Tag: Face-to-Face Counseling

How to be successful in conflict

by Nathan Chua

I have heard it said before that couples who don’t fight, don’t talk either.  The same thing can be said about families and friends.  We can be so averse to conflict that we often opt out of talking about them.  I often hear couples demand that their partners should have as similar wants as they do.  My partner should already know what I want and asking for it will make me look pathetic.  In our culture, it is quite common to see couples come to seek therapy due to the long periods where there have been so many bottled up emotions.  In this article, I will share with you some things you can try to help you prevent conflicts that can either drive you apart because of a major fight, or make you imperceptibly drift apart.    

Tune in to your feelings 

In contrast to what most of us might believe, conflict can actually be healthy in close relationships.  It’s really how we handle them that can make a difference.  One way to avoid escalating conflicts is for us to tune in to the deeper feelings that are hidden in our efforts to protect ourselves from exposing our vulnerabilities.  In many challenging situations, we are often unaware that we have mixed emotions.  A good example to use is when we lose someone in death.  Most of us believe that the only legitimate emotion that we should feel is sadness.  Yes, that is true.  Sadness would most likely be first on our list.  But some of us end up unable to accept the grieving process believing that we are somehow defective for having other feelings like guilt, anger, or even relief at the idea that the burden of caretaking has been lifted out of us.  

In relationships, it is legitimate to feel anger or irritation with our loved ones. Tuning into ourselves involves discovering the other feelings that we might be missing.  Are there other feelings involved here? 

See for yourself if showing just one side of you to your partners is helping you come to a resolution.  If not, maybe it is time to let your partners see those other sides of you. 

For some, the angry side is what the loved ones want to see.  Maybe our indifferent attitude has made them think that they don’t matter.  At least seeing our anger tells them they matter.     

In case you lose it 

Then there might be times when you just couldn’t help but go back to your old ways of handling the situation.  You very well know that you’ve gone away from what you would like to be in the situation.  Listen to your senses, if it doesn’t feel like you like yourself in those situations, then waste as little time as possible and make amends.  Begin an open and honest conversation about it.  

One thing I help couples to realize in the counseling room is that the work they do does not guarantee that they will never make mistakes.  It is impossible to expect near perfection.  They can accept that these are tendencies that the relationship will probably evoke in each of them when there are major challenges and changes.  Couples and relatives can ask themselves one thing to recover from such ill-fated arguments.  Has anything changed in what they value?  Have their deepest aspirations for themselves in their relationships become different?  Chances are they have not.  Their values remain the same.  

I recall one of Dr. Steven Hayes’ analogy of how we are in times of challenges.  He reminds us of what we were like as toddlers.  Toddlers fall down countless times experiencing, at times, excruciatingly painful wounds just to learn how to walk.  Well, we’ve all been toddlers before.  We can remind ourselves that before we had language, we kept on standing up when we fell.  There were no rules that told us what we can or cannot do.  The only thing we instinctively did was to stand up again and walk toward what matters to us.

Say you’re sorry and do it over again.  We are all a work in progress.  Perfection is not what we were built for.  And that’s why we are all called simply, to be human.

Common Sense and Psychological Sense

by Nathan Chua

As I learn more in the field, I can understand why some people might have a negative view of psychology.  Besides the stigma, there is plenty of material out there that can make any person think, “Do you really need a PhD to know that?”  In this article, I’d like to talk about some examples of how this happens and why much of the common sense advice we hear online can at best, be heard but reflected on before implementing.

Here are some examples of very common common sense advice we all may have heard about at some point:  

A common sense or logical approach to sadness or depression:

Eliminate negative thoughts!  Think positive!  This will work only if we eliminate a function of our thinking, which is thinking of the opposite!  

You and I can test this for ourselves.  Living in a tropical country like the Philippines, note what thoughts come to you when the heat and humidity become unbearable.  Your mind will probably remind you of how much more pleasant the weather is in the cooler months of the year.  During the cooler months, you would probably remember the impending summer months and how short-lived these more pleasant temperatures are.  This is our minds’ propensity to think of opposites.  For our minds to not be able to do this, we would have to damage it in some ways.  Thinking positive will only remind us of the negative thinking that we were trying to avoid in the first place.  

