26 Techniques – Used by a Marriage Counsellor to Help Resolve Couple Conflicts
26 Techniques – Used by a Marriage Counsellor to Help Resolve Couple Conflicts
July 27 2022 TalktoAngel 0 comments 4941 Views
Social media is an ongoing highlight about reel, the reality is that having problems as a couple is quite common nowadays. Many couples do face conflicts and find comfort in guidance from a licensed relationship counsellor. Most of us are not very comfortable confronting our relationship conflicts face-to-face with our partner on account of regular arguments, sarcasm, blame, and fights. With the help of a relationship counselor, your determination, and a positive mindset the challenges can be conquered. The relationships can be repaired. If you’re interested in trying relationship counselling or couple therapy or wondering whether it’s a fit for you, we have rounded up the best strategies, techniques, and exercises to get started.
What is Relationship Counselling or Couple Therapy?
We all have noticed that all relationships have some conflict. Learning how to manage your conflicts, helps not only to identify and patch up your issues, but it can also make your relationship much deeper and stronger.
In couples therapy, a certified couple counselor works with two people to improve their relationship effectively. Certain types of counselors/psychologists are also specifically trained to work with couples, including marriage and family therapists.
Like any other form of psychotherapy, couples or marriage counseling requires a commitment and willingness to open up from both involved parties. Counseling is not a guarded practice reserved for any “type” of person. Couples therapy or Relationship Counselling can be of help to anyone in a relationship, regardless of demographics, caste, sexual orientation, and age. “Couples in relationship counseling identify, learn develop a deeper and more secure bonding with one another and can have difficult conversations without pushing the other person away by mutual respect,” says Dr. Prof R K Suri, PhD, Founder Psychowellness Center.
When you’re committing to couples therapy, come with an open mindset, and be ready to break down the negativities and barriers of communication.
Marriage Counselling techniques
Online counselling platforms like TalktoAngel and other online resources and telehealth have made couple therapy more accessible than ever.
If you’re looking to engage in self-care and enhance your relationship, there are many techniques and exercises at your fingertips.
- Reflective or Active listening
“Reflective or listening is a highly beneficial exercise where the couple takes turns being active listeners,” s Use “I” in place of “you” statements. Always be respectful in conversation with your partner.
Some therapists use a technique called emotionally focused therapy (EFT), to facilitate enduring behavior changes. The goal is for couples “to identify maladaptive emotional, thinking and behavioral patterns within the relationship that are interfering with secure bonds and attachments”, Partners “learn and utilize these techniques to nurture or create healthy safe, and secure boundaries, attachments within the relationship,”
Narrative therapy is a type of counselling or therapy that views people as separate unique entities from their problems. The practice of narrative therapy revolves around people listing their problems in narrative form and rewriting their stories. It can help them see that no single story can save in totality of their experience. Narrative therapy is helpful for couples who feel like their relationship is failing due to both of their faults.
The most popular method of marriage counselling Gottman Technique practiced among couples’ therapists. The technique is designed to help couples develop an intense understanding of one another for identifying and managing conflicts in their relationship, intimacy, and marital adjustment.
Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt developed Imago Relationship Therapy in 1980, emphasizing the connection between adult relationships and childhood experiences. The understanding childhood traumatic experiences couples become more empathetic and understanding of one another.
It focuses on dealing with a particular issue, like burnout, or trying to work toward a specific goal, solution-focused brief therapy is a model to consider. “Short-term-focused counseling is an evidence-based therapeutic technique which helps clients to change by exploring and constructing solutions rather than over dwelling on problems.”
- Get crafty or Vision Board Technique
“Visible vision board exercise can help you to define your shared beliefs, desires wants, and goals for when you are having issues within the relationship,” It is recommended that couples develop crafty skills by writing down goals and collecting pictures that embody their relationship desires. “The marriage is a dynamic and evolving process of work in progress, and it takes hard work and time on both the partner to create a strong, healthy, and enduring relationship,”.
