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John and Terry, married for 22 years, have been struggling in their marriage for the last five. Very focused on trying to make his business successful, John works long hours and is often not home in the evening. As the kids grew up Terry felt like she wasn’t needed as much and John wasn’t around to give her support. Terry began to look for more in her life.
This is a typical story that plays out in many couples marriages before divorce occurs. At the point of crisis, the decision to get divorced, many couples make a final attempt to save the marriage by entering into marital counseling or therapy. The success rates of these interventions are low and in fact might even make things worse if one partner is no longer committed to the relationship, according to Sam Margulies PhD, author of Divorce for Grownups.
I became curious about how successful counseling really was and what would make it more successful. This is what I discovered.
“Each year, hundreds of thousands of couples go into counseling in an effort to save their troubled relationships, but does it really work” asks another article on The Hypnosis Motivation Institute site. It references research indicating that 25 percent of couples are worse off two years after they stop therapy, and 38 percent divorce after four years.
5 Reasons Counseling / Therapy is Ineffective
- Couples enter into counseling about 6 years after they start having problems, which is too late. Often by the time they enter into counseling or therapy one of the partners is already on the way out and is no longer committed to making the relationship work.
- When domestic violence or addictions are involved and the offending partner does not take responsibility for their actions there is very little the other partner can do other than look after themselves. Counseling may be sought to find the strength to leave.
- The intervention often involves gaining new insights about the marriage and the other partner as well as learning new skills to work through difficult situations. Couples usually quit practicing the new skills learned and go back to treating each other the way they were before counseling.
- Often underlying emotional insecurities in both partners are not being resolved.
- Sexual and intimacy issues aren’t resolved.
5 Types of Intervention
- Behavioral Marital Therapy teaches spouses to be kinder to each other.
- Insight-oriented Marital Therapy works on defense mechanisms and power struggles in a relationship.
- Integrative Behavioral Couples Therapy focuses on learning to accept and accommodate the needs of your spouse.
- Emotionally Focused Therapy emphasizes emotions and their impact on the marital relationship.
- Differentiation uses sexual and intimacy counseling to unveil a couple’s emotional insecurities that affect their relationship, intimacy and other areas of their lives.
According to the Hypnosis Motivation Institute research Emotionally Focused Therapy has the highest satisfaction success rate – 70 to 73 percent, with couples 2 years after their intervention.
“Until emotionally focused therapy came along, therapists were so intent on getting couples to make contracts to change their behavior that they did not delve into the emotional underpinnings of a relationship.”
It is no surprise that Emotionally Focused Therapy and Differentiation are more successful methods of marriage counseling. Both methods focus on emotions, which when triggered are more powerful than thinking. The first three methodologies are based on changing our thinking.
Could a new technique make counseling and therapy even more effective? Yes
Imagine having a technique you could use to let go of the underlying emotional energy which causes the majority of your marital problems. Imagine being able to let go of this energy by working with it while conflict it is occurring!
It does not require a lot of talking, if any. You don’t have to understand where the energy comes from or your underlying family conditioning. All you have to do is learn how to feel it in a particular way that brings it to resolution, and learning takes less than 4 hours.
All the other methodologies have value and their value can be substantially increased when we are able to let go of our emotional insecurities and pain permanently. Emotional Hot Button Removal Techniques can do this for you.
4 Recommendations for Effective Counseling, Therapy or Coaching
- Get support early on when you are having problems in your relationship, before your emotional connection dies.
- Decide if you are really committed to having a great marriage with your partner. If you are not committed counseling won’t save your marriage. Choose divorce counseling instead, and be clear on your motives.
- Learn the Emotional Hot Button Removal Techniques: they support and increase the effectiveness of other counseling methods whether you stay in your marriage or get divorced.
- Find out what methodology your counselor or therapist uses in their couples counseling sessions. Emotion- based marriage counseling has the best success rate for marriages.
