"The Burning of the Temple of Forgiveness" by AlmostJaded on Flickr

Last week we approached a word that everyone knows but not everyone completely understand. This week, we’re going to talk about the fourth trait you’ll need for a successful marriage and one that seems to be pretty scarce these days: forgiveness.

First, a question: do you want to be right or do you instead want the gifts that come from trusting your partner and their explicit trust of you?

If you’re at all considering marriage, then there’s no better time than now to polish up on your forgiveness skills.  This means seeking forgiveness and readily giving it too. You’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to say and do things that will be hurtful, disrespectful, dismissive, uncaring, and unsupportive. You’re going to do and say things in frustration, anger, self-centeredness, laziness and forgetfulness. You’re going to make mistakes.  Tons and tons of them,  I promise you that.  Your mistakes will have a cost but what you do with them may have an even greater cost. I have seen hundreds of couples in my office and thousands of individual mistakes. It’s consistently what is done with those mistakes rather than the mistakes themselves that injure and endanger the sacred nature of marital trust.

It is our nature to make mistakes. Mistakes are an opportunity to learn and to grow and to become stronger, better people from all the mistakes we make.  There is, however, the same opportunity to destroy the intimate bond of trust from our response to the very same mistakes.  Blame and shame of ourselves or our partner add a punitive tone to the simplicity of a mistake.  Anger or denial, complete avoidance or emotional and sexual withdrawal, complaining – all of this better serves a relationship’s demise than any mistake ever could. Our partner’s pain doesn’t make us their victimizer.  The pain we feel doesn’t make us a victim either. The pain is as understandable as the mistakes that are made.

“I am so sorry.  What I did and what I said wasn’t okay.  Please forgive me.”

Those words open a doorway to the process of reconciliation. Reconciliation is more protective of the marital trust than caring about protecting ourselves. These are the words that declare the accountability to ownership.  Your words and actions are your own and not at all because of what someone else said or did.  Don’t defend or justify what someone else is seeking forgiveness for.  What you did or said is not who you are.  It’s not representative of who you are to your partner or of how they feel for you.

As we ask our other’s forgiveness we must be prepared to trust in their forgiveness in us, in our “forgiveability.”  If we cannot understand - and in that understanding forgive ourselves – how, then, can our partner ever trust in any forgiveness we claim to give them?

We forgive our most endeared because our forgiveness counts most.  Our spouse relies on us to best understand and, in that understanding, best know them.  Our forgiveness affirms that knowing.

“I forgive what you did and said. I know you well enough to know that what you did isn’t who you are.  That what you said, in the way you said it, doesn’t reflect how much I trust you.  Of course I forgive you.”

A good marriage is a safe place to make mistakes.  If you’re ready for marriage then you must feel prepared to create and maintain an environment of safety.  Your children will one day be watching you and their mother or father make mistakes - mistakes at home, mistakes in the car, mistakes, too, with them.  Will it be okay in their little minds that they make mistakes?  Will you be one that will know them beyond their mistakes?  Will it be safe for them?

If you’re ready to make mistakes (at least 18,472 of them) and ready to seek, give, and receive forgiveness, then you’re one step closer to being ready for a great marriage!

So far we have a pretty strong table. We have one that has enough integrity as a tri-pod to hold its own.  A tabletop of ownership with three independently strong legs of love, honesty, and forgiveness working in collective harmony to define and support its function.  However, add just one more leg and any pressure placed on it would be equally distributed.  Just one more leg, and the balance created by all will sustain its integrity of strength. I’ll tell you that fourth leg next week!

Tags: children, family, marriage, relationships by Greg
No Comments »

"why lie?" by AutumnRedux on Flickr

Last week we approached a word that everyone knows but not everyone completely understand, love. This week, we talk about the third trait you’ll need to make a marriage work: honesty.

I’ve witnessed the demise of too many marriages and other loving relationships caused by the lack trust that honesty creates and maintains. Who was the culprit in those marriages? Fear - fear of conflict, fear of hurting the other, fear of rejection, fear of disappointing, fear of losing the other’s trust or love or respect. Fear.

“I don’t want to make him angry.”

“I don’t know, I think there’d be hell to pay if I told her…”

Honesty, in the spirit of openness and ownership, allows for the understanding on which trust relies. We don’t trust what we don’t understand and we can’t understand without a basis. Is there a greater gift than the trust you can give to your marriage, to that one person you have chosen to know you and to be known by you?

Marriage is a place to share what you’ve done or what you would like to do and why. But, even more than that, marriage is a place to share the deepest parts of ourselves, the darkest corners of our psyche. This special bond between two people encourages complete and total honesty.

