Marriage and Family Therapy Discussions

How to improve your marriage - make the most of couples counseling

by Sierra Sparks, MFT on 06/26/15

Make Your Relationship a Priority
After Greg and Priscilla Hunt said “I do” in 1976, Greg worked hard to master the grammar of an unfamiliar new language: marriage. “I remember consciously shifting the way I talked, going from I and me to us and we,” says Hunt, now senior pastor at the First Baptist Church in Shreveport, Louisiana. “I was constantly rephrasing as I moved from thinking in individualistic terms to thinking of us as a couple.”

Getting to “we” seems like a given for newlyweds: You’ve planned the wedding together, tied the knot in front of friends and family, earned the marriage license that proves the two of you are an official legal entity. Yet experts say it’s important to make a concerted effort to heighten and reinforce this new sense of oneness — and then to guard and protect it. “It’s so important that couples form their own new, separate union together,” says Claudia Arp, who with her husband, David, founded Marriage Alive International and co-authored marriage books including 10 Great Dates to Energize Your Marriage. “But we see a lot of husbands and wives who never, ever reprioritize their relationship after marriage. They’re still entwined with their family of origin, putting their parents and siblings first. Or they’ve been on their own for years and don’t realize that their friends or job or other interests no longer take precedence. You need to be able to say ‘My spouse comes first.’ Yes, you love and respect your parents. And you still get together with your friends. But this is your anchor relationship. If you establish this now, it will be easier to hold on to when life becomes more complicated later in your marriage.”

The mental shift from me to we can be startling: You can’t go home to your old apartment (or your childhood bedroom) anymore if you’re bored or angry or need quiet time. You can’t arrange a girls’ night out or a poker afternoon without factoring in your partner. You’re a team — and responsible to someone else in a new and profound way.

When University of Minnesota researcher David Olson, Ph.D., and his daughter Amy Olson-Sigg surveyed over 10,000 married couples, they found that togetherness was a top priority for 97 percent of happy couples but for only 28 percent of unhappy pairs. Enjoying free time together was important to 97 percent of the happy group but only 43 percent of unhappy husbands and wives. Nearly twice as many happy couples as unhappy twosomes made most decisions in their marriages jointly. And perhaps most telling of all: 81 percent of happy couples said their partners’ friends and family rarely interfered with the relationship, compared to just 38 percent of unhappy couples.

Establishing a healthy boundary around your union isn’t always easy: When University of California, Los Angeles, researchers interviewed 172 newlywed couples, problems with in-laws and other relatives ranked with communication, money management, and moodiness as top challenges.

“You really are forming a new system when you get married, and it needs care and feeding,” says marriage and sex therapist, Pat Love, Ed.D. “In our culture, we don’t do ‘we’ very well. We’re better at autonomy: I can take care of myself, I can give to you. But being a real unit means taking another step: making the relationship itself a priority. Other cultures do this much better — the Japanese have a concept called amae, which loosely translated means the delicious experience of interdependence. It’s a goal worth striving for.”

The first step for newlyweds? Revel in your exclusivity. You want to be together, just the two of you, so give yourselves permission to cocoon. Then try these couple-building tips.

Create couples rituals. Do something regularly that bonds you, such as 10 minutes to chat before bed, always having morning coffee together, or saving Saturday for date night.

Institute a daily check-in. Marriage experts recommend couples do something that big business has employed for decades to keep workers happy, productive, and in the loop: hold regular team meetings. Luckily, yours will be more fun than listening to Bob from accounting go over the last month’s sales numbers. One version of the daily check-in helps couples keep communication flowing freely with an agenda.

• Start by appreciating something about each other.
• Offer up some new information from your day.
• Ask your spouse about something that has bothered or puzzled you (or something about yourself).
• Make a nonjudgmental, complaint-free request (“Please fold the towels when you do the laundry. I couldn’t find any this morning after my shower.”)
• And end with a hope that could be small (“I hope we can go see that new movie Friday night”) or lavish (“I’d love to retire at age 50 and sail the Mediterranean with you.”)

