Premarital and Pre-Commitment Counseling

By: Abby Lombardo, LMFT

What is Prepare/Enrich?

Prepare/Enrich is a program used with couples to improve the quality and satisfaction of their relationship via an evidence-supported assessment that allows for personalized feedback, discussion, and relationship skills training.  It serves well as Premarital & Pre-commitment Counseling, in addition to a relationship tune-up & check-in for couples at any stage in their relationship.

Who is it for?

The assessment customizes itself automatically based on the general demographic information provided by the couple at the time of taking the assessment. The assessment itself takes about 30-45 minutes, taken by each individual separately and costs $35. The assessment asks questions related to your attitudes and what you think your partner’s attitudes are towards roles, commitment, dynamics, conflict, family, spirituality, and personality in the context of your relationship. It is not a pass/fail type of test. Research-backed, the assessment gives a snapshot depiction of your relationship and its strengths and growth areas, which then become the content for our following sessions. We identify where you might require the help of some more tools or insight and practice right there in session the very skills you’ll use outside the therapy room.

Couples who can benefit from Prepare/Enrich include premarital couples, couples thinking about taking the next step in their relationship whether that is engagement, marriage, or neither. Couples in later stages of their relationship are also encouraged to try this program, as it can teach skills that are helpful for everyday fights and recurring struggles, and even stepfamily-specific issues.

It can be used as prevention and a tune-up for strong relationships or a honed-in detector for problematic areas in struggling relationships.

What will I get from it?

As a trained facilitator, I will walk you through your personalized feedback highlighting strengths and matching growth areas with skills and education. We meet for as many sessions as you would like to dive into the rich information provided by your answers to the assessment -- many couples choose to meet for 6-10 one-hour sessions.

We’ll have some fun as well as some honest, open dialogue that gets to the heart of your experience in your relationship--the good and the not so good.

You will leave our time together with a better understanding of yourselves not only as individuals but as a team, feeling more prepared to take on future challenges with the insight, knowledge, and skills acquired from our sessions.

Skills training addresses important skills such as assertiveness (how to effectively ask for what you need or want from your partner/relationship), conflict resolution (10 step formula to help you walk through disagreement), and stress management (how to address stressors as a couple). It makes sense then that taking the Prepare/Enrich assessment prior to marriage has been found to reduce your risk of divorce by 30%!

Every couple has patterns they must acknowledge, address, and work on together if they are to be successful in navigating this modern-day world with its many distractions and demands. The Prepare/Enrich program reminds us that relationships take work.

One more time, in case you missed that: Every relationship takes work.

The work can be hard, but also very rewarding. Not many people have had access to a “How To Have Successful Relationships” course that prepares them with the knowledge and skills they need to have satisfying, happy, healthy relationships throughout their lifespan. Consider the Prepare/Enrich program your personalized relationship course, specifically molded to your relationship’s unique needs.

It’s never too late to learn how to do relationship better or to learn the skills that can improve your connection and communication.

If you’re interested in benefitting from the Prepare/Enrich program, reach out to us on the contact page and request to work with Abby!

Source: Why Prepare-Enrich? Prepare-Enrich. Retrieved from: https://www.prepare-enrich.com/couples/why-prepare-enrich/

Marriage Therapist's Take On "Love Is Blind" Season 2

by: Abby Birk, LMFT

*Disclaimer: We have not met with these individuals or couples. We are not their therapists. We are not pathologizing or diagnosing. The purpose of this post is to explore common dynamics that show up in intimate relationships, in the hopes of providing helpful tools and strategies to build strong, happy, healthy relationships.

Couple: Shayne & Natalie

S2E5: "Leaving Paradise"  (32:29 - 36:09) - Expressing & Meeting Needs

At 33:55, Shayne covertly compliments Natalie by saying her dress looks sexy, though the context around the compliment is awkward (asking if she would wear that to meet his mom). Natalie then replies with humor to match a question that sounded ridiculous to her. You can see Shayne's demeanor totally changes, his face falls, his gaze lowers, and his body caves in on itself. Physical reactions like this can be a way to let our partners know when something is impacting us, if we're paying attention. This is a common defense mechanism: putting a piece of ourselves out there but with the protection of a funny comment or other distracting element. Natalie, of course, misses the subtext because of the awkwardly sandwiched compliment. We see this often happen in relationships- putting a feeler out there without being assertive or direct with your partner as a way to protect yourself from rejection or being missed by your partner.

