Coupleworks Blogs
Blended Families: Negotiating Step-parenting
January resolutions for a better, more peaceful or more creative 2022? Many people will still be trying to recover after the dust has settled post-holiday season. Any occasion that brings loved ones together can be a time of great joy, but sadly...
Responsibilities
Responsibilities. Covid’s unexpected legacy. The following blog was written 4 weeks ago. I have left it as it is even although it is now out of date because it does illustrate how quickly things change at the moment. It does, however, still have the same...
Does Having Children Make Couples Happy?
Paul Bloom, a contributing writer for the Atlantic, asks the question in his article “What Becoming a Parent Really Does to Your Happiness”. He states that most research has found that having children is terrible for quality of life but adds that the truth about what...
Endings and Beginnings
Looking back at our recent blogs it’s no surprise that COVID and its consequences have dominated so much of our thinking and therapeutic practice at Coupleworks. Along with most therapists we have been finding that lockdown, WFH, social distancing and everything else...
Couple Counselling: Pausing to Take a Breath
‘Between the stimulus and the response, there is a space. And in this space, lies our power and our freedom’ (Victor Frankl) It is mid-October, a time of change as leaves turn red and the evenings draw in. It is half term, an interim period, a time to take a breath,...
RELATIONSHIP CHALLENGES: When one partner wants to leave
Relationships are complex and challenging of that there is no doubt. Never more so than over the past two years when we have had to manage Covid and all its implications on top of everything else going on in our lives. Over the coming months I am going to focus...
Pet sounds: Dealing with the loss of a much loved animal companion
Grief is an intensely painful and primal emotion. The last couple of years have brought this into particularly sharp focus. Many of us have suffered loss and, at the very least, been unable to avoid facing the spectre of death in our own...
What has Covid-19 taught us.
As a Coupleworks therapist, I have always respected my clients and their agenda for coming into therapy, no matter what the presenting problem seems to be. During the last 15 months, my respect and admiration has grown for people in very difficult circumstances, who...
Jealousy: How to Embrace it and Talk about It
With lockdown slowly coming to an end, we are slowly interacting with more people. For some couples, this is a welcomed relief to spend time other than our partner but for some, it can bring up feelings of jealousy that have laid dormant throughout lockdown. Dr. Ari...
Wedding Season….
With Harry and Meghan’s reflections on their own wedding day at Windsor, and Carrie and Boris beating the media pundits and enjoying a very private ceremony at Westminster Cathedral, weddings, and all that surrounds them, have been very much in the news in recent...
Anxious Times and Quietening the Mind’s ‘Chatter’
‘You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf’ (Jon Kabut-Zinn) ‘The way you tell the story to yourself matters’ (Amy Cuddy) Since the first news of the pandemic we have been aware of a global thrum of anxiety which has impacted on us individually to varying...
Is Online Therapy the Future?
As the country went into lockdown last year, the NHS could barely cope with Covid patients let alone the soaring increase in mental health problems. Faced with cancelled hospital appointments, long waiting lists to speak to, let alone see a GP and isolation from...
The Torment of Indecision in Couple Relationships
How many decisions do you think we average per day? Stop and think for a moment, before being completely sideswiped by the result which is an eye watering ....... 35,000 DECISIONS PER DAY Apparently about 227 of these are food related which is...
Change
Never was so much owed by so many to so few...has become a mantra in the UK in terms of our debt to the NHS. This same quote is present today under different circumstances in many areas as well as the NHS. Patterns and rhythms are altered by law. We, at...
Motherhood, Guilt and Self-care
Before women have babies, they are conditioned to believe that a good mother always puts themselves last; otherwise, they are overlooking their child and are being selfish. So, it’s not surprising that since the Pandemic began, being a mother has got even more...
While we can’t hug….
Physical closeness outside of our bubbles is something that many of us have been missing during the lockdowns and pleas for social distancing over the past year. For me so much of what that has meant is encapsulated in the title of a book that I have been...
Loneliness in our relationships
If there is anything positive that’s come out from this current Covid pandemic is that issues of loneliness and isolation experienced by so many especially during this last year are firmly at the centre of our awareness. Organisations such as Campaign to End...
What does it take to get through
Melanie Reid, the Times magazine columnist, wrote recently that, ‘Bravery is a concept I’ve always been suspicious of. I’m not sure it exists. Mainly it’s what you do when there isn’t really an option to do anything else. Bravado, though, that’s something else...
Developing Our Resilience in a Time of Pandemic
Resilience may be defined as ‘the capacity to adapt to and recover from adversities and difficult situations’ and it suggests ‘the presence of flexibility and elasticity that allows for an adjustment to misfortune and challenge’. Resilience may be understood as...
Kintsugi
THE JAPANESE ART OF SHOWING US THE STRENGTH AND BEAUTY IN HEALING AND REPAIR ‘The world breaks everyone and afterwards, some are strong at the broken places.’ Hemingway wrote this in his seminal work ‘A Farewell to Arms’ but it feels relevant to...