How to be more present in your relationship

We all have a certain level of programming that we bring with us as we go through life and as we enter and are in relationships. This programming is partly made up by the experiences we had as children and comprise much of how our parents or primary caregivers treated us. From birth to around the age of 7 our brain is doing a lot of learning and changing. These early experiences with caregivers get solidified into our brain and they become the basis for our programming.

Programming can determine the type of student you were, the type of employee you are, how you feel at work and how you respond to emails. Many of my client’s identify as people pleasers and cite a long history of overworking in school and at work, struggling to say no or set boundaries. This is a programming.

Programming can also determine how you show up in a relationship, how you handle conflict with your partner, and how satisfying you find the relationship dynamics.

In order to change our programming, we need to become present and to notice the ways that we are showing up in our relationships and in the world.

An example of not being present in a relationship would be when you are early in the relationship, you are enjoying dating, have a lot of passion for one another, the sex is fantastic, and your mind is constantly focused on thoughts like “is he the one?”, “how much time should we date before we get married?”, “why hasn’t he asked me to marry him yet?”, “what if he cheats on me?”, “what if his parents don’t like me?”. Focusing on the future, rushing to the next step, fixating on the past, these are ways that we are not present to our relationship in the moment.

Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in these thoughts that we go on autopilot, going through the day, not present to any true part of our life. Cooking dinner, eating, cleaning up. Moving and going, checking things off of our to do lists, not really experiencing or connecting.

Becoming more present in our lives, in our relationships can be hard. It requires slowing down, intention, awareness.

The next time you are noticing yourself on autopilot, whether in your relationship or in some other area of your life, take a short pause (1-2 minutes). If you can and if you feel safe, close your eyes. If you can’t close your eyes then fix your gaze on something relaxing or neutral. Take a slow deep breath in, filling up the belly and chest. Repeat this a few times and try and become present in your body. Next, bring in your 5 senses. What do you hear in the room with you, what do you hear outside? What do you smell? How does your body feel in the places where it connects with the chair? Notice your thoughts. Can you observe them without judgement? Can you taste anything? What is that taste?

A practice to try when you are wrapped up in thoughts and noticing yourself worry about the future or focusing on the past is to state “right now” statements to yourself. Pick statements that you know to be true. Here are some examples: “right now I am happy in my relationship”, “right now everything is going great in my relationship and I am enjoying getting to know my new partner”, “right now I feel secure in my relationship”, “right now we are having a conflict but I know we will work on getting through this”, “right now I am feeling anxious, this is just a feeling”.

Right now statements can help you to ground into what you know to be true in this moment.

Are you struggling with being present in your relationship or in another part of your life? Therapy can help you with becoming more mindful and present and help you to reprogram the unhelpful patterns you’ve developed. When you do therapy with Gwendolyn Nelson-Terry, virtual therapy in California and Berkeley, you will learn to develop the muscle of awareness so that you can start to identify your behavior and relational patterns that are keeping you from living the life you desire. By becoming more aware, you are then able to make choices in how you want to respond to feelings, thoughts, relationship dynamics and much more.

Email today to schedule your free 20 minute phone consultation.

The Number One Reason Couple's Fail in Couple's Therapy

When things aren’t working in a relationship it is easy to see how our partner has hurt us. Our focus is turned outward, noticing all the ways in which our partner’s haven’t shown up for us, haven’t expressed care, have let us down or been difficult or started fights with us. It’s easy to see how the other person is doing all the wrong things. We can start to have thoughts like “If only they would stop being so sensitive”, “If only they could focus on my emotions more”, “They don’t care for me, they can’t even sit and listen to me”. The narrative and pain is all abut what the other person did to us.

During the individual assessment session (Click Here to Read More About That) I sometimes hear “I need you to fix ___ about my partner” or “I need you to tell them to stop ____”. When I hear these types of statements it’s a sign to me that in order for the couple to do the real work of couples therapy, at least one of the partners needs to open up to exploring their role in the problematic relationship dynamics.