It's a symptom of feeling insecure or vulnerable in saying how you really feel about someone. This is something that they struggled with throughout their relationship on the show. Then he asks "That's the person you love, right?" he is continuing to test her on if he is enough as he is, is he acceptable to her. She responds with a meek "Yeah." To which he responds in mock outrage, "Could you give me a little more love than that or no?" What he's really asking for is verbal assurance so that he can feel safe enough to go there emotionally with her and not get rejected and left heartbroken.

Natalie responds in a way where it seems she is expecting Shayne to be more confident in their relationship and not need verbal assurance or for her to "brag" about it to others. Unpacking this, we usually find narratives shaped by societal expectations and our families (i.e "men don't need reassurance" or specifically for certain POC communities, vulnerable reassurance communicated as verbal expression is not the most comfortable or typical way to communicate love, care, and respect.)

Shayne comments, "You gotta give our relationship a little more credit." I believe this is his way of asking for more softness from Natalie, more vulnerable statements about her true feelings about him and their relationship. In the conversation where Shayne reflects with Natalie on the lack of "good" things or affectionate language they share about their relationship: "How often do you say how good it is..? " Natalie responds, "Why do I have to?" He's not asking for what he needs, he's asking for her to change or be more like him...when there might be some cultural differences at play that make that less comfortable or less natural for her.

This would have been a good opportunity for Natalie to soften and really clarify what Shayne was noticing about their relationship and why it's important. DEFENSIVENESS IS A GREMLIN!! It's the vulnerable humanness in us trying to protect itself.

Usually, defensiveness shows up where we feel most vulnerable or insecure. And in light of the rest of the season, you can really come to understand Shayne's deep-seated fear of not being enough or not being accepted as he is. And this is why he's asking for reassurance, but he's not doing it in a direct and inviting way that allows Natalie to feel safe and open enough to listen and respond in a way that would increase emotional intimacy.

The conversation gets derailed quickly as they both get triggered into their defensive and protective postures.

Natalie's self-aware statement of "I'm just like shutting down during it right now." would have been a good time to stop the conversation, take a break, a few deep breaths, and to soften towards each other and lead with curiosity about their partner's needs, desires, and expectations.

If this feels right, adding in words of affirmation like: "This conversation is really hard, but I want to figure this out with you." "I love you and want you to feel heard."

And: "It's important to me that you can let me know what you need and we can find a way to support each other's needs without asking each other to change who we are."

In my work with heterosexual couples, asking a cisgender male-identified partner to compromise or change behavior can feel like a threat to their autonomy, sense of self, ego, and individuality. I'm often asking: Where's the line between healthy compromise, flexing to meet your partner's needs and losing sense of your own needs?

This is a difficult area for most couples I see in therapy, too. I think it's about normalizing that every couple has their differences that they need to manage, not solve. Like for this couple, maybe Natalie will never feel comfortable bragging openly about her private relationship, but she could assure Shayne with other types of affection, verbally or physically, to reassure him and make him aware of how she feels about him. They can create their own secret, shared language that communicates care and affection.

This could be a moment for Shayne to reassess his own needs and ask himself if he will feel fulfilled with a partner who has limitations in the area of verbal affection. Or, in the long run, he could acknowledge that what he's asking is challenging to Natalie and meet her efforts with appreciation. Compromise can be hard!

Both partners are still relatively new to each other and insecure and sussing each other out. That's where you can see a lot of these types of issues arise because you don't know how to ask for the reassurance and the vulnerability you're really seeking because you feel too vulnerable in even asking for it, for fear of not getting it. The "I'm done" comment from Shayne totally shatters the sense of we're in this together and really leaves each partner isolated and activated, which I'm sure, is not how this couple wanted the evening to end. Hopefully with our breakdown, you can see at which points the conversation derailed and what can be done differently to keep this type of important conversation on track.

