Hope for Couples in Conflict

The journey of every marriage inevitably takes all couples onto the ‘rocky roads’ of conflict. Some couples choose to tread the rough and rocky pathway together, and through skillful listening and patient communication, they are able to stay together no matter how bumpy and difficult the road gets. Others, however, are left behind by their partners and many, after they have tripped and fallen with painful emotional wounds, find themselves lost in a world where they are alone and unable to trust.

The Conflicts

What many couples don’t realize is that most problems (whether grounded in the past or related to current circumstances) can actually be solved. When couples learn to shift their communication from a “debate” to a dialogue of patient, willing and respectful listening, and where emotions can be safely expressed and validated, they re-energize the emotional connections that once drew them together. Without this respectful dialogue, couples stay locked into the never-ending debates that over time perpetuate the deepening emotional resentments that have come between them. Some couples will divorce, others will resign themselves to the quiet misery of a joyless marriage and still others will act out through aggressive and emotionally abusive behaviors such as overeating, excessive use of alcohol and drugs and damaging infidelities that only further damage the friendship and the trust that they once had.

The Hope

Sherwood Couples Counseling specializes in helping couples in high-conflict relationships to begin the dialogue that will ultimately lead you and your partner back to a point of resolution, and re-commitment and where new skills in listening and communicating will help you see a bright future of hope rather than the unhappy prospect of living with the resignation and emotional avoidance of an unhappy and joyless marriage.

Turn back to the vows you made on your wedding day. While there is life, there is still hope that you will yet find the warmth, the friendship, the closeness and the trust of a fulfilled and happy marriage.

Sherwood Couples Counseling is both skilled and committed toward the goal of guiding couples through the healing process so that they can rediscover the emotional connections that once brought them together. Our intensive and marathon approaches will help you and your partner break through relationship roadblocks by rediscovering your friendship and developing healthier and more effective styles of communication.

Through these therapies, you will also discover your own core values, the values you and your partner have formed together and the values that you and your partner will build on to achieve a truly happy and fulfilled relationship.

You may have been stuck in a very difficult place for a very long time, and no matter your age or the state of your relationship, it’s not too late to get back on track, to reconnect to the lost, forgotten, and unspoken dreams that you are longing to experience and which first drew you together.

Getting Couples Counseling in San Antonio May Avert Divorce Impact

These findings make it clear that there is rarely any “good divorce” as children still suffer negative consequences, anyway. This is actually not surprising because, as most people who have experienced divorce—either as one of the couples or as the child of the divorcing couple— can attest to, the event can be so traumatic for all involved, spelling drastic financial, emotional, and personal shifts for a family. There are valid instances wherein divorce is the best solution, such as when there is emotional and physical abuse in the relationship. Outside such grave situations, however, many couples can be blinded by crisis, opting for a separation instead of working together to create a more fruitful union that benefits them and their family. Going for couples counseling in San Antonio can inject new hope into marriages that still contain loving and willing partners, who only need guidance and a fresh perspective, so they can continue handling life’s challenges together.
http://sherwoodcouplescounseling.com/getting-couples-counseling-san-antonio-may-avert-divorce-impact/

Couple Counseling in San Antonio May Assist in PTSD Symptom Relief

People who have experienced significant traumatic events may develop PTSD and have symptoms ranging from distressful flashbacks or dreams, as well as severe physical or emotional responses triggered by memories of the traumatic event. Because of the severe stress that the individual can suffer from PTSD, this may inevitably affect the relationship of the couple, how they treat each other, and how they protect themselves from the emotional and psychological pain that the illness brings forth. The effects of PTSD on individuals and their relationships can be damaging if not handled in a loving and knowledgeable manner, more so in intimate relationships. Traumatic events can be devastating, but they do not have to hinder PTSD sufferers from maintaining stable, meaningful, and healthy partnerships with their loved ones.
http://sherwoodcouplescounseling.com/couple-counseling-san-antonio-may-assist-ptsd-symptom-relief/

Counseling Can Help Save and Improve Relationships

In 2012, CBS produced a comedy-crime TV series which centers on two cops who have been sent to couples counseling because their problems with each other is affecting their work. Common Law was able to show that couples counseling can work wonders for people who are faced with relationship problems, including those who are couples or partners at the workplace.

