Are you suffering in silence?

How long have you spent struggling in your relationship? How many nights have you spent crying alone in the dark, while your partner sleeps next to you, wondering when or how things will ever get better? How many times have you had the same argument and gotten the same results - retreating to your corner, alone, hurt, broken, and feeling helpless? 

My guess is way too many. 

But why do we suffer alone, in silence? 

I’ve heard a lot of interesting opinions about why people choose not to share what’s going on in their marriage. Things like, “we agreed we’d never talk to our family about our marital problems because we didn’t want anyone to have a negative opinion about our partner.” 

I’ve also heard, “It’s not always bad so I’m afraid it will sound like I’m just trashing my partner.” 

Along with other things like: 

“People will judge me.”

“People would be shocked if they knew how bad things are.” 

Our Western society teaches us in so many ways that we should suffer in silence. If you’ve ever been told as a child to go to your room because you were having big emotions, then it’s really easy to internalize the belief that your emotions are too much and that you should not burden others with them. 

Most parents of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s weren’t equipped with the skills of conscious parenting and were likely so uncomfortable with their own emotions that they couldn’t deal with ours. They weren’t privy to the research we have now that shows that stuffing and suppressing emotions actually leads to higher levels of anxiety and depression.

But one thing that I’ve learned in doing this work, and in my own healing is that suffering alone can only get you so far. And it isn’t very far.

It's difficult to undo those patterns that you’ve learned in your childhood, or push past the myths of talking about problems in your marriage. It’s not easy to reach out and tell someone that you don’t have things under control. It’s humbling, and it’s hard. 

It can feel like no one will ever understand the nuances of your relationship. It's scary to open up and talk about what’s going on because you might be afraid that talking to a therapist might force you to leave or make other life-altering decisions. 

Unless you’re in physical danger, a good therapist will not tell you that you should end your relationship. That’s not our job. 

If you come to couples therapy saying that you want to fix the relationship then a good couples therapist will be focused on helping you do that. 

Talking about the pain you’re feeling in your relationship can make things feel more real, and I know how scary that can be. But once you put it all out there, it can feel so relieving, and when you see a great couples therapist, you will truly understand that you are not alone. 

One of my favorite parts of the therapy process are the first few sessions. I know that couples are uncomfortable sharing what’s really going on behind closed doors. But one of my greatest gifts is instilling hope and letting couples know that they aren’t alone.We’ve seen some really difficult issues in my practice. But my staff and I have helped so many couples weather those difficult storms and create amazing, healthy, connected relationships that surpass what people even think is possible when they first sit down on the couch.

We also have a formula for success that is backed by tons and tons of research! The Gottman Method is one of the most effective tools for helping couples improve their marriages. So you dont just come in and see how things go. 

Our staff take the time to truly understand your relationship and each of you as individuals. We start with a couples session to get a sense of the issues you’re struggling with and also conduct a relationship history - we ask about the significant events that have happened in the relationship. 

After that, we do an individual session with each partner to get a sense of your personal histories and backgrounds. These play an important role in the way you communicate with one another. 

We also send out the Relationship Checkup - an extensive background questionnaire that will measure various aspects of your relationship and communication patterns.

All of these components give us a really good picture of where your strengths are as a couple as well as the areas that can use improvement. 

Once we collect all of the important background information we sit down with each couple and show them all of the components the research tells us are required for a happy, healthy relationship. We show each couple where their strengths are, along with their weaknesses and areas that we will be focusing on going forward. 

Every couple that works with us knows exactly what their sessions will be focused on because they get a print-out of all of their strengths and weaknesses. There’s no guess-work. Our therapists get to work and help couples reach their goals. They focus on the issues and help couples create amazing, joyful, intimate, connected marriages. 

You don’t have to suffer alone. Once you put voice to what's happening the spinning in your head will stop. You can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

If any of this sounds like you, I want to help. Imagine what it will feel like moving into Fall feeling like you REALLY want to cozy up to your partner.  Imagine starting 2024 with a clear vision for the future of your relationship AND a supportive therapist behind you as you take those scary steps forward. 

Picture how connected you'll be this time next year after pushing past your fears - of failure, of not knowing where to start, of anyone knowing what’s really going on in your marriage - and seeing all of the progress you've made together. 