Couple: Danielle & Nick

S2E6: "Back to Reality"  (32:08 - 36:00 ) - Anxiety & Insecurity

Danielle leads with a trap. Due to what appears to be negative past relationship experience and resulting anxious insecure attachment, Danielle is scared that Nick will leave her when he truly gets to know who he's going to marry. In an attempt to be open with Nick, she brings up her intrusive thoughts and how they makes her second guess Nick's commitment, basically overanalyzing his reaction to meeting her family. She then creates a trap for Nick because her assumptions are not based on how he says he feels, but are based on a fearful projection of how she interpreted the situation; therefore, there's no real opportunity for him to soothe her or convince her otherwise. In essence, she creates the very scenario she feared: Nick pulling away from her due to her flaws (i.e., anxiety).

Yikes! It seems like she was feeling extremely anxious about this interaction with her family and placed a lot of importance on the outcome of the day. But because he didn't express his emotion in the way that her self-constructed narrative told her he should have, it led her to believe that the day with her family wasn't as important to him as it was to her. Even when Nick responds that there were things that were troubling him, Danielle overlooks his own emotional needs or his even space to show up with differing emotions.

She jumped to conclusions that went from: you aren't expressing excitement in the way I want you to, and you are expressing negative emotions about something else, to: you aren't excited about how things went with my family, to: you don't love me "for the right reasons." This is an example of our assumptions getting in the way of truly emotionally connecting with our partners and creating space for all emotions, even contradictory ones that show up in the same day.

A helpful strategy for this moment: step back and listening in for when our own assumptions and storylines are not matching what our partners are attempting to explain. Helpful phrases look like "The story I made up in my head was this..." and leaving space for your partner to share their experience of the event as well. A response could be "Oh, I didn't know that's what you were going through or feeling in that moment, how can I better support you next time?" Ideally, both partners would engage with these helpful phrases at this point in the conversation.

I would start with validation. Nick did try to validate why this is so important to Danielle and reassure her. Danielle could have chosen to validate that Nick had other events and emotions outside of meeting her family. This would be a good time to say to each other: "This is important to you that I enjoy spending time with your family and I truly did enjoy them and I'm excited for what that means in the future." And Danielle could easily say, "I want to be there to support you when you're experiencing difficult feelings outside of the relationship." Conflict avoided. Instead the conversation devolves as both become triggered and activated into attack-and-defend mode. Leading to Danielle's "I can't do this anymore." The conversation did not need to end up in a place that felt threatening to their relationship, because the threat was due to anxiety, anxious thoughts, assumed expectations, and insecurity stemming from Danielle feeling extremely vulnerable and insecure about Nick choosing to marry her with her flaws and all. She created a self-fulfilling prophecy by letting her anxiety lead the conversation, pushing her partner away instead of pulling him closer and attuning to each other's emotional needs in the moment.

Interactions between couples are complicated. We miss cues for connection all the time because of past relationship experiences, our current emotional experience, or fears of the future. It's even worse when we unintentionally create conflict or derail productive conversations because of these reasons. Couples therapy can be a useful and supportive place to work through these stuck patterns, to catch each other's cues, and to build better communication strategies -- ultimately cultivating more safety and connection in the relationship.

Empathy 101

by Toni Aswegan, LMHC, NCC

Let’s dig into this massive concept!

What is the difference between sympathy and empathy and compassion?

Sympathy is identifying with someone else’s situation, while empathy involves identifying with what they’re feeling and thinking during that situation. Empathy is harder and more vulnerable because it requires you to identify and experience within yourself the same emotion they are experiencing right now. That’s also what makes it more powerful than sympathy. Compassion is similar to empathy, but the main difference is that compassion is empathy PLUS the desire to help.

A note on terminology: “empathic” and “empathetic” are synonyms.

Is being an empath a real thing?

Maybe! Social scientists seem to have mixed opinions on this topic. For my purposes, I don’t feel the need to know whether it is a “real” thing (by which I’m assuming people mean “an inborn characteristically high level of empathy”). When I’m talking about an “empath” I mean someone who is highly attuned to other’s emotional states. If the label of “empath” is useful for you, great! If it’s not, you don’t have to pick that label up. You can call yourself what you want.

Does everyone have a baseline amount of empathy? Does early attachment wire you for more empathy?

Everyone (arguably, other than psychopaths) are born with the capacity for empathy. It is a trait humans naturally possess. Our experiences can increase our ability to experience and express empathy, or they can stunt our ability to experience and express empathy.