Couples therapy works under the the assumption that the couple is a system and that the system isn’t functioning well. It’s not one person who is at fault, it’s how the couple interacts, how they work together, that is at fault. This can be a hard concept for some people to understand because they’ve been in pain for so long that their brain has started to wire itself to the story “my partner is to blame”.

Couple’s where one or both partners lack the ability to do self exploration AND they aren’t open to exploring how they may have contributed to the relationship problem are doomed to fail. The inability or unwillingness to open up and look at your own behaviors creates an unequal dynamic in the relationship, where one person is placed in the position of carrying the greater effort of doing the work. When these dynamics have played out in my couples therapy practice, I see the person being blamed eventually burning out and becoming resentful. Feeling like their efforts are never good enough, that the other person can’t be satisfied, they began to disengage from the work and neither partner puts in the effort.

As you are reading this I’m sure you are thinking of some scenarios where one person is absolutely to blame for the couples unhappiness. For example, affairs. It seems easy to say that the person that cheated is the cause of the relationship problems. The person who cheated made a choice that is harmful to the relationship and they should make amends for that decision. However, the decision to cheat came from dysfunction that was already present in the relationship. To learn more about how this principle applies to affair recovery (click here)

Couples who start therapy with the inability to self reflect on their role in the relationship unhappiness are not doomed. This is a skill that can be learned. Many couples start couples therapy in this fame of mind but with some support and guidance, they are able to start to see how their actions contribute to the problem.

To start working on building this skill try asking yourself the following questions after a conflict: why was my partner upset? Did I do anything that caused them to be upset or contributed to them being upset? Did my actions or words cause the conflict to get worse? Is there anything I could have done to de-escalate the problem?

When you do couples therapy with me, Gwendolyn Nelson-Terry, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Berkeley, California, you will go through a thorough assessment before even starting the work. This assessment helps me to be able to identify some of the stuck points that you and your partner might be facing, such as mindset. With this information, I am able to craft a plan to support you and your partner in starting to do the work of healing problematic relationship dynamics.

It is possible to have the relationship of your dreams, to heal your pain, and to grow as an individual in the relationship as well as to grow as a couple. Email today to set up a time to talk about how therapy may be able to help you and your partner heal your relationship.

Why Your Conversations Turn Into Fights

Ever say something normal to your partner like, “hey, the kitchen is super messy”, only to have it turn into a full blown fight?  Or have you ever had your partner say something to you like “Star Trek is better than Star Wars” and find yourself in a 3 day argument?

Seemingly normal conversations with our partners can easily turn into huge fights when our triggers are left unchecked.  

What is a trigger?  Great question, I’m glad you asked.  A trigger is a topic, story, gesture, face, movement (anything) that triggers within us a strong, and often undesired feeling.  These strong emotions are frequently tied to our history and our stories.

As we go through life, have experiences, enter and exit relationships, we develop a lens in which we filter our information.  This lens is created and developed by the life we live and the experiences and relationships we have.  As our partners talk and interact with us, these interactions go through that lens, get distorted and we take that in.  Most of the time we are neutral about the information coming through this lens, sometimes we like what we see and sometimes it triggers us.

If you grew up in a house with a mom or a dad that was a clean freak who would get upset, yell or give out consequences if the dishes weren’t done, then as an adult you might get fearful when your partner shares an observation that the kitchen is messy.  Rather than seeing that as a neutral statement, or a chance to talk about how to keep the kitchen clean, you might go into defensiveness, blocking your partners statement with comments on their cleanliness, or lack thereof.  

If your older cousin was a die hard Trekkie, going to conventions and learning klingon then you might have a bias towards Star Trek.  Maybe that bias keeps you from being able to understand why your partner might like Star Wars.  When you innocently say to  your partner “Star Trek is better than Star Wars” and your partner disagrees, you might feel invalidated and tell yourself the story “they (your partner) just don’t respect me or my family”.  

Triggers, if left unchecked, can lead us to big misunderstandings where we tell ourselves stories about our self, our partner, our relationship.  These stories may or may not be true but when they are painful stories, they cause us to be defensive.

