Taking the plunge

Why would I decide to spend an hour a week going over difficult stuff with a stranger? It would be so embarrassing – what will he/she think about me droning on about all my ‘issues’? Aren’t there more fun ways to spend my hard-earned money? Do I really want to stir things up when life’s hard enough already? She/he won’t understand me anyway – no-one ever does. I should just pull myself together and get on with it. There are loads of people who have more serious problems than I do – and they all seem to manage fine.

It’s a big step to start counselling. You’ll probably be weighing up some of the thoughts above. You’ve probably got to the point in your life where something isn’t working, and you’re wondering if things could be different, but actually taking the plunge to contact a therapist feels pretty scary.

You could start by finding out a bit more about the many different types of therapy that are available. Would you prefer a time-limited approach, or might you like to embark on some sessions and see where they take you? Do you want to see someone more than once a week, or might it be enough to talk to someone on the phone? Would you respond best to being given strategies and tools? Would you like to share your feelings and see what patterns and themes can be uncovered?

Counselling Directory offers a summary of different kinds of therapy here http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/counselling.html and by reading this you’ll get a sense of what you think will work best for you. Once you have more of an idea of what type of therapy you’re looking for, you can find the counsellors in your area on websites such as Counselling Directory. Some therapists have links to their websites, where you can read more about their approach. You might want to give some of them a call and see if they sound like the kind of person you’d be able to work with.

You may be nervous at the beginning – you don’t know what to expect. Share your fears with your counsellor. Explain that there’s part of you that wants to sit there, and another part that would rather be almost anywhere else. Ask your counsellor about the process, tell them that you’re uncertain about what might happen, and see if they can reassure you about how the sessions will evolve. Their training and experience will help them to make you feel as comfortable as possible, and by understanding as much as they can about where you’re coming from, they’ll be able to tailor their approach to your needs. And don’t forget that you’re in control all along – you can stop the sessions whenever you like.

Once you start working together, you will develop a relationship with your counsellor, and this will vary according to their style. Some counsellors are more directive than others, some will offer specific strategies or techniques, and some will gently draw your attention to recurring themes they have noticed. What you should find with any counsellor is that they will listen carefully to what you have to say, and from their responses you will have the feeling that they are ‘getting’ you, doing their very best to understand exactly how things are for you. This process can be enormously powerful – for some people it’s the first time in their lives that they’re sitting with someone who wants to know more about how they feel about things. It may be difficult at first to trust the counsellor, to share painful thoughts and feelings, but a good therapeutic experience will allow you to open up gradually, to take things at your own pace. And this is how I feel counselling works – you have a chance to explore your needs and desires in a safe place, and your counsellor helps you to find a way forward that makes sense for you. 

How to increase connection with your partner

Hold Me Tight, one of the many useful books on couples therapy I’ve read, is written by Dr Sue Johnson, a leading proponent of EFCT (Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy). She believes that the way to enhance, or save, a relationship is to re-establish a secure emotional attachment and preserve the bond between you, and her book offers a wealth of practical and emotional guidance on how to increase connection with your partner.

Johnson believes that we’re much more dependent on our partners these days, now that we live more in social isolation, and may not have our extended families nearby. When we feel secure in our relationship, we are less angry, more empowered, more able to be curious and open. If we begin to feel that our partner is unavailable or unresponsive, we react with fear, and in most cases we either become demanding and clingy, or we withdraw.

Seven conversations
Johnson teaches couples to have what she calls ARE (Accessibility, Responsiveness, Engagement) conversations, which are all about checking out whether your can reach your partner, and whether you can rely on them to respond to you emotionally. She identifies seven ARE conversations which can transform how a couple engage with each other. When I see a couple, I’ll be looking out for the negative cycles they get into, and Johnson’s first four conversations aim to help the couple limit these spirals. The fifth and sixth conversations focus on increasing emotional bonding, and the seventh shows couples how to sustain and build on their connection.

Limiting negative spirals

1 Demon Dialogues

Couples are encouraged to stay in the present and notice the circle of criticism they’re engaged in. The theme is probably one of the following:

Find the bad guy. They blame each other. Feeling angry and fearful, they attack before they can be attacked.