Here’s another reason why it becomes difficult for you and I to simply think positive.  In fact, it can even be counterproductive.  The command here is, “It is important for you to not think that negative thought.”  The paradox of this command is that it makes you monitor your thoughts, specifically, your negative thoughts.  So how do you know you’re successful?  You’re not thinking of the…oops!  In other words, simply using common sense to not think about a negative thought, already reminds you of what you are avoiding in the first place and it has taken such an important place in your mind.

This war between positive and negative thoughts is unending.  One thing for certain is life will provide us with challenges, which inevitably produce negative thoughts.  This is part of what we mean when we say that depression is not really due to sadness, but it is mostly about the struggle with sadness.  Thinking only positive thoughts may sound logical by the process of elimination, but it leaves us in a losing war with our feelings which will only disappear if we are in a state of numbness from medication, or if we were dead..        

Common sense advice on sleeping problems:

Be prepared to go to sleep!  Keep it as dark as possible, with just the right temperature, and dead silence.  What’s more, follow a routine of taking a warm shower or a hot bath and make sure you have comfortable clothes.  The fact that you are prepared to go to sleep means you are primed and anxious for a battle with your insomnia.  If you are prepared for a battle, it goes without saying that you will be awake!  

I remember in the early days of my work as a therapist, I used to give one piece of advice to conquer insomnia, try not to sleep!  In other words, come to an acceptance with your insomnia and you will probably be more able to sleep.  So common sense advice as mentioned above may only serve more to keep you awake than it is to help you get the rest you want. 

Couple advice on apologies or using formulaic sentences:

Be quicker to forgive or apologize to your partner or spouse.  That’s a common statement we hear from different experts in the field.  When taken as a rule for its own sake, it forgets about the different contexts that couples have.  As I have mentioned before in a previous article, context does not just refer to a physical location but also people and our very own thoughts and memories.  If applied without sensitivity to context, this can lead to misinterpretations and even more loops in a couple’s arguments.  A quick apology can be interpreted as insincere just as a quick word of forgiveness.  It’s easy to say words we don’t mean but body language is harder to disguise.  This can lead to more vigilance from one of the partners and more frustration on the other.  One is seen to be insincere while the other is perceived to be unappreciative, which leads to the point of them giving up on each other.     

The kind of psychology I espouse is not difficult because it takes a lot of effort, it is difficult because it is tricky.  As you might have experienced yourself, common sense advice can be effortful and offer more opportunities for discouragement and escalation to even bigger problems.  To paraphrase a famous psychologist, we are not in therapy to do the logical thing, but the psychological thing.  So next time you hear someone give common sense advice, please either think critically or try not to generalize.  You may even give it a try if you wish, but also be more noticing of the results.  What makes psychological sense may not be what common sense dictates, and that’s the whole point of this blog post.    

Why Couple or Marriage Counseling? – What couple or marriage counseling can offer that you cannot find in workshops or self-help materials

by Nathan Chua

There have been a number of times that couples have come to me to seek therapy because it is their last option in an otherwise hopeless relationship.  Oftentimes, these couples have tried seeking advice from well-meaning friends and relatives.  They often may have also experienced attending group workshops or retreats.  Unfortunately, at least for those who have come to my office, they do see changes but they have been mostly short-lived.  Don’t get me wrong though, I have no problem having couples go to these events.  They can be of some help and for some, may be the best option.  In fact, I believe in the wisdom of doing one’s own research and work on becoming a better person.  The only thing about these approaches that can sometimes lead to less successful attempts at fixing a relationship, and at times may even cause more harm, is the lack of context.  

A Word About Context

Pardon me if “context” may sound a bit jargony for some.  Put in another way, context simply means applicability of some of the rules that people learn in retreats and self-help materials.  When I say group, I don’t mean group therapy, but those that we often see, where people gather to listen to a speaker and talk about targeted subject matters that come out of the talks.  The application of a rule without sensitivity to context can lead to its misapplication and therefore possibly cause more harm than help.