Take a moment and write down 3 triggers that show up and cause conflict in your relationship.  Write down your triggers, not your partners (although knowing their triggers is also important).  

Read through that list, notice how each trigger makes you feel.  Do you notice yourself getting angry, feeling tense in your body?  Does a trigger make you think of a certain painful or uncomfortable event?  Does a trigger make you tell a story about yourself and/or your worth?  Notice what comes up for you, try not to judge it.  

If you notice yourself getting triggered during a conversation with your partner, get curious.  Ask yourself “what am I feeling?”, “why am I feeling this way?”, “is this because of something my partner said or is it possibly reminding me of something else?”, “what story am I telling myself right now?”.  Getting curious about your trigger and your emotions can hep you to grow your awareness of your triggers.

As your awareness of your triggers grows, you can start to practice self soothing during conversations with your partner.  Some examples of self soothing are: focusing on breath, saying calming statements, taking a break from the conversation, asking your partner to go for a walk while you talk, or rewriting that story you are telling yourself (ex. “My partner doesn’t understand me” to “my partner is just sharing with me that they like watching Star Trek”).  

Self soothing helps you to stay in conversations longer with your partner, helping the two of you to start to resolve conflicts and misunderstandings more easily.

Does all this sound complicated?  It is.  If it were easy, you would have figured this out, made some changes, and the fighting with your partner would be seldom, if not non-existent.  

Couples therapy can help you and your partner to identify, talk about, understand, and learn how to manage your triggers so that when they show up in your relationship, they don’t take over.  

Begin Couples Counseling for relationship conflict in the Bay Area, California (Online/Virtually).

Couples counseling can help you and your relationship.

Helping couples communicate better and resolve conflict is not the only service we offer at Gwendolyn Nelson-Terry, LMFT.  I am able to treat most couples concerns such as relationship unhappiness, affair recovery, co-parenting, and more.  I also meet with individuals and can support you through a variety of relationship and non-relationship concerns such as anxiety, self esteem, and moving beyond a break up.

Don’t go it alone, work with a trained and experienced couples therapist who can help you and your partner to heal from an affair.  Call today for a free 15 minute phone consultation (619)383-1900.

Can I Do Marriage Counseling Without My Spouse?

Can I Do Marriage Counseling Without My Spouse?

In an ideal world your spouse would be on board with working on your marriage. However, there are many reasons why your spouse or partner may be choosing to say “no” to marriage counseling. Most people have heard horror stories from friends or co-workers who report that each week they and their spouse would go into marriage counseling only to start a fight, have the therapist sit and observe, only to leave and continue the fight in the car on the way home. These stories can create fear that the issues between you and your partner can grow bigger if you go to therapy.

Other reasons your partner might not want to go to therapy; it’s scary to be vulnerable, they don’t know what to expect, they too are tired of the fighting and the way they cope with it is to withdraw, etc. Whatever their reason, it is best not to fight their need to stay out of counseling for the time being.

The fact that your spouse or partner doesn’t want to come to therapy doesn’t make it a deal breaker. You can work on the relationship, alone, in marriage counseling.

A trained couples therapist will be able to help you develop communication skills to decrease conflict, increase friendship and intimacy, and help you to find ways to start connect with your partner on a more frequent and consistent basis. You might also explore with your therapist your relationship patterns, attachment styles and triggers, and gain insight into how you and your personal history may be getting in the way of you having the marriage of your dreams. A trained couples therapist can also help you to learn how to navigate through transitions in relationships such as having a baby, your child leaving for college, partner becoming unemployed or getting a new job, moves, and much more.

Not sure you know what you want to work on but know that something in the relationship needs to change? Your therapist can help you figure out goals for therapy, what to expect from therapy and speak with you a little bit more about the direction of therapy and what to expect.

Most therapist’s will offer a free phone consultation before you schedule the session. This is a great time for you to talk a little bit about what is bringing you into therapy and a good opportunity for you to ask and find out how therapy might be able to help you and your relationship.

If you are interested in starting couples therapy or relationship therapy for yourself sent me an email. I am currently gathering a waiting list for anticipated open spots for January of 2020.