- Improving deeper conversation
Get over from surface-level conversations and ask your partner deeper engaging questions other than “What’s for dinner today?”, “Can I help you make Dinner today?” Giving clients the homework of simply talking with each other to improve deeper conversations. “Often, we get so busy and caught up in the day-to-day needs and mundane chores, that we don’t realize that we stop having beautiful conversations with our partner,”.
- Express Gratitude
The gratitude expression and communicating about the same works in a relationship and can help to further strengthen your skill of appreciation for one another. Gratitude therapy is one of the very useful techniques for improving relationships “Make it a habit of expressing appreciation daily through in-person conversations, texts, or a sticky note in a place your partner will find it,”
- Notice your partner’s love language
If you’re in a relationship, it doesn’t mean you experience love in the same way, as your partner.
Dr. Gary Chapman's “The 5 Love Languages” is useful for couples to notice what makes them feel loved, so they can show up for each other. The five love languages emanate from the principle that each person has a preferred way of receiving love:
1. Accepting gifts
2. Doing acts of service
3. Words of affirmation
4. Quality time
5. Physical touch or Cuddle
- Scheduling important moments and difficult conversations
If you are looking to have an important moment in your life or a difficult discussion with your partner? Serious talks or enjoying occasions are best when you have a plan. “We often engage in conflicting situations or arguments because the timing is wrong, and we aren’t in a right frame of mind where we can thoughtfully engage in difficult conversation or celebration of special moments,” according to Dr. R.K. Suri, top clinical psychologist and relationship counselor recommends scheduling difficult conversations or parties in advance, so no one is caught off guard.
- Fixing in one-on-one time
Life can often feel hectic, don’t let outside pressures override time with your partner. “Fixing ‘couples time’ to get intimate is a good move. Fixing an hour to focus on topics that will help improve the intimate relationship or emotional warmth can be done several times a week or once a week,”.
- Filling your intimacy basket
Please understand that as a couple and as individuals, you both have intimacy needs. The “intimacy basket,” includes the following:
1. intellectual
2. experiential
3. social
4. emotional
5. sexual
Spending time in finding exercises in each other’s intimacy bucket. For example, you can explore a new hobby together party with mutual friends watching Netflix, or a couple trip.
- Practice Couple yoga
It is a good way to consider teaming up with your partner for couples’ yoga as it allows you to balance jointly with your partner, establishing and strengthening connection and trust as you flow through different moves.
With the synchronization of your breathing, you’ll be one with your partner during your practice — and the benefits may even exceed your yoga class.
- The 6-second Kissing Technique
The kissing is just long enough to be passionate while also acting as a distraction from the busyness of the day. Don’t reject this technique before you try it. Dr. John Gottman advocates for the 6-second kissing. It’s a beautiful step for couples to add a passion to romance seamlessly as the day progresses.
- Showing keen interest in each other’s day
When did you ask your partner last time what they were most excited about for the day? Spending a few moments discussing your partner’s interests, agenda and goals will help support them and make them feel cared for in your relationship. “The appreciative inquiry creates curiosity and can help your partner to feel connected with you.”
- Share your expectations with your partner
Write down five expectations you have from your partner and want them to do weekly that would make you happy. Share your list while gazing into each other’s eyes. The expectation lists may not be something your partner can do every day, but a reminder of things they can manage to do at least once a week to help build commitment, trust, respect, and communication.
“The emphasis over here is that we all show and need affection in different ways, and honoring those differences and expectations is essential to feeling heard and understood,”
- Use Practice of icebreaker technique
You might have a glimpse of icebreaker techniques used by trainers during summer camp or work seminars, but this go-to conversation-starting game may help reinvigorate your relationship and teach you something new about your partner. Icebreaker is a very powerful tool to make a better understanding of yourself and your partner. Reintroduce yourself to your partner by setting time to discuss icebreaker questions that dig beneath the surface, for example, 5 qualities you appreciate in your partner and love him/her for.
- Connecting through music or Videos
Do you remember the days of making your school crush the ultimate mixtape? It is noted from the studies that shared music and video preferences create stronger social bonds. Feel the passion and curate your playlist of songs, and videos that remind you of your partner and the moments you’ve shared. It's a good idea to swap your playlists and get an insight into each other’s romantic side.
