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Power Struggle
Power struggles can cause deep rifts in a relationship. When neither party wants to "give in," superficial problems become the battleground for winning rather than understanding the deeper, more important issues at stake.
Couples therapy can assist in defusing the power struggle problems in your relationship and build trust with your partner. It can help you let go of a need to control and find ways to be supportive of one another.
Communication Issues
Communication can be more complicated than we expect. Because most of us have many years of experience communicating or attempting to, we may not be aware that communication issues may be the cause of relationship difficulties, both personal and professional. Learning how to understand others and adapt our communication style can pay off smoother, more productive and loving relationships.
Effective communication skills are the foundation of a rewarding relationship. Knowing how to share your feelings, state your needs clearly, and communicate your thoughts and feeling constructively can dramatically improve your relationship.
Conflict Management
Every relationship has conflicts and disagreements. Unfortunately, too many couples let their disagreements contaminate their relationship. Conflict can stimulate a respectful expression of diversity, a constructive process of decision-making, an opportunity to create change, or motivation to solve problems.
The way a couple deals with conflict is a powerful predictor of marital success. The critical thing is that couples need to learn to manage their conflict in such a way that it doesn’t hurt the good things in the relationship. Conflict can be a way of getting to know each other better. Sharing respect, power, and decision-making leads to happier, more stable relationship.
Infidelity/Affairs
Affairs are a painful, sometimes irreparable breach in what had been a committed relationship. When your partner has been unfaithful, you might feel angry, betrayed, or vengeful and it critically, and negatively affects the relationship.
Couples counseling cab help you overcome the pain and suffering during this difficult time and renew your commitments to the relationship. For couples who are committed to saving their relationship and willing to do the necessary repair work together with a professional therapist, they often emerge with a better, closer, and stronger marriage than they ever imagined. For them, the affair represents a wake-up call and an opportunity to birth a new marriage.
Jealousy
Jealousy is a reaction to a perceived threat--real or imagined--to a valued relationship or to its quality. For most people jealousy produces tremendous pain and distress that has the potential power to be destructive, evidenced by things like frequent accusations, suspicious behavior, or extreme controlling behavior. When jealousy is not addressed it can lead to distrust and anger, or even symptoms of anxiety.
Working with couples to reduce or eliminate the frequency of jealous thoughts and behaviors, while addressing the issues of negative feelings and controlling behavior, is a key in building a healthy relationship. Couples counseling can help restore feelings of trust and improve relationship satisfaction.
Pre-Martial Counseling
Marriage is a serious commitment. If you love each other, than it’s wise to deal with the red flags before, rather than afterwards. Pre-marital counseling can help sort these issues out - and provides a place for you to explore your thoughts and feelings about each other in a safe and constructive environment. It would give you an opportunity to feel more confident about your decision and be clearer about what it takes to make a relationship successful by addressing your concerns before making a larger commitment.
Pre-marital counseling also educate partners understand the intricacies and problems of close, committed marriage – so they will be better prepared to handle the relationship challenges for the purpose of experiencing greater marital satisfaction.
Relationship Renewal
Have you been in your relationship for a long time and feel things have gotten stale?
Are you feeling like you're in a rut that you can't get out of?
Patterns develop in relationships over time, and sometimes those negative patterns don't inspire or re-energize us. Discovering these negative patterns or vicious cycles in the relationship, finding way to break these cycles and create new ways to related and behave toward each other is a task that can bring to life sour relationship. Couples therapy can help generate new ways to feel renewed.
Romance & Intimacy
Romance and intimacy in the dating stage promots all kinds of goodwill. When romance and intimacy fall away due to hectic life stressors, unfulfilled expectations, negative communication and behavioral patterns etc., good will begin to decline. Automatic functioning gives way to distant feelings and that often results in couples feeling that they don’t love each other anymore. Making sure that Romance and Intimacy are well cared for in a relationship is essential to the relationship’s vitality. Yet, most couples, innocently, let this aspect fall away. In couples therapy couples can learn skills and develop new habits to (re)establish romance and intimacy.
Spiritual Issues
Disagreement between you and your partner over religious faith or practices, or differences in spiritual beliefs, can be a source of conflict and distress in your relationship. Deeply held beliefs and values affects how you relate to each other as couples or as parents. Developing mutual respect, understanding and tolerance can serve as the foundation for strong relationship. Resolving these issues can bring a new level of intimacy to your relationship.
Financial Differences
Financial/money issues are a common source of conflict between partners and often cause stress, anger, distress and unhappiness. Money means a great deal to many people, and money also means different thing to different people. Finding out the meaning you and your partner hold, having a mutual understanding and respect as well as reaching mutual agreement about financial matters can tremendously impact your relationship for the positive.
Trust
Trust is the foundation for intimate, secure and successful relationships. It must be earned and maintained with consistent actions. But building trust and feeling like your partner is trustworthy is not always easy for those who have had their trust betrayed. Once your trust has been violated, it’s difficult to make it viable in your relationship again. If you have the desire to try rebuilding trust in your relationship again, couples therapy can help you take the steps to get there.
Sexual Issues
If you and your partner are experiencing problems with sex, you are not alone. Recent studies reveal that high percent of people of all ages report having sexual problems. Sexual problems or differences may have a negative effect on a relationship, causing hurt and shameful feelings. But you deserve to have a pleasurable sex life and spiral2grow has the professionals who can help. Therapy can help you enhance your sexual enjoyment and increase your general relationship satisfaction.
Addictions
If you find yourself arguing with your partner over the issue of addictions (such as alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling etc.) and find that they consistently fail to maintain their promise, you might consider couples counseling to help you reduce the negative effects this problem is having on your relationship.
spiral2grow works with couples to address problems of drug and alcohol use and to establish an environment of mutual trust and respect, which will help improve your relationship and help your partner on the road to sobriety and/or recovery.
Emotional Reactivity
Emotional reactivity is a strong or sudden emotional response to an event (conscious or unconscious). If you feel there is a negative energy in your relationships and that you are fighting about the same issues repeatedly, then your relationship is driven by emotional reactivity.
In couples therapy you can become aware of the real reason you have conflict in your relationships and the source of emotional reactivity. You can develop skills and practice techniques to break free from recurring conflicts moving from reactive mode to active mode allowing you to create an emotionally intelligent relationship that is free of fear and filled with love.
Life Crises/Transition
Major life events, such as the death of a loved one, a career setback, "mid-life" crisis, etc. can cause a period of psychological stress, anxiety or depression. A life crisis can have disastrous consequences on a relationship, particularly when the person who is going through a crisis refuses to accept it and deal with it. Couples counseling can help the individuals understand and address personal crises and can also be effective in dealing with problems in relationships.
Problem Solving
For most of us, seeing problems in our relationships is easy, solving them is another matter. It can be annoying or just plain scary when we don’t see eye-to-eye with the one we love. Sometimes "little" things seem to take on a life of their own and negative escalation of the interaction takes place, even without understanding how it got there. Problem solving is critical and practical skill that can be learned with the purpose of discussing and solving problems constructively.
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