Gwendolyn Nelson-Terry is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the State of California and Missouri. Gwendolyn is a Level 3 Gottman trained therapist who specializes in helping couples to rebuild the friendship and spark in their relationship.

How to Handle it When You or Your Partner Shuts Down During a Fight

John Gottman calls it Diffuse Physiological Arousal that state that a person goes into when they have started to emotionally flood and they are starting to shut down emotionally and physically. During Diffuse Physiological Arousal we might experience a racing heart, we might feel tense, we might go into what feels like fight, flight or freeze.

The 4 Horsemen - criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling tend to show up during Diffuse Physiological Arousal (DPA). This is because we (or our partners) are having a hard time managing the emotional flooding and are seeking ways to pull back or push away.

People who are in DPA have lost the ability to listen, some report hearing music or white noise, others report it being completely silent. People in DPA also can’t access their sense of humor, a key component to being able to navigate through conflict. Additionally when we are in the state of DPA we can’t give or receive affection which means any attempt by our partners to help us soothe or any attempt we make to soothe our partner is often overlooked and not helpful.

We can tell when our partner is in DPA because they start to show us the 4 horsemen by either criticizing, becoming defensive, stonewalling or expressing contempt. Another way that we can tell our partner is in DPA is if they start to repeat themselves (this is because in their physiological state, they can’t listen).

What Do We Do When We Are In DPA?

When you catch yourself or your partner showing signs of flooding:

1. Stop Immediately and take a break. Breaks should last at least 30 minutes in length. Research shows that it takes our bodies about 30 minutes to work through the physiological arousal of flooding. Sometimes we need more time and that’s OK. Breaks shouldn’t last more than 24 hours, after 24 hours the likelihood that you and your partner will return to the issue decreases.

2. Set a time to meet up again with your partner. Saying something like “This is hard, I need to take a break. How about we continue this conversation in 30 minutes, is that OK?” can help you to communicate your needs and set a time to return to the conflict.

3. During the break take positive actions to help yourself calm down. Physical movement such as going for a walk or doing a short yoga routine can help your body to process the physiological response to your emotions. Other soothing activities to do during a break can include listening to music, watching a TV show, doing a meditation, going outside to get fresh air.

4. Don’t ruminate on the issue. If possible think about something else, anything else. Spending your break ruminating on the issue will cause you to re-enter the conflict with more fire and fury.

5. If you need more time, ask for it, tacking on 30 minutes to an hour each time and checking in with your partner as you go.

6. If your partner becomes upset with your need for a longer break, offer reassurance. A statement like “This is important to me and I want to make sure that I can really understand what you are telling me. I can’t do that right now but I do love you and I want to work through this with you” can be reassuring to your partner.

If you are finding that you and your partner are having the same fights over and over and are unable to resolve conflict, couples therapy may be able to help. A trained couples therapist can help you and your partner to learn communication skills to help move the two of you beyond the arguments and towards feeling more connected, supported, and closer.

Gwendolyn Nelson-Terry, a licensed marriage and family therapist in the states of California and Missouri is a Gottman trained, Level 2 (soon to be Level 3) therapist who specializes in couples seeking to rebuild their connection and create a fulfilling, meaningful, lasting love.

Call today, or click the link on the homepage to schedule a free 20 minute phone consultation to find out how couples therapy may be able to help your relationship.

What to Do When You've Said Something Wrong During an Argument With Your Partner

You’ve been fighting for hours about the same thing. Your tired, your frustrated, your blood pressure is shooting through the roof, and you start yelling. What comes out is cruel, off topic, and so not helpful to resolving the fight. You feel bad, your partner is even more mad, and now the two of you have taken a step backwards in working through this fight.

We’ve all been there. When this happens it is painful for sure, but not impossible to fix.

When things become escalated during a conversations and you can see that it is going no where good you have some options - one option being to try and give a repair.

There are a couple of types of ways that you can give a repair to your partner after you’ve said something you regret or when you see that you words have escalated the fight.

