Tip Two: How to Improve Your Marriage

As a couples counselor in Wake Forest, I work with lots of couples who are feeling disconnected and alone in their relationships.

You may feel like you are just coexisting or like you and your partner are just roommates or best friends but without passion and romantic feelings for each other. 

Marriage counseling Raleigh NC can help you rekindle passion, improve communication, negotiation, and relationship skills. During marriage counseling sessions, you will learn to feel connected and safe to be yourself in your relationship again, so you can feel happy and fulfilled.

Marriage Counseling Tip Two: Stop Keeping Your Parents’ Spiritual Company

What does keeping your parents’ spiritual company mean? This language comes from Terry Reel, a family therapist, author, and speaker. He created Relational Life Therapy methodology, a training program for clinicians, and Relational Life Institute, offering workshops for couples and individuals.

So, keeping your parents’ spiritual company means our unconscious tendency to take in our parents’ reality as our own, and we keep them company by living through their lenses. You are living your life the way they lived it, even if you don’t like all the things they do (or did). Even you disapprove of how they do life, you still adore your parents and have a hard time separating their reality from your own.

I often see this pattern in my work with couples in Marriage Counseling Raliegh NC. For example, you may have anger issues not being fully aware of where they are coming from. For example, you may get angry and raging, not understanding why you feel like that, and even not wanting to feel or act mad.

During our marriage counseling sessions, we may unwrap that you hated being a child whose parents were violent, raging, and angry most of the time.

Now, the same thing is happening to you because you haven’t separated your inner, adaptive child from your adult self, and you are stuck in those unproductive patterns.

How to Detach from Your Parents’ Spiritual Company?

What I recommend and do with couples in marriage counseling is the empty chair technique in which my clients have an emotional dialogue with their parent who is imagined sitting in an empty chair during our session.

Of course, the best scenario is bringing a parent in for a session, but the empty chair works fine too.

During this dialogue, you can ask your parent to release you from their reality and give you permission to live a better and happier life.

Often, our parents want what is best for us but didn’t know how to because of their own inner conflicts and traumatic experiences.

However, today we have more resources to work on ourselves and overcome our issues more than our parents used to have.

Marriage counseling can be a safe place to learn how to detach yourself from your parents’ spiritual company and start living a healthier and happier life.

You can also try journaling, as this is an excellent way to observe your thoughts and emotions without censure. Or you can practice the empty chair at your home, having an imaginary conversation with your parent. This can help you figure out why you are stuck in an unhealthy cycle, whether it is addiction, anger, or any other dysfunctional behavior that is impairing your life.

The Inner Child Healing

An inner child can be described as your way of being, the totality of our past experiences and memories from childhood. These memories and experiences played a significant part in your growing up and development.

So, if you grew up in a dysfunctional family, your inner child can be a source of psychological distress and suffering. It can shape how you relate to yourself and others. Insecure attachment in childhood may impact your personality, relationships, and well-being.

So, getting in touch with your inner child can enlighten your past traumatic experiences and help you heal.

Summary

Suppose you are struggling with these issues and you are not in couples or individual therapy. In that case, I strongly suggest reaching out to a therapist who is experienced in working with couples or can help you to work through your inner child healing process.

I hope this information was helpful. If you have any questions or would like to book your free 15 min phone consultation click here https://www.irinabaechlecounselingllc.com/book-a-consult