Ask: Is it good for our relationship? When you bump up against any important decision in your marriage, don’t just talk about whether it’s good for you and for your spouse. Make it a point to talk about and think about whether it’s good for your marriage. “You’ll know the answer almost intuitively if you stop and ponder it,” Dr. Love notes. This may come down to how much time something will take away from your time together, whether it will make things stressful between you, or if it involves people who in some way threaten your relationship (lunch with your ex, for example). If you don’t even want to ask the question, that’s a red flag that whatever it is — from working late to “surprising” your spouse with an expensive new living room sofa to making individual plans on your usual date night — isn’t going to be good for your marriage.

Build healthy boundaries. Marriages need what experts call a semi-permeable boundary that allows friends and family to connect with you but that doesn’t interfere with your own desires and plans. This can be especially complicated when it comes to your families of origin.

The biggest challenge is often deciding how you’ll handle the holidays. Will it be his family’s house for Thanksgiving, yours for Christmas? Yours for Rosh Hashanah, his for the Passover Seder? Or will you start a new tradition in your own home? How often will you talk on the phone — and how much will you share about the details of your marriage? If in-laws are nearby, decide how often you’ll visit — and when you’ll be at home to receive family visitors. Some parents and siblings respect a new couple’s needs; others may need gentle reminders. “Parents can work with or against a new couple,” Claudia Arp says. “They need to be getting on with their own marriage, going from being child-focused to partner-focused. Your marriage can be a transition time for them as well. Don’t cut them off — you really need that love and support. Do communicate your decisions about your needs in a kind, calm way.”

Cheer each other on. “One of the most important things to me is that my wife, Rebecca, is for me and I’m for her,” says Lee Potts, a retired computer programmer from St. Louis, Missouri. “It sounds simplistic, but it’s really important. I’ve been married twice before, and I don’t think we had each other’s best interests at heart like this. We had our own agendas.” Arp suggests that encouraging your partner is one of the most important things you can do for your relationship. “If we don’t, who will? Our bosses and co-workers? Don’t count on it! Our children and teenagers? Ridiculous!” she says. “Our mates need our encouragement.” Three strategies she and her husband recommend in their workshops: Look for the positive in your new spouse; develop a sense of humor; and give honest, specific praise — describe what you appreciate about your spouse.

Schedule time for your marriage first. Don’t relegate your relationship to scraps of leftover time. “In mapping out your schedule for the next several weeks, why not start with writing in date times for you and your mate?” suggest Claudia and David Arp. “Then add discretionary things like golf, shopping, and community volunteer activities.”

No time? Wonder why? Do a calendar review. You’re overcommitted if friends, visits with your parents and extended family, hobbies, clocking overtime hours on the job, or volunteer and community commitments have crowded out the three kinds of time you need with your beloved: casual catching-up, scheduled dates, and intimate encounters. Same goes if your evenings are TV marathons or Internet extravaganzas. “Unless you’re willing to make your relationship a higher priority than other relationships and activities, you won’t have a growing marriage,” notes Claudia Arp.

Disconnect from the 24/7 office. Push the “off” button! Heavy use of cell phones and pagers, BlackBerry devices, and high-tech walkie-talkies — the little gizmos that keep us connected with family, friends, and the office 24/7 — can mute your happiness and dial up stress in your home, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researchers found recently. The study tracked the technology use and moods of 1,367 women and men for two years. Those who sent and received the most calls and messages were also most likely to say that this “work spillover” left them tired and distracted at home. “Technology is really blurring the lines between home and work,” says lead researcher Noelle Chesley, an assistant professor of sociology at the university. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It may give you more flexibility. But your boss doesn’t tend to call you with the good news — you don’t hear that you’ve done a great job on the project; you do hear that suddenly there’s a deadline crisis.”

Setting limits could lift on-call stress: Talk with your boss or your company’s human resources department if work calls are burning you out. Check e-mail once in the evening. If a call’s not urgent, muster the courage to say, “I’ll look into it first thing in the morning.” And simply turn off your cell phone at a certain time in the evening (same goes for the laptop). Ahhh … quiet.