1. Affection: Remind your partner you love them, offer them some reassurance. Often times when we are in a fight we can have our fears triggered. Things like “they’re going to leave”, “they don’t love me”, “this is impossible, we can’t work through this” can come up and make it harder for our partners to work through conflict. Examples of affection include; “Hey, I love you and were going to get through this”, “I see that you are really trying to work this out with me, thank you”, “you are doing better with the dishes, thank you”.

2. Agreement: If your partner has successfully persuaded you in their argument, agree and move on. A simple statement like “true, you do have a good point” is often enough to move the conversation along towards resolution.

3. Compromise: Try and meet your partner part of the way towards their needs and see if they are willing to compromise to meet your need. To do a compromise, you need to be in the position to be able to understand your partners point of view and what they need. Example of a compromise: Partner 1: “You spend all day at softball, we never do anything on the weekends because of that”. Partner 2: “That’s not true, we have all day Saturday to do chores and grocery shop”. Partner 1: “Exactly! How is that time together?” Partner 2: “I see what you are saying. How about I pick up the groceries on Thursday night, and we come up with some kind of chore system where we get the chores done little by little throughout the week. Then we can have Saturday together.”

4. Defining the Conflict: It is not uncommon for one person or both partners to get lost in a conflict. With emotions, defenses, and issues that keep popping in and out of a conflict it can feel as if the 2 of you are talking about 2 different things. When things get heated in a fight it can help to take a pause and define the conflict. Example: “I just want to check in and make sure I understand why you are upset. You’re upset because ____. Is that correct?”

5. Guarding: This is when the conflict has risen to a point where one partner is feeling as if the other is approaching dangerous territory. Guarding can be used to gently set a boundary - “Careful, you know I get mad when you talk about my mom”.

6. Humor: Always a good thing. Humor can be used to laugh at the situation. Never laugh at your partner.

7. Making Promises: Make a promise to try and work on the issue. For example, if the issue is housework, say “How about I try and work on doing the dishes each night. It would help me too if you reminded me to take out the trash because I forget”.

When doing couples therapy I often work with couples on identifying moments, signs that their partners give them that let each partner know that the conversation or conflict is heading in a bad direction - one where resolution might not happen. I then work with the couple to help them identify helpful repair strategies, strategies that their partner might be most receptive too. I work with the couple to help them understand that it is each persons responsibility to help manage the flow of conflict, help their partner to manage emotions, and to work towards resolution. Repair attempts are just one of many strategies that couples can work on in therapy.

Start working on your relationship today! For a free phone consultation call (619)383-1900 or go to the homepage, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the link to schedule your free phone consultation.

How to find the right couples therapist

It’s unfortunate, the frequency with which one of my client’s tells me they had a bad experience with a couples therapist. It takes a lot of courage to go to couples therapy and by the time most couples decide to go to therapy they are at a point of desperation, they just want the relationship to get better.

Finding a couples therapist that matches your needs takes a bit of work. First, if you were hoping to use your insurance for couples therapy, most insurance plans will not cover a couples therapy session. This is because in order to use your insurance the service has to be medically necessary. Insurance does not view your relationship as a medically necessary issue to cover. For this reason alone I suggest that people do not call their insurance companies for a list of referrals to therapists.

Before calling any therapist take a moment and think about what you hope to get from going to couples therapy. Do you want to learn how to work through conflict? Are you feeling emotionally disconnected from your partner? Is your relationship recovering from an affair or breach of trust? Get clear on your needs before calling.

Next, decide what type of therapist you are looking for. There are 2 main schools of couples therapy (there are plenty more but in general therapists tend to fall into one of these two) Gottman Couples Therapy and Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. The way I think about Gottman is that it is skills based and focuses on helping couples to improve communication, learn skills, build friendship, trust and respect. Emotionally focused couples therapy focuses on attachment wounds and helping couples to heal and connect with their partner. Both are great, both have their merits, its just a matter of which one is a better fit for your needs. Click here to read a blog I wrote on the differences between Gottman and Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy.