You'll be so proud of your relationship and you would have spent the last year learning, healing, connecting, and creating an unstoppable, deep, intimate bond and gained communication tools that you will have for the rest of your lives together. 

The things we teach couples take time and practice to implement, but once our couples understand what is under their behaviors, they begin to experience lasting change. They create more intimacy and their love continues to grow even after they graduate from therapy.  

Will Marriage Counseling Help?

This is one of the top searches on google. Most people want to know if something will work before they invest their time and energy into it. It’s the reason sites like Yelp are so popular and customer reviews are the most read part of product information. 

Marriage counseling absolutely does help but under certain conditions. 

Here are 3 things that will give you much better results from marriage counseling: 

1. Seeing a therapist that is an actual marriage specialist.

Finding a couples therapist in Rancho Cucamonga, CA can be tough - it’s hard to find the right therapist in any area (I’m speaking from personal experience - it took me 6 months to find my therapist and I”m a therapist who knows what to look for!). 

But if you wanted an eye exam you would see an ophthalmologist, not a podiatrist. You also wouldn’t see a generalist. 

In our practice we have one main focus: couples. Through our education and training we have worked with many individual clients and even some children, but have come to find that working with couples is our forte, and it’s what we are most passionate about. Because we have dedicated our practice to working with couples it means that all of our continuing education is focused on honing those skills, on learning all that we can in this subject area, and we have attended many, many trainings that can help us be better clinicians in this exact area. 

This is what you want to look for, not Suzy Save’em-all who specializes in everything A-Z and takes a new training every other month based on whatever she needs to learn to help clients she’s feeling stuck with. 

2. You attend sessions frequently and for an optimal amount of time. 

At Rancho Counseling we recommend weekly therapy, and tell couples to plan to be in therapy for at least 6 months. 

Developing the skills that are necessary to create lasting change takes time. Think about how long you and your partner have been together, and how long you’ve been stuck in the same relational patterns. When you become accustomed to these patterns over time, it takes time to learn a new way, and to implement those things you are learning. 

Couples therapy isn’t like a regular doctor’s appointment. You don’t go in once, get a prescription, and then take it and move on. Therapy is a process, and in order for that process to work, you must invest the time. 

Another common issue is with the frequency of sessions. If you are seeing a therapist once a month you are literally spending one hour, out of the 730 hours focused on your relationship - think about that ratio. That is truly not enough time or energy to create change. 

3. You and your partner show up and are ready to work. Many people make the mistake of thinking the therapist is going to do the work for them, and that just by showing up their relationship will be fixed. 

A couple’s therapist is like a guide. If you were to hire a guide to take you through a hike in a national forest, you would expect that guide to show you all of the amazing points of interest along that trek, point out areas you should avoid, and help you find your way. 

You would not expect that guide to move your feet for you - it is expected that you walk and climb alongside that guide, follow what he/she has to say, and do the work that it takes to get you to the peak, so that you can enjoy the amazing scenery. This is the same with therapy. 

If you discover in therapy that you often become critical of your partner, and that has become detrimental to your relationship because of the hurt it is causing your partner, then it is up to you to change that pattern when you are outside the office. That process may be slow, and you might slip up from time to time, but ultimately you are the one who must create that change. 

If you have any questions about how couples therapy can help, or just general questions about therapy, ask away! I LOVE hearing from you! Leave a comment below or schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation here.  

Holding onto hope for your Marriage: How therapy can help

When couples finally reach out and call us for the first time, most of them are hopeless.  

They feel like they’ve tried everything, and they are exhausted from having the same fights over and over. 

Once you’ve decided that you’re going to reach out to a therapist in your area that can also be a confusing task. Many therapists don’t specialize in work with couples or they don’t take your insurance. Couples therapy tends to be a specialized service not covered by some health insurance plans, however working with a couples therapist who truly loves this work and dedicates their career to helping couples makes a HUGE difference in the results you’re going to receive.  

Many times when people call me I hear things like, “this is our last resort, we keep trying but nothing is working and we want to be able to say we’ve tried everything, so if therapy doesn’t work, then I guess it’s time to throw in the towel.” 

It can sometimes seem like giving up and asking for a divorce is the easier thing to do. The task of doing therapy and showing up weekly can feel really daunting when you don’t know what to expect or where to even begin. 

The unknown is scary - I totally get it! But when couples call us for a free 15-minute phone consultation I walk them through our process and answer any questions they might have. 