Attuned interactions with early caregivers (interactions in which a caregivers helps us name and care for what we feel) helps us develop both a theory of self and other. When we don’t experience attunement regularly as children, we develop a less stable sense of self and less skills to regulate emotions, and thus may have a harder time with empathy later on in life.

On attachment styles:

Those with avoidant attachment tend to experience a lack of attunement in childhood. Their emotional states are often ignored or criticized, so those with avoidant attachment might have a harder time experiencing and expressing empathy. Those with anxious attachment tend to experience enmeshment as children, meaning their emotional states are merged with their caregivers rather than differentiated. Those with anxious attachment might have a harder time stopping empathy and setting boundaries around empathy.

Why do some people struggle with empathy?

There are a ton of possibilities here. It’s possible they didn’t have a lot of attunement in early childhood. It’s possible they are not very in touch with their own emotions and so have a hard time connecting with those of others. Maybe they are easily dysregulated by emotion. Maybe they are stressed or otherwise burned out, which makes it harder to perspective take. Maybe they are judging another person, which blocks empathy.

Humans are generally born with the capacity to experience and express empathy.

Your childhood and attachment experiences can help you become more empathic, but even if you didn't build this skill from a young age, it is a skill you can learn and improve. And it's worthwhile to do so. Empathy will help you feel more connected, happier, and makes the world a better place.

What skills will help me build and practice empathy?

-reading fiction books;

-watching movies;

-going to therapy;

-practicing self-compassion;

-asking yourself questions about other people's inner worlds and behavior (swipe).

All of these actions help you build the muscle of curiosity and imagination about what is going on for another person.

Question to ask yourself to practice empathy for others:

-how might this person be feeling right now?

-how might I feel if I were in their position?

-what might this person have experienced in their past to lead them to this action/feeling/belief?

-even if you disagree with it, how might their behavior make sense?

What are some practical ways to express empathy?

There’s no script here. Use your body language and facial expression. Reflect what you think the other person is feeling “I imagine that was really scary” or “You’re feeling really lonely, huh?” with the option for them to correct you (we’re going for accurate empathy here, y’all). Get curious and ask questions, then reflect more.

How to move cognitive empathy to emotional/visceral empathy?

Being able to think through or understand empathy is great, but letting yourself feel it is really what other’s resonate with. Practice feeling your own emotions, this will help you get more comfortable with others. Therapy is a great place to practice this skill.

How do have empathy when I don’t agree with the other person?

This is totally possible! Empathy is not agreement. I can disagree with someone staying with an abusive partner, and empathize with their fear and helplessness about the decision to leave or not. I disagree with their decision, but I know moments where I’ve felt scared and helpless, and I can connect with them on that. Remember, empathy is connecting with the feelings, not the situation.

How to ask for empathy?

“I don’t need solutions right now, I just need you to know and understand how I feel.”

Remember, not everyone who is empathic has the skills to communicate it, so be patient.

At what point does experiencing empathy for others become unhealthy?

You’ll notice empathy becoming unhealthy when:

-you have little to no space to feel your own feelings

-You can’t stop thinking about other people

-You can’t sleep, are experiencing depression or anxiety related to other people’s feeling

-You overly adjust your behavior to influence others’ emotions or to take care of them

-You’re feeling burned out, disconnected, and losing your ability to have compassion and empathy (this is a SURE sign for me as a therapist).

How to set boundaries when you’re overly empathic?

-take some time to focus on your own feelings.

-Remind yourself that you’re not in the other person’s situation.

-Remind yourself what IS and IS NOT yours to be responsible for.

-Practice symbolically setting other peoples stuff down (write it down, pick an object to represent it and leave it outside the room).

-Get empathy from other people yourself. Seek support of your own, especially if you are consistently in the position of supporting others.

Wow, there’s a lot to say about empathy! It’s almost like its MY JOB! I really believe that empathy and compassion can make the world a better place. That’s why I do what I do.

Want to book with one of our wonderfully empathic therapists? Click here to schedule your free 20 minute consultation!

5 Steps to Dealing with Shame in Conflict

Shame does not lead to productive conflict. Period!

It typically leads to either: withdrawal, people pleasing, or defensiveness/aggression (see my recent post on shame shields for more on this). None of those responses typically lead to productive conversation.

