The Problem With Therapy When Your Relationship is Broken

Pretty much anytime someone's having a relationship problem, the answer is always the same: go to therapy. It doesn't matter who you ask. It could be your mom, your best friend, the internet. It's always go to therapy. So it might sound like a bit of a shock when I, a trained therapist with over 20 years of experience, tells you that going to therapy isn't always the right move. Before you panic and click away, just hear me out because I'm not really trying to say that therapy is bad. I'm just saying that when your relationship is broken, there are some blind spots that people don't like to talk about when it comes to therapy. And if you don't know what these blind spots are, you could end up wasting a ton of time and money and just end up making things worse, thinking you're doing the right thing the whole time. Now, if you're at a stuck point in your relationship, stay tuned, watch this whole video, because later in the video, I'm going to give you 6 questions that research shows will help you get out of a gridlock, out of that conversation stuck point that you've been going around and around and around for a long time now. So stay with me. All right, so the natural first thing that most people think of when there's a relationship problem is couples counseling, of course. And on paper, it makes perfect sense because you'll get an objective third party, someone who can help you learn to communicate better, which sounds great. But what secretly happens in a lot of those sessions is that both people walk in hoping the counselor is going to take their side and communicate it that their partner can finally understand what they're doing wrong. Let's face it, not everyone goes to couples counseling trying to figure out what they can do better. Unfortunately, A lot of times people are just there because they just want someone that has a degree to tell their partner what they need to change. And in some ways that makes a lot of sense because you're frustrated. You've been trying to get your point across and it's not landing. So of course you want backup. But once you get to couples counseling, you figure out that it can be really hard to fully open up when your partner is sitting right there. You want to express yourself. You want the counselor to really understand what's going on, but in the back of your mind, you're also thinking, If I say this the wrong way, we're going to be fighting the whole ride home. So you give the edited version, the version that sounds reasonable, the version that doesn't poke the bear. And honestly, and what a lot of counselors aren't going to tell you is that they actually have the same problem. They can see what's happening. They may even know exactly what needs to be said, but they end up having to manage the energy in the room to make sure nobody shuts down, make sure everybody gets heard, everybody gets the same equal time. So the whole session doesn't blow up. So essentially everything gets softened, it gets cushioned, and the direct things that need to be said get buried under a whole bunch of what I hear you saying kind of statements. And before you can even get to all those roadblocks with couples counseling, and all of that assumes that both people agreed to go in the first place. So what do you do when your partner won't even agree to go? Maybe they don't believe in counseling. Maybe they say, we've tried that before and it didn't work, and they just avoid having these conversations anywhere with anyone. What do you do when you've brought it up and they just keep shutting down? down saying, we don't need counseling. I'm not talking to a stranger about our problems. You can go if you want to go. That's where most people end up, sitting across from a therapist all alone, trying to work through a relationship problem. Now, I'm not saying that that can't be helpful because the truth is one person can change the dynamic of a relationship. When one person really does change what they're bringing to the dynamic, the other person is going to naturally respond differently. So the whole system starts to shift. So getting individual therapy can absolutely be effective. But if you're going to do individual therapy for relationship problem, be really careful because there is a giant pitfall that happens when you're working one-on-one with a therapist. And that pitfall is they're only hearing your side. And I'm not saying that as a criticism. It's just the reality of the situation. It's how therapy works. I know this because I've been the therapist in those situations hundreds of times. And pretty much every time someone sits down in front of me and tells me their side of a story, of course I see things from their point of view. But over the years, I've learned that there's always multiple sides to any story. In our office, the way it works is everybody gets assigned their own therapist. So I'll be sitting in a session hearing from my client. I'll think I've got the whole problem understood. I'm seeing everything. I've got really great advice. And then I go to treatment team and I hear from the counselor who talked to the other partner. And they found out the same thing from their end. Without having those pieces, I almost always give bad advice, and it's usually because I'm overly aligned with my client. And I feel like if I made that mistake, probably not the only therapist out there to make that mistake. So you got to be careful when you're telling your story. It's not that you're lying or purposefully leaving stuff out, but you have blind spots or you leave out some really important context information, which makes it really hard for the other person to be objective about your side, whether that's your therapist, your mama, your sister, or your They believe you and they tell you what you should do, but they're only working from half the picture. And half the picture is going to get you the wrong answer pretty much every single time. