There are countless pleasant things you can think of to be in a relationship. But there are also some considerations that make a lot of people afraid to be in a relationship, even with someone they like. If you’re reading this article, then you are probably considering to be in a relationship.
Romantic feelings and the idea of being a relationship is what a lot of people yearn of. As human beings, we couldn’t deny that when we are with someone we like and interested with, things seem to be more exciting. However, like the saying, it takes two to tango.
Being in a relationship needs good cooperation, otherwise, things could be uncomfortable for both parties. Many people complain about their relationship problems, and it seems like there’s no end to problems in dating. However, there are also many things that you could enjoy being in a relationship. Here are 6 benefits of being in a relationship.
Motivation
You might have seen a lot of romance movies where the main characters suddenly gain ‘superpower’ and able to achieve their dreams trough love. This is not completely fiction. When you’re in a healthy relationship, your significant other could be the reason for you to better yourself; either it’s directly or indirectly. Also, being happy and affectionate with your partner could also boost the production of certain hormones that would make you feel more easygoing and contented.
Widen Knowledge
This one is often underestimated by a lot of people when it comes to benefits in being in a relationship, however, this is important. The reason why is because by connecting with the person you like, you could learn a lot more things. For example, when you learned more about your significant other, it opens your mind to another people’s lives and how they are as a person. This is an opportunity for you to be more knowledgeable and understanding towards another people’s perspective.
Good Cooperation
Like I mentioned at the beginning, it needs good cooperation to be able to maintain a strong and healthy relationship. It would help you to train how to face a problem and how to approach and resolve it with another person.
Healing Effect
We all understand that it is hard for a scar to heal, especially when it comes to mental scar or trauma. It is also not easy to ‘fix’ and most probably, such problems in some cases are impossible to be ‘fixed’. But when someone is in a relationship, moreover a well-maintained comfortable relationship, it is comforting for them to know that someone else is there for them. Even if it’s a small problem. Like for example; you got issues at work and felt frustrated, the presence of your partner could be relieving for you, even if it’s only for companionship.
Moral Support
This is one of the most important things in relationships. When dating someone you like and care for, it is almost natural for you and your partner to feel more contented in the term of mental health. Similar to what I mentioned before, the presence of your significant other could make you feel more relieved and satisfied, especially if physical affection is involved.
Good Mental Health
Finally, this is the most important thing on the list. When you are in a relationship with good understanding and cooperation, it would definitely improve your overall well-being. Combined with excitement, happiness, and contentment you feel when being together with your significant other, things would seem easier and lighthearted. Even if you can’t avoid when a problem comes, with the overall wellness, it would be more likely for you to believe in yourself that you can solve it.
Research shows that feeling grateful doesn’t just make you feel good. It also helps — literally helps — the heart.
A positive mental attitude is good for your heart. It fends off depression, stress and anxiety, which can increase the risk of heart disease, says Paul Mills, a professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. Mills specializes in disease processes and has been researching behavior and heart health for decades. He wondered if the very specific feeling of gratitude made a difference, too.
So he did a study. He recruited 186 men and women, average age 66, who already had some damage to their heart, either through years of sustained high blood pressure or as a result of heart attack or even an infection of the heart itself. They each filled out a standard questionnaire to rate how grateful they felt for the people, places or things in their lives.
It turned out the more grateful people were, the healthier they were. “They had less depressed mood, slept better and had more energy,” says Mills.
And when Mills did blood tests to measure inflammation, the body’s natural response to injury, or plaque buildup in the arteries, he found lower levels among those who were grateful — an indication of better heart health.
So Mills did a small follow-up study to look even more closely at gratitude. He tested 40 patients for heart disease and noted biological indications of heart disease such as inflammation and heart rhythm. Then he asked half of the patients to keep a journal most days of the week, and write about two or three things they were grateful for. People wrote about everything, from appreciating children to being grateful for spouses, friends, pets, travel, jobs and even good food.
After two months, Mills retested all 40 patients and found health benefits for the patients who wrote in their journals. Inflammation levels were reduced, and heart rhythm improved. And when he compared their heart disease risk before and after journal writing, there was a decrease in risk after two months of writing in their journals. Those results have been submitted to a journal, but aren’t yet published.
Mills isn’t sure exactly how gratitude helps the heart, but he thinks it’s because it reduces stress, a huge factor in heart disease.
“Taking the time to focus on what you are thankful for,” he says, “letting that sense of gratitude wash over you — this helps us manage and cope.”
Does your current morning routine consist of hitting the snooze button four times and walking out the door five minutes later as you put on your shoes and eat a protein bar, all while checking email on your phone? From that point on, our entire day can feel like we’re always trying to rush and catch up, never really feeling on top of our game or very productive. We can do better!
Many of us are busy, have a lot of responsibilities and obligations, and often feel strapped for time. Having a great morning routine can make all the difference in being productive, achieving goals, feeling organized, and doing all of this with confidence.
Why Bother?
