So on Friday, Brother Williams explained why family therapy is more beneficial than individual therapy. Lets see if I can explain adequately. A family is a complex unit made of many parts. When one person is off it throws the whole system off. In family therapy they don't look for the root of the problem, they look to help improve the family relationship. I am sure this is not always the case, but usually in individual therapy they are digging deeper and deeper to try to get to the base of a problem. This doesn't always solve things because it is bringing up anger, hurt and other difficult feelings, thus pulling the family apart more. Another thing is that you build a relationship with your therapist rather than your family members or others in your lives. Seems like it would just create more problems, no? Now I know this might be a weird example, but to me it connected. I was watching Reba the television show yesterday and Brock and Barbara Jean were having marital problems. Reba ended up having a conversation with Brock about what his therapist had been telling him and in essence, he was being told to wait it out. I don't see how that is great advice in a relationship at all.
I suppose that goes along with my next epiphany or you could call it a paradox. In order to fix conflict in a marriage, you need to communicate with your spouse. Don't talk to your other family members or friends because that just breeds bad blood between them and your spouse. The thing I have a hard time with is, if you are mad at them you obviously don't want to talk to them. So all you married people out there, answer me this, how do you solve the problem of communicating when you are mad at your spouse?
It's a delicate balance between giving yourself adequate time to cool off and not giving yourself too much time to over think things and make you even more angry. Probably the best thing to do is pray for peace and calm and for clarity. But I am not a great example of this. haha. I agree, however, that marital counseling or family counseling is much more productive than individual counseling. It needs to be more about communicating feelings than about finding the root of the problem. You can't solve problems between several people without hearing each person's individual point of view first.
ReplyDeleteArguments in marriage are hard, there's no right or wrong answer that works for everyone. It really depends on the people in the relationship. Besides prayer, I think. Which I know in my marriage should be applied more often on both sides. Including the Lord in our decisions and in our relationship is very important, and isn't thought of quite as often as it should around here. I admire Mom and Dad for their constant use of prayer in both family issues, and their marital stuff.