Don’t allow your stress to run away with you in the build up to the examinations!

If you are a student I am sure that you are thinking a great deal about the forthcoming examinations! As a your future rests on getting good results the thought of the exams will be causing you some degree of stress!

Of course we all cope with stress in different ways and with varying degrees of success. Some of us have trouble sleeping whilst others suffer from anxiety, feelings of panic or physical ailments such as headaches and back pain.

If stress levels are too high or stress becomes chronic, it can seriously affect memory. Brain science has determined exactly why that is and how it works. However, all we need to know about this is that hormones and neurotransmitters that are released during the stress response (also called the “fight or flight” response) can block memory formation and retrieval. This is responsible for the common situation of “going blank” during an exam.

It is therefore imperative that students and learners take on board the essential knowledge and skills to enable them to gain control of their stress. These include cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), relaxation training, visualisation and mindfulness training.

I will be presenting a workshop entitled “Preparing yourself for the Exams” in Claremont, Cape Town, On Saturday morning the 17th September. The workshop is open to Grade 11s and 12s and to students.

For more information about the workshop, please contact us.

Best wishes with your exam preparation!

Now that spring has arrived, we all tend to think about getting our bodies into shape and some of us even get motivated to do

a bit of spring cleaning!

At this time of year we often start to feel a personal sense of renewed optimism and purpose  - however, it is important not to overlook your relationship when doing your general overhaul – does it need a breathe of fresh air too?!

How can you accurately judge the current health of your relationship? (unfortunately we can often be in denial about this important issue).

Ask yourself (and your partner) the following questions:

* How good is your communication currently – can you talk openly and from the heart about yourself and your feelings to your partner?

* Are you caring, supportive and non-judgemental with each other?

* Can you have constructive arguements without resorting to criticism, avoidance and name-calling?

* Are you on the same wave-length emotionally?

* Do you enjoy each other’s company and do you regularly have fun together?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no”, it is probably a good time to get a relationship tune-up!

During September we are offering a special 4  ninety minute session package for couples in Wynberg, Cape Town

Feel free to Contact us for more information!

I bought a new printer the other day. The owner’s manual that accompanied it was so thick and dense that there was not a chance that I would even try to understand it. Luckily I had a more techno-savy friend who managed to set it up for me and now I only have to press various buttons and wondrous things happen, like scanning and faxing.

But if understanding a new appliance is hard, getting to know the inner workings of your intimate partner is in a different league altogether! However, if you don’t work on it, your relationship will probably deteriorate very quickly.

It is all about empathy and emotional attunement! John Gottman talks about understanding your partner’s love-maps, whilst the authors of “Love and War in Intimate Relationships”, Marion Solomon and Stan Tatkin refer to the idea of an owner’s manual for your partner.  In this book, they mention some important questions you need to ask yourself in order to test your understanding of your spouse – for example:

* What three things can you say or do to make your spouse feel good?

* What three vulnerable areas does your partner have (that have probably been present since childhood)?

When your partner is challenged on one of this issues or is inadvertently triggered during an arguement, he/she will probably react extremely negatively.

* What is the most effective way to calm your partner down when he/she is upset?

* What are guaranteed ways of making him/her happy or excited?

* What can you do to bring a smile to his/her face?

If you are unsure about the answers to some of these questions, perhaps it would be a good idea to schedule some quality time alone with your partner (away from the kids and the other responsibilities of life) to get onto the same emotional wavelength and to begin to fill in the gaps in your Owner’s Manual!

If so, make sure that your “Relationship House” is in good order!

I wrote about the relationship guru, John Gottman, in my post last week. Dr Gottman has been researching the top of what makes couple tick and the differences between happy and unhappy couples for forty years! His findings make for fascinating reading and are crucially important to anyone who wishes to make a succes of their intimate relationship and to live “happily ever after”.

What are the components of Dr Gottman’s “Sound Relationship House”*?

He speaks about 7 levels. Starting at the bottom – the foundation of a good relationship, according to Dr Gottman is “building

love maps”. What he means by this is that couples need to be invested in continually getting to know and understand their

partner more and more every day in all areas of their lives.

The second level involves the sharing of mutual fondness and admiration. It is important to respect and admire your partner. Dr Gottman has found that a lack of respect and verbalised contempt of one’s partner is one of the greatest predictors that a relationship will break down. He says, therefore, that is important for couples to cherish each other – this will lead to an emphasis on the partners strenghts and positive qualities and further encourage a strong emotional investment and commitment to the relationship.

The third level concerns “turning towards” one’s partner – being receptive when he or she needs you. Dr Gottman states that this builds up a store of good will between the couple, so each is more likely to act in an open-hearted and generous way in response to a call for help from their mate.