When I use the word context also, I do not just refer to it as a place, time, or situation that a couple finds themselves in.  A context in any given situation, can include people and internal mental processes.  People as context means your partner or spouse is a context.  I am sure you’ve heard some say that they are different people when they are around their co-workers compared to when they are with their family.  Your spouse is a context.  Internal mental processes are also a context.  Each partner in a relationship has their own histories either within or outside the relationship.  A wife who had been betrayed in a previous relationship before will likely be more vigilant of being betrayed.  If there had been a past betrayal in the current relationship, the betrayed as well as the betraying partner can become sensitive to secretiveness and guilt messages respectively. 

Sure, attending weekend retreats, and reading self-help books and online articles can definitely help, but there is this element of context that you and your partner have to consider.  Books and group facilitators have no and very little knowledge of your context either individually or as a couple.  Here is an example of how a misapplication of learned material can end up not just being of little help, but also cause even worse problems if taken out of context.

Suppose you learn from a weekend couples workshop that couples have to talk about their issues to keep the problems from festering.  Yes, this can certainly help couples who are conflict avoidant.  Let’s say a partner learns to follow a piece of advice culled from a weekend retreat, which is to apologize as soon as possible to their partner.  Devoid of context, this essential rule may feel like sound advice.  However, what if from the apologizing partner’s perspective or context, they never had the habit of apologizing.  The family of origin of the offending partner had learned that just starting up a conversation is enough to serve as an apology.  Given that this rule of immediate apologies is learned by both partners, expectations from the offended partner will naturally rise to a level much higher than before.  Well, they did spend quite a bit of time and resources to attend the retreat!  

Following a rule devoid of context can be damaging.  How?  Let’s suppose the apologizing partner does the immediate apology as advised.  Having been reminded of this, the offended partner will notice this with greater scrutiny as to how the offending partner would make the apology.  Being uncomfortable with the newly prescribed behavior, the apologizing partner on the other hand, tries to make as sincere an apology as possible but falls short of the other partner’s expectations.  The offended partner can have thoughts like, my partner is just doing this because that was what was taught.  It’s insincere and fake and therefore doesn’t deserve attention or appreciation.  The offended partner may then choose to wait a bit longer and see how far this goes before expressing appreciation.  

The apologizing partner may then attempt this several times, which from their perspective requires a herculean effort.  Having not received any form of appreciation sooner, the offending partner can feel that their efforts are not working to make their relationship move back to better times in the past.  They give up on doing it.  The offended partner can then notice the short lived quality of the change and have thoughts about how hopeless their partner is, and that change is not likely to come any time soon or become a lasting sign of better things to come.

So to answer the question in the title of this article, couple counseling is indeed not a joke.  It is hard work and is fraught with fears of having to share very personal matters to a stranger.  But a counselor will have a better grasp of your contexts as a couple and as individuals.  Knowing that context and how these rules can apply or not apply to you is critical to avoiding the pattern of distrust that’s shown above.  Why not give it a shot?

Brief Therapy Packages for 2023!

At One Life Only, we always endeavor to help you find the kind of therapy that will be most helpful to our clients!

We believe that therapy should be brief (as possible) and effective in moving our clients’ lives in the direction that they want.

There are some of you who want to know what sort of packages we recommend for individual, couple, and family therapies!

Well, we are now publishing it here for your guidance in making a decision that can prove life-changing not just for you but even your loved ones!

The packages are now available in our FAQ pages, the general one and the one for personal inquiries.

Here is the update that we just introduced to these pages:

What are your suggested packages for individual, couple, and family therapy?

  • Here are our suggested packages for individual and couple therapy:
    • Individual: Six to Eight Sessions may be done weekly, biweekly, or monthly depending on your needs
    • Couple: Our package for couples therapy consists of four sessions.
      The first and the fourth sessions are conjoint, while the second and third sessions are individual sessions. The total amount of time for the four sessions is 300 minutes or 100 minutes each for the conjoint sessions and 50 minutes each for the individual sessions.
      We generally see significant improvements after four sessions for a majority of our clients.
      The four sessions can be done between one day to as long as your schedule permits.
      Follow up sessions if needed will be mostly conjoint at 75 minutes each.
      You may choose to schedule one session at a time and decide if you wish to continue anytime during your series of sessions.
    • We currently do not have a package for family therapy.