Protest polka. Couples get into a dance in which A reaches out and B steps back. Johnson points out the dance, and helps the couple to recognise it.

Freeze and flee. Both A and B step back, feeling numb and distant from the other. This usually occurs after some time has been devoted to finding the bad guy, and the protest polka.

2 Raw Spots

This refers to the wounds we feel when we’ve felt abandoned or criticised. They will often come from things that have happened to us in our past, and may be compounded by our current relationship, and crises in our lives. We need to acknowledge and soothe each other’s raw spots. We can tell a raw spot has been activated if the emotional tone of a conversation suddenly changes, and we feel like we, or our partner, may have reacted out of proportion. It’s as though an alarm goes off. Our body responds, putting us in survival mode, our intellect tries to work out what’s happening (am I safe?), and we react … If we’re angry, we may approach and fight, if we’re ashamed, we withdraw and hide, if we’re afraid, we flee or freeze or attack, and if we’re sad, we grieve and let go. Johnson encourages us to find and acknowledge the source of our raw spots, and to be open with our partner about our vulnerabilities.

3 Rocky Moment

This is about realising that your partner’s negative reactions, especially during conflict, may well be a desperate attempt to deal with their attachment fears. Johnson urges couples to de-escalate conflict to create emotional safety together. She suggests we stop the right/wrong game, and begin sentences with We rather than I/You. It’s important for us to stop blaming the other, to take responsibility for our own feelings and to ask our partner about theirs.

4 Hold Me Tight

What am I most afraid of?

Try to order, distil and share your experience so that it’s not so scary.

What do I most need from you?

Tell your partner. Be honest. Be able to know that you long for connection, and that you fear losing your partner. You want reassurance and comfort, and that’s okay.

Emotional connection reduces stress hormones like cortisol, and Johnson believes that each time a couple creates a moment of real connection, the bond between them grows.

Increased emotional bonding

5 Forgiving Injuries

Being hurt by those we rely on to protect us makes the trauma particularly hard to handle.

If one partner feels abandoned, they may try to ignore or bury the injury, but it doesn’t go away. Johnson stresses that these injuries have to be confronted and processed together through a healing conversation designed to promote forgiveness and reintroduce trust.

If A has hurt B, B expresses the pain they’ve felt, and A acknowledges the pain and their part in it. A expresses regret and remorse for the hurt caused. B asks for what they need to get over the hurt and pain. Together A and B create a new story that captures the injuring event, and describes how they confronted the trauma together and healed it.

6 Bonding – Sex and Touch

Sex is often the first casualty if a relationship is faltering. It’s worth noting that touch both arouses and soothes – it’s about both sex and attachment. The couple may be having sealed-off sex, which is all about the act, performance, prowess and has little feeling. They may be having solace sex, which is based on anxiety, a desperate attempt to feel close. Johnson helps couples to get to synchrony sex, when they’re in physical and emotional harmony, able to ask for what they want, both sexually and in the relationship in general. They can soothe and comfort one another.

Going forward

7 Keeping Love Alive

Johnson advocates regular ARE conversations. Couples need to agree how to get out of the dangerous areas that lead to demon dialogues, and to celebrate moments of connection when they occur. She suggests they create rituals around parting and being reunited, and share their dreams with one another, while forming a new model of being together. It’s helpful to separate attachment issues from practical problems that need to be resolved so that the practical stuff can be
discussed without attachment needs getting in the way.

It seems to me that Hold Me Tight offers a sound structure to help couples find, and keep, emotional connection. I use some of Johnson’s ideas in my couples work, and I have seen how they can help. With a bit of understanding and insight, we can ensure that our relationships mutually nurture and nourish us, rather than causing us pain. Her quote from Leonard Cohen says it all:

Dance me to your beauty

with a burning violin

Dance me through the panic

till I’m gathered safely in

Lift me like an olive branch

and be my homeward dove

Dance me to the end of love

What is the meaning of life?

