The truth is, relationships are hard.
Most of us have hearts that have been wounded. And these traumas make it harder to express our love for our partner and to recognize the love our partner is trying to express for us. You're trying to say, "You matter to me." But what they hear is, "You're not doing it right." Or they're trying to say, "Come closer to me," but what you hear is, "I want to control you." So you get hurt, or afraid. And when you try to explain, it just makes it worse.
When you have a disagreement:
You get triggered. You get angry or afraid. You lose it with each other. Then what do you do?
Get Mad?
Fight
Get Away?
Flight
or Shut Down?
or Freeze
These are normal responses to extreme stress. While this means there's nothing strange about your reaction, it also means your relationship is extremely painful.
Most often one of you is pulling the other into a connection, any connection, while the other one is looking for any way to reduce the arguing even if it means leaving. Both of you are looking for safety, but in opposite ways that only make your partner feel less safe, not more. So it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle. It's not working for either of you. When this cycle keeps happening it eventually becomes unbearable and relationships end.
There Is a Way
In the last 20 years there’s been a revolution in understanding how people get stuck in cycles of anger and fear and in how to help them get out of it. Emotionally Focused Therapy has proven to be the most effective form of couples therapy. The overwhelming majority of couples are able to recover from their distress and to rediscover happiness in their relationships.
More about Craig Stein
Craig Stein, PhD, MDIV
My practice is focused on counseling couples in distress. In our first session we will talk about what you're experiencing when you can't connect, and we'll develop a plan for getting you reconnected to each other with a new foundation established on safety, trust, and compassion for each other.
Often couples begin counseling with little hope and lots of pain and distrust, but at the end find a deep respect and appreciation for one another. And they usually rediscover that they actually like each other! Imagine that! There is hope.
"Love is worth being brave for"
Ready to Get Started?
Call:
(971) 351-2461
—
Email:
Craig@heartandsoulpdx.com
Learn More:
The Heart
We now have a clear scientific understanding of love: All of us are born with an innate need for safe emotional connection, someone we can depend on. The drama of love is driven by our need to establish, deepen, and protect a secure emotional attachment. When we have that connection, we can weather the misunderstandings and disagreements. When we don't have that safe connection, life becomes unbearably stressful. Using Emotionally Focused Therapy, I help create, strengthen, and repair the emotional bonds between romantic partners and family members.
This is not about learning a new set of tools or communication skills. This is about transforming the way you relate to each other by healing and transforming your connection to each other. Inside each of us is a deep emotional longing to know and be known, to trust and be trusted by those who are special to us. But that precious vulnerability is often hiding beneath our defensive emotions, like anger and fear. I will help you to recognize and reconnect with one another's softer emotions and to respond with care and comfort.
And Soul
The heart knows a dimension of reality that reason cannot grasp. The deepest nature of the universe reveals itself only to the loving heart.
What lovers and poets have always known science now confirms: we are born to love. But what the heart also knows is that, finally, only Love is Real.
If you were raised in a church or mosque or synagogue, you may already have a language for the Love that is the Source of existence, the Ground of being. "God is love," is the most familiar expression.
Or you may still be looking for a language to do justice to what the heart knows: that this is why we're here, to love one another; and somehow the whole universe is in on the conspiracy to lead us to the heart of love.
Whether you have a language or are discovering a new one, I very much enjoy the conversation that gives words to your heart's wisdom. As you and your partner rediscover and name the love between you, many couples discover that they have a renewed connection to the Love that calls us into being.
Here too, at the center around which the whole universe turns, there is a precious vulnerability, a compassionate Heart. And here too we can experience a rediscovery and a reconnection to what is dear.