Marriage Counselling Issues - Mississauga, Toronto, Oakville, Ontario
Ten Blocks to
Marital Intimacy
Personal obstacles to a healthy marriage
How does a Christian marriage counselor deal with the personal obstacles to marital intimacy
by George Hartwell M.Sc, registered psychotherapist and Christian counsellor (416) 939-0544
If we could overcome our own personal blocks to intimacy we could help build a healthy loving marriage. With our own personal transformation we would shed our unhealthy Relationship patterns. Personal life transformation through Peak Psychotherapy will help our work in couple counselling by undermining those persistent cycles that are rooted in our personalities.
For example we all have trigger points. Something our partner does or says or their tone of voice or attitude triggers an emotional reaction in us. We can use EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to deal with our personal trigger points and we can use EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to bring healing to our own personal blocks to intimacy.
It has become clearer in the last 30 years how to make psychotherapy with couples more effective. Since each person in a marriage has their own history or backstory - years of memories of childhood that shaped their perspective and automatic reactions to their partner when things get intense - it essential in healing marriages to heal the individual backstories. Therefore, I strongly advocate that individual Peak Psychotherapy be part of the plan to completely transform one's marriage into a better, healthy or extraordinary relationship.
Individual sessions that accompany couple therapy will make use of Peak Psychotherapy.
Peak Psychotherapy makes use of:
Parallel with these developments within the inner healing movement, careful research by a husband and wife team of psychotherapists, made significant advances in of how to achieve significant life transformation within psychotherapy. Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley presented their findings in their book, Depth Oriented Brief Therapy, 1996, Josey-Bass and came to call their work 'Coherence Therapy.' I completed training in 2017.
Experimental evidence within psychology began to surface in 2005. Psychological research in 'Memory Reconsolidation' confirmed the lasting change of emotional memories was possible and under what conditions it did occur. This research supported Ecker and Hulley and confirmed the recent inner healing breakthroughs. The principles of memory consolidation now would enhance the breakthroughs achieved in life transformation within inner healing and psychotherapy. Christian psychotherapy using listening prayer therapy had new foundations of understanding and new principles to guide our work into enhanced effectiveness in personal transformation.
For example we all have trigger points. Something our partner does or says or their tone of voice or attitude triggers an emotional reaction in us. We can use EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to deal with our personal trigger points and we can use EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to bring healing to our own personal blocks to intimacy.
It has become clearer in the last 30 years how to make psychotherapy with couples more effective. Since each person in a marriage has their own history or backstory - years of memories of childhood that shaped their perspective and automatic reactions to their partner when things get intense - it essential in healing marriages to heal the individual backstories. Therefore, I strongly advocate that individual Peak Psychotherapy be part of the plan to completely transform one's marriage into a better, healthy or extraordinary relationship.
Individual sessions that accompany couple therapy will make use of Peak Psychotherapy.
Peak Psychotherapy makes use of:
- Evidence-based Christian inner healing that I call Listening Prayer Therapy. Of course as a professional Christian counsellor I only make use of this when it is chosen by and appropriate for my client.
- EMDR - a research-validated method of therapy with unusual effectiveness in healing memories and a great reputation for liberating people from trauma and PTSD. The method is so surprisingly simple - the use of bilateral sensory input - that it can be used with children and teens as well as adults.
- A variety of background skills and perspectives such as Brandon Bays 'The Journey,' Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley's 'Coherence Therapy,' Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis, and the Psychological research on Memory Reconsolidation.
- heals our emotional personal trigger points,
- brings healing to our own personal blocks to intimacy and
- Provides and effective method to deal with core belief issues and relationship traumas,
Parallel with these developments within the inner healing movement, careful research by a husband and wife team of psychotherapists, made significant advances in of how to achieve significant life transformation within psychotherapy. Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley presented their findings in their book, Depth Oriented Brief Therapy, 1996, Josey-Bass and came to call their work 'Coherence Therapy.' I completed training in 2017.
Experimental evidence within psychology began to surface in 2005. Psychological research in 'Memory Reconsolidation' confirmed the lasting change of emotional memories was possible and under what conditions it did occur. This research supported Ecker and Hulley and confirmed the recent inner healing breakthroughs. The principles of memory consolidation now would enhance the breakthroughs achieved in life transformation within inner healing and psychotherapy. Christian psychotherapy using listening prayer therapy had new foundations of understanding and new principles to guide our work into enhanced effectiveness in personal transformation.
Ten Blocks to a healthy marriage and a Christian Prayer Therapy approach for each of them.
- To take let go of our control, worry and despair about a situation, releasing our goals, issues and problems to God - use: put it on the altar to let go and let God.
- For when we have made on idol of their image, see: Self Image as Idol.
- To let go of being the one with the most control or power, see: King of the Castle.
- When you need to give up the 'right' to blame and judge others, see: Here comes the Judge.
- For the unhealthy pattern of being morally superior, see: Right to be Right.
- To step out of the role of family Saviour, see: Saviour No More.
- For the analyst, the thinker, the answer man, the 'know it all,' see: Autonomous Mind.
- For when we make an idol of our partner, see: Partner on a Pedestal.
- When our expectations cause us pain and frustration, see: Release Expectations.
