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NEWS FROM THE THERAPY ROOM. Tips and strategies that you can use in your own relationships. |
 I've mentioned here before that I have a dislike for bullet points. Maybe they have their place in a Power Point presentation at a conference, but if we are writing about relationships, life is too complex to be reduced to snappy three word statements, which are designed just to hook us in. I'm also meaning the numbered lists, that are everywhere on the net, and that invite us to think everything is so easily achieved if we just do what is on the list: ("follow these 10 simple steps to attain the weight you want"). The internet is becoming more and more The Land of ADD. Sane and sensible people who can hold a face to face conversation seemingly can't stay focused on one thing for more than a few minutes, once they jump on the net. And writers therefore need to have succinct and catchy ways of hauling us in. If we don't see something that grabs our eyes within the first few lines of a webpage we are reading, we are straight back to Google. Even at this point of an article, something like 30% of readers who started out at the top of this page will have left already. Plus it's pretty common for only a small number of readers to actually make it to the bottom of a page they have started. (there's certainly a lesson for me in this - articles on these pages can be a tad long sometimes). So I'll get to the point. And I will use bullet points, in the hope that you might stick around for the whole page. The point that I was making (before I got distracted with an apparent attack of ADD...) is that there are some important factors that people should stay aware of, if they want their relationships to go well. These come from John Gottman - who is THE guy when it comes to defining what works in couple relationships. But when you look at these, you'll see that they also have relevance for other family relationships, or maybe any close relationship....Enough. I'll get onto these straight away - I see your concentration is wavering......
Gottman has written far and wide about what is damaging in relationships, and more importantly, what makes successful relationships work. Above are just four factors to consider. If you want to receive the latest ideas about ways to improve your relationship, join up with the Gottman Blog right here. It's sensible stuff and very readable. Another important discovery Gottman made was that couples will sit with major issues in their relationship for up to seven years before they seek any outside help. This is unwise and so un-necessary, as most issues in relationships CAN be resolved. If you want some help with your relationship, feel free to contact me here. And well done if you made it to the bottom of the page - you truly are an internet rarity!   Here we are, well in to the second month of the year all ready. I'm quite convinced that the passage of time happens in inconsistent ways. Warmer days and weeks slip by quickly, colder weather periods move slowly. My working year started out reasonably quietly, then got quite busy again. I had an influx of couples coming in, wanting to address issues in their relationship. This showed sensible intent on their part for two different reasons. Firstly relationship issues can be more readily addressed and resolved, the sooner the couple resolve to get on with it. Secondly, the three free sessions that couples in New Zealand have been able to access will soon be discontinued, with the Family Court moving to a user pays situation. I've mentioned a few times in this blog the importance of happiness in our lives, but also the importance of tempering our quest for this against our ability to experience a whole raft of emotions that humans are capable of experiencing. Sure it's great to be happy, and we should aim for having a good amount of this in our day to day lives. But we do have a unique capacity as humans to feel and experience a range of varied and rich emotional responses to the events and people that move through our lives. To truly experience a full range of emotions reminds us that we are really alive. Whilst happiness is good, there are other feelings or emotions that are just as significant. And yes, I agree, we don't want to be sad or angry the whole time. But we don't want to aim to have any one emotion present the whole time - because then we miss out on all those other feelings that we are equally capable of... In our quest for happiness, it's good to be able to think about what has brought us happiness in the past - when you have been feeling in a really good space, what was happening for you at the time? Were there particular circumstances that came together by pure chance, or were you actively setting things up so that you would ultimately feel good? One thing that is becoming increasing clear, is that whilst happiness can come from a variety of sources, it is also more likely to come from things that we do, (or experience) rather than things that we acquire (or buy). Here's a way to check this out for yourself: think back to a time in your life that you were really happy - what was going on around you at that time? There's a good chance that this happened as a result of something that you were doing, rather than something you had bought. Sure, we might get a buzz from a new 52 inch plasma screen, but this buzz will not endure in the way that good relationships or experiencing something new will. Here is a very simple example of experiences bringing happiness and satisfaction with life - check out Matt in the video clip below. He dances his way around the world, enlisting people to dance with him, as he goes. Two important things. The first is that Matt can't really dance at all. It's more of a robotic shuffle kind of thing (but that's just my opinion...). The second thing is that everyone he coaxes in to joining him on his quest looks really happy. Because it's the simple experience of dancing. And Matt looks like he couldn't care less about his wooden dancing skills - he's having a ball anyway... Go Matt! Talk soon.  That crazy time of the year has rolled around even more quickly this year...