- Start a book club or journal
Reading can allow you to explore emotions and share an experience at your own pace. Take ownership of choosing a book that’s grabbed your attention, and set a date to discuss it with your partner. Joining the Book Club or Journaling the book, article, videos, and experiences and asking a partner to share is a wonderful way of deeply connecting.
- Eye Gazing & Eye Contact
Improving good eye-to-eye contact is a part of communication, social acceptance, and respect. Initiating deeper eye contact often called gazing into your partner's eye may help you two feel a stronger connection.
Prolonged eye contact can help you recognize emotions, trust, and love, and increase intimacy. Studies indicate that eye gazing with “self-other merging,” reduces the boundary between yourself and the other person to feel unity.
- Increase cuddling
Cuddling fosters the body to release chemicals like oxytocin and reduces cortisol, the stress reduction hormone. The interpersonal touch from your partner could act as a stress reliever and lower pain it may help lower resting blood pressure. This means that, if you’re feeling warmth and good feeling, your body is doing its job. It promotes well-being and happiness.
- Investing in a therapy workbook
Find a couple’s therapy workbook in a bookstore or online, and take time each week to go through assigned activities with your partner. Seek couple counseling by the best relationship counselor who will recommend workbooks or exercises like the book “Hold Me Tight”, “Cognitive Behaviour Therapy workbook”, and The Couple Home Lasting Connection Systems”, having a lot of worksheets and exercises designed to help couples connect in “deeper, more meaningful ways.”
- Unplugging digital devices
Studies have found that one of the serious issues in relationships is excessive you of digital gadgets like, cellphones, and TVs, which distract their partner when they’re alone together.
Very often called phone snubbing (or “phubbing”), focusing on your phone instead of your partner in a social setting could negatively impact your relationship over time. If distraction and a feeling of absenteeism are infiltrating your relationship, experiment with setting aside time to fully unplug, digital detox by going on a jungle safari, and communicate with each other more meaningfully.
- Avoid some unnecessary topics and help create healthy boundaries
Whatever preparation you make before each session, you're likely to show up to counseling with more thoughts in your head. Perhaps the two of you had a major disagreement earlier in the day. Although it's fine to talk about the issue, however, you shouldn't make it the primary discussion point for the session. It's better to stay clear of issues of the moment and stick to your planned subjects.
Staying true to your plans is adhering to your plan. This is the most effective way to deal with your marriage issues systematically. If you're not careful, focusing on the issues of the moment can lead to an unbalanced approach that won't produce the most effective outcomes.
Preparation and planning allow us to make connections. We can sequentially tackle the issues that make life difficult for yourself and for your partner just as you might acquire new skills. It's a fundamental method that can lead to a deeper understanding of the reasons the two of you are having trouble as well as more effective solutions to those issues. The therapist must help the client in building healthy boundaries.
It's easy to get to a marriage counselor with the general purpose of improving your marriage. However, a stronger relationship is an expectation. It's helpful to move past that general goal to create something concrete. What are the places you and your spouse want to be in six months from today? What kind of lifestyle do you wish to create with your partner?
Social media is an ongoing highlight about reel, the reality is that having problems as a couple is quite common nowadays. Many couples do face conflicts and find comfort in guidance from a licensed relationship counselor. Most of us are not very comfortable confronting our relationship conflicts face-to-face with our partner on account of regular arguments, sarcasm, blame, and fights. With the help of a relationship counselor, your determination, and a positive mindset the challenges can be conquered. The relationships can be repaired. If you’re interested in trying relationship counseling or couple therapy or wondering whether it’s a fit for you, we have rounded up the best strategies, techniques, and exercises to get started.
We create goals so we can have something to work towards. Let's say that you together with your partner choose three goals you would like to reach. We begin to work towards one. If we accomplish it there are two outcomes The first is that you are in a position to begin working towards the next goal, and both you as well as your coworker feel the satisfaction that inspires you to continue going forward.
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