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Tag: Marital Therapy
Two Shrinks Over Drinks AGAIN!
In this episode for our series, Shrinks Over Drinks, I talk with Dr. Niklas Torneke, a Swedish psychiatrist who has authored three books in English and more in Swedish. Two of his books in English have been very instrumental in my journey into ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), RFT (Relational Frame Theory), and behaviorism. He is an authority when it comes to the uses of language and metaphors from an RFT perspective.
I have myself seen how his work has informed me inside the counseling room and how much it helps people see through the veneer of language.
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Pain vs. Suffering
by Nathan Chua
There’s an old aphorism that goes, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional,” credited to Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami.* Have you seen a kid who was disappointed by a parent or primary caretaker who wasn’t as appreciative of a pyramid of blocks it created, and then proceeds to wipe out the masterpiece with one quick stroke of an arm? I do remember myself doing so but can’t remember what my creation was. If we look closely, we as adults sometimes revert to this way of coping with the inevitable hard feelings or the pain we get in situations at home, at work, and at random moments in our days.
I am here borrowing a series of questions you might ask yourself when faced with a challenging moment in these situations. This can help you see if you may be causing more pain on top of what is already an emotionally difficult moment. I borrowed this from a book written by experts in functional analytic psychotherapy.**
- In that situation, can you notice what it is that you do in reaction to it?
- If another person is involved, what do they do in response to your reaction?
- What do you think it is that you do that aggravates or contributes to the problem?
- Did the way you reacted show up in other places or with other people?
- What is immediately rewarding about what you do?
- What is it costing you in the short term?
- What do you foresee will happen if you continue doing what you’re doing in the long run?
- What would happen if you stopped doing what you’re doing now? What would you have to be willing to accept?
- Is there a purpose important enough for you to accept or face that?
In your relationships with your partner or your family:
When people in close relationships fight, there’s usually a reason for such behaviors. Very often life’s stressors provide enough of a catalyst for differences and emotional sensitivities to be highlighted. Couples and parents often believe that their partners or children need to be exactly just like them. There is a tendency to believe that what is evident to one should be evident to the other. There is nothing wrong with these thoughts for that is a typical function of our minds. We compare and find out what should or should not be the same. However, in your attempts to change the other, what results do you notice you get? And if you didn’t do this, maybe you would have to accept that you and your kid or your spouse are different from you. Now is there a purpose here for which you would be willing to accept that?
In your relationships at work
Just like in other areas in your life, change happens at work. Let’s take for example your boss. We all hope that we have only one boss who happens to like us and the way we work, usually for life! Unfortunately, that is not, most of the time, under our control. Many decisions from within the hierarchical structure are handed down from above. So ask yourself the questions posed above. Let’s say you end up consuming hours contemplating how bad things have been since your company had a change of management. You may notice that there are short term costs involved in this behavior, like procrastinating on your work tasks. In the long term, such a habit can only lead up to you losing your job or getting bad marks on your performance. Would you be willing to accept the fact that companies change and at times your boss will frustrate or be different from you? What would be reason enough for you to accept this reality? Is it the family that you love and care about who depend on your job to sustain their needs or even lifestyles? Is it that long wished for vacation that you planned to spend with loved ones?
At random moments
You and I know that driving in a megapolis like Metro Manila can be rather challenging. Anger and frustration are easy to come by when you have to contend with multiple threats to your peaceful drive home. When you yell and scream inside your vehicle while your kids and partner are with you, what do you notice are the payoffs and both short and long term negative consequences? Has it gotten in the way of an otherwise happy ride home? Would you have to accept that at times driving in an overcrowded city can be challenging? Is your drive home important enough of a reason for you to hold your peace?
There you go my friends. Hope these examples will give you a snippet of what you can learn from what the experts have painstakingly worked to provide us with, which is the knowledge that we are not free from life’s pains, but we are free to choose how we respond to them. Will we follow old rules of thumb that have both long and short term costs to what otherwise are things we most cherish about our jobs and relationships? Or will we stop and take a step back and see from a distance what we can do differently to avert the costs and live well in the moment?
*https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/613585-pain-is-inevitable-suffering-is-optional-say-you-re-running-and
**FAP Made Simple by Holman, Kanter, Tsai, Kohlenberg
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Interview with Dr. Blake Evans!
What to do after an affair
by Nathan Chua
This is intended to be a first aid kit for those who are going through a difficult discovery of an affair. Please note that this is not a substitute for seeking professional help. Affairs are situations that would likely require trained assistance. Some who have taken such events lightly or have let these incidents slip by, often end up having to deal with it later with loads of pent up emotions that make it even harder to recover from.
I am not sure if I ever had a blog post that enumerates a list of do’s and don’ts when it comes to dealing with cheating in committed relationships, particularly because applying such rules can at times do more harm to an already struggling relationship. Let me emphasize to you, my audience, that I am listing them here not because I want to give you easy answers to your situation. It is exactly that your situations are unique that I want you to take these tips with a grain of salt. I am showing you a list of rules that can generally apply to most cases of betrayal without having the paradoxical effect of the couple ending up fighting about the rules instead of facing the problems affecting the relationship.