The fourth level is “The Positive Perspective” – maintaining a view and perspective of one’s partner and the relationship as

good and worthwhile. This is especially important as every interaction with our partner is coloured by our underlying (often unconscious) views and our attitudes.

In my next post I will speak about the remaining three levels at the top of the “Sound Relationhip House”.

* Reference: The Science of Trust. Emotional Attunement for Couples. John Gottman (2011).

What are the secrets to a happy long-term relationship?

Because couples counselling is a special area of interest for me, I was especially

excited and intrigued to read  John Gottman’s new book “The Science of Trust”.

His research into the ingredients that make successful relationships has spanned over 40 years and makes fascinating reading.

He has found that happy couples tend to continually spend time and effort getting to know each other (they build “love maps” in which they get to know the inner workings of their partners mind, what matters to him/her, and knowledge about their loved one’s dreams and aspirations.

Happy couples tend to show fondness, respect and admiration for their partner,

they tend to habitually focus on their partners good points and strengths rather than on their weak points or perceived personality flaws).

In successful relationships, couples also tend to acknowledge the efforts made by their spouse to be helpful and emotionally available. This is termed “turning towards” the other by Dr Gottman. He states that

these three aspects create the first tiers of a “Sound Relationship House” for a happy and fulfilling relationship.

In a future post I will talk about Dr Gottman’s exploration of  the crucial role that trust plays in

intimate relationships.

Relationships that work tend to hit the right balance between emotional “walls and windows”!

Shirley Glass in her book entitled  Not “Just Friends “. Rebuilding Trust and Recovering your Sanity after Infidelity”, talks about walss and windows in relationships – referring to openness and disclosure vs privacy and secrets in relationships. She states that good relationships and successful marriages require a healthy and appropriate balance of closeness and separateness. When a spouse finds him/herself being much for open and intimate with a friend than they are with their life partner, for example, this may be an indication of trouble brewing in the relationship.

Unhappy couples who come for counselling at my practice invariably cite communication problems as a major issue – communication either becomes extremely conflictual and negative or the couple stop talking to each other altogether (except of comments about day-to-day happenings). These couple have erected protective emotional walls between each other, windows shrink in size and as a result, intimacy between the couple is lost. Individuals will then start opening windows into other relationships – they start to get their emotional needs met elsewhere, often with disastrous consequences for the relationship or marriage.

All healthy relationships require a fine balance to be maintained between walls and windows. A teenage client of mine complained to me recently that her parents would not allow her any privacy when it came to her social life – they constantly monitored her e-mail, insisted on being her friends on facebook and vetted all her friends. And then there are parents who treat their teenage children as confidants and share with them all their worries as well as explicit details of intimate relationships. This, too, is inapproprate as these children as forced to assume adult, responsible roles before their time.

It is thus important for each of us to give careful thought, on an ongoing basis, to effectiveness of our communication with the people in our lives and to the appropriateness of the walls and windows we unconsciously maintain in these relationships.   We need to be constantly mindful!

Comments are welcome!

What are you worried about and what makes you anxious?

Your anxiety can point the way to constructive change in your life and in your relationships

In my psychology practice I see many clients who struggle with anxiety and chronic worry. They are often so preoccupied by their anxiety that they feel their lives have become limited, self-involved and essentially unsatisfying.

Most people just want to stop worrying and feeling anxious – that is understandable and a worthwhile short-term goal. However, the nature of their anxiety can point the way to understanding what is important to that particular individual, and this is important to understand if we are wishing to achieve a more holistic, long-term solution to their problems and issues.

For example, I had a client recently who was extremely anxious because of a perceived failure of sexual performance, specifically premature ejaculation. During our first session it became clear that he was placing so much pressure on himself  to perform because the relationship with his partner was extremely important to him. He was actually trying desperately hard to please her – but in a way that was having the opposite effect – he was getting more and more anxious and she was feeling “turned off”.

So the anxiety which brought my client into treatment highlighted the importance of addressing the relationship issues – and for that reason I recommended couple counselling to my client – so that he could get his partner on board to support his treatment for his anxiety and sexual performance concerns but also to understand how his partner was experiencing the problem, what she felt she needed from him in terms of their relationship, and to improve their communication, and ultimately, their relationship.

It was also revealed, as therapy progressed, that there were deep roots to my client’s anxiety. Since childhood he had been suffering from low self-esteem – he had had a stutter and, as a result, was teased mercilessly by other children at school. He became avoidant and extremely distrustful of people in general. These effects were still evident in his current life.

So my client’s presenting anxiety provided the both the impetus for treatment and also led, like a paper-trail, to the underlying  problems and issues in his life.