Note: You may still choose to schedule one session at a time and decide if you wish to continue anytime during your series of sessions.

What can help you become the New You in the New Year?

by Nathan Chua

It’s that time of year again when many of us set out to become better people.  We all have this internal yearning to be the best versions of ourselves.  I often use the term our existential angst, a concern that we have not been living up to what we hoped to be.  What do we want to be?  A kinder friend?  A more responsible husband?  A more fun-loving person?  Much of the troubles we feel have much to do with thoughts surrounding the people we strive to be and what our current reality indicates.  

But what if this striving can start instead from a very simple skill that we can learn?  Maybe the question could be phrased as what is it that we could get better at, rather than what we could be.  Nothing is more demoralizing than realizing that even with all the work we try to do in becoming a better person, we fail.  Why is this so?  For one, our minds are very good at naming things we can or can’t do when faced with different circumstances.  It feels like there is an upper limit to what we can or cannot achieve.  It could be someone or something that could potentially stand in the way of such goals that keeps us from doing better.   

Here’s a very simple tip on what to be better at this coming year in order for you to take some steps towards your most coveted aspirations.  It’s so simple you might think it’s silly.  Be better at: noticing.  That’s it!  It’s your first step towards making the change you’ve always seemed unable to reach.  It could be hard at first but you and I can get better at it, if we practice.  

But you might ask, what is there to notice?  What should I notice?  Should I start noticing what shirt my workmate is wearing everyday?  Of course not.  Firstly, notice what you tend to do when something happens and then notice the results of what you do.  If what you do doesn’t help your relationship with your spouse then start noticing those that do.  If what you do doesn’t give you the hardworking, addiction-free child that you want, then start noticing those that do.  Notice what works and doesn’t work for you and your relationships.    

Then notice what goes on inside of you when these challenges come along.  Notice it just for what they are.  Then notice what your mind tells you they are.  Are there any judgments against those very feelings that make you and I, very human?  And notice also how long these feelings last.  Are they there permanently?  Or do they come and go as they please?       

Then notice what, in those moments, are most important to you.  Here is where maybe your list of becoming can come along handy.  Whatever our role in life is right now, we want to see ourselves becoming the best we can be in those roles.  You and I can be a spouse, partner, friend, sibling, parent, child, and so on.  In every situation that presents some kind of challenge to your emotional stability, go back to what you think will be representative of how you would have wanted to handle the situation.  Go back to noticing the probable consequences when you do what you do, then notice what it is that goes on inside your thoughts and feelings as you experience these challenges, and finally, notice what is important for you in the moment.  Then choose your best or better course of action from there.   

And why notice?  If you have gone through numerous self-help books or articles lately, I think that’s what the fuss about mindfulness is.  Yeah!  Simply put, mindfulness is really mostly about noticing!  So just start noticing more this new year.  And may I go just a step further.  Maybe that’s what you go to see a counselor for, to become more noticing or mindful.  Try and see for yourself and notice what wonders more noticing can do for you and the people you love.  Happy New Year everyone!

Finding Your Purpose: A Behavioral Perspective

by Nathan Chua

In a recent article about Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple computers, he had this to say about an old saying: 

“There is a saying that if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life,” Cook said during the speech at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans.

“At Apple, I learned that is a total crock,” Cook said to a laugh from the crowd.*

How many times have many of us stared at the horizon to ask ourselves what our existence is for?  There have been many cases in the counseling room wherein people ask me why they have these feelings of emptiness, a lack of purpose or direction in their lives.  Believe me, I still ask myself the same questions.  I am not exempt from life’s difficult puzzles. 

I am quite sure that most of you reading or listening or watching this have browsed through countless articles that try to answer this question of finding purpose.  In this space, I would like to share my take on how this might look like, from a behavioral perspective.  