Well ... it's a big question, and here it's answered by a wise nine-year-old, via mindyourmind.ca, which is a place where youths and emerging adults can access information and resources. I thought it would follow on nicely from my last post on mindfulness, and I hope you enjoy it. I particularly liked this youngster's thoughtful, open-minded approach, and his ability to acknowledge that he might be wrong.

http://mindyourmind.ca/community/blog/35-mental-health-a-coping/4712-what-is-the-meaning-of-life-and-the-universe

Mindfulness via ACT

Welcome to this first post from Perspective. I’ll be exploring themes that I hope will be of interest to you, whether you're thinking of having counselling or not. Future subjects will include parenting, communication and conflict in relationships, and how our childhoods impact on our adult lives. You can find me on Twitter at @ngcounselling, where I highlight useful articles and blogs that offer insight into all kinds of mental health issues, and there's more information about counselling at www.ngcounselling.co.uk.

Mindfulness

The Oxford English Dictionary defines mindfulness as 'the state or quality of being mindful; attention; regard'. It is inherited from a Buddhist tradition and is now increasingly being used in Western psychology to alleviate a wide range of mental and physical conditions, with ancient Eastern practices being combined with the latest discoveries in neuroscience. 'Beditation', the practice of meditating lying down, is even being taught in schools, and appears to be popular with students.  

Mindfulness is an attentive awareness of the reality of things, of our bodily functions, our feelings, thoughts and consciousness. It involves paying attention to things as they are – on purpose, in the present moment, and without judgment. It has similarities to meditation, but it seems to me that meditation is about enlightenment, getting to a higher place, while mindfulness is simply about awareness of what is. In 2004 NICE, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, recommended mindfulness as a treatment for depression, and there is increasing evidence that it can be beneficial in the treatment of a range of mental health issues.

Mindfulness is a huge subject, and I’m going to focus on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), one of a number of mindfulness-based therapies. Although it may not have the catchiest name, ACT seems to me to offer a practical combination of mindfulness skills and easy-to-follow ways of assessing your life, and making changes. In his book The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris, a leading authority on stress management, focuses on undermining struggle, avoidance and loss of the moment, rather than teaching new techniques to pursue happiness. He explains that ACT has a firm basis in scientific research and has been proven to help people for whom other kinds of therapy have failed.

Along the way the book offers personal anecdotes, engaging examples of how in his everyday life Harris often still fails to practise what he preaches, and encouragement to give it a go: ‘Don’t believe it because I say so – try the exercise for yourself’. Most of the mindfulness exercises are simple, brief and enjoyable, and he offers a variety, so that if you don’t get on with one, you can just try another.

What is happiness?

Harris queries the idea of happiness – what does it mean? Is it a realistic goal? He feels it’s essential that we accept that life involves pain, and that what will be helpful to us is to work out how we can handle pain better, make room for it, reduce its impact and create a life worth living despite it. As Nathaniel Hawthorne puts it: 'Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.'

Who’s in charge?

Harris reminds us that our emotions don’t control our behaviour, especially if we consciously bring our awareness to how we’re feeling, observe how we’re behaving and choose whether that’s how we want to act.

Psychological flexibility – how can we achieve it?

Harris believes that psychological flexibility comes from following a combination of mindfulness, values and action, and demonstrates how in his view ACT is the framework for living this way. He explains how we can be in touch with the present, and be open to experiences rather than avoiding them. He shows us how not to fuse with our thoughts, but to see them simply as thoughts, rather than reality or fact. He suggests the idea of a sense of self that can think and feel without being defined by those thoughts and feelings – ‘I feel stupid at this moment’ rather than ‘I am stupid’.

Harris urges us to identify our values by asking ourselves who we want to be, what we want to stand for, and how we want to live in the world. He then offers a practical guide to action, setting achievable goals towards creating a life where we live by our values, actually doing the things that are important to us. We can redefine success as living by our values – and we don’t need the approval of others to know we’re doing that.

ACT is just one of many applications of mindfulness, but I believe that The Happiness Trap would resonate with many of the clients I’ve seen over the years, who struggle with a critical mind, who feel their lives can never be as they’d like them to be, who are plagued with anxiety or depression, who would like things to be different but don’t know where to start.

If you would like to practise seeing a thought as just a thought, click here. The exercise takes about 13 minutes.

And finally, I'll leave you with a little scene of mindfulness that you can find here.

Photos © Joe Gadsby http://www.flickr.com/photos/gadsbar/