Category: Maintaining Healthy Relationships

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Life in General Maintaining Healthy Relationships Managing stress Psychology in practice

Cape Town Couple Counselling:Couples becoming parents – be prepared!

 

 

If you are currently pregnant (or that your partner is pregnant), or you have just become a parent for the first time, it is an exciting and challenging time!

 

Newby moms and dads have a great deal to adjust to, so it is important to start the process as soon as you get the news!

So what can you do to make this journey as happy and smooth as possible and  how can you help your partner prepare for this new, exciting stage in your relationship?

1. Communicate, communicate! From the first

moment you find out that you are pregnant, begin to talk to your partner about the implications and ramifications for yourselves as individuals and also as a couple.  Becoming a parent and co-parenting with your spouse or partner presents many and varied challenges – to talk about and explore these beforehand will stand you in good stead for when the baby arrives.

2.  Operate as a team and be there for each other. Ask your partner what he/she needs from you at the various stages of the pregnancy and after the birth. A strong, mutually supportive relationship at this stage will ensure that when the baby arrives, an immediate family bond is established, which becomes a strong foundation for the future.

3. Look out for signs of emotional distress in your partner. Pre- and post-partum depression and anxiety is quite common and mostly goes unrecognised. Although emotion fluctuations are normal in pregnancy and post-delivery because of strong hormonal fluctuations,  if you notice that your partner seems depressed and/or anxious for

days on end, if she has trouble sleeping and stops doing her usually daily activities, it is important that you encourage her to go for counselling.

4. Make sure you are prepared for the delivery (both practically and psychologically).

Whether you opt for a natural birth or for a caesarian section, be aware that things don’t always go according to plan, so it is important not to get too invested in one option as circumstances may dictate a different scenario entirely.

5. Get support from outside.

The first weeks as new parents will be a roller-coaster ride! Make sure you have adequate family and/or friends around for support, as well as nursing/breastfeeding/medical backup.

 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

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Life in General Maintaining Healthy Relationships Mediation

Cape Town based divorce mediation, facilitation and parenting plans. If you are a parent who is preparing to get divorced – step carefully when compiling a Parenting Plan!

 

 

Recently I was asked to mediate by an ex-couple who had been divorced for a few months and who have a two year old child. In line with the Children’s Act, before getting divorced, with the help of a mediator they had hammered out an extremely complex parenting plan, detailing the care and contact arrangements in respect of their child. The parenting plan stipulated that the child live primarily with her mother, and that her father have a great deal of contact with his daughter, both during the week and at weekends.

At face value the parenting plan appeared excellent. However, when I had both parents in the room I realised the following:

1. The parenting plan made the child’s life incredibly hectic – she was passed backwards and forwards between the parents almost daily, I wondered how this affected her well-being?

2.  The mother felt that the child was suffering from separation anxiety when she was forced to leave the parent which whom she was currrently  happily bonding.  (This is a difficult problem to solve when children are very young, as they need to see both parents quite regularly as their memories are limited).

3. Both parents felt that they were being short-changed on the time they were permitted to spend with their child.  It was extremely difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that, as they were no longer together, this had the effect of halving the time they could each spend with their child.

4. The father admitted that he had been unhappy with the parenting plan when it had been written, even though he had agreed to it at the time. He stated that his lawyer had advised him that he would not have got such a “good deal” if he had gone to court.

5. The ex-spouses were now forced to see each other almost every day for the forseeable future, even though they now totally disliked one another. And of course, the almost daily conflict around picking up and dropping off the child was worsening their relationship by the day!

So the moral of this story is:

1. Be very careful when you work out a parenting plan – it may look good on paper but think about how it will translate in reality. Is it in the best interests of your child and is it practical in the longer term?

2. Don’t settle for a plan too quickly if in your heart of hearts you feel that it is not going to work for you or for your child. The best time to do this is during the mediation process before your divorce because you still have the power to steer the process. After the divorce, when there might be a facilitator in place, you will probably have less leverage to make changes to the parenting plan.

3. Allow yourself to grieve for the losses associated with the divorce and having to settle for less of your children’s time. If you find you cannot easily overcome feelings of bitterness, hurt and possibly depression,

it is important that you seek some help, either from a trusted friend or from a professional

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Maintaining Healthy Relationships

The psychology of attachment. Do you have an emotionally distant partner?

It all boils down to their primary attachment style!

How good is your partner’s relationship with his or her mother?

Psychologists and researchers have long known that the way we relate to our romantic partner mirrors our very first relationship with our primary caregiver (usually our mother or father). Four attachment styles were identified: secure, avoidant, anxious-ambivalent and disorganised (Bowlby and Ainsworth).

The secure attachment style is ideal. If your partner lets you be yourself but also values intimacy with you, he/she is likely to have had a secure relationship from birth with his/her mother.  On the other hand a partner who tends to be emotionally distant probably had a primary attachment style characterised as avoidant – this style developed because the child could not rely on the mother as a source of comfort.

