Category Relationship Tips

December 21, 2018,  Exercise, Love, Relationship, Relationship Tips, Sex  No comments

An Exercise:

To discover your conditions for great sex:

1.  Get a piece of paper and a pen and set aside half an hour or so. Think back to your best-ever sexual experience or experiences. If you have never had a great sexual experience, just imagine one or go find one of your favorite romantic movies.
2. Now write down all the things that made (or would have made) the experience(s) so good. They could be emotional factors (being in love or happy and relaxed), physical factors (feeling fit, well, and sober), relationship factors (feeling safe or in love with your partner), or situational factors, such as privacy or timing.
3. Next, think of your worst (or your imagined worst) sexual experience...

January 30, 2018,  Counselling, Exercise, Life, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

Some people say that forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past. Ironically, the future and the present are caused by the past, and thereby the past becomes our future and the present defines our past. And the causes and the effects mix to such a level that it is hard to even understand where it all started in the first place and where it will lead.

For me, besides gratitude, forgiveness is the single most powerful way to create lasting change for the better in relationships.

The story of a young man perfectly describes the effect of “cause and the effect” – he arrived home from work to find that his partner of ten years had left. A note on the kitchen table said that she didn’t love him anymore and she’d had enough of his abuse...

December 30, 2017,  Exercise, Life, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

Which Scenario Best Fits Your Relationship?

You wake up in the morning and lean over to your partner for a good morning kiss and hug or you grab your mobile, ignoring the person beside you, as you roll out of your bed to go for a coffee and/or a cigarette?

There are numerous ways to approach your partner when you want to encourage certain behaviours and numerous ways to fail in it.

We can so easily overcomplicate things, believing that there is only one way to get what we want and that is having ignored our partner we then get angry and demand, often through put-downs, what we want.

The smarter approach though is usually the simplest suggestion – to show you are grateful that he or she is there not just when you want something but all the time...

November 28, 2017,  Counselling, Family, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

People often wonder whether Couples Counselling works when one partner isn’t present at the counselling session. Absolutely, yes, it works. If one of the partners change, then the other will respond to the changes. Of course, this does not guarantee positive change or that the relationship will work out, but it does start changing the situation from its current, unsatisfying state.

Breaking the zone of comfort is stepping away from a zone of a relationship that is going nowhere and achieving nothing. Staying in what seems to be the comfort zone, you may be surprised to hear, is hard to maintain as it is not comfortable at all. Holding the decisions taken to move away from what is familiar and comfortable can be even harder...

August 23, 2017,  Family, Life, Relationship, Relationship Tips, Script  No comments

The Main Categories of Counsellors

Many people are somewhat afraid and ashamed when it comes to help, especially on the topic of feelings, mentality and psyche.

Realizing there’s a problem and a need for it to be solved is the first step in solving it.

There are a few different categories when it comes to therapy in general. Counsellors fall into one of four main categories: behaviour therapy, cognitive therapy, counselling, or psychotherapy.

None of them is better than the other and each of them can lead to the effect that is being wanted, namely inner peace and happiness...

August 8, 2017,  Exercise, Life, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

By saying “SMART” I mean all the things that involve a goal to be achieved. Because it is not enough just to want something and to set is as a goal. In order to achieve it there is a list of steps that need to be followed and worked on. In this context SMART is an acronym for all the things that make a goal great.

For a goal to be great it needs to be:

Specific

First it needs to be clear and formulated the best possible way so you know where you’re headed to. It needs to include as many specific details as possible:

• What you want?
• Why you want it?
• Who is involved besides yourself?
• Where it’s going to happen?

Measurable

Every goal has its price. Therefore, it needs to be clear what you want to get and what you are willing to give to have it.

• How much?
• How many?

Achievable

We of...

July 28, 2017,  Exercise, Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Life, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

Limiting Feelings, Limiting Beliefs and Limiting Behaviours

There are various ways to relieve yourself from a script and a game your mind is used to playing. Many of these are therapeutic which includes many different techniques and practices. In the USA there are about 450 registered associations that offer different help for limiting beliefs, behaviours, and feelings. These three combine to create the scripts we live our lives by.

“Limiting” here means something that holds you back, restricting you from living a truly happy life. It refers to an old way of being that is no longer useful in your life. Feelings, beliefs, and behaviours based on negative past experiences can all be limiting if held onto.

In therapy, you get an opportunity to review those limitations and make changes so tha...

June 5, 2017,  Fundamental Human Needs, Games People Play, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

Vanessa and Mark’s Games

Most often on the surface, things can look really good or really bad, depending on what exactly we’re looking at as well as the angle of our perspective. Some couples are envied for the way their love looks on the surface and for the happiness they seem to have.  Vanessa and Mark seemed to have had it all in the beginning and they believed that they had the best marriage going until one day it just all went wrong.

Of course, when something goes wrong with a marriage, there must be an issue with both people and the way their characters combine in creating the games they play. Usually, the issues revolve around consequences of communication styles, games that the individuals play or just incompatible personalities.

The problem started with Vanessa and the way s...

April 30, 2016,  Exercise, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

Pavlov’s Dogs and Skinner’s Theory of Conditioning

Ivan Pavlov, a Russian Physiologist, and BF Skinner, a US Psychologist, are most well known for their experiments with behaviour in the early 1900s.

You might recall hearing about Pavlov’s behaviour modification experiments with dogs and pairing feeding them meat with a ringing bell. Naturally the dog would begin to salivate at the sight of the meat.

Over time Pavlov proved he could change the dog’s behaviour and could get the dog to salivate on the ringing bell even when there was no meat present.

Then Skinner expanded on this theory it into what’s now called Behaviourism. He showed that all behaviours could be modified and that this is how certain behaviours developed in the first place...

March 23, 2016,  Exercise, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

When in relationship, as in life, our thoughts, feelings and behaviours become habits. Getting what you want could thereby follow those old well-worn habits, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

If not, you could use this to inspire and even change the way you express your thoughts and feelings.

You can become more assertive by following a formula when expressing what you like and what you want to change, according to who it is being directed at and how it will be received.

How to Be Assertive

Here’s the formula I use and teach my clients:

“I feel…” (Here, simply name the feeling or feelings)

“…when…” (Describe the situation that creates the feeling, but try to neutralize it so it doesn’t sound like blaming...