Here’s my understanding of the subject at this point in my journey inside the world of contextual behavioral science.  We all do things for a reason.  When you pick up your toothbrush in the morning, that has a purpose.  Deciding to use your time to go to the grocery store whether by foot or by the use of a vehicle is also based on reasons.  There are three ways of explaining why we do what we do.  We either think of them as activities that we should, must, or can’t do, that we have to do, and that we want to do.  Now, let’s break each one of them down.  

Musts, Shoulds, Can’ts:

As humans who enjoy being at the top of the food chain, we occupy this spot in part because of our capacity to follow rules without having to experience something first hand.  We can just be told about a rule and not have to test it.  You can imagine how helpful this ability can be if we go back to ancient times when a rule to follow might be, “Don’t go near a lion because it can be dangerous.”   Rules like washing our hands before we eat or avoiding certain places that can pose a danger to our safety are helpful in keeping us safe and alive.

However, this rule following capacity can otherwise be detrimental when applied to threats we sense from the inside.  If we yell and scream at our child or partner, sometimes following that rule can work. 

We get what we want, like a period of less frustration from someone we live with.  The rule here is I shouldn’t be getting to this level of frustration with my child or partner.  Or, I can’t stand this feeling any longer, I must do something to stop it.  Unfortunately, this can have detrimental long term effects on your relationship with the very people that mean most to you especially when done in a harsh manner. 

This can also translate into other consequential decisions in life.  Shoulds like you should be pursuing a career in a field only because it is what others say you should do.

A good example of this is, “I must be a doctor because that is what my family wants for me,” which often leads to burnout and poor performance.

The other extreme is to follow a rule that may not be available for us to follow at the moment.  An example would be, I must be an artist regardless of the fact that I am currently without any opportunities to be one.  

Another form is when we follow rules like I must have a drink when I am stressed; I can’t sleep without a sleeping pill; or I can’t speak before a crowd until I am relaxed.

This type of rule-following can lead to unhelpful and at times unhealthy behaviors where we don’t make advances in what we are capable of achieving within the finite amount of time that we have in our existence.

Have to’s: 

These activities fall under what Tim Cook was probably referring to.  Although we would like an ideal of working in jobs that give us the most fulfillment, we nonetheless would likely end up with aspects of the work that we don’t necessarily enjoy.  This is where some of that idealism has to wear off. 

If you are one who insists on being in that dream job, but can’t find any opportunities to land one, maybe it is time to think about the have to’s.  In the meantime, and we don’t know how long that meantime will be, you might have to work other jobs and pursue your passions through other avenues.  There are people who end up doing what they love on the weekends in a different setting.  Anyway what we love to do we can do even without compensation.  You’ll never know, you might even find it in whatever current job you have that puts food on the table. In other words, there can be parts of your job that allow you to do what you love to do even if it’s less than your ideal.

Want to’s:

Here is where most of us would like to be.  Unfortunately, not even the jobs that fit our passions are purely fun.  If you wanted to play a sport for a living, there’s also the hard part of long hours of practice in a very lonely gym.  So congratulate yourself if you are able to land a job wherein you are fulfilling your want to’s.  

Want to’s can also involve what we do for rest and relaxation.  To go back to an earlier example, your musts, like I must drink to remove my stress, can be changed to, I drink when I choose to remove my stress.  This is where we see the same form of behavior functioning differently in different contexts.

Here’s a quote from Ray Owen, that I believe is a helpful guide for us to know if ingesting something to relax from heavy stress is helpful or not:

“Remembering, planning, daydreaming, imagining, and so on–matter greatly to me too and I wouldn’t give them up.  However, I’d say that they’re good things when they’re chosen,” Ray Owen

You can add having some time off of work or other commitments with a drink or two (or whatever activity it is that you do for recreation) because you choose or want to, and not because you must, is a way to see if you are doing something with your time that is helpful or unhelpful to your sense of purpose.  It is probably something that works for you if you choose to do it rather than something you must do in order to achieve something, like relieving stress. 

So next time you do something that’s like following a rule, notice the rule first, then notice why you’re doing it and see if it is something you feel like you:

  • must, should, or can’t do,
  • or something you have to do,
  • or something you want to do. 

Maybe you will find your place in the sun or what we most of the time call, your purpose for living.  Nice rule of thumb, isn’t it?

*Source: IFL Science