In anxious-ambivalent early relationships, the child looks for comfort from the mother but the mother’s presence also causes heightened anxiety.  When someone is in an intimate relationship with a partner with this attachment style, they will experience him/her as demanding and possessive but also emotionally unavailable and rejecting.

If your partner’s attachment style is disorganised, he/she probably regards relationships as dangerous because their primary attachment bond provided no safety or nurturance. These individuals will rarely let their guard down with their partner and any real intimacy will be difficult to achieve.

Although our early relationship bonds are extremely important in shaping our intimate relationships as adults, it is important to keep in mind that we are all capable of making positive changes in our relationships if we are sufficiently motivated and patient!

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Health and Happiness Maintaining Healthy Relationships Managing stress

How good is your anger-management?

anger and frustrationAs a psychologist I find that its all about frustration tolerance and managing your expectations!

I have clients who report that they have days when they feel more and more frustrated, to the point where they are ready to explode!

Often their frustration results from problems in their relationships, either at home or at work, or it arises in certain situations, such as when when driving in traffic.

I talk about frustation being a sign that one’s expectations of a person or situation are unrealistic – we have an idealised idea of how a person or a situation should be (in the perfect world!) and then feel frustrated and angry when things don’t turn out as we would wish.

How would you rate your anger-management (on a scale from nought to ten – ten being perfect!)?

If  you find that you need to improve in this area – what can you do?

 

1. Examine your internal dialogue  – the conversation you have (hopefully silently!) with yourself throughout the day. If you are tending to wind yourself up, you can work on this. Listen to the conversation, and change the self-talk to a calmer, problem-solving tone.

2. Examine your expectations. If they are tending to be unrealistic, alter them to match reality. For example, if you are caught in a traffic jam thirty kilometres away from your office, rather than fuming about not being able to get to the meeting which is to begin in five minutes time, estimate how long it will take you to get there and perhaps consider how you could let people know that you will be late.

Of course it is important for each of us to work on our anger-management skills for a number of very good reasons – such as to preserve our relationships, our jobs and our sanity!

It is important to note that an ongoing pattern of anger and hostility can seriously affect your health. Research has consistently found that A-type personalities who are competitive and also angry and hostile are much more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and have higher rates of heart attacks than people who are driven but not angry.

So being a lover not a fighter is better for one’s health too!

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Maintaining Healthy Relationships Mindfulness Relationship Building

Assertiveness and psychology: What do you need to be able to practise strategic assertiveness?

What do I mean by strategic assertiveness?

I will explain it with an example.

An eighteen year old client arrived at my practice in an extremely distressed state. She told me that she had spoken up in class against unfair treatment on the part of the teacher.She said that she had worked till late the night before completing a homework assignment only to find that some of her class-mates had failed to complete their assignment but had not been punished in any way.

When she spoke up, her classmates who had not completed their work turned on her and said some hurtful things, whilst those who had done their work failed to support her. My client lamented that this was one of the few times she had managed to be assertive and it had turned into a disaster. She vowed to never speak up again!

I commiserated with her experience but suggested that it she might have predicted this outcome as it was to be expected that her outburst would not have been popular with the girls who were at fault. (Of course she was angry and frustrated at the time and was therefore not not thinking rationally). If she had managed to be more in control she would have probably realised that her outburst would have negative consequences in terms of her popularity with her peers!

The take home message from this example is:

Being assertive, and yet not antagonising or alienating others in the process, is a complex skill and is not easy to achieve. It requires a clear, rational mind, good anger-management and high frustration tolerance – all these are aspects of emotional intellengence (EQ).

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Life in General Maintaining Healthy Relationships Mindfulness Relationship Building

Relationships and Couple Counselling: How do you deal with a “difficult” partner?

In my psychology practice I often have clients who tell me that they are in relationships with “difficult” people and they tell me that they want to develop the skills to cope with their highly problematic other half! (This request usually only happens once they accept that it is unlikely that their partner will change to any significant degree!).

One client I have paints a picture of her partner as irrational, jealous and passive aggressive. When he succeeds in pushing her buttons (which he manages to do pretty often), she in turns becomes frustrated and angry, leading to a major blow-up which throws the family into turmoil for days.

She asks me what can she do to contain these types of situations.

My approach is to suggest that she look at her expectations of her partner. Her high frustration levels are a sign that she is comparing his behaviour with some idealised image of how she considers he should be and she is angry and disappointed when he falls short. I often say to clients that we should base our expectations on how the person has behaved in the past en though we may hope that they might surprise us in a positive way!

I also believe that it is important for each of us to gain control of our emotions, in particular our anger. Mindfulness is an extremely effective means of gaining the necessary self-awareness and focus to track one’s thoughts and emotions in the present (as they are occuring), in order to stay calm and in an adult mode. If one partner succeeds in doing this, the “relationship dance” is altered and negative patterns such as repetitive arguements can be eliminated.

I tell my individual clients and the couples who come to see me that, even when you strongly disagree with our partner, it is important to try to maintain empathy for their point of view (this is often a very difficult thing to do, especially when emotions are running high). You can then acknowledge how they feel and then give your point of view, using the word “and” rather than “but” to contrast your own point of view. In this way your partner will feel heard and acknowledged.