The greatest gift we give our couples at Rancho Counseling is that our therapists are the holders of hope. 

⭐️ Many times it’s our job to keep being that North Star of truth that says, “you can do this! Just keep going, you’re making progress!”

For me that’s the best part of being a therapist - Holding hope for people when they’ve lost it. 

If you’re losing hope, I want this to be a reminder that you can do this! You can make the changes you need to have the relationship you’ve always dreamed of! 

It’s not always easy, and it does take self reflection and work. But it’s totally possible when you meet the right people who are experts in helping couples create amazing connections with one another! 

Don’t lose hope my friends! We’re here and we are so happy to help 💕 We have a couple different options for working with us including couples therapy and also our upcoming 7 Principles Workshop so check out our offerings!

Is it Ever Too Early to Start Couples Therapy?

I think you probably know by now if you’ve been reading my newsletters that the short answer to this question is no. 

On occasion I will get a call from a couple who is engaged or newly married and they will say something like, “we don’t have a lot of issues, but we want to get started on the right foot, do you think it’s a good idea for us to come to therapy?” 

To which I will respond with a very enthusiastic - of course!! And then I do a little song and dance and praise them for taking the time to invest in their relationship before things get overwhelming. 

I honestly wish that couples would invest their money in therapy rather than a lavish wedding, or that it was more normal for family and friends to gift couples therapy to newlyweds. 

*Sigh* Maybe one day. 

There are some major benefits to investing in couples therapy early on in your relationship. 

I know that therapy can be expensive. But think about it like going to the dentist - if you brush and floss regularly you’re less likely to get cavities. If you get your teeth cleaned every six months as recommended then that gives the dentist an opportunity to detect a cavity early and take care of it before you are in need of a root canal or something more serious. 

Starting couples therapy before things get too out of control is like getting a filling. The amount of time and money you’ll be spending in therapy is going to be much less than if you’ve been in the same negative patterns and routines for years. 

Finding a therapist who practices Gottman Therapy is also really great at the beginning of your marriage because the protocol for treatment includes the Relationship Checkup, which is an extensive background questionnaire designed to measure various aspects of your relationship. 

In most Gottman Therapy practices like Rancho Counseling, you come in first as a couple, complete your Relationship Checkup and then each partner has an individual session with the therapist. 

After that you have a second couples session where the therapist will sit down and show you all of the components it takes to have a really strong, healthy relationship. 

The therapist will discuss your strengths as a couple, and the areas that you have as opportunities for improvement which come from the conversations the therapist is having with you as well as the Relationship Checkup. 

Once those areas are identified you go to work and learn ways to improve the areas that are going to translate to a healthy, happy connection. 

Many couples tell us that even completing the assessment is super helpful because it gets them thinking about their relationship in ways they haven't in the past. Couples also report an increase in their satisfaction levels after just 3 sessions, which is before the real work even begins. My theory about this is that dedicating the time and space to focus on the relationship gets couples thinking differently. They feel excited about the process, and happy that their partner has agreed to focus their time and energy on making improvements. 

Most people don’t actually know what it takes to have a strong, healthy marriage. They have some ideas - good communication, spending time together, etc., but the Gottman method of therapy is backed by years and years of actual research and gets into the nitty gritty of helping couples understand their communication patterns and learn what truly works. 

Much of what people know is by gleaning from what was modeled to them by parents or family members and many times people will tell me they learned what NOT to do because their parents divorced or don’t seem very happy. 

Investing your time in the beginning of your marriage will give you some amazing tools to keep in your toolbox for years and years to come. 

If you are on the fence about it, give us a call and schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation and we will be happy to answer any questions you might have about the process.  

4 Actual issues disguised as, “Trouble Communicating”

Since I started my therapy practice over a decade ago I’ve taken thousands of calls from people over the phone looking for therapy. The first thing I ask is, “tell me a little bit about what you are looking for help with.” And inevitably within the first minute everyone I have ever talked to about their relationship in one form or another tells me they need help with their communication. 

However, in 90% of the cases I have seen, communication is not the biggest problem. There are so many issues that are masked and placed under the category of “communication.”

Simply put, communication is the imparting or exchanging of information or news. Most couples don’t actually have an issue exchanging words, information, or news with one another.