Create a code word for love. Remember the elementary school joke about “olive juice” — say this silly phrase, and your mouth automatically makes the same movements as when you say “I love you.” Find a secret way to express your love that only the two of you understand. It comes in handy if your spouse calls when the boss is standing beside your desk, and creates that “just us” feeling anytime you use it.

 

Couples counseling in Grass Valley, Ca

Sierra Family Therapy (530)913-5054 or www.sierrafamilytherapy@gmail.com

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Child Therapy

by Sierra Sparks, MFT on 06/25/15

Blowing bubbles helps to manage anxiety by using deep breathing

 

To help younger kids learn deep breathing skills: 

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3 Ways To Calm Anxiety and Panic Attacks

by Sierra Sparks, MFT on 03/11/15

Jogging and Exercise

It all starts with exercise, and as much as most people have grown to hate that term there is no way around it. Exercise is a crucial component of a mentally healthy individual. Exercise - especially jogging, but all forms of exercise will do - provides several important tools necessary for controlling anxiety:

• It releases brain chemicals that provide relaxation and improve mood.
• It decreases the quantity of stress hormone in the body.
• It improves overall hormone balance.
• It tires muscles and makes for easier sleep.

If your goal is to control your anxiety, you simply have to start exercising. Studies have shown that there are ample benefits to exercising regularly with almost no consequences, and some studies have stated that exercise is as effective as some of the leading anti-anxiety medications.

Start jogging today, and that alone may be enough for you to see a significant difference.

Thought Journal

While anxiety has a lot of different physical symptoms, the mental symptoms are often what seem the hardest to control. It's possible to ignore aches, pains, and nausea, but it's very hard to ignore thoughts that won't leave your head or worries that you try to convince yourself are irrational.

There are several reasons for this, but one of the reasons is because the mind has a tendency to want you to remember and focus on the things that you try to forget. You brain doesn't like the idea that you try to push something out of your conscious, so you're actually more likely to focus on worries that you have when you try to get rid of them.

Since you clearly want these thoughts to go away, one solution to this is to write all of the thoughts down. Not just stressful thoughts - any recurring thought that you cannot get out of your head. This is especially useful at night, when often you'll find you're thinking about things that aren't stressful but you cannot seem to stop thinking about them and go to sleep. Write out all of those thoughts in a journal, and your brain will relax knowing that they're in a permanent place.

Positivity Journal

The previous journal was designed to get you to stop thinking about negative things. But anxiety also causes you to focus on the negatives. This is actually an anxiety symptom - when your neurotransmitter levels change from anxiety, your thoughts naturally become more negative. It's not clear why this is, but it also seems natural so people don't realize it's happening.

If you can think more positively, you'll find some relief from the effects of negative thinking on anxiety. That's why you may want to start a positivity journal.

A positivity journal is a logbook of only the positive things that occurred to you throughout the day, with a pre-set minimum. The items must be specific to the day, as detailed as possible, and not at all passive aggressive. You also have to always meet the minimum.

Examples of good entries:

1. The barista gave me my coffee for free today because I was nice to her.
2. My boss complimented me on the project I finished.
3. I received a phone call from an old friend just because she wanted to catch up.

Examples of the types of entries you should avoid:

1. I woke up.
2. My mom didn't call me which is good because I didn't want to hear from her.
3. I didn't screw anything up too badly.

You want to fill this with a minimum of 10 to 15 entries every day from the "good" examples, not the "bad" examples. They don't have to be new every day (if you get new compliments from your boss, you can add them to the list) but they do have to be specific and positive, and you need to do this every day without fail.

The goal of this isn't just to think about the positives, which is important. The goal is so that each and every day you start noticing things to put in your journal. Filling out 10 to 15 positive things every day is hard. But the more you pay attention during the day, the easier it is. You'll find that over time you start to notice things better, remember them more, and your ability to recognize all of the positive things that happen will improve as a result.

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Teen Cutting

by Sierra Sparks, MFT on 03/02/15

What is cutting and self-harm?  