In the same way that co-workers need to settle their differences so that their personal problems won’t affect their professionalism or productivity, married individuals must also try all means of conciliation and find solution to problems, especially if they want a harmonious family life. Sometimes couples just need the help of a professional who can make them look at their current situation with a new perspective so as to protect the marriage and preserve and build on the beautiful memories they have together.

It Can Happen to Anyone.

No marriage is immune to infidelity! Bad people in bad marriages have affairs and good people in good marriages have affairs. Affairs occur because both parties have lost the trust, the friendship and the emotional connection they once had. Growing resentments over these losses cause spouses to be more vulnerable to the attentions of others or to actively seek the attention and the comfort they have lost.

What to Do?

Get help!

For 30 years, John Sherwood of Sherwood Couples Counseling has been helping couples repair the emotional losses that occur from infidelity and to help couples recover the trust and the friendship they once had.

He states that when couples are able to talk about all aspects of the affair they begin to understand more fully how unmet needs and unresolved injuries of the past created an emotional climate of disengagement that ultimately led to the affair. He goes on to say that through difficult, honest and respectful communication, couples can succeed in building a new foundation of trust and understanding that will lead to the restoration of the trust and friendship they had before the affair.

Talking about the affair is difficult and one or both parties often think that the best way to put the affair behind them is to never talk about it again They rationalize that it happened, that it can’t be undone and that talking about it just makes things worse.”

This strategy only leads to resignation, growing anger, emotional isolation, more mistrust and the perpetuation of the broken communication that lead to the affair in the first place. This avoidance strategy increases the likelihood of another affair, an eventual divorce, or worse, living forever in a joyless marriage.

Reasons Why and Solutions

It’s helpful to realize that affairs don’t just happen. They are the result of the growing emotional distance that happens when couples turn away from each other as they try to negotiate and satisfy their own emotional needs along with the multiple needs of the family and their intimate relationship.

Couples who are struggling with an affair must realize that affairs are caused by the failure of honest and respectful communication and the habitual avoidance of the conflicts in their relationship.

Restoring and building sound, effective communication skills will help every couple suffering from the effects of an affair to build a new relationship of trust, confidence and hope.

Strengthen Family Relationships Solving Parent-Child Problems

Our memories from childhood fade quickly and we may not always be able to relate to, or to see ourselves in the feelings and behaviors of our children. And it just may be that the problems that your child is now having is a similar expression of what you yourself went through years ago when you were growing up. With hard work and with favorable opportunities you’ve probably outgrown that phase, and now, you find yourself trying really hard to understand what your child is going through.

When you and your partner face the challenges of an oppositional and defiant child, you actually face two problems: the problem of what is going within the emotional and behavioral life of your child and the challenge of communicating about your child’s needs in an effective and honest way that leads to getting your child help.

Managing and correcting parent-child problems is an important part of couples counseling because of the stressful effects these problems have, not only on your child and the family but also, on the strength and integrity of the marital relationship between you and your partner.

Signs and symptoms of an oppositional child

• Loses temper

• Argues with adults

• Actively defies and refuses to comply with adult rules and requests

• Deliberately annoys others

• Blames others for his/her mistakes or misbehaviors

• Angry and resentful at home and at school

• Failing at school

• Depressed and using alcohol and drugs

• Is spiteful and vindictive toward others

Helping your child through counseling

In counseling, parents learn that the child is not the only problem. They learn:

• That child/parent conflicts are sometimes a reflection of parental and marital conflict;

• That the child’s manipulation comes from having no sense of personal power to fulfill “wants and needs”;

• That empowering the child reduces manipulation and improves behavior;

• That parents can empower themselves by responding to manipulation in more skillful and thoughtful ways;

When you and your partner and child go through counseling, you can expect and learn new ideas and develop social, psychological and developmental insights that underline the behaviors, motivation and internal mood states of your child.

To know more about Sherwood Couples Counseling and how counseling can restore a sense of balance and direction to your child’s behavior, visit us to schedule a free initial confidential consultation.