To find a therapist there are a lot of great search directories out there. One of my favorites is Therapy Den. One of the reasons that I like them is because they give back. They take a portion of the fees that therapist’s pay to be listed on their site and they donate it to organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the Trevor Project. One of the largest therapist directories out there is Psychology Today. This is a great site to use if you want to try and use your insurance as it lets you filter out your options by insurance companies. However you can also do this on Therapy Den. If you are interested in a Gottman trained therapist, the Gottman Referral Network will help you find a therapist that is trained in the Gottman Method.

When you’re ready, start calling or emailing therapists and set up a phone consultation. Most therapists will offer a free 15 minute phone consultation to discuss how they work and to answer any questions you might have. When I conduct my phone sessions I reserve a little bit of time to hear what is going on, why you are looking into therapy, I share with you my method (Gottman) and talk about what I see us working on together if you decided to book a session with me. I also save time to answer any questions you might have.

Some Questions To Ask During Your Initial Consultation

1. Do you have special training in couples therapy? If so, what.

2. Do you practice Gottman or Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy?

3. What would we work on in therapy?

4. I’ve heard that couples therapy can cause an increase in fighting, what should we expect in therapy and what should we do if we find ourselves fighting a lot?

5. How can you help us?

When you do therapy with me, Gwendolyn Nelson-Terry, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I use Gottman Couples Therapy. I focus on helping couples to rebuild their friendship, enjoy their time together, and I help couples learn valuable communication skills to help them work through conflict in a productive way. If you are interested in Couples Therapy or Individual Relationship Therapy go to the homepage of this website and click on the button at the bottom of the page to schedule your initial consultation.

What To Expect During The First Couple Of Sessions (Couples Therapy)

It’s been months of non stop fighting and the two of you have agreed it’s time to go to counseling.  You feel anxious, unsure what to expect, hopeful that this helps. It feels like so much is riding on this.  You hope you choose a good therapist, you hope the therapist can help you explain your side, you hope they can help the two of you start talking again.

It takes a lot of courage to come to couples therapy.

You may be gearing up to come into therapy and unload everything that is wrong in your relationship, some therapists might have you do this.

When a couple comes to me, Gwendolyn Nelson-Terry, LMFT I work with couples right away to get them talking and to help them start connecting again.  Friendship is key to being able to work out any relationship problem.

In my first session with client’s I start off by first welcoming them to therapy.  I go over the business stuff I’m required to verbally say to you and answer any questions you or your partner might have about the paperwork, fees, confidentiality, etc.

From there I invite one of you to share what brought you into couples therapy.  In this first session both you and your partner get to share about some of the issues that led you to couples therapy.  I might ask about your history in couples therapy, what the two of you gained from past experiences in couples therapy, what didn’t work in couples therapy.  I usually ask about the history of your relationship, how you met and how you got to where you are today (living together, married, committed, etc.). If time allows, I have you and your partner discuss a problem while I watch, like a fly on the wall.  During this time I’m just observing the interaction between the two of you and seeing what is working, and what isn’t working.  

At the end of the session I talk about some more assessment pieces that I do, one is an in depth online assessment, the other is to schedule a one on one with each person in the partnership.  At the end of the session I also give you my clinical impressions, how I see myself helping you and your partner.

Sessions 2 and 3 are those individual sessions.

During our individual time together I invite you to share with me any additional information, concerns, or issues you’d like to address in our work together.  It’s a chance for you to talk a little more freely about some of the struggles you’ve been facing in your relationship. Some things I might ask in our time together;  what is your commitment to working on the relationship? What do you want to work on as a couple? What do you want to work on individually within the couple? History of affairs?  Alcohol and other drug use? At the end of our session together I re-cap and answer any questions you might have about therapy.

Session 4

With the information that you provided me through your couples session, individual sessions, and the online assessment I go a little bit deeper into my clinical impressions and suggest a few initial goals for therapy.  Therapy works best when you are working on goals that feel important to you. If you don’t agree with my goals, or if you find that you were wanting to work on something else, tell me, let’s talk about it.

