3 Ways Marriage Counseling Strengthens Emotional Connections
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3 Ways Marriage Counseling Strengthens Emotional Connections
Ever wondered how marriage counseling can transform a couple's emotional bond? Insights from a Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist and a Psychotherapist/CEO uncover powerful strategies that make a real difference. The first expert emphasizes the importance of identifying and communicating real feelings, while the final expert highlights the benefits of learning vulnerable communication skills. Together, three expert insights reveal the transformative impact of marriage counseling on emotional connection.
- Identify and Communicate Real Feelings
- Create Corrective Emotional Experiences
- Learn Vulnerable Communication Skills
Identify and Communicate Real Feelings
Marriage counseling helps a couple strengthen their emotional connection through directed conversations to uncover the deeper emotions beneath surface conflicts. Vulnerable expression of emotions within a safe and secure environment allows partners to get back to being intimate and understanding.
Consider Sarah and Michael who came into counseling because they felt unconnected in their 12-year marriage. On the surface, they argued over chores and parenting, but in therapy, deeper emotional needs emerged. Michael was unable to express feeling overwhelmed at work, and Sarah perceived his withdrawal as a sign of rejection, stirring up her own fears of abandonment.
Through therapy, they learned how to identify and communicate their real feelings. Instead of saying "You never help with the dishes," Sarah told her husband, "I feel lonely and unappreciated when I am doing everything myself." Rather than withdrawing, Michael told his wife that he felt he was failing as a husband because of work stress, leaving him emotionally drained.
Everyday battles between couples often cover over the deeper emotional needs being experienced. When the partners can learn to talk in an honest manner about deep-seated feelings of either abandonment, validation, or security, they begin re-attaching at that level. The therapist makes it safe for this natural communication to occur and guides partners out of the negative pattern of defense, instead genuinely listening to each other's emotional truth.
Create Corrective Emotional Experiences
Creating Corrective Emotional Experiences
A significant aspect of couples counseling focuses on creating corrective emotional experiences that can transform the couple's relationship dynamics. These experiences may involve moments of vulnerability and emotional engagement where partners can express their needs and fears and receive a supportive response. Additionally, these experiences can help couples build a more secure attachment bond and recalibrate the couple's interaction patterns.
A beautiful example of this type of corrective experience occurred with a husband who had not spoken with his father in many years due to some of his personal experiences of abandonment, loss, and hurt feelings. The husband shared that he was having some similar feelings arise around his wife. Through a couples intervention with a focus on facilitating a corrective emotional experience, the husband experienced the "injury" in an emotionally healing way, that included a deeper understanding of the pain he experienced as a young man, the vulnerability that he felt in intimacy, and acknowledgment of some of the deep seated fears he possessed. Through the course of couples counseling, he was not only able to repair the interactions with his wife, but also was able to gain some profound insights that allowed him to take steps to repair the relationship with his father
Learn Vulnerable Communication Skills
Marriage counseling helps couples strengthen their emotional connection by teaching them skills to help communicate more vulnerably. The therapist will help the clients become more reflective of their emotions in order to help their partner best understand how they are feeling. Often times, when someone feels anger, they are really experiencing a more vulnerable emotion and the therapist helps them to determine what that more vulnerable emotion is and how to communicate it. Vulnerability can revitalize and renew a relationship that has grown distant. It helps resolve conflict in a healthy way, which also improves connection.
