Relationship Counselling Helps You Be More Yourself

Relationship Counselling gives you the skills and experience of re-connecting to the 'Me' feeling as you communicate helping you find the clear expression of who you are.  It shows you how you can be yourself while being in a connecting relationship

Relationship Counselling Is Powerful yet Gentle Process

It's natural when we are in difficulty or painful situation  to want a quick fix. If only there was a pill for relationship problems! Change in Relationship Counselling  happens through becoming more aware of what is causing barriers in communication, and learning how to manage and express your feelings so you have more choices over how to respond. It's a process of gaining awareness, seeing how we set up our partner to respond as they do and vice versa, and focusing on what we can do to improve things.

Here is a breakdown of the steps:

Awareness - We notice  the meaning we give to what our partner does and the feelings our thoughts trigger in ourselves. We become aware of how we trigger our partner and the meaning they put to what we do. Awareness is the ability to stand back and observe what is going on.

Acceptance - What we resist and make wrong persists. Behaviours are often our best attempt of getting our needs met. If we can  understand what we do and what need we can move from self-judgment to self-acceptance.

Choice - When we are aware of what we are doing we find we can choose to respond rather than react.  It takes effort to try something different,yet with practice we integrate our new experiences until the change feels natural.

The verse below is a metaphor for the change process conveying the human tendency to keep falling into the same patterns and blame others !

The Autobiography in 5 chapters

Verse is from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Sogal Rinpoche. Rider 2002

1. I walk down the street.
There is a big hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost..I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

We find ourselves stuck in unconscious patterns where we cue up people to respond to us a certain way.
E.g. we don't notice the unexpressed anger within us and how it communicates in our voice tone and  actions. We  argue with our partner . It's easy to feel hard done by and fall into the victim position. It is the other person's fault , not ours and we feel indignantly hurt.

2. I walk down the same street.
there is a big hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe that I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

As the pattern goes on we become more aware that we keep falling into the same holes. We begin to wonder about why we end up in the same place

3.I walk down the same street.
There is a big hole in the sidewalk.
I see that it is there.
I still fall in..it’s a habit.
My eyes are open. I know where I am.

It is my fault. I get out immediately.

The first stage of change is awareness. The second stage is acceptance that this is a pattern and will take some time to overcome it . We accept that we will fall in again and when we do we focus on what we are learning. We get out of the hole rather than get stuck in self-judgement.  We stand back and observe our actions and behaviour.We see how we co-create what happens . We accept what is happening and  take responsibility to move towards doing things differently. In Relationship Counselling you work together to change the shared pattern.

4.I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

The third stage of change is being able to respond rather than react, which gives us choice. It requires determination and perseverance to maintain the change.

5. I walk down another street.

Over time we integrate new insights and behaviours so rather than it being an effort , we hardly notice that the arguments we once had have changed. Walking down another street is a metaphor for having a different perspective. It doesn't mean that all bonding patterns go away. It means our perspective has grown so we see the value in healing that comes from working things through.

Conclusion

1. Who you essentially are doesn't change.
2. How you react and your understanding can change
3. We can update learnt behaviours and attitudes that no longer serve us
4. Relationship Counselling gives you insights, reflections, a better understanding of yourself and your partner . It teaches you both how to respond and work together , rather than react in the same patterns.
5. Changing negative  relationship patterns into positive ones is a not a quick fix. It requires  awareness to understand how you your partner co-create the patterns. There's the step of acceptance of how you co-create the pattern. You both make a new  choice to commuincate differently and perservere when you fall back into old patterns
6. You naturally integrate new behaviours that work for you

By Richard Cole