I don't know about you, but I've had a really busy year. Overall it seemed to have a good balance, what with the variety of the rewarding work I did, some time travelling, and also kicking back with the people who are important to me. Though I've got to admit, the balance probably happened more by accident than any real planning that I'd done. I work in several different locations around the traps, and therefore get to work alongside some amazingly committed & creative people. My private practice takes up the bulk of my week and that has been full-on, my busiest year in a long while. People attend for the first time, with issues relating to, say, worries they are having about their teenager, or issues in their couple relationship. But once we've been talking for a while, underneath it all for many of these people, are on-going issues relating to the earthquakes, which in turn decreases their resilience, and means they are just not managing things as well as they would have been otherwise doing. So as you can hear, it's been another stressful year here in Christchurch, where, three years after earthquakes decimated our city, people are still struggling to have homes repaired. The rest of the country is understandably sick of our incessant whining, and over the last couple of months they've managed to distract themselves by watching either Lorde's premature quest for world domination, or Peter Jackson's latest journey to track down whatever it is he's now managed to lose....Mmmm. With just over a week to go until Christmas, most of us are about to embark on some fairly intensive family time. In this part of the world, most people get together in large family groups on Christmas Day, and this usually leads in to some extended holiday time soon over the following couple of weeks, with camping holidays seeming to be still the preferred option amongst the people I've been talking to lately. What I've been noticing in increasing amounts lately, is a worry, and I've been thinking about this, because it's likely to be a particular issue over these holiday weeks ahead, when people get to spend extended amounts of time together (which is mostly a positive thing, but not always). And what I'm meaning, is our heightened pre-occupation with our technology (but especially our smartphones), when we are otherwise in the company of 'real people'. And yes, this is something I also need to be personally more focused on... It seems that we are majorly dependent on these devices. I know I'm not the first person to mention this - we all seem to know that we shouldn't do it, yet we do... I wondered for a while if this was just a New Zealand thing - but no. I spent most of October in the US, and everywhere I went, people were obsessed with their smartphones. Maybe it's OK when we are waiting for a train, or doing something that doesn't involve being physically present with other human beings (but even then, we are probably still looking at someone's Twitter feed, rather than being present in the moment - which we all use to do very well before the technology got a grip on us), but not good when we are actually present with a group of real living breathing people, and we are still giving preference to our smartphones. And because we all do it, we somehow think that it's OK - something along the lines of I-won't-frown-at-you-when-you-are-checking-Facebook-for-the-second-time-in-5-minutes-if-you-then-look-away-when-I-text-someone-that-I've-arranged-to-have-coffee-with-later-on. Call me old fashioned, but in the end, I think we all wind up giving out a big non-verbal message, that being physically present with you here today is my second choice. And maybe this will be an important thing to be thinking about over the holiday season. Meanwhile if you think you might be a little too dependent on your phone, here's some other useful stuff you might want to read.... Thanks for stopping by to read my ramblings - I'm continually stunned by the increasing number of people who have been visiting these pages during the year. Good luck and happy holidays - I hope you don't just get socks or underwear....  I hope your week is going well. I've been pretty busy lately, which is why I haven't been lurking around these pages so much. I've been working with a lot of couples who have had crises or issues in their relationships and are wanting to make things better. I've also been working with quite a few parents who are wanting to feel more comfortable in their role in the family - ie., being a parent to a teenager. The time of teenage years for families often brings up quite a few new things that parents need to start doing differently. The parenting approach that might have been OK in earlier years will no longer cut it and there can be several different reasons for this. And if there was ever a time that parents needed to be on the same page as each other, well this is one...(jump over here, to see why this might be important). These two topics alone could and do take up miles and miles of screen space right across the blogosphere, so I'm not going to repeat it all here. Even though the couple and the parent/teen are different relationships within the family, and will therefore have a different focus when they come for therapy, there are also going to be some things in common that I'm curious about. One thing that I'm always going to be very interested in is the strengths present in the relationship. And there are always strengths. What makes the relationship work, what are the good parts? Human nature being what it is, the parts that don't work will often attract our attention like some kind of shiny object - yet there is always good stuff happening too, that we are not seeing. The other thing that is important in both these relationships - OK, ALL relationships, is a natural follow-on to the above. And that is to notice what the other person/s does well in the relationship, and tell them. What do they contribute, what are their relationship strengths? And if you tell them, they are then pretty likely to do more of it. It's one of those win - win situations. People often think this praise and encouragement stuff is only important when parents are trying to positively influence a child. Indeed, when I checked what other people were saying about this, there are a million sites saying how important it is to praise kids. And it is. But we can all benefit from told we are doing OK. I know this stuff doesn't sound earth-shattering by any means - maybe it's fairly obvious, even a case of "ho hum, yes I know that." My experience is that sure, while a lot of people know the value of compliments and encouragement, it doesn't always follow that they are doing it. If we have a life-long experience of having had our faults and flaws pointed out to us, then it's probably going to be fairly ingrained, and it might be hard to notice the good stuff that others do and then point it out to them. If we are not use to receiving the good stuff, doing it for others may not come so readily. But there is another reason we need to compliment, (and I've talked about the importance of this before, right here) or even if you can't always stretch to that, at least try to make positive comments. And that is, that it will make the relationship more durable, and more resilient to conflict. In fact there is some research that supports this. John Gottman from the University of Washington discovered some years ago, that 'successful' couples were those who had a ratio of roughly 5:1 positive to negative interactions (check this out here). In other words, the relationship can tolerate a degree of conflict and negativity if this 5:1 ratio is occurring. And although Gottman was referring to couples in particular, this will certainly have relevance for other close relationships also. When I've discussed this with couples, they get the importance of this, plus when they start looking out for this, and trying to even up their own ratio, so that it comes in somewhere around 5:1, then they have experienced an overall improvement in their relationship. Now, I'm first to agree that this isn't about to cure major relationships issues - but along with the other things I've mentioned here today, it certainly has a part to play. But don't just take my word for it.....and try and do better than the glib examples below. Talk soon.....  |
"Some occasional thoughts about families, relationships, and other things that distract us...."
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