We can know a lot by what someone does. To really know and understand each other, however, comes from learning how everyone experiences what it is they have done. Yes, we watched that movie, but it is how that movie affected us that reveals who we are and how we feel about things. How we experienced the movie we just watched or the phone call we just received or the accident we witnessed is what will help our partner understand the uniqueness of who we are. Our morals and values in our individual sense of “right and wrong,” of our fears and wants, or of our biases and judgments. This is the sharing of what we’ve done or what we’ve experienced. But, it’s in the sharing of how it affected us that richly describes who we are. And, in that honest disclosure comes the trusting and bonding of one to another.

“I did…blah, blah, blah…and boy, did it scare me/inspire me/frustrate me.”

Another important element of honesty is trusting that the one we need the most knows us completely.

“When you say, ‘I love you,’ do you really know the ‘you’ that you’re referring to?”

“Can I trust that you do know all that one can know about me and still love me?”

Tags: marriage, relationships by Greg
No Comments »

We can all agree that truth is the foundation of trust - my trust of you and your trustworthiness to me. And yet, the truth of one another’s experience, of one thing or the other, can typically be the biggest point of contention and source of conflict. So, let’s talk about why and what can be done with this thing called “truth.”

Let’s begin with the acknowledgment that a good relationship embraces multiple truths. A good relationship is not a competition between two people to determine who’s got it right and who’s got it wrong.

The two of you need to decide to make room for four Truths. That’s right, four of them. Each one is valued, respected, understood, and honored. And, even if they differ in their details, one’s truth factor won’t be diminished over the other’s.

The four Truths are Your Truth, Their Truth, the Common Truth, and The Truth (what is actually true and can never be perceived). Let’s walk through them together.

First, there’s what you heard and experienced. This is everything in a context of understanding unique and specific to you. Everything said by you, heard by you, and what it meant to you. This is Your Truth.

Next, there’s everything that was heard and said by the other person and what it meant to them. This meaning might, perhaps, be different than your own. Their reaction to what you said or did is more about what your words meant to them and how your actions were interpreted by them than about what you actually said or did. This is Their Truth.

So far, we’ve got what you said and its intent, (Your Truth), and what the other heard and its meaning to them (Their Truth). Your Truth and Their Truth, one just as valid as the other.

The third Truth, the Common Truth, comprises all those things you both hold to be true: two plus two is four, the world is round, water is wet. These are things you both believe in common - addresses, phone numbers, quirky things about each other (like a fear of spiders or snakes).

Finally, there is The Truth. Whatever that truth happens to be, please leave it out of your relationship. In a loving relationship, it just isn’t important and it has no relevancy. The Truth belongs in the courtroom so leave your pursuit of The Truth out of your relationship. The Truth doesn’t matter because, beyond being truthful, it serves no purpose. Let it go.

The trust you seek from the other will be more readily given when you hold their truth in compassion and understanding. You gain nothing by trying to prove yourself right and them wrong.

Telling someone that boogey men don’t exist does nothing but make them feel alone in believing what they do. We all simply feel the way that we feel and are free to do so. Having another understand how we’re feeling is the biggest gift we can receive. When we’re understood, we feel like we are heard and assured by the other’s understanding and grateful and warm and close and respected and validated.

Our understanding of another’s truth does not require us to make it our own truth. They can be cold while you’re warm. They can be hungry right after you ate. It’s seventy-two degrees but they’d still appreciate a blanket. You both just shared a sandwich but how thoughtful of them to suggest something more they might enjoy snacking on.

Perhaps the one you love feels hurt or disappointed by something you said or did. It doesn’t mean you intended any harm or injury. If anything, their hurt is a compliment to how important you are to them. We feel the most hurt and disappointment from the words and actions of those we hold in greatest importance to us. See the compliment there? If you weren’t as important as you are, your actions wouldn’t then carry the sweet significance they do. It’s okay for you to be disappointed, too.

“Ellen, thank you. I’m disappointed too that traffic made me late and cut into our time together. I love you!”

Isn’t that better than…

“Why do you have to get so upset? It’s not like I meant to piss you off. This is great! Now the while evening’s going to be messed up. Great!”

Your truth, Their truth, Common truth and The truth. You can choose to defend and justify yourself or simply respect another perspective. The choice you make greatly influences the quality of your most important relationship.

You’ll see, I promise.

Tags: marriage, relationships by Greg
No Comments »

25 years of private practice family and marriage counseling has uncovered some fairly universal and consistent truths about people. One such truism, pertaining to interpersonal relationships, has to do with expectations. Expectations of what one thinks that the other should be or do that the other isn’t and doesn’t is at the root of most failed relationships. The arguments and sniping are endless and the depth of discord is bottomless. Each feeling rejected and disrespected in who they are. Replaced, instead, with who they “should be,” with what they “should have done” if they were “really loving,” “really caring,” “really as supportive” as they claimed to be.