Now the hard work starts.  Gottman therapy works under the framework of the Sound Relationship House.  The idea being that for you to work through the hard stuff, like conflict, you need to have a strong foundation upon which to grow; friendship and understanding of each other.  Goals for therapy focus on building friendship and connection, learning to speak to each other in ways the other can hear, learning to manage your emotions when you are in conflict, supporting your partner when they are flooded with emotions, and so much more.  

By the time you leave couples therapy my hope is that you feel reconnected to your partner, passionate about your relationship, you feel heard, seen, and accepted, you enjoy each other.  I want for you to have the confidence to know that the two of you can work through conflict and grow closer together as a result of it.

It absolutely is possible to grow closer to your partner through conflict.  A couples therapist can help you learn how to turn conflict into a chance to learn about your partner and grow.

Learn how to have constructive fights, turn conflict into a chance for connection, and grow your relationship.

Call Gwendolyn Nelson-Terry, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist today and find out how couples therapy may be able to help your relationship (619) 383-1900

Negative Sentiment Override - A Major Block To You Having A Fulfilling Relationship

When all you ever seem to do is fight with your partner it’s hard to want to go home and spend time with them.  Finding extra things to do at work, or going out for happy hour with your friends seems like a reasonable excuse to avoid what has become a very tiresome pattern in your relationship.

It can feel awful to dread seeing your partner, to avoid going home.  When you live your life this way, avoiding your partner and hoping the two of you can find yourself back on a better path, it easily can turn into you or your partner feeling disconnected, withdrawing and making the problem between the two of your worse.

Negative sentiment override is what happens when over time, all the arguing, all the conflict between you and your partner has built up for so long that you can no longer give your partner (or they can no longer give you) the benefit of the doubt.  Perhaps for you it plays out in your life like this: For a month you’ve been planning to go to your parents house for dinner. You haven’t seen them in a while and you’ve been looking forward to spending some time with them. You told your partner about the dinner, asked them to come home from work on time, and made sure they could make it to dinner at your parents.  On the day that you are supposed to go to dinner at your parents your partner is 20 minutes late getting home from work. S/he wants to take a quick shower before leaving. 20 minutes late has now turned into 30 minutes later than you wanted to leave. As they are grabbing their stuff to get in the car you explode and angrily tell them “My family isn’t important to you.  Just stay home, you obviously don’t care about my parents or me. You’re so selfish.” Your partner who just rushed home after being stuck in a meeting s/he couldn’t get out of yells back at you “I’m selfish. I just about killed myself trying to get home on time. I tried!”.  

Eventually, the two of you wind up in a place where you just drop the issue, don’t speak about the problem, and use that interaction as just more proof that your partner doesn’t care about you.  

Many couples find themselves in similar patterns.  It’s completely normal to go through periods in your relationship where it’s just hard to get along with your partner.  Life tosses many curve balls into a relationship, work stress, having children, caring for aging parents are just some of the many things that cause couples to go through long periods of difficulties.

It’s true that when you can’t give your partner the benefit of the doubt, or they can’t seem to see the effort you’re putting into your relationship it can drive the two of you further apart.  However, if we can learn to fight with our partners in a constructive way, then conflict can be a tool that brings the two of you closer together. When we make changes to how we bring up a potential conflict, how we listen to our partner, how we work to negotiate our needs in our relationship then we can have a lasting and fulfilling relationship.

Without help the two of you could continue to fight, with increasing resentment, and eventually break up.

The biggest downside of not overcoming negative sentiment override is that the cycle continues, leading to ongoing fighting, feeling distant, and possibly even breaking up.  You spend a good chunk of your time thinking back to the way things were, longing to have the relationship that the two of you used to have, longing to feel heard, loved, pursued.  Yours or your partners resentment starts to grow the more they long for what used to be and the negative sentiment override grows stronger. Being in a relationship with so much resentment, so much hurt, is  unbearable and not sustainable.

With help the two of you grow closer, feel more connected, and the fighting stops.

Although you may struggle with negative sentiment override in your relationship you and your partner have the potential to overcome it and grow closer.  When you choose to work on your relationship, there is a possibility for increased connectedness, re-igniting that spark in your relationship, and to grow together as a couple.  You have the opportunity to learn how to effectively communicate with your partner, get your needs met in your relationship, reduce resentment and frustration, and have a meaningful relationship.

