Marriage Counseling Effectiveness: 3 Pitfalls to Avoid
Your marriage stinks and now you've decided to do something about it. No, you didn't resolve to see an attorney. You have kids and they love their other parent. Besides, a part of you feels linked somehow to this miserable person you've been married to for a long time.
Marriage Counseling Effectiveness: 3 Pitfalls to Avoid
You resolve to see a marriage counselor. Great idea, but watch out for pitfalls. Let's assume your advisor has a good name with the state you live in and the professional organization to which he or she belongs. Let's assume your advisor is well-trained and experienced, too. There are still pitfalls, and because these are subtle, they can spell danger. They can spell the end of your marriage, the very thing you were trying to avoid.
Pitfall #1: Your advisor can listen endlessly to your pain.
Now you're saying, "Why in the Dickens is there a question with that?"
Obviously, a advisor must be empathic. The advisor must listen to you; that's part of the job description. But how much? Are you supposed to visit week after week doing nothing but complain? Where are the solutions? If your advisor only listens to the problems, there will be nothing but problems to listen to.
A good advisor has many, many tools to get past the problems and if these tools are not introduced into the sessions, then it means that change can only happen one hour a week. Whereas, if homework is given-homework that makes sense to you and which you would enjoy trying out-then the whole week between sessions becomes your laboratory for change. It converts a hopeless, miserable situation into one of possibility.
Pitfall #2: Your advisor thinks that arrival into sessions with your spouse would somehow be unethical.
The opposite is true. If you come in alone when what you want to do is heal your marriage, then that is unethical. The hypothesize you might hear counselors say otherwise is simply that they were not trained in marriage counseling! Bear in mind that Marriage and family Therapy is a isolate field from, say, Psychology. The Mft is specifically trained to deal with some people at once and recognizes that a lot of the problems in a marriage come from the different assumptions and meanings that the people in it attach to things. Therefore sorting all that out is a must and it can't be done alone. In fact, it goes farther than this.
Each person reacts to their spouse in a unique way. For example, Sally might be a Ceo of a profitable firm, but when she's home with Joe, she stops giving directions and starts expecting to be given them. Why is that? maybe because Joe won't let it be otherwise. Or maybe it's because she genuinely likes to kick up her heels at home and let person else be in charge. And, just to make life interesting, none of this is in aware awareness. It's the therapist's job to observation these patterns and help the integrate see them, too. That, in turn, produces more choices for the couple.
Pitfall #3: Your advisor takes sides.
Even though it's important for both people to be there, and even if one person clearly seems nasty and difficult, if the advisor takes sides, this behavior creates a new obstacle for the integrate that they now have to overcome, as if they didn't walk in the door with sufficient of them already.
Let's get back to Joe and Sally. Suppose Sally complains to the therapist that Joe takes over but the reality lurking in their communication patterns is that Sally encourages this. Joe haplessly falls into step with the program and neither person is aware of any of it. If the advisor jumps all over Joe, he misses an chance to help Sally see how she has subtly orchestrated it. He also misses the chance to help Joe be more sensitive to the subtle communications going on. The good advisor would ask exactly how this happens, who says what to whom, under what conditions, how it is answered, and so on. It could take a few sessions for the advisor to figure out these dynamics. The good the therapist understands-and likes-each person in the marriage, the more helpful that therapist can be.
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