So when you are about to have a disagreement with someone, always ask yourself what is your goal is in every case and also how realistic your goal is.  (Often people merely want to let off steam and although this may relieve frustration in the short term it may seriously damage your relationship!).

It is also a good idea afterwards to evaluate whether or not you think you managed to achieve this goal!

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Life in General Maintaining Healthy Relationships Relationship Building

How to have a successful long-term relationship – don’t ignore red flags when choosing a potential partner

Most of us are aware that all committed relationships, including marriage, require hard work to keep them vibrant and fulfilling.

However, as the saying goes, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear – you need to choose your prospestive long-term partner wisely and with care!

In the book “Everybody marries the wrong person”, psychologist Dr. Christine Meinecke talks about two types of scenarios – the first involving a choice of a partner who does not gel with you on all levels but with whom you can still have a good, happy life and the second, more devastating situation, where a partner turns out to be a complete disaster.

She identifies six “red flags”  – if any of these characteristics are present in a your potential partner, you would be wise to nip the relationship in the bud to avoid long-term heartache and misery! 

1. Substance abuse/dependence

Many partners of substance abusers are themselves in denial about the seriousness of the problem. Unless your partner has been “clean” for at least a year, you can’t rely on them to be suffciently emotionally mature to pull their weight in the relationship.   

2. Mental cruelty

If someone is mean, critical and tends to humiliate you he/she is not the partner for you!

3. Abuse

Of course this goes without saying – any type of physical, sexual, mental or financial abuse should be a deal-breaker in a relationship. If any of these are present in your relationship, it is imperative that you get some help – either from a trusted friend, a counsellor or a psychotherapist

4. Inappropriate venting of anger.

Don’t make any excuses for a partner who cannot control his/her temper. This situation will not improve in the future unless the person with the anger problem acknowledges it,d takes responsibility for changing the pattern of behaviour and agreed to attend anger management counselling or psychotherapy.

5. Controlling behaviour/jealousy/paranoia

This type of behaviour is a sign of a seriously dysfunctional individual who has the capacity to cause psychological harm to their partner and to their children.  This pattern that is usually hard-wired into the psyche and is incredibly difficult to change So, if the signs are there it is a good idea to end the relationship before more harm is done to your self-esteem. 

6. Under functioning/under-responsibility

Does your partner pull his/her weight when it comes to finances, tasks, roles and other responsibilities?  You need to ask yourself whether you want to spend your life with someone who tends to be thoughtless, careless and even reckless. The partners of these type of people often find themselves in a “parent” rather than a “partner” role.

So if your partner exhibits any of the above to any great degree, perhaps it might be prudent to do some serious thinking about what you really want and deserve from a prospective life partner!     

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Life in General Maintaining Healthy Relationships Recommended Reading

The psychology of making mistakes

When I popped into my local book shop a couple of days ago, one book immediately caught my eye. (The cover is very effective – see photo!).

The book: “Being Wrong”, by Kathryn Schultz.

I have got to the end of Chapter 1, and have been savouring every page – it is funny but also thought-provoking. For anyone who is interested in the psychology, philosophy and history of human error, and who also enjoys a good chuckle, I would recommend this book. Excerpts:

“Of all the things we are wrong about, the idea of error might well top the list” (pg 5), (the book) is built around stories of people screwing up, stories (about) illusions, magicians, comedians, drug trips, love affairs, misadventures on the high seas, bizarre neurological phenomena, medical catastrophes, legal fiascos, some possible consequences of marrying a prostitute, (and) the lamentable failure of the world to end (pg 17).
There is also mention of the disastrous impact of always needing to be right on our relationships and that “this applies equally to relationships among nations, communities, friends and relatives” (pg 9).
I am certainly looking forward to reading the rest of the book!

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Maintaining Healthy Relationships

Is it OK to have secrets in my marriage? Are secrets a form of infidelity?

Do you believe that you should tell your spouse or partner everything about yourself and your past? Or are there certain secrets that are “harmless” to your relationship?

Consider the following examples:

 

  1. Patrick and his wife Eve had made a pact to give up smoking together a year ago. Eve managed to stay smoke-free for about three months but after that she started having the odd cigarette in secret and now she is  smoking regularly but is not letting on to Patrick. She feels this is not a big deal because her marriage is strong.
  2. Is there something coming between us?

    Sipho is happily married to Neolitho but is also in regular SMS and e-mail contact with an old girlfriend. He says that his friendship is platonic and that it does not impact negatively on his marriage. He doesn’t tell his wife about it because he says it will only cause misunderstanding.

  3. Nancy is happily married to John but she has a secret retail therapy addiction. She regularly spends quite large amounts of money on clothes and accessories and hides her purchases from her husband as she feels that he will not understand or condone her behaviour.
  4. Mary has been married for five months and has not yet gathered up the courage to tell her new husband about the abortion she had as a teenager.

Which of these scenarios in your view are acceptable and which would qualify as serious breaches of a relationship?