Christian Counselor Directory Blog

Goals

The main purpose of couple therapy is to help each of you increase your knowledge about yourself, your partner, and your patterns of interaction. The aim is to help you have more choices in how you respond to the demands and challenges your relationship places on you. My goal is not to help a couple stay together. If I were to undertake that goal I would be making the assumption that I know what is best for each of you. Figuring out what is best for you is your task. My task is to help you understand yourself better so that you can determine what is best.

How This Works

There are many ways of understanding your self better. One of them is through understanding what there is about you that gets hurt, angry, disappointed or upset with your partner. What bothers us tells us a lot about our selves. How we respond to what bothers us does the same. We are often limited in how we respond by what we learned in our families. We are often shaped to be bothered by certain things by how we think we are supposed to be. Learning more about your self can help you have more choices and flexibility. Another way of understanding your self is through increased clarity about what you consider to be the best in you. How do you want to be in your relationship? What kind of relationship do you what to have? How will you have to draw on the best parts of you to achieve those goals?

This Takes Effort

For you to benefit from couple therapy you have to be prepared to put effort into your self. You have to spend time thinking about your self in terms of both how and why you respond as you do. You have to be prepared to be honest with your self, to not pull the wool over your own eyes. You have to be willing to take risks in trying new behaviours and in revealing previously hidden parts of your self. You have to be willing to tolerate anxiety and discomfort in order to grow.

How to Prepare

The most common and unproductive pattern in couple's therapy is for couples to focus on whatever problem happens to be on someone's mind at the moment. Another version of this is to focus on the fight/conflict of the week. Usually the goal in each of these approaches is to get the other person to change. Most people resist being told that they should change so these approaches quickly get the couple into a deadlock situation.A better approach is to think about your goals for being in therapy before each session. Think about what you did in the past interval which contributed to difficulties in your relationship. Think about what your responses to the challenges in your relationship tell you about your self. Think about how you handled the anxiety which arose in you. Did you try to get your partner to change so that you wouldn't feel anxious or upset? How could you better manage your anxiety on your own?Try to bring these reflections into focus before the session. Present these as something you would like to work on in your self during the session. I can best help you when you are clear about what you want to achieve. 

What You Can Expect From Me

You can expect me to ask you to honestly reflect on your self. I will share with you any thoughts or observations I have about you. I will tell you what I have noticed about how you seem to respond. I will help you to explore how and why you are constrained to respond in the ways you do. I will line up behind each of you in achieving your deepest goals. I will not give advice or tell you what to do. I will help you see clearly how your relationship is challenging you. I will help each of you find ways to rise to those challenges.

I get the most satisfaction from this work when I witness individuals honestly confronting themselves and finding the courage to try new things. I deeply respect individuals who are working to live with ever increasing awareness and clarity about themselves and who are attempting to achieve ever increasing personal integrity.

James Morgan

21 Lydia Street
Kitchener, Ontario, CA
N2H1V2
Office: (519) 745-3602

Myth #1  There is a time-limit for grieving.

Grieving is often defined by time.  Employers may offer time off for awhile, many people will talk about grieving for a year, or even less.  The truth is that the loss of a loved one or any other significant loss may result in grieving for a long time.  In fact, most people experience grief in waves.  There are reminders, anniversaries, etc. for years to come that will bring on a wave of grief.  This is normal.  Grieving does not look the same for any two individuals.  It is important to allow yourself the time and space to grieve as you need to.

Myth #2  Grief is appropriate only when someone has passed away.

Grieving a loss of a loved one is very real and very significant.  However, there are many other losses as well that send people into grieving.  It can be the loss of health or finding out you have a serious illness.  It can be the loss of a dream, such as having a baby or building a business.  Grief also comes with the loss of a relationship.  This may be a divorce, or it may be an estrangement of friends or family members.  It is also common to grieve after a traumatic event.  Grieving the loss of safety, or the loss of personal property is very common.  It is healthy to grieve any kinds of losses that you have experienced.

Myth #3  If I just stay strong, I will get through the grief without a problem.

Some people cope with grief by ignoring it as much as possible, or just by continuing on with daily life in order to avoid the emotional pain.  A common misconception is that avoiding emotional pain is a sign of strength.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Individuals who allow themselves to experience the feelings associated with a loss are more likely to feel better in the future.  Those who avoid the emotional pain often end up carrying that pain for many, many years.  This can sometimes evolve into complicated grief, which requires professional help.  Allowing yourself to grieve as the emotions come is the healthiest path to get through the difficult time.  And, of course, utilizing the support of friends and family can help make the pain more manageable.

Myth #4  The stages of grief and loss appear in order.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross created a great model called, ‘The Stages of Grief’.  These stages include, Denial, Anger, Depression, Bargaining, and Acceptance.  Although this model is helpful to identify many of the different emotions and parts of grieving, many people have taken this to be a prescriptive path.  It is nothing of the sort.  People experience these stages at different times and in different orders.  It is not meant to be a blueprint, it is simply meant to describe the different elements of grief.  So, if you find yourself stuck in one stage of grief or going back to denial, that is all normal.  The important thing to remember is that these are all common feelings to have while grieving a loss.

