Couples Therapy Tips: Powerful Interventions To Revitalize Your Relationship
Key Couples Therapy Strategies to Salavage and Heal Your Marriage
Here are some valuable couples therapy tips and strategies that will help you avoid problems and elevate your relationship.
Make an accounting of what is truly important in life.
A popular couples therapy approach is to prioritize what is really worth getting upset about. Don’t “sweat the small stuff”. In all of your interactions with your partner, try your best to let go of things that are petty and inconsequential.
Empathize and validate
Couples therapy emphasizes the importance of appreciating the good and turning one’s eye away from flaws and idiosyncrasies. Becoming a connoisseur of the special uniqueness within your spouse will enable you to empathize with him or her more effectively. Your ability to be understanding and flexible is the key to a happy relationship.
Be giving and thoughtful.
Couples therapy involves developing the habit of being mindful. Make a point of marking special milestones such as birthdays and anniversaries with heartfelt cards, creative gifts and taking him or her out to fun places. Offer to do chores to lighten your partner’s load.
Catch yourself before anger leads to harsh and hurtful words.
Couples therapy requires emotional discipline and self-control. Nip in the bud your frustration and annoyance. Restrain your anger. Remember that hurtful words cannot be taken back. Words spoken in anger can diminish your spouse’s feelings of love and affection for you.
If things get heated agree to a “time out”.
Couple therapists suggest that their clients develop skills in de-escalation The two of you should agree to postpone arguments when they get too intense. Tell your partner that you need to leave the room and calm down. When you cool off, you should be more capable negotiating and compromising.
Learn to say “I am sorry”.
Couples therapy is most effective when people have worked developing the traits of humility and respectfulness. you realize you have made a mistake, swallow your pride and admit it. Apologizing and showing remorse is the healing balm in a relationship. Your spouse will love and respect you for your ability to say “I am sorry. I was wrong. Please forgive me.”
Couples therapists teach couples how to maintain respectful boundaries and not becoming enmeshed and codependent. Your spouse is not looking for you to solve their problems, offer parental advice, or take on the role of their individual therapist. They want you to be empathetic, validating and supportive. Don’t try to rescue your partner when he or she is expressing pain or discomfort. And don’t volunteer advice unless you’re asked. Simply be an empathetic sounding board.
When listening to your partner, reflect back to them what they just said.
Couples therapy is a very process oriented experience that entails the use of Active Listening. Active Listening involves paraphrasing and repeating back what your partner just said, reaching for clarity and affirming the legitimacy of their underlying feelings. Your partner will sense that you truly care and this will only strengthen the bond of love and caring.
Become a more a flexible and tolerant person.
In order to reach a meeting of the minds and hearts, couples therapy highlights the crucial need for respectful negotiation. Be willing to compromise and reach consensus. If you cannot reach a consensus, be OK with the concept of “agreeing to disagree” and postponing deliberation until the next day. To acquire this degree of mental flexibility, you need to truly believe that your partner’s position is just as legitimate as yours. You can’t get let your ego and need to be right get in the way.
Focus on the good.
Instead of looking for the negative and criticizing, try your best to appreciate the good in your spouse. The more you focus on your partner’s inherent goodness, the less likely you are to become negative and critical. Your partner will then reciprocate and become more supportive of you. Your marriage will become much more positive and loving. Much the principles that underlie couples therapy involve the psychology of reciprocity. What we put out is what we get back in return.
Schedule “dates” with your partner.
Couples therapy requires that the two parties engage in behavioral modification that prioritizes the couple’s relationship once again. Going out and having fun on dates seems simplistic but it is so essential to feeling connection and positive energy in the relationship. A couple has to conscientiously co-create beautiful memories. Your A couple’s life together can’t just be about partnering in mundane chores and responsibilities. A couple has to engage in enjoyable experiences on a consistent basis. This means scheduling dates, ideally once a week.
Make sure you are not displacing your issues or life stress onto your partner.
You may attribute problems as emanating from your partner when they really stem from within you. If you do not maintain proper work/life balance you may bring home your frustration and displace it onto your partner. If you had to deal with abuse or trauma in your past, you might project onto your partner unresolved negative feelings. If that is the case, a couple’s therapist might suggest you pursue individual therapy so as to become more self-aware and develop better coping skills.
Don’t forget to engage in regular physical affection and sexual intimacy. Couples therapist have conducted numerous studies on the place of physical affection and sexual intimacy in cultivating marital satisfaction and connection. The studies unequivocally demonstrate the critical importance of the physical connection in a marriage in addition to the need for healthy communication.
ONLINE APPOINTMENTS ARE AVAILABLE IN ADDITION TO IN-OFFICE SESSIONS.