Thoughts on Therapy Thursday

Yahoo! The weekend is only a day away. Believe it or not, a huge snow storm is forecasted again for Saturday so it looks like Saturday's are morphing into snuggle Saturdays, which honestly, I don't mind. When the weather forces me to slow down, I like it because on my own, in the slow down category, I fall into "needs improvement" sometimes. How 'bout you?

Movies, hot chocolate and naps will fill the day, so if you have any suggestions for good movies, I'm all ears.

Today, I'm going the personal and professional route again. As Thursday approached and I formulated this post, I found myself more cognizant of those things I personally find therapeutic. Establishing Thoughts on Therapy Thursdays has really encouraged me to take greater advantage of what those things are. I hope it has for you too. Leave me a note in the comment section if you have too!

Now, at the risk of sounding redundant, I gotta say, this week, one of the things I found most therapeutic is my goats, Zuzu and Petals. They are better than Prozac.

People have asked us, "What's the deal with you having goats? Do you milk them?"

Nope, they are not dairy goats. We got them for the pure delight of watching them live their simple little lives. There is something very organic and grounding about watching animals. They don't worry about where their next meal is coming from, with whom they are in conflict or worry about the weather. They trust the universe will provide. Every time I let my dogs out, the goats bleat to say hello and when I rub them behind their horns they smile and it feels like is God whispering to me, "Hey, I got them covered. Let that be a reminder, I got you covered too."

That's the personal part for this Thursday, now here's the professional part.

In my practice, I see lots of couples who are finding their marriages broken and in disarray. It happens. In school our education system focus on reading, writing and arithmetic with virtually no tools on relationship-ing, if you will ( I just made that word up, I kinda like it). We need relationship-ing badly. Just look at the divorce rate.

Early on in my our own marriage, The Bird and I sought support in how best to resolve conflict and now twenty years later, when people ask us, "How have you stayed so happy?" I say, we learned and mastered the scientific techniques necessary to resolve conflict effectively and committed to them.

One of my favorite resources I recommend routinely to couples is the book, Fighting For Your Marriage. It is based on the scientific research the authors conducted when they set out to discover what factors have the most predictive value in determining whether or not a relationship/marriage will be successful. They observed couples discussing issues that are bones of contention in their relationships and after 30 years of research, they were able to determine within 96% accuracy which couples would stay together and which couples would fail, simply by observation.

Their research yielded four main pitfalls that couples doomed for divorce engage in. They are:

• invalidation ("That's stupid. You shouldn't feel that way. That's ridiculous.")
• escalation ("Your just like your mother/father!")
• withdraw/avoidance (walking away, ignoring your partner)
• OK, the last one totally slips my mind and I lent out my copy of the book to my niece and I can't find #4 on Google...forgive me

The book in invaluable and what I like most is it is research based. I use it in my practice and it works. Fail proof when couples are committed to the process.

So how about you? Today, any questions about this? Shoot, I'll answer or what do you think about these four pitfalls? Did you recognize anyone?? (Me, I'm a reformed escalator) :-)

Have wonderful weekends, guys. See ya Monday for Mantra Monday.