I have a number of very distressed partners coming to see me for couples counselling at present, at my psychology practice in Wynberg. They either come together (usually one partner brings along a reluctant other half) or on their own because their partner refuses to come.
What can you as an individual do to improve your relationship?

1. Hone your communication and anger management skills

As it takes two people to maintain a destructive arguement, you can make the decision to communicate your needs clearly and to fight fair. If you find you are not able to break the negative cycle you may need to consult someone like a psychologist or psychotherapist to help you master the necessary mind-set and skills.

2. Take personal responsibility for your own actions.

Of course your partner behaves in a way that infuriates you. However, you can make the choice not to react in a negative and destructive way. It is important to find ways that work for you.

3. Accept that constant nagging and criticism will not heal your relationship.

In order to change your interaction pattern into something positive you will need to start focusing on what is good about your partner and to reinforce that. This is hard but necessary. Remember Gottman’s 5:1 ratio – good relationships are characterised by communication that consists of a ratio of approximately five positive, constructive comments to one negative comment.

I suggest you make a start and make some positive changes now before it is too late for your relationship to recover!

For any comments or queries, please contact us.

Last week I wrote about possible reasons why some individuals stay in relationhips that have become toxic.

What do I mean by toxic relationships?

Signs to look out for:

If you, as a couple, are emotionally enmeshed with each other (you feel that you cannot imagine your life without the other person) but simultaneously you are both making each other totally miserable? Do you yourselves caught up in recurring negative and hurtful patterns of interaction? Is there a lack of respect and a sense that you are being taken for granted?

You may find there are periods when things between you seem to be going well, but then your relationship goes back into a recurrent, negative cycle.

Dysfunctional relationships are also characterised by criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling (John Gottman’s “The Four Horseman of the Apocolypse”*).

You find yourself preoccupied by angry, resentful thoughts and a sense of frustration when you think about your partner. You feel helpless to change the dynamic of the relationship. These thoughts start to interfere with your life and your ability to cope and be happy.

Reference: Gottman, J. M. (2000). The seven principles for making marriage work: A practical guide…New York: Three Rivers’ Press

Can couple counselling be of help when relationships have become toxic?

The short answer is “yes” – provided that both partners are motivated to work on changing their relationship for the better. Not all relationships can, or should be, saved of course, but at a minimum, couple counselling will provide the opportunity for each member of the couple to re-evaluate their relationship in order to decide whether or not there is some potential for improvement.

Next time I will write about how individuals can begin to constructively address problems in their relationships.

When you know if your heart of hearts that your intimate relationship has become a major source of stress and unhappiness in your life , why don’t you break it off?

All your friends and family are giving you a consistent message that you would be better off without your current partner, why do you steadfastly resist their advice?

In my Cape Town psychology practice I often get clients who find themselves stuck in this position – they often feel desperate – they love their partner but he/she drives them crazy. They have often been in a destructive relationship for a long time and are feeling at the end of their tether.

Why won’t they admit that their relationship is doing them psychological harm, end it and move on with their lives?

The reasons people stay in toxic relationships are often complex and driven by largely unconscious factors such as:

1. The comfort of the familiar

In many cases there is the feeling that the bad relationship is comfortable in a sense, because it is known and predictable.

2. Needing to be needed

Clients often reveal a fear that their current relationship may be their last – that they will not find anyone else if they break off  their current relationship. There is a fear of being alone forever.

3. Trying to avoid “bad” feelings

Ending a relationship usually precipitates a sense of loss and mourning, with associated feelings of sadness (and even misery), anxiety, panic, and sometimes may trigger depression. Avoidance is a natural and normal tendency in the circumstances. However, we all need to face such feelings if we want to transform our lives for the better.

3. Poor self-esteem

Some individuals believe that they are not deserving of a caring, supportive relationship and of a happy, fulfilled life. There are, of course, always a number of unique, complex reasons for such an outlook. Often the underpinnings are to be found in the person’s early life experiences.

4. Not being able to say “no” or get their needs met

Clients caught up in toxic relationships often report that they feel unable to insist that their own needs get acknowledged – they often nag their partner to change but to no avail. They are in many cases locked into a co-dependent, enabling dynamic with their parnter where they feel helpless to change things for the better.

5. Believing one’s partner must/will change

Often I will hear “If only my partner were to realise the error of his/her ways and change for the better, our relationship would be good”.

This is a normal, but unfortunately, misguided belief!

It is crucial to accept that we can only change ourselves, if we become more strategic and positive in our interactions with our partners, our relationships have a chance to transform. However, if the other person in the relationship is not motivated to similarly change for the better, you may be doing yourself a big favour if you decide that enough is enough and to move on with your life!