Category: Self-improvement/Identity

Couples Therapy Self-improvement/Identity Stress June 29, 2024 By Sara Martin 0 Comments

How to Write Letters to Resolve Conflict in Relationships

Reciprocal Letter Writing to Learn Calm Corrective Conversation

Often we get stuck in triggered and heightened communication conflicts and experience the same frustrating and often hurtful interactions that don’t seem to have any resolution.

You may feel you cannot get through to the other person. You or someone else gets so angry, upset, overwhelmed or shut down that hearing what the other is saying is not working. That’s because we all ‘hear and see’ through our own filters or lens.

These lenses are often set in childhood or past painful relationships. Sometimes it is the way our family communicated, and because the other person learned different ways to communicate from their experiences and wounds, it’s like you are not tuned into the same frequency – like a radio station, the signal sent out needs to be received by a receiver that can tune in.

Self-improvement/Identity Couples Therapy Breakup April 8, 2023 By Sara Martin 0 Comments

Post Relationship Breakup Questions (To Help You Move On)

Here are some reflective questions to assist with moving on without bitterness and wounding from a relationship break-up:

Do I have all of my heart back or have I left some parts behind? What parts do I need to re-claim?
Can I encourage my heart to love again?
Can I forgive?
Can I choose which conversations I will participate in? (to others and in my head and do these conversations empower me or drag me back?)
Do I determine how much respect is in my communication and relationships (operating out of the best of myself, holding myself and others to account)
What boundaries can I set?
Does my YES mean YES, and my NO mean NO (or am I flagging that I can be manipulated or malleable)?
Do I decide where I spend my time, talent, energy and resources? (intentionality)
Do I know how to keep my love, joy and peace on at all times? (spiritual integration)
Am I good at identifying the feelings and needs that I have (Honest self-reflection and facing my truth)
Am I good at valuing those feelings and needs? (identification is first, then prioritising)
Am I good at communicating those feelings and needs? (letting others know and not expecting mind reading or letting others get away with not respecting your feelings and needs)
Do the people I choose to be in a relationship with know how to do the same? (iron sharpens iron)
Do they value me?
Do they value themselves?
Do they control themselves?
Have they forgiven those they need to?

(Based on questions posed in the Relationship Breakup Mediations on “Soul Time” App by Danny Silk)

Couples Therapy Self-improvement/Identity Gottman August 1, 2022 By Sara Martin 0 Comments

16 Ultimate Gottman Couples Counselling Concepts

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When couples decide to embark on couples counselling, they often hear about a method of counselling called Gottman Couples Counselling.

Dr. John and Julie Gottman are world-renowned for their work on marriage stability and divorce prediction based on forty years of research with thousands of couples. John is the author or co-author of over 200 published academic articles and more than 40 books.

His focus is a scientifically based research approach and aims to assist couples to improve communication and increase their level of understanding, empathy, connectedness, intimacy and interpersonal growth by identifying and addressing the defences that prevent effective communication. Observation and analysis of couple conflict is a key intervention to disarm conflicting verbal communication.

Anxiety Mindfulness Self-improvement/Identity Stress Practice August 18, 2021 By Sara Martin 0 Comments

Mindfulness Practice [Top Tips]

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What is Mindfulness?

Whether it is a professional athlete; a rock star, a Mum in her fitness gear or the chilled-out guy who is cultivating an organic veggie patch; everybody seems to be practising mindfulness. It is not just for Zen Buddhists and yogi masters, and whilst mindfulness is a type of meditation, you don’t need to be an expert to incorporate the principles into your life.

The reason why so many people are doing it is because it has some solid research to prove its effectiveness as an adjunct to your lifestyle or as part of many mental health interventions. But how do you do mindfulness practice?

Couples Therapy Self-improvement/Identity Couples • Therapy August 16, 2021 By Sara Martin 0 Comments

Differentiation Based Couples Therapy: Can I Be Truly Loved?

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As a couples therapist, I follow the work of Dr David Schnarch, a Differentiation based therapist. Schnarch is critical of love and relationships based on Hollywood-style notions of romantic infatuation, which is time-limited once you truly get to know someone where it becomes more personal. He says that marriage is a people-growing machine and an opportunity to become more capable of loving authentically on life’s terms, creating realistic patterns of marriage instead of romantic notions (Schnarch, 2012).

What Is Differentiation Based Couples Therapy

This points to the concept of healthy differentiation. A well-differentiated person is able to balance autonomy and intimacy: being close and being themself. Schnarch defines differentiation as “People’s ability to balance humankind’s two most fundamental drives: our desire for attachment and connection, on the one hand, and our desire to be an individual and direct the course of our own lives, on the other.

Anxiety Mindfulness Self-improvement/Identity Mental Health August 16, 2021 By Sara Martin 1 Comment

Growing Scientific Evidence for Mindfulness [Exclusive Tips]

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Mindfulness can relax you and regulate your emotions in the short term, but it can also change your brain permanently if you approach it as a form of mental exercise.

What is the Scientific Evidence for Mindfulness?

Studies show that when we intentionally turn our focus onto mindfulness our brain changes activation and with repetition can change brain structure. This is neuroplasticity, or how the brain can change in response to our experiences, both positive and negative (Mindful.org, Sept, 2019).

Neuroscience research shows that the brain continues to grow and change over our lifespan (neuroplasticity) and we are not ‘hard wired’. When we experience repeated experiences, the brain neural pathways thicken which changes brain chemistry and anatomy.

Anxiety Depression Self-improvement/Identity Bio • Psycho • Socio • Spiritual August 16, 2021 By Sara Martin 0 Comments

What is the BioPsychoSocial Spiritual Model? [Full Guide]

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BioPsychoSocial Spiritual. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? But perhaps that is exactly the point; that we are not one-dimensional and should not be viewed through a single lens. We are integrated and holistic beings and not a set of separate compartments. Many things can affect our emotional states such as underlying medical conditions; general physical health; family background; cultural and social contexts; career situation; stage of life; underpinning belief systems; and recent events.

The path to wellness often involves working on different aspects of our being, that’s why counselling should consider all dimensions of self: the biological, the sociological, the psychological and the spiritual. So, let’s look at what makes us who we are.