Self harm is intentionally harming oneself, oftentimes with the objective of  alleviating suffering. Examples of self harm include cutting the skin with objects, scratching the skin, picking wounds so they can’t heal, biting or burning oneself, and more harmful instances that include hitting one’s head or breaking bones. Of the many types of self harm, cutting is the most common. It damages the skin or other tissues, it is rarely associated with suicide attempts, and it is socially unacceptable. People who cut themselves may attempt to hide the marks or scars, and they may give false explanations for how they occurred (e.g., being scratched by a pet). Teens use many different items to cut (e.g., razor blades, scissors, pens, bottle tops, etc.), and it occurs in a variety of body locations (e.g., arms, legs, genital area, abdomen, etc.).

Who is most likely to cut? 
Young people of all ethnicities, ages, and income levels intentionally harm themselves. Cutting is most common among adolescent, Caucasian females who come from intact, middle- to upper-class families. Self-injurious behavior oftentimes begins during middle school, and young people are often introduced to it through peer groups and media outlets (e.g., music, television, internet, etc.).   

How common is it? 
Approximately one out of every eight people engages in some form of self harm, and currently, it’s more widespread than it has been in prior decades. Among people who have mental illnesses, it is more common, affecting approximately one out of every four people.

Why do people intentionally injure themselves? 
It is unclear why people cut themselves; some explanations include impulsivity, a way to distract from personal pain, feelings of control and peer pressure. If a person is cutting or engaging in any other form of self harm, a mental health professional should be consulted. Professionals will use interview techniques to identify reasons why it may be occurring and to provide interventions for effective treatment.

What are the risk factors and signs to watch for?
It is important to remember that each adolescent who cuts is different and not all start or continue for the same reason. In addition, some individuals who cut may not show any of the warning signs. If you believe or know that your child is cutting, it is important to seek professional assistance to assess the reasons why the cutting is occurring and to begin appropriate treatment. Here are some risk factors and signs that have been associated with cutting among adolescents:

Risk Factors

• Knowledge that friends or acquaintances are cutting
• Difficulty expressing feelings
• Extreme emotional reactions to minor occurrences (anger or sorrow)
• Stressful family events (divorce, death, conflict)
• Loss of a friend, boyfriend/girlfriend, or social status
• Negative body image
• Lack of coping skills
• Depression

Signs

• Wearing long sleeves during warm weather
• Wearing thick wristbands that are never removed
• Unexplained marks on body
• Secretive or elusive behavior
• Spending lengthy periods of time alone
• Items that could be used for cutting (knives, scissors, safety pins, razors) are missing

What should you do?
If you become aware that your child is engaging in self-injurious acts, remember that it is fairly common. Though it is often frightening for parents, the majority of teens who cut themselves do not intend to inflict serious injury or to cause death. If the injury appears to pose potential medical risks, contact emergency medical services immediately. If the injury doesn’t appear to pose immediate medical risks, remain calm and nonjudgmental, contact your child’s pediatrician to discuss the concerns, and ask for a referral to a trained mental health professional who has experience in this area.

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Improve your marriage NOW - 10 Tips

by Sierra Sparks, MFT on 07/21/14

1. Cool off together at the neighborhood pool during adult swim. Some pools have evening hours, too, which can be highly romantic.
2. Make each other an ice cream sundae to enjoy in the evening on the back porch. This is a quiz in listening to the details of what your partner wants.
3. Head for the drive-in movies. It doesn’t matter what’s playing, because you can kiss during the slow spots.
4. Guys, if she has long hair, offer to have her sit while you braid her hair and pin it up to keep her cooler.
5. On a hot afternoon while sitting on the back porch in your bathing suits, write your initials on each other’s backs with an ice cube. Blow on the initials to evaporate them more quickly.
6. Devise a special mix of sexy evening music from the King of Cool and the Queen of Cool. It doesn’t matter which recording artists you choose, just as long as the music puts you and your sweetie in a seductive mood in front of a reliable fan.
7. Ladies, while at the beach with your man during the day, it is perfectly acceptable to remind him how handy you are at applying sunscreen to the male physique.
8. At sunset at the state fair, be thrilled at a breeze at the top of the Ferris wheel.
9. Go camping at a campground away from city lights, so you can lie side by side on a blanket under the stars at night, holding hands, and look for flashing meteors. Some of the best evenings to watch for falling stars may be announced by your local news station. August is famous for its Perseid meteor showers.

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