Tip 1: Know where responsibility lies
- It is often that the hurt partner puts the full blame of the affair on the participating partner. Yes, that is a fact that the affair or the recourse to an affair is the sole responsibility of the participating partner. There is no excuse for an affair even as there are major problems in the relationship. However, the difficulties in the relationship is the responsibility of both the partners. We all have reasons for our behavior but they are not to be considered excuses. Providing excuses can lead to the participating partner to blame the relationship for the affair, and for the hurt partner to justify their past behaviors in the relationship. Reasons are different from excuses or justifications for either partner.
Tip 2: Problem-solve in the immediate aftermath
- You and your partner may decide to live separately for the meantime if situations at home become too difficult to handle. This could either be because you have a tendency to escalate or are afraid of how your escalations can affect your children.
- You may want to get yourselves checked for possible sexually transmitted diseases.
- Couples are free to decide if the relationship is worth keeping but making a decision in an emotionally charged state may not be in their best interest. Delay such decisions until you have returned to calmer emotional states.
- Withhold conversations about the affair until you are in therapy. Early on, it may be too much of a stretch for couples to know how to handle the problem without escalating. Remember, what we want is for couples to move forward in their relationship rather than take steps that bring them to even more hurtful conversations. Bring these conversations to the counseling room with your therapist.
Tip 3: What questions to ask and how for the hurt partner
- It is understandable that the injured partner will resort to questions fraught with accusations and harsh criticisms towards the participating partner. Focus on what you want to know and tell your partner why that is important to you. Let your partner know that this is part of the process of moving on rather than a way of punishing your partner. There are tendencies for the injured partner to ask rhetorical and often sarcastic questions to their partners. It is advisable that you make factual disclosures and revelations of your underlying softer emotions of fear and anxiety towards the possibility that this could happen again.
This will be all for now. For part two of this post, I will be discussing what the participating partner can say or do that can help in the moving on process. It will also involve how partners can deal with future challenges that can happen if the participating partner is still able to remain in touch with the affair partner. Another common question is, “Is it okay for the hurt partner to confront the affair partner?” See you in the next blog!
How to create lasting change in your relationship: Video!
How to create lasting change in your relationship
by Nathan Chua
There was a time in my practice as a counselor that I thought working on a relationship only required learning skills of communication that anyone can practice. Well, nothing has changed until this very day except for the realization that the skills have to come with a motivation that creates lasting rather than fleeting change. In my continuing search for what truly works for my clients, I have always been watchful of signs that tell me if what I do works or otherwise. From my over-a-decade’s experience dealing with couples, I have gone through multiple approaches that I thought were the holy grail of couples therapy. They all seemed to make sense. One of the approaches involved highly emotionally charged sessions that got into the deepest feelings that have thus far remained unseen by the couple. The other approaches involved learning skills on how to communicate better and keep couples from spiraling into their usual patterns of unending arguments.
It turns out that I would find both of these approaches to make sense but also knew that there were areas that needed to be addressed. It was only until I found a way to marry these two approaches that I sensed an end to my search. Well, at least until a time comes when a better approach is discovered. While digging into deeper emotions was important, constantly employing this approach can prove rather exhausting for the couple as well as the counselor. Realistically, people don’t get into heavy conversations about their deeper emotions on a day-to-day basis.
On the other hand, with the skills training approach, couples can be very imprecise with their ways of handling conflicts. It is hard to always be accurately following rules of engagement. Moreover, this technique coming from an expert can mean that couples are motivated more by complying with what the therapist is telling them to do or following rules outside of context sometimes, and end up fighting about these rules.
I found an approach that blends these two rather seamlessly. Something that has to do with exposing the deeper emotions that are difficult to show, and at the same time developing skills that can be practiced not just because that is what the couple learns from therapy but rather because they feel empathy towards each other.
It is about guiding the couple rather than following an imprimatur from the therapist. It is allowing them to discover what they can adapt as their own, because let’s face it, not every interaction that a couple does ends up in a wreck. They would have had at least a few conversations that worked in the past without any instructions from therapy. The rule only requires that couples be more observant of these successful instances in the past that don’t get noticed, repeated, and turned into habits of course.
So rather than teaching couples about what to say or do, it is more a process of discovery or trial and error. In addition to this, couples learn how to make disclosures that create empathy rather than defensiveness. It is part of our nature as social beings to have a sense of empathy towards another if only the words or gestures exchanged create room for safety and bonding. It is one thing to say that your partner is insensitive to your needs and another to say that you feel hurt when your partner behaves in a certain way in a given situation. Disclosing your vulnerable feelings over attacking your partner will usually influence your partner to feel empathic and act accordingly.
Lasting change usually happens when the motivations for change are not just about what couples learned from their therapist in the counseling room, or what they read in some self-help articles or books, lasting change comes from caring. That’s the part that happens when couples learn to feel safe enough to share their deeper, softer feelings. A metaphor that I often use for couples is that of a child who rants and throws a fit in order to get its way. Parents would then panic and address the fit rather than what it is that was causing the fit in the first place. A child, though, that learns to speak about its fears rather than its frustrations, would more likely have that fear addressed by a compassionate attentive parent. A pouting child would normally get a defensive reaction, while a fearful child would probably get attention. The former would usually end up being, at best, disciplined, and at worst coerced by the adult parents into behaving properly, while the latter would likely end up with getting assurance and affirmation. In summary, lasting change comes not just from learning skills, but more so from caring for the other. The other half of it is becoming more aware of what approaches you do with your partner that evoke caring and which ones lead you back to square one.