Jennifer from Durango Family Counseling 

128 W. 14th St, Suite B
Durango, Colorado, US
81301

Where did the time go?  Is it a new year?  As we get older, at times it may feel like time is moving more rapidly.  Why does this occur?  Many theories and I wonder if our mind spends less time really being present; hence, the experience of time flying by.

Every year, we acquire more memories, the accumulation of tasks and a few more aches and pains (mental and physical).  It makes sense that our mind will focus on these past moments and/or anticipate more coming our way.

Past: Reliving what did not go well.  Embarrassed about something we did.  Angry about what was done to us.  Grieving something lost.  Reviewing happy times.  Future: Working out “to do” lists.  Rehearing situations in our mind.  Anxious about all that could potentially hurt us.  Envision what we want in our life.  Anticipating exciting events.

As the holidays are upon us, I invite you to experience your “childlike” nature.  Practicing and going back to our basic nature; a place of experiencing the rapture of life.  Dropping the worries of the past and/or anxiety of the future, being

Present:  aware of the body, breath, noticing all our senses and mindful of stimuli, noticing thoughts and feelings with acceptance.

We struggle to live in the here and now.  Life is consumed with what was or how it could be – expectations.  A great deal of our spiritual anguish is a result of our inattention.  We are “human doings” and the “being” part is difficult, we are out of practice.  Our ability to connect with ourselves, others is postulated on one’s ability to be attentive.

As we practice being still, returning back again and again to the present, several shifts can occur.  You may experience time differently.  Slowing down and smelling the roses can allow a pause;  hence, time can take on a different element in our life.  Life slows down in a way that it can be felt/experienced.  We become more open to other perspectives (cultivating empathy), come to understand our ways of the past may not be best for the present, learn to accept “what is” versus resisting, quieting the mind, developing a “witnessing” perspective, knowing your purpose and decreasing activation of our central nervous system.

CenterPoint Counseling offers two programs you may experience to enhance the “basics” of life, allowing the rapture of the extraordinary in the ordinary to be a part of your daily life.  Mindfulness Meditation meets on Fridays from 12:15-12:45pm in Room 113.  Brief discussion, followed by silent practice and concludes with observations, comments and/or general wonderings.

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a course of practice developed by Jon Kabat Zinn out of University of Massachusetts Medical School.  An eight week class (2.5 hours/class) with an all day retreat for those interested in structured support to shift from “doing” to “being” begins January 28^th at 3:30pm (Wednesdays) or January 30^that 8:30am (Thursdays).  For more information, highly recommended, visit one of two orientations on January 14^th@ 3:30pm or January 16^th at 8:30am.

There are many paths towards spiritual and mental contentment.  Mindfulness meditation, centering prayer, silence and contemplation are some of the words/practices used to support said intention.  CenterPoint welcomes your presence to experience the present.  Please feel free to contact our office and/or visit our website for more information.

“The word LISTEN contains the same letters as the word SILENT.”
– Alfred Brendel

Posted by Jennifer from Center Point Counseling 

7700 N. Meridian St
Indianapolis, Indiana, US
46260

Dear Friend,

In this newsletter we'd like to take a brief moment to talk about the concept of Intensives.  The term may be new to you.  This is a counseling approach that is often very effective for couples -- especially when time is of the essence.

In the marriage counseling profession, an "intensive" is the term most commonly used for extensive counseling that is done with a couple (or group of couples) in a condensed amount of time. When clients' marriages are at a critical stage and concentrated, in-depth, immediate effort is needed, we recommend our Connected Couple Intensive program.

Our intensives are usually formatted as approximately 20 hour programs that take place over a 3-day period. By doing so we can cover more ground in a few days than would normally be the case over 4-6 months of hourly counseling. An intensive requires couples to make the decision to step away from day-to-day life and focus their entire energies on addressing their issues and saving their marriages.

At Christian Counseling Associates of Raleigh we personalize each marriage intensive and base our work on our proven Connected Marriage Home© model.  It has 10 essential building blocks and several activities and interventions for relational health, happiness and growth. In our experience, intensives can provide couples with the positive results they seek.

A final note about intensives …

As an aside, some practices refer to intensives as "retreats" but we avoid that term. Intensives are — as their name implies — intense. They are demanding for both the couple and the counselors who are working together to get to the root problems in a relationship and devising methods to address them. These 2-to-3 day sessions aren't "laid back" and relaxing, as the term "retreat" suggests. Furthermore, at Christian Counseling Associates of Raleigh we don't believe in "retreating" when it comes time to save a marriage!

You can learn more about Intensives at our website.  If you know a couple who might benefit from an intensive or other counseling methods, please help us arrange for a free 15-minute phone consultation so we can talk further.    

Dr. Mike Garret 

PHD, LPC

809-1000 Spring Forest Rd
Raleigh, North Carolina, US
27609