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not telling you not to get help. I'm telling you that the kind of help you get matters a lot. When you've got a relationship problem, what actually moves the needle isn't talking about how you feel. It's about changing what you're doing. Relationship problems require action. Let me give you an example. Remember earlier when I told you I was going to give you those 6 questions? Well, we're finally here. Next time you find yourself in one of those gridlock conversations with your partner, having the same disagreement that you've had over and over again, you know the one, it always ends the same way. I want you to try this. Instead of trying to find a way to communicate to your partner to help them understand your perspective and where you're coming from, don't try to get them to understand you at all. Now I know that goes against all your instincts. You've been trying to be understood for so long that it can become your whole mission. But every time you're focused on trying to make your point, they feel the pressure of it. And then immediately the walls go up before you've even said a single word. So instead, get genuinely curious about their side, not being nice and letting them talk so that you can say your side. None of this, I'll listen so they'll listen. I'm talking about actually curious. The Gottmans, who are a couple that have researched more couples than pretty much anyone alive, they have these 6 questions that are designed specifically for these kinds of situations, for those gridlock moments, the disagreements that keep coming back no matter how many times you've been through them. These questions are almost magical because they do 2 things at once. They help you understand your partner better and they help you feel understood. Which is what gets the walls to come down. So here they are. The first question is to ask them what they believe this topic. Then I want you to ask, does this connect to your background in some way? This topic, do you have so much passion about it? Is it so important to you because it connects to something in your past? If not, can you tell me why this is so important to you? Then ask, how do you feel about it? You can ask, what would your ideal outcome look like if you could have exactly what you want? You can ask if this topic, this roadblock that you guys keep hitting, if it's related in some way to their identity, because people will really dig in when things are triggering a button from the past, if they're related to their identity, if it's hitting some kind of button from some other relationship trauma and understanding why you keep getting to this impasse is so important. And what you'll notice about these questions is none of them are trying to make a point. It's not a passive-aggressive question. You're not trying to set up a counterargument. They're just, help me understand you. Because if you can make your partner feel really understood, like genuinely understood, their nervous system actually settles down and their defensiveness drops. Not because you convince them of anything, because they feel like they don't have to fight anymore. Now, when you ask these questions, you got to respond with empathy. Reflect back what you're hearing. Now, this is not the time to share your differing opinion Or correct the record. Just receive the information. Oh, and another pro tip, before you even get to the questions, check in with your own energy. What energy are you bringing to the conversation? Because even if you say all the right things, they can read your energy before you even say a word. If you walk in frustrated or bracing yourself for a fight or already convinced that it's going to go sideways, in fact, your partner's responding to your energy before they're even responding to your words. It's all about the state you show up in before the conversation happens. When you change what you're bringing, you get something different back. This is what I mean when I say finding better ways to communicate your feelings isn't always the solution, but there are some actions you can take, some specific behaviors you can change that are going to get you a different result starting pretty much immediately. It's all about changing the dynamics of the relationship. You don't have to wait for them to be ready. You don't have to wait for them to agree to go to counseling or anything else. You can start this right away. So the next time that complicated comes back up, I want you to try those 2 things, shifting your energy. And if you find yourself getting gridlocked, I want you to move into asking those curious questions. Those are just a couple of the strategies you can try, but there's a whole system behind the dynamics that get created, why it keeps repeating, and exactly what to do about it. And if you want to understand the whole system, like from A to Z, the whole thing step by step, then take a look at our challenge. We do our challenge about every 6 or 8 weeks or so where we walk you through the whole process. It's all about helping you find the clarity and the tools to get you unstuck in your relationship, because the worst place to be is not knowing, not knowing if this can change, not knowing if you're the problem, if they're the problem, and being unsure if you've tried all the right things. The link to the challenge is in the description, and if you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe so you can get the whole video series, which is all about how to get your relationship unstuck.