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When you appoint yourself judge
and jury of truth and righteousness,
you are shipwrecked by
the laughter of the gods. Albert Einstein
Almost every day we help people who are in serious trouble. We help
motivated adults use their issues, symptoms and problems as motivation
towards healthier lives. We make opportunities to explore and change your
emotional baggage, and we can help
you renew your path to peaceful harmony.
I and my graduate students coach motivated adults to
enjoy more health, success and pleasure ... to enjoy life. The sense-of-life inherent
in our work reflects the models that we use for healthy and unhealthy relationships.
We can help you explore, define and achieve what you really want.
| Sample Questions |
Why we
ask |
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1. What do you want
in a relationship? |
We assess goals, nonverbal signals,
entanglements and bonds, trauma, abuse, coaching plans and relationship
ecology ... |
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2. How do you want to
get what you want?
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3. How will you test that
you got what you wanted?
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Your answers to such simple questions provide
huge information. We try to keep our relationship diagnosis to a session or
two (although diagnosis is ongoing as more information becomes available).
We use this to assess where you are now as a couple, where you have been and
where you want to go. We also explore why you want to go there and how
you want to get there ...
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We can coach you to reconnect with
your own wisdom, to find your own answers and to recover your own power. We
can help you build a bridge from where you are - to where you want to be.
Together we can confront your situations and
speed your transitions.
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When we offer to coach couples, families or
teams, we prefer conjoint (simultaneous) coaching. We don't just counsel
two or more people at the same time - we coach people to coach each other!
We strive to make people independent of us!
Transforming Relationships
Sometimes
the longest journey is the distance between two partners!
Pay attention to how they communicate because
that's how they communicate!
If a partner says that he or she feels unpleasant - ask
about the nature of the feelings and their causes. Are the feelings existential
(all the time in any context) or only sometimes in some contexts (e.g. overwork)
- or triggered by some stimulus (e.g. a spider).
We often help each partner resolve individual issues
(such as chronic emotions, habits or obsessions) before beginning our
couple coaching. You have many possible futures - and no matter which path
you choose, we can coach you to change your fears, anger and unwanted habits.
How do you feel about your relationship?
If you ask this to a partner alone, and again with the partner
listening - expect different answers. Here are some common possibilities ...
- If both partners feel well about their
partnership, we can coach them both towards increasing individual
pleasure and mutual enjoyment. We help them both build resourceful
states that they may need later when resolving conflicts and during
reconciliation.
- If one partner feels dissatisfied and the other is
satisfied, we can coach both partners to dissolve individual issues and to
better understand each other. This can lead to both feeling well, or
to both wanting to change their relationship in some agreed way.
- If both partners feel badly about their
partnership, we can coach them to examine and resolve any current
crisis, and then to evaluate their partnership
or marriage. This often requires individual work with both partners,
and then couple work to sort out couple problems.
Relationship Evaluation
I composed this for partners, although it is useful in
evaluating many human relationships.
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Healthy Partnership |
Relationship in Crisis |
| Partners often show
appreciation and gratitude to each other |
One or both are often
dissociated, irritated, depressed, critical or show contempt |
| Partners respond
to most verbal and nonverbal communications |
One or both ignore,
avoid or shorten most communications |
| Partners review
events in their history |
They rarely
review their relationship history |
| Partners greet after time
apart and ask about each other's activities and other news |
They rarely interact when
together, without even silent intimacy |
| Partners enjoy meeting
each other's needs for passion, intimacy and commitment |
One or both often ignore or
criticize the other's goals and needs |
| Partners discuss goals
and dreams, finding shared values and creating shared meanings. |
They rarely discuss
shared goals, values or
dreams |
| Partners often go out
together |
They generally prefer
to go out alone |
| Partners create projects
which require committed cooperation |
One or both often avoid,
ignore or give small attention to shared projects |
| They wish to stay together
to enjoy sharing partnership and parenthood happiness |
One or both want to
separate but cannot because of guilt, fear or constraints |
| They respect most of each
other's choices and decisions, and politely discuss differences |
One or both show contempt
for the other's decisions and angrily demand changes |
| Partners want happiness
together |
One or both prefer
happiness alone |
- The ratio of positive to negative comments in
successful relationships is about 5:1, and in unsuccessful
relationships it is often below 1:1 (Gottman, 1999)
- Successful couples learn to create passion,
intimacy and commitment (Sternberg, 1986)
- Couples who argue more than they
make love are likely to separate (Howard & Dawes, 1976)
- More couples stay together because of entanglements
than because of love (Carruthers, 1996)
To assist a couple to develop patience, tolerance and
gratitude, you can explain things in optimistic ways (Cameron-Bandler,
1985). Identify the behaviors each person dislikes in their partner
and then:
- Explore "What would cause me to behave in this way?"
and "What goals am I trying to reach?"
- Explore "How could I behave differently towards my
partner, if I knew the circumstances or goals that trigger that behavior?"
- Explore "Is this behavior that I dislike or
a quality that I sometimes admire in my partner?"
- Explore "What qualities do I most enjoy in
my partner?" and "How can I express those qualities
when my partner behaves in ways I dislike?"
A partner may believe that the other partner initiates
conflict, or both partners may believe that conflict is inevitable.
We coach couples to dissolve their inner conflict, and to understand their
external behavior as systemic dynamics, rather than as issues of manipulation
or control. See Reconciliation.
Of all the hurts people inflict upon each
other, few are so hard to resolve
as those caused by judgments such as, "He/she only did that to
hurt me!"
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Since our last session, one of my longtime
wishes has come to fruition. I am totally in love with my husband in a way that
I never thought was really possible. I hoped that it was a dream that could come
true but I had very little faith that it would. Philadelphia
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Many people are simply not trained to be partners, and
traditional couples or marriage counseling offers them little help. We help
couples learn and use proven ways of relating as they resolve partnership
issues and marriage problems. We coach partners how to coach each other.
- Contact us and briefly outline your situation
- We explore your goals and issues that you
wish to change
- We explore if working together with us
would be right for us all
We also mentor counselors, coaches,
therapists etc, and coach them to resolve ethical and personal issues, to
use systemic diagnosis, resolve transferences, to dissolve relationship
entanglements with family and clients, and in brief relationship therapy.
(Many of our clients are helping professionals and therapists; they want
personal change-work and professional insights into systemic coaching).
“When you want to spend the rest of
your life with someone,
you want the rest of your life to begin as soon as possible.”
from When Harry Met Sally
Unlock your success, your
relationships and your life choices.
Explore what feels good as you empower your life.
Click HERE for Better Relationships!
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers, 2007-2011
All rights reserved
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