Here a few steps to try when you're feeling shame-based withdrawal or aggression in a conflict:

1) Take a few deep, slow breaths to calm your nervous system. Take a few minutes away from the other person to collect yourself. It's hard to be clear-headed when we're diving into shame, so take a lil break.

2) Practice self-compassion. Talk to yourself like you would a friend; be cool to yourself. Talk to yourself about why your response makes sense even if it's not productive. Remind yourself that we all get this way in conflict sometimes.

3) Get curious. Ask yourself, how could the other person's position make sense? If you were an impartial observer, what is the person actually saying or asking of you?

4) Practice empathy for both yourself and the other person. What needs are you trying to have met? What needs are they trying to meet? What are you both thinking and feeling? What do you both want for the relationship at the end of this conversation?

5) Consider, what move or request is fair, sticks to your boundaries, and comes with empathy for both the other person and yourself?

This is a practice, and takes time and repetition!

**of course, this does not apply to situations of abuse.

Attachment, Resilience and Trauma

Therapists asking about your childhood is a cliché. But…it’s cliché for a reason.

Your childhood has a massive impact on who you are as an adult. In my work as a trauma therapist, I know that your childhood experiences have a huge impact on stress resilience. People who had childhoods that fostered secure attachments (or adult relationship that facilitate an “earned secure” attachment style) are better able to recover from stress, and less likely to develop PTSD after a traumatic event.

Let’s back up. What do I mean by “attachment”? It basically means the way that you receive soothing and connection with your primary caregiver(s) as a child. The quality of these early attachment relationships to a large extent influence everything about you.

“Attachment is part of a 3-part motivational system of fear–attachment-exploration. Fear triggers attachment behaviors. The safe haven of secure attachment soothes the fear of the amygdala, and opens exploration….Exploration eventually bumps us into something that triggers fear again which shuts down exploration and triggers attachment behaviors again which soothe the fear again and open exploration cycle of safety-exploration again.” -Linda Graham

Because we have a need for regulation, and as a baby haven’t yet developed the structures to do this ourselves, we rely on our primary caregivers to help us regulate. This is what our attachment system does for us. Attuned attachment typically leads to a wider window of tolerance, while misattuned attachment typically leads to a narrower one.

If our early attachment relationships are safe and attuned, we develop the ability to trust, accurately assess fear and regulate emotions. We can move more easily between fear, attachment and exploration. When something stressful happens to a person with secure attachment, their fear/anxiety peaks, and then over time returns to baseline in the window of tolerance. This happens more quickly and easily for those with secure attachments.

However, if our early attachment relationships are injurious or traumatic, then we might get stuck in any part of the fear-attachment-exploration cycle. This depends on how our caregiver(s) responded to us when we sought soothing after fear, or when we craved exploration. We may become more likely to seek attachment in response to fear (anxious attachment style), or seek exploration in response to either fear or attachment (avoidant attachment style), or oscillate between both (disorganized attachment).

This has a huge impact on how we respond to stress.

With an insecure attachment style (anxious, avoidant or disorganized), the peak of anxiety/fear may be higher, last longer, and take more to return to baseline. In addition, that baseline may be higher than those with secure attachment as well—meaning anxiety without stressful events idles closer to the edge of the window of tolerance.

Because our early attachment relationships influence our ordinary stress resilience, they also influence resilience to traumatic stress.

Those with insecure attachment styles are more likely to develop PTSD after a trauma than those with a secure attachment.

[This DOES NOT MEAN that everything is predetermined. Our attachment systems are quite amenable to growth and change, as is our stress tolerance. This is simply more information about how our early childhood experiences shape our adult selves.]

About 20% of people who experience trauma go on to develop PTSD. There is not a ton of research on how to prevent the development of PTSD after trauma, but this information is an interesting piece of that puzzle. If we can help kids have more secure attachments, then it follows that less kids and adults will experience PTSD after a trauma.

(I know, it would be great if trauma just didn't happen...but we don’t have control over that. However…I'd also argue that less interpersonally caused trauma would happen if more of us had secure attachment...but that’s a post for another time.)

Attachment security being a resilience factor supports the theory that relational experiences are necessary for healing trauma: developing more secure attachments in and through therapy will help widen your window of tolerance, support your nervous system in becoming more adaptive and flexible, and provide new healing experiences.

Want to explore this with one of our therapists? Click here to schedule your free 20 minute consultation today!