Finding Some Useful Information About Couples Counseling Services

By Pat Skeats


Many relationships become strained sometimes for different reasons. This could be because of financial troubles, lack of communication or illness in the family. When this happens, working through the problems in a positive way is important to preserve the relationship. Many people have found that couples counseling has been helpful in working through some of these difficulties.

When there are changes in a family such as financial difficulties, physical health, or problems with other family members, this can have a serious and negative influence on the way that individuals respond in a relationship. In many cases it is not just one person who is at fault. One principle that is taught in relationship therapy is that it takes both people to create a problem and so both must try to manage the problem.

Relationship therapy first originated in Germany during the 1920s with the eugenics movement. After that, institutes for marriage therapy began cropping up in the USA starting in the 1930s. This was due in part to the racial purification centers from Germany. Eugenicists such as Paul Popenoe and Robert Dickinson promoted it in the USA. It was also supported by birth control advocates like Abraham and Hannah Stone, two of the founders of Planned Parenthood.

The purpose of using love maps is to illustrate the idea that that each person must take responsibility for awareness of the problems in the relationship. Each person must be aware of how they contribute to the problem and start to make changes in how they think and feel about things.

As cultures modernized and the western world saw nuclear families become more prevalent, there was a shift towards training people to become accredited relationship counselors or therapists. Volunteers can be trained by a Government agency or a social service group in order to help those in need of family therapy. Some communities have their own groups of volunteers who can help others.

Rather than trying to make decisions for the couple, the relationship therapist should seek to empower them. They must feel confident enough to take control of their lives and make important decisions on their own. The end goal is simply to improve communication so that they learn how to do this.

Some methods of relationship therapy focus on the process of communication. The method most commonly used is called active listening, developed by Carl Rogers and Virginia Satir. This helps each partner to learn how to communicate in a way that creates a safe environment for each individual to express their feelings.

Psychologists have observed that active listening helps to create a safe environment to allow criticism to be heard and dealt with. Many listeners often feel overwhelmed by criticism and so tend to avoid such encounters. Some psychologists believe that people are biologically programmed to be defensive towards criticism. Therefore, the goal is to train the listener to interpret criticism as love and not necessarily as something abusive.




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