3 Tips to Help You Reduce Resentment In Your Relationship & Start Connecting

Yes, its true you may be feeling resentment in your relationship but it is possible to release resentment and overcome negative sentiment override.  The key to overcoming resentment in your relationship is to actively work on improving the way you communicate, learning how to self soothe so that you can help de-escalate conflict, and remind yourself of your partners positive qualities.  

Take a look at these 3 tips to see how you can start to overcome resentment and negative sentiment override in your relationship.

One of the reasons you may struggle with negative sentiment override or resentment in your relationship is because of the way you and your partner are communicating with each other.  If every time you have a fight with your partner you feel attacked or judged overtime you might develop protective ways of coping with that feeling. This may mean you withdraw, maybe you lash out and argue out of defense, either way when you feel this way it’s not uncommon to reciprocate the judgement and attack in your own communication.

So what do you do about this?  You change the way you communicate with your partner.  You be the one to model change and over time your partner’s own resentments and or defenses will start to lessen.  Start by noticing how often you say a judging statement or an attack. Sometimes they are subtle and we aren’t even aware of the language and how it impacts our partners feelings.  Statements like “you never” and “you always” are usually signs of a judging or attacking statement. Once you get into the habit of catching yourself attacking or judging your partner, try and find a way to bring up the issue in a softer way.  For example if your usual go to is “you never do the dishes. I’m so sick of cleaning up after everyone” you might try “I’ve been feeling frustrated with how messy the house is. Can you help me by doing the dishes a couple of nights a week?” If what you really want is a cleaner house and help with the dishes the 2nd statement will get you a lot further towards achieving that goal.

Another reason that you may struggle with resentment in your relationship, or negative sentiment override is because of frequent fighting and lack of resolution.  It makes complete sense that if you are constantly arguing you would start to form a negative opinion about your partner and start to think the worst about them. You might even start to lose hope in the relationship and start to think that it is impossible for the 2 of you to solve any problems.

Therapy can help you learn many tools that will help make conflict more constructive and help to decrease the frequency of fights you have with your partner.  One thing you can try now is to practice self soothing. Many times couples come to therapy feeling hopeless and frustrated because when they do fight the arguments just keep escalating.  Conflicts escalate because our feelings start to get in the way and we start to become flooded in our emotions. When this happens it can be difficult to get your point across in an effective way and it can be difficult to hear what your partner is saying.  Mostly what we can away from these heightened fights is a feeling of frustration, anger, and resentment.

Some ways to self soothe include: take a break of at least 20 minutes, breathe - focus on breathing in and out, tell yourself and your partner that the two of you will figure out a way to get through this fight.

When you have a lot of resentment in your relationship or when you’ve gone through long periods of fighting and not getting along it can be hard to see your partner’s positive qualities.  If we aren’t careful our brains can also start to become re-wired to only see the negatives about our partner. Start a daily practice of thinking through your day and finding one positive thing to say about your partner.  Maybe its that they give great hugs, or maybe they took the kids to school today, or they said thank you for making dinner. Nothing is too small to start.

One thing I often hear in my practice is “I don’t want to be the one to back down.  I don’t want to give in to him”. This thought is normal but it’s not helpful. Negative sentiment override often places couples in a stalemate, neither willing to budge because they feel that their emotional bank account is so heavily drained.  My response - sometimes you have to give a little in order to get a little. As hard as it is I encourage you to be the change for your relationship. In the long run this will pay off for you.

It absolutely is possible to go from feeling hopeless in your relationship to hopeful and connected.  Therapy can help you to identify your relationship patterns, learn communication skills to help you work through conflict and find constructive ways to argue.  Therapy can help you to rebuild trust, friendship and fondness and admiration in your relationship.  

If your partner isn’t interested in going to couples therapy, no problem.  Relationship therapy for one person can make a difference for the couple.

You absolutely can have the relationship of your dreams.

Call 619-383-1900 to schedule an appointment now.