Relational Empowerment con'd

Couples-therapist Terrence Real's second Losing Strategy:

Controlling Your Partner.

So tempting to solve your relationship problem by focusing on what we want to 'fix' in our partner. If we could get him to stop reading at the dinner table, be more affectionate, quit barking at the kids, become a saver instead of a spender etc. then life would be good again. Yes, but at what cost?

Controlling another person through manipulation, (nagging, bullying, flattering etc.) never really works. We may bring about change but with it comes resentment and distance. We win the battle and lose the war, as Real puts it.

Controlling others can become a full-time project, draining the controller's batteries and distracting her/himself from working on what really needs to be addressed first (see below)

Real's rule: WE ARE DRAWN TO PEOPLE WHOSE ISSUES FIT PERFECTLY WITH OUR OWN IN A WAY THAT GUARANTEES A REENACTMENT OF THE OLD, FAMILIAR STRUGGLES WE GREW UP WITH.

Painful to discover how this rule may apply to the controller's own life, it is also the path to empowerment  — freedom to make choices.

Relational Empowerment

I recently attended a terrific workshop by couples-therapist Terrence Real. Real's new book: The New Rules of Marriage, is a manual for couples and therapists and it's an excellent one.
In my own work with couples, I  frequently encounter what Real calls The Five Losing Strategies.

The first Losing strategy: Needing to Be Right. 

As Real says, you can be right or you can be married. An over-simplification perhaps but not by much. Couples claw each other bloody over what each believes is the superior, rational, objective observation about some shortcoming of the other. Getting drunk on indignation, as Real puts it.
So true. I have never once seen a couple 'Get to Yes' by this means. Couples will readily admit knowing this, yet seem powerless to stop themselves.

Real's rule: OBJECTIVE REALITY HAS NO PLACE IN CLOSE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS. 

The way to stop is to stop. Right or wrong is basically irrelevant. It's about redirecting that need to be right towards rekindling respect and support for your partner, instead.
Think we instead of me.

Bullying hurts everyone

Bullying damages children. Damaged children carry their wounds into adulthood. Some of them are lucky and can heal themselves. Others look around for ways to distract themselves from their pain and humiliation and wounded self-esteem. When the distractions they choose make a mess of their lives and the lives of their dear ones, they sometimes seek out help from people like me. By which time, it’s a little like cleaning up an oil spill. As a therapist, I know from experience that it’s far, far better to grow healthy human beings from the seeds of a nurtured childhood than do psychological overhauls on adults damaged by bullying, or by being bullies, or who witnessed bullying and couldn’t — or wouldn’t — intervene. It’s truly a form of preventable violence if we set our collective wills to stopping it through education and vigilance — and love, basically.

Hybrids: Are You One Too?

As a psychotherapist, writer and meditator, I do understand what it’s like to juggle many different lives in one.

My Credentials

• M.A. in Counselling Psychology (Adler School of Professional Psychology, Chicago) • Certified Gestalt Therapist (Gestalt Institute of Toronto) • Certificate in Applied Mindfulness Meditation (U. of Toronto, Fac. Social Work) • Certified Mediator (Arbitration and Mediation Institute of Ontario) • Certified since 1999 by OACCPP (Ontario Association of Consultants, Counsellors,Psychometrists and Psychotherapists)

Hybrids continued ...

I draw on my Cognitive, Gestalt and Mindfulness-Based skills and experience to help you catch the moment’s possibilities and tap back into your own innate spontaneity.

MEDIATION — meditation without the T

A mediator locates the hidden obstacles or emotionally-charged grievances that create impasses. It's not always a picnic. Both parties may leave from a successful mediation feeling they gave ground in order to get to yes. The consolation prize: freedom from the knots of conflict and battle fatigue.