- For unhealthy attachments, holds, and control mechanisms, see: Cut Umbilical Cords .
Christian Inner healing of these 10 blocks in more detail:
1. Put it on the Altar.The "Put it on the Altar" prayer encounter allows you to offer people, situations and things to God. It allows God to be involved, bless and receive what we offer. The result is often deep peace, relief of burdens, and freedom from worry.
The scene we invoke, the picture we imagine, is based on the Biblical practice of making sacrifices to God on an altar. Put burdens, sacrificial service, worries, loved ones, work, and one's marriage on your imagined altar. Watch, listen and feel. What do you experience?
When we lay something on the altar, and picture ourselves doing it, we often experience a heartfelt release of control and deep peace as we let God have control.
Do this with a friend when they express their problems to you. Are you tired, burdened, heavy hearted with working it all out yourself? This is a great first step toward letting God take charge of your marriage, relationships, children, work or finances.
You not only can feel lighter but you have given God the right to move, to heal, to save, to deliver, to counsel, to comfort and to enhance communication.
2. Self Image as Idol: The "Self Image Prayer Encounter" allows us and God to pull down the "Idol" we have made of ourselves. God, we know, has little tolerance of idolatry. God cannot bless you and your relationships, at least not fully, until it stops being "All About Me."
I've discovered that God acts to shake down our idols. When God acts we are humbled. We (like king N. in the O.T.) eat grass.
Restoration requires a change of heart, a dying to "Self-Image" so that it is not 'All about me.' In this prayer encounter: confess idolatry, submit the self-image idol to destruction, and picture it happening. I notice that things go much better when we die to our need for (worship) constant acknowledgement, affirmation, and positive feedback.
3. King of the Castle: The right to be lord, "king of the castle," 'top dog,' the one with the most control, power or say is laid down in this prayer encounter. Control, (need for dominance) usually out of fear, destroys love; just as perfect love casts out fear. Love does not 'Lord it over the other.' Prayer involves confession and picturing getting out of the 'top dog' position.
4. "Here comes the Judge " In this prayer encounter one steps out of the role of Judge, giving up the right to judge others, to condemn, accuse, label and rail at their weaknesses. This resigning as Judge comes out of the recognition that when we judge we usurp God's right to be Judge. A repeat of the scene is necessary to admit and deal with judging ourselves.
5. Right to be right: One of our unhealthy patterns is being morally superior. This may be manifested as always getting the last word in every argument, or flaunting superiority in knowledge, skill, memory, etc. The prayer involves confession, forgiveness and picturing the prayer.
6. Saviour No More: A prayer encounter for stepping out of the role of family Saviour - the one who sacrifices to keep peace, who diminishes their own needs and focuses on others to 'keep it all together.' It is unhealthy, unbalanced and, ultimately idolatry to be stuck in the role of "Family Saviour." It eats away at our relationship with God, intimacy, community and our own physical and emotional health. Instead of waiting for an emotional breakdown one can confess, receive forgiveness and picture stepping out of this role.
7. Autonomous Mind: The mind becomes an idol when intellect is our source of security and our way of staying in control of life. The analyst, the thinker, the answer man, the 'know it all' often trusts mind over God; relies on self. This independence from God (autonomy) could be called sin. This means something is unhealthy, out of balance. There might be the pride that comes before a fall.
8. Partner on a Pedestal: It is unhealthy for you or your partner, pastor, leader to see them as a god (goddess.) We know God has zero tolerance of idolatry and wants proper place in our lives but do we realize that we put another under an intolerable burden if they are to meet all our needs. Frustration and anger; hurt and disappointment; withdrawal and disconnection; obsession with the other; pleasing the other (with loss of our own true identity) are some of the results. Often this goes back to a history of disappointment with a parent that left our inner Child yearning and hoping for our parent's approval, love, acknowledgement or faithfulness (non-abandonment).
9. Release Expectations: This prayer encounter is way to tackle the problem that we are expecting of our partner only things that God can provide. The purpose of the prayer is to refocus on God as our primary source.
10. Cut Umbilical Cords: A relationship involves both healthy and unhealthy holds, attachments and control mechanisms. Cutting unhealthy bonds, cords and attachments is freeing. It frees us from unhealthy relationship patterns and pressures. In the freedom from unhealthy ties (picture spiritual umbilical cords) a healthier more vibrant relationship can grow.
The First Step along the Path to Healing
Identifying our patterns is often the first step.
You may be able to identify your personality pattern in this list of ten blocks to healthy marriage. Or discover these doing intensive Christian marriage retreats where there is time to deal with the individual patterns affecting the couple.
Further Steps
This is not the place for a complete teaching about the process. I hope to write further and release books about how I combine the best of inner healing, Coherence Therapy and Memory Reconsolidation to create an effective process leading to Life Transformation.
Identifying our patterns is often the first step.
You may be able to identify your personality pattern in this list of ten blocks to healthy marriage. Or discover these doing intensive Christian marriage retreats where there is time to deal with the individual patterns affecting the couple.
Further Steps
This is not the place for a complete teaching about the process. I hope to write further and release books about how I combine the best of inner healing, Coherence Therapy and Memory Reconsolidation to create an effective process leading to Life Transformation.