Turning this around requires that each make a commitment to let go of what the other “should” anything. Assumptions of one another must be replaced with the understanding of what their true nature is - forgetful nature or preoccupied nature or stressed and overwhelmed nature. To work with that nature, in the spirit of support, towards getting needs met becomes the short-term goal; using the support of the other and the marriage towards improving, remedying or changing one’s nature, for the better, becomes the long-term goal.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. The expectation sounds like:

“You know something, Charlie? I find it interesting that when something is important to you, you sure don’t forget that, do you? Obviously, Charlie, I don’t matter enough to you for you to remember what’s important to me.”

The shift sounds like:

“Honey, if you don’t write it down, you’ll forget it. Here’s a pad and pen.”

Long-term sounds like:

“Barb, hang on a second. I want to grab a pen and put that on my list of things to do.”

Charlie and Barbara are continuing to let go of expectations. They damaged the trust and closeness their relationship would have had otherwise by setting up the other to prove their love, prove their care, prove what instead needed to be trusted.

Your relationship will grow in its closeness, mutual sense of trust, and affection shown to one another following your decision to eliminate any expectations of what your partner should be or do. In place of that, you will understand and express all that you know of how they show their love of you.

First, begin with the acknowledgment of what already is. In time, and in the spirit of understanding and support, introduce them to what you want and need. It doesn’t matter what you “should” do, what he “should” do, she “should” do, they “should” do - none of that matters. There are two people and two natures that love one another. Acknowledge the nature, help that nature to grow, and learn how to become someone who is proud of who they are. It will be better than any expectation could ever wish to be. I promise.

Tags: family, marriage, relationships by Greg
No Comments »

If you have ever sought out a mental health professional for yourself or someone that you care about, you have undoubtedly experienced a broad range of people, each with their own style and approach to counseling and psychotherapy. This can be very daunting for someone that was not expecting so many choices, especially if the need for help is urgent. Those of us who practice in this field and truly care about what we do completely understand the stress this might cause. The variation, however, is not without reason; we are as varied as our client base is to provide for the potentially infinite different combinations of afflictions, stressors, personality traits, fears, and motivators.

Each of my clients, students, and audience members are individuals, one different from the next. Though common threads run through the human experience, each person requires and deserves a special approach. Whether I’m helping a group of new dads find out what being a father means or helping someone get past their long-held fears, I find ways to adapt what I know to that particular situation. Like the human experience, however, there are common threads running through my practice and it might help you to understand what I do a little bit better if I can make these commonalities transparent.

First, I should clarify a few terms. There is, indeed, a whole vocabulary that comes along with this profession but I am only going to tackle the ones that are relevant to what I do.

A term that I am asked to define on a regular basis is “psychotherapy.” This is a scary word to some people because its prefix, “psycho-,” has a well-established stigma attached to it. I define psychotherapy loosely as providing an environment for a “patient” to freely emote, to purge accumulated hurts, pain and anger. The psychotherapist maintains a relative anonymity while providing their patient with a safe, therapeutic context to randomly express.

Wikipedia has a nice accurate and general definition of psychotherapy:

Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living. This usually includes increasing individual sense of well-being and reducing subjective discomforting experience. Psychotherapists employ a range of techniques based on experiential relationship building, dialogue, communication and behavior change and that are designed to improve the mental health of a client or patient, or to improve group relationships (such as in a family)

I resonate with the idea of psychotherapy and do provide a certain amount of it for my clients. I am not, however, a classical trained psychotherapist; I am, in fact, an experienced counselor. I do not classify the people that come see me and talk to me as patients; I, instead, refer to them as clients. Like a traditional psychotherapist, my goal is always to improve my clients’ mental well-being, to assist with relationship building, and to encourage dialogue. The difference is in the approach: I approach people less as an expert with an arsenal of jargon and expertise and more like a close friend with capacity to listen, understand, and advice.

The standardized clinical term that best describes my style of counseling is Cognitive-Behavioral. With the help of an honest and open client, I try to identify and modify thought patterns that lead to destructive or unhelpful behavior. I am not here to assess whether your behavior is “right” or “wrong” or that your thought process is “flawed” or “unhealthy.” I am here to guide you towards an understanding of how your perception can affect certain components of social interaction with others.

I, once again, turn to Wikipedia for a good description of cognitive Behavioral Therapy:

An example will illustrate the process: Having made a mistake, a person believes, “I’m useless and can’t do anything right.” This, in turn, worsens the mood, leading to feelings of depression; the problem may be worsened if the individual reacts by avoiding activities and then behaviorally confirming his negative belief to himself. As a result, a successful experience becomes more unlikely, which reinforces the original thought of being “useless.” In therapy, the latter example could be identified as a self-fulfilling prophecy or “problem cycle,” and the efforts of the therapist and client would be directed at working together to change this. This is done by addressing the way the client thinks and behaves in response to similar situations and by developing more flexible ways to think and respond, including reducing the avoidance of activities. If, as a result, the client escapes the negative thought patterns and destructive behaviors, the feelings of depression may, over time, be relieved. The client may then become more active, succeed more often, and further reduce feelings of depression.