They actually have problems listening, empathizing, talking about their feelings in a constructive way, and dealing with their own triggers which cause them to become flooded, shut down, and unable to focus on their partner’s requests and communication.

Listening

There is an actual art to listening. It doesn’t always come naturally to us and most people listen to the first part of what their partner says, then they think they have the gist of what was said, and they begin formulating their response while the other person continues to speak. While they are formulating their response they tend to stop listening or cut their partner off before they are finished speaking.  

At this point the conflict or discussion can become derailed and the focus is shifted onto the fact that the person speaking was interrupted, feeling like they are being dismissed, or there may be a blow up if this is something that happens continually in the relationship. 

Instead of formulating your response while your partner is speaking, work on building your empathic response. 

Empathizing 

You do not have to agree with your partner’s feelings or thoughts to be an empathic listener! (Trust me on this one - I literally empathize for a living, and I do not always agree with what my clients are saying.) Empathic listening is the best way to convey to your partner that you hear and understand what they are saying. 

Here’s an example: 

Partner 1: “Today was so terrible! My boss has been such a jerk lately and she called me in to discuss everything that was wrong with the project I have been working on and now it’s going to put me back 2 days to make all of the changes to things she already approved last week!”  

Partner 2: “Babe that sounds rough, I’m sorry you had a bad day. I could see how that would be so stressful for you to make those changes in such a short period of time.”

Notice Partner 2 did not say anything about how to fix the issue, make any criticisms about Partner 1’s approach, or tell them they shouldn’t be stressed. Your partner may wish for your feedback or advice, and in those cases they will ask. You can also practice asking, “do you need advice, or do you need me to just listen?” 

Talking about feelings

Talking about your feelings in a way that your partner can hear is one of the best skills you can learn to improve your relationship. Couples will tell me they’ve discussed how something their partner did or said made them feel, but when I actually sit and break down their conflict with them it turns out they haven’t actually done so and are counting on their partner to read their mind or “just know” based on their reaction. 

What not to say: 

“I do everything around here! I’m running around all day, getting the kids here and there, trying to get everything done at work, and I’m so tired! I don’t get any support from you!” 

It might seem like the partner expressing this has conveyed how they are feeling, however this statement is void of any important emotional dialogue necessary for their partner to hear. Instead, “I don’t get support from you!” is a criticism. This statement is used to convey blame, not to convey how the person is actually feeling. When someone feels criticized or blamed their natural response is to become defensive. 

If this person would like help from their partner, they aren't actually asking for it, nor are they letting their partner know what it feels like when they don’t provide assistance. 

What to say: 

Instead saying something like, “Babe I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed lately, I have deadlines at work, and running the kids back and forth has felt so exhausting. Can you help me by taking the kids to school tomorrow and picking them up from daycare on Thursday?” 

If the pattern continues or the partner is unable to offer assistance, coming back and saying, “I’ve asked you for help, and I get that you can’t pick the kids up Thursday, but I feel so hurt and alone when I don’t have your support. Can you help me come up with any other solutions?” 

Focusing on the feelings of hurt and loneliness is important, and it gives your partner an opportunity to respond to your emotions with much less to become defensive about because you’re not attacking, criticizing, or blaming. 

Recognizing triggers

Recognizing your triggers can be one of the most difficult things to do on your own. That is why therapy is so helpful. It’s like sitting in your living room and your therapist can ask you to pick up the rug a little and see what is under there, or behind the couch where you might not have looked in a while. 

Many times couples have perpetual problems that just keep resurfacing and turning into blow-ups. Remembering the saying, “if it’s hysterical, it’s historical,” can be helpful - meaning, if you are having a really big emotional reaction to something, it’s probably a trigger from your past that is resurfacing. 

When you are not in the heat of the moment and can take time to think about the reaction, ask yourself, where have I felt this feeling before?

Many times couples aren’t just responding to one another when they are arguing, but they are having an automatic response that is related to a previous trauma. 

Having a big reaction to a spouse who appears nit-picky can bring up old wounds that come from having a highly critical parent while growing up. Feeling the need to control your partner’s actions may actually be coming from living with an alcoholic parent where life was very unpredictable. You can read more about how trauma can impact your relationship here. 

Once you are able to recognize where your triggers come from, working through them in your own personal therapy or in couples therapy will immensely benefit your relationship.