I was on a zoom call with a couple I’d just met. The wife had spent a year in personal counseling and found it helpful. The husband went briefly to counseling for a crisis with his sister but never mentioned a marriage problem that had come up.
What’s more, a girl came onto this guy and he was able to let her know she needed to stop, but he never told his wife about it. A year later, he decided to tell her. Naturally, she freaked out; it seemed as though he was hiding something.
Well, he was.
But why?
He explained that when he told her anything she would freak out, and that disturbed him way too much. So he didn’t tell her.
Who is “at fault” here? The wife who freaks out too easily (that’s why she had been in counseling)? Or the husband who is scared to bring things up?
Well, now that you got something to chew over, let me rush to say I do not agree with blame. At all. No one is at fault. Everyone has to do their own work on themselves to chase after their demons.
But since the wife had a counselor that she liked, it made sense to me to turn to the husband and say, “Has anger been a problem in your family of origin? Does it frighten you because you’re just not used to it?”
Bingo.
He admitted he’d been protected from it a lot and simply couldn’t handle it.
This was one of those “Aha” moments for this guy. He turned his attention away from his “faults” to his family’s style of operating and the messages he got from it.
What just happened, here?
This is called “insight,” looking inside, looking deeper to see what others don’t immediately see. But how is it done? Why do some people have insight and not other people?
Really, having insight is the ability to see patterns, the ability to connect the dots. I made the dots clear for you to see by not putting any other bits and pieces of the conversation in the story. But ordinarily, the many “dots” can get lost in so many, many data points in client stories. Then the counselor, or guru, or Auntie Jane who loves you, may miss making the connections.
But I don’t. They jump out at me because I red flag them as I’m hearing the story.
Here’s another one, a bit different.
A guy reached out to me on Facebook with a DM. He wanted advice for his marriage. Our exchanges were brief. I noticed that he didn’t include the usual niceties of “please” or “thank you” but I let that go.
As we were texting back and forth, I mentioned something that “my late husband” had said. And that point went unremarked. Tough cookie. (Most people would say something like, “Oh you lost your husband? I’m sorry.” The little social things we come to expect. Well, if he’s not picking up on that, what else is he missing?) So I told him that it would be best, if I’m going to be helpful, to actually speak to him. So we zoomed.
Sure enough, my surmise was correct: His wife felt neglected. And indeed, he neglected important pieces of information that just didn’t seem so relevant to him. But gee whiz, they were relevant to his wife! Boom! And that is what we then worked on for the next 9 weeks.
Why is this important?
Well, what’s really nuts is that this couple was going to therapy for three years and the therapist never pointed out to the husband this huge problem.
That is a story I hear over and over and over: A therapist who a couple’s been seeing for quite some time never zeroes in on the problem.
Can you see how much time, money, and emotional capital has been lost that way?
See, it’s that “emotional capital” piece that’s the biggest problem.
I mean, how long can you hang in there when everything’s falling apart?
You need someone who can step back, see the big picture, and lovingly and politely ask you if you want a peek at it too (because some people don’t; they’re too scared). And then let you in, very quickly, on what they see so that no more time is wasted – and no more emotions are spent suffering.
Just yesterday, someone kept praising me and I finally asked: “What did I do that was so special?” She told me I can quickly “diagnose” a problem and I think this is what she was referring to because I do not like or believe in using psychiatric diagnoses.
Now, when you combine this skill with the rest of my 9-week intensive group and private therapy/coaching hybrid called Love Yourself, you’ve got a very powerful formula for turning around a challenging marriage.
Here’s what people exit the course having that they didn’t have before:
*Inner Authority. This is the foundation on which everything else is built: Knowing who you are. Knowing your feelings, your wants, your needs, and what causes those feelings to change. It’s knowing yourself.
*Emotional Agility. One of the things you need to know in order to heal is what triggers you. We all get disturbed by certain things. We can hide it, even from ourselves – but it is doomed to come out somehow anyway. So this part of the program is to get clear on it. And to take the next step – conquer it. We can’t go through life having hurt feelings or exploding, or being depressed because something triggered all that. We need to have tools to make those feelings sweetly dissipate. Without sweeping the dust under the rug.
*Intentional Self-Adoration. We suffer from limiting beliefs. We know who we are but don’t like who we are. That’s got to change. The road to change is intentional. We learn to disarm harmful messages buried within ourselves. We intentionally replace those with the self-love and even adoration that is rightfully ours. Developing this self-compassion readies us for the next step.
*Compassionate Honesty. The strong framework of the above three pillars of the program gets us past resentment and bitterness. We now can clearly, honestly, and openly communicate in an assertive way what we think, want, need, feel, and offer. But it is filtered through a heart of compassion. This is key for a relationship and it deepens the connection between you. This is how you get the marriage you want out of first developing Self Love.
How do they do all that? With daily written, verbal, and thinking exercises, as well as exercises to change your body’s state (for Emotional Agility). By the time you get to Compassionate Honesty, you’ve laid the foundation to have a good conversation, one of depth and kindness – and truth. Those three together: depth, kindness, and truth, are the foundation of intimacy. And we make sure you do all the work, too, with the Accountability System that I have in place!
And remember, the Accountability System is run by yours truly, who not only zeroes in on what’s wrong the first time around, but all the way through – to help people reach their goals.
If this sounds intriguing, book a call with me. https://drdeb.com/book There’s no charge. Whether we work together or not, the call itself will reveal things about yourself that you didn’t see but will recognize immediately as true when you hear them.
When you’ve booked, be sure to fill out the application that is on another page you will be taken to. That info will help us in our meeting and it probably saves 20 min of talk time.