The objectives of CBT typically are to identify irrational or maladaptive thoughts, assumptions and beliefs that are related to debilitating negative emotions and to identify how they are dysfunctional, inaccurate, or simply not helpful. This is done in an effort to reject the distorted cognitions and to replace them with more realistic and self-helping alternatives.

As a counselor, I wear many hats: teacher, mentor, advocate, trainer, coach, interventionist, guide, liaison, source of community referral, supporter, confronter, brainstormer, re-framer, parent educator, theosopher and philosopher, sponsor, witness, recovery specialist and cheerleader. I am interactive in my feedback and I use tools and methods to help my clients see their situation objectively. Homework (i.e. reading a particular book or keeping a journal or attending a twelve-step meeting, etc.) might be assigned as a means of highlighting or accelerating a process that assists the client towards his or her counseling goals.

I am asked, by my clients, my audiences, and my family, to understand someone else’s frame of reality. Being a great counselor does not come simply from being attentive and present in the situation but being able to take on someone else’s experience. Without judgment and without criticism, I try to “put myself in their shoes,” if you will pardon the old cliché. I take the information I am trusted with and try to build a picture of a person from the inside out.

Can I do this every time for every person? Unfortunately, the answer is no; any therapist, counselor, or other mental health professional who claims otherwise may need some serious re-framing themselves. I believe, however, that everyone has the ability to do what I do in some capacity. When you look at your child and try to connect with them to understand why they do what they do, you are doing what I do. When you listen to your spouse and make an attempt to see who they really are, you are channeling the same energy as I am. When you look at yourself in the mirror, not with judgment but with a strong desire to see who you really are, you are beginning to feel what I feel when I do the same for my clients.

This is what I do, I discover how someone could feel the way they do and why, in turn, they respond the way they do - a way that might seem patently mysterious to those around them. I do this through directed questions and a very open mind. I might ask what your birth order is (whether you have siblings older or younger than you, if any at all). I might ask you if one of your parents had a substance abuse problem or if they were even present in your life. I might ask you how you feel about yourself, what you hate or love about yourself, how you see yourself in relation to others.

What I try to do is create a frame of reference, a picture not only of you as a person but the social constructs that surround you and influence your choices. It is about understanding what’s right about what we do rather than arrogantly judging what’s wrong with it. It is about following the clues and exploring different paths until a clear picture begins to form. We tend to treat those closest to us as we treat ourselves and this is the key to understanding behavior, both our own and those that surround us. The critical father or wife who has high expectations of those around him or her will often prove to be self-critical to a much greater degree. You might find that they protect themselves from others’ judgment by being defensive, combative, or preemptively demeaning.

It’s like human algebra: just do the math and it all adds up.

The teen that seems unmotivated in school specifically, and in life generally, begins to progressively becoming more dedicated in their alcohol and/or drug use. This behavior follows years of parental pride in their child’s academic and athletic accomplishments. Pride in achievements, motivation to succeed, and social prowess begins to change into broad apathy, drinking or taking drugs, and surly defensiveness. Maybe this teen feels the suffocating stress of not disappointing her devoted, supportive parents. Maybe he feels this debt load and attempts to emancipate himself by diminishing the power of Mom and Dad’s expectations and subsequent disappointments. These expectations of perfection and accomplishment, maybe the parents don’t have them beyond the teen’s assumption they do. Now, any concern or disappointment parent expresses is immediately countered with anger, defensiveness and door-slamming. Now, the whole family is stuck between trying to express themselves and trying to understand the situation.

What we do, how we feel, it all serves us, serves what we believe (whether true or not), serves what is true for us. What we believe about ourselves, what we believe about another or the world around us, what we do, how we feel, this is all revealed in the moment we believe. Tell me how you experienced the actions or words of another and I’ll begin to see what those actions and words meant to you. What it meant to you can reveal your true beliefs.

Good relationships demand that we understand each other’s experience, whether or not it is our own experience too. When I begin to understand another’s experience, I can help that person move from the place that has not worked for them to a place that can. If we can start to challenge what we’ve always believed, it’ll change how we react to others and to the world around us.

It’s hard work; there’s no question about that. It demands rigorous ownership and personal accountability. It requires, too, that blame and defensiveness be replaced with understanding and compassion. Just remember, all of these things are within reach for every person out there with a desire to make a positive change in their life.

Tags: addiction, children, family, marriage, positive change, relationships, self-improvement by Greg
No Comments »