Life Change Blog

12 April 2010.

Welcome to the Monday Morning Life Change Blog. Over the past twenty years we have amassed a huge amount of knowledge and experience in "life change". We post a new Life Change Blog article every Monday morning. Hope you enjoy them and find them useful.

The Problem With Relationship Problems

If there was one person who really felt the wretchedness of human relationship problems it was the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy:

“I had not the remotest idea that merely taking a women to church and putting a ring upon her finger could in any possibility involve one in such a daily, continuous tragedy as that now shared by her and me”

So said poor old Mr Phillotson in Thomas Hardy’s "Jude The Obscure". I don’t think Thomas Hardy thought a great deal about marriage, his own complicated love life and suspected romantic affections towards his own cousin I dare say had something to do with it all.

Talking to many people about their relationship problems, as I’m often doing as part of my job, I am aware of one big problem, it’s a problem bizarrely shared by two other ill fitting bedfellows -  education and football. The problem is..... everybody has an opinion.

It’s fine with football for every supporter to have their own opinion of what the manager should have done, or how the players should have played. There is no problem for everyone to have their own opinion about education, we’ve all been to school, we know what goes on and we all have our own thoughts and ideas. But, when it comes to your relationship other peoples opinions can often make things ten times worse.

It’s very difficult for everybody to not to offer “help” based on their unique experience of relationships. Somebody who has been betrayed by a partner may tell you that people can’t be trusted; the next friend who has learnt to trust their partner might tell you the complete opposite.

Often an interesting psychological phenomenon takes place. Our opposing thoughts will become argued out in real life. One friend might tell us to do one thing; the next will tell us the opposite. This is not exclusive to friends either. I fear that often experienced and trained counsellors fall into this trap. It’s hard not to. We are “hard wired” to help people by giving our best advice, what else is there. Well.....

It would be tempting for me just to say come on our Counselling Retreat and find out, but I wont.

Sometimes people need advice, and we have lots of it and are happy to give it. Often though we recognize that our jobs are to help you make up your mind what you want to do rather than just to tell you what I think you should do. Sometimes our advice plays a part, but actually often it does not. Those two or three opposing thoughts already in your head don’t need to be amplified any further, they need to be resolved.

Let me explain one of many good techniques that might be helpful. Write out your options. Imagine it is some time in the future, perhaps 2 or 3 years, taking each option in turn describe to yourself how your life will be, where you will be living, how you will be living and what you will be doing. It’s useful to remember that all people myself included, tend to be more optimistic than pessimistic. We’ll have an inbuilt drive to think “it’ll be alright”. It maybe useful to ere on the side of caution to think “what if it won’t be alright”. So, over to you. Give it a go and let me know how you are getting on.

If you would like any further information about our Counselling Retreat or any of our Change Holidays please just let us know through our contact page.

Have a good week. Talk next Monday.

Bye for now.

Alex.