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Marriage Counseling Tips to Improve Your Marriage
Congratulations! You and your partner have made the decision to go to marriage counseling, or at least are seriously considering the idea. Marriage counseling is a positive step towards healing your marriage and making it more resilient.
The success of your marriage counseling sessions depends a whole lot on you. Your counselor is merely a facilitator; he or she works with what you give. To make the most of marriage counseling, it helps to have the right attitude and disposition.
Below are some marriage counseling tips to help you to make the most of your sessions:
Get rid of biases against counseling.
There are many biases against the mental health profession; if you subscribe to them it might jeopardize the process. For instance, some view counselors as people who exploit problematic marriages for money. Others view the counseling process as a way to label their spouse with a mental disorder. Unless you trust your marriage counselor and his or her practice, you would always be resistant to their assistance. And unless you have the right idea about what services your counselor actually provides, you'll have unreasonable expectations. It helps then to research first what counseling is before you attend a session.
Commit.
It's understandable if you're wary or pessimistic about marriage counseling. Depending on your situation, you must have already tried many different ways to address the problem in your marriage, and feel frustrated at the lack of results. But like with most things, a half-hearted commitment can only get you so far. If you want to make the most of marriage counseling, decide to give it all you've got.
Make your counseling sessions and homework a priority. If you have to adjust all your other schedules around it, then do so. Unlike other helping processes, it's difficult for a counselor to say for certain how long sessions would run and how much emotional investment would be required from you. You may uncover an issue in the middle of the process that might necessitate an extension of your original treatment plan. The counselor might hit an issue he or she thinks is important to sort through. Committing to counseling means being open to possible changes and self-confrontation; they are prerequisites to moving forward.
Here's a tip: always keep the goal of healing or strengthening your marriage in mind as you go through counseling. This way, any temptation that to veer away from the process can be weighed against what you went to marriage counseling for to begin with.
Prepare to disclose--- and own your disclosure.
Disclosure, especially about deeply personal matters like your married life, is a difficult and often painful process. It can involve admitting embarrassing things about your life, re-living something you've already decided to forget, losing an “upper hand” in the relationship, and generally feeling vulnerable. All these are very threatening situations which can make you resistant to revealing your true thoughts and feelings --- something that can create problems in the counseling process. Before you go to your first session, it's best to reconcile yourself to the idea that yes, you are going to disclose.
Here's some advice: pay no mind to appearances. Be honest, cry and scream if you want. You are not there to impress the counselor or protect your reputation. Nor are you there to get the counselor to side with you. A counselor is not interested in what makes your story sound credible or rational; he or she is interested in reality. All counselors are ethically bound to keep the confidentiality of your disclosures, so you can be free to be real. When you're authentic in your disclosure, the diagnosis and treatment plan the counselor would prepare would be more accurate.
But note: openness is not enough. You also have to take responsibility for everything that you say. Counseling is not a free pass to blurt out all that you feel and let the chips fall where it may. The counselor will not get personally affected by what you share, but good or bad, it will affect your spouse. Disclose because it's necessary for healing; don't do it to blame, manipulate or get even. Things said can never be taken back.
Prepare to listen--- and make compromises.
Don't just prepare to share, prepare to listen. Your spouse will also get time to disclose; you need to attend to everything that they say if you really want to help your relationship. Suspend all your assumptions and judgments and listen to your spouse with a fresh, objective mind. It's tempting to dismiss your partner's point of view (“I've heard it all before”, “There he/ she goes again”) but being part of the problem, accept beforehand that you may not have an accurate view.
As you listen, prepare for self-confrontation and compromise. You may hear things that are hurtful; you'd might get asked to evaluate your contribution to the problem. Take responsibility for having hurt your spouse as well –- and be open when asked to change. Healing requires a sacrifice from both parties, but it's an investment worth making.