It is well known that morning routines can be a deal breaker for people having great, productive days. Particularly in the professional fields of sales and leadership, the development of a solid morning routine can be a dealbreaker in terms of productivity and success. Although not all of us are in sales or a leadership position at work, we are all designed to be leaders of our own lives. This includes giving ourselves the best opportunity for feeling confident and productive each day.
Productivity coaches suggest that daily habits can be an indicator of increased productivity and achievement. Although coaches have varied ideas on the types of daily habits to include, most agree that how we begin our day has a tremendous impact on how the rest of the day seems to go.
Creating a morning routine is not focused on who can accomplish the most or check off more boxes than everyone else, it is about allowing yourself to begin your day with confidence, peace, and a positive attitude. Starting the day this way can allow us to effectively complete tasks and to handle things that come our way without constantly feeling stressed or overwhelmed.
Potential Benefits
Physical Health
According to researchers from Harvard Business School and Stanford University, workplace stress can be as damaging to our health as secondhand smoke. In fact, in a Nielsen survey, it was reported that up to 80 percent of employed adults experienced workplace stress.
If that sounds tough, consider that a research study out of the University of Akron found that stress (measured by cortisol levels) is higher in stay-at-home moms compared to women working full-time outside of the home. As stress increases, our immune system can become less effective at fighting off colds, flu, allergies, and other common physical concerns.
Emotional Health
Feeling good, physically, can certainly influence how we feel emotionally. We usually don’t walk around having the flu with a smile on our face or being overly optimistic. Our emotional health can be impacted by how we feel we are managing our day.
When we are constantly in a rush and trying to make the next appointment, always running behind, or feeling lost in a sea of tasks, we can easily become overwhelmed, stressed, sad, and frustrated. Over time, if this were a continual pattern, it makes sense that we could possibly begin to feel hopeless as if we’ll never catch up! A sense of peace and confidence in our day can help us maintain positive emotional health and help us to become much more resilient during times of stress.
Relationships
When we feel overwhelmed and stressed, our emotions can easily show up in our relationships with important people in our lives. How many times have you come home from a long, stressful day and taken your frustrations out on a loved one? This could be through venting, anger or even isolation from those we love.
As we start building a morning routine that allows us to feel more confident, productive, and resilient, we might find that our relationships feel closer, more connected, and positive as well.
Productivity
The morning routine helps us set the tone for the day, better allowing us to control our schedules rather than our schedule controlling us. As we start each day fresh, we can better focus on what is in front of us, where to prioritize our time, and, ultimately, increase our productivity.
Productivity is not always about how much we are getting done but can also refer to the level of quality and intention we are giving to tasks. Finishing the day with 10 half-completed tasks feels a lot different than completing six tasks and feeling proud of the quality of your work. When we are constantly reacting to additional tasks, stressors, or needs of others, we can find it very difficult to effectively prioritize and follow through.
Confidence
Being confident means more than simply saying, “I like myself.” Authentic confidence is grown through experiences. Self-efficacy is a term that refers to our belief that we can achieve goals and complete tasks—a belief in our own abilities. Different from self-esteem, which is an overview of our feelings of self-worth, self-efficacy is more influential in helping us build confidence and resilience.
Walking through experiences in our day and actually observing ourselves completing tasks and feeling a sense of accomplishment helps to reinforce our sense of self-efficacy. Having a morning routine helps to set the stage for better prioritizing, more effective time-management, and greater productivity. All of this, in turn, is likely to have a positive impact on our self-efficacy.
Peace
Stress can cause us a lot of trouble, emotionally, physically, in our careers and in our relationships. Not feeling as if we can accomplish tasks, or feeling as if we are always behind, causes great stress. Our self-efficacy feels low, we can begin to experience negative self-talk and end up feeling distressed and overwhelmed.
A solid, consistent morning routine can offer us a time to practice intentional mindfulness and/or prayer, leading to feelings of greater peace as we go through our day. Feeling productive in our day can lead to a more peaceful evening and, in turn, a better night’s sleep and a refreshed morning the next day.
Give Yourself Time
Don’t hit snooze! It can be so hard, especially in the beginning, to not go back to old ways and hit that snooze button so you can lay in bed just a little longer. A good morning routine allows you enough time to actually enjoy—and benefit from—your routine!
The amount of time can vary from person to person but could range anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes. There is sometimes the assumption that you have to wake up at 4 a.m. in order to have a good morning routine. Productivity professionals suggest that you listen to yourself and know what would be realistic for you to do and keep up with. Don’t worry about what others are doing.
Key things to remember:
Set a reasonable time to wake up. Give your routine between 30 to 90 minutes. Don’t hit the snooze button. Move Your Body
Your previous morning routine might have been to wake up and immediately grab your phone, laying in bed for 45 minutes, scrolling through Instagram or even checking emails for work. Productivity coach Jim Collins suggests that in developing our morning routine we should consider some things we could “stop doing” rather than focusing all of our attention on what to add to our day. If we allow ourselves time away from the screen, we can use those moments for standing up, stretching, yoga, or even going for a brief walk. Any body movement in the morning will be better than lying in bed on social media! We are actively waking up our muscles as well as our minds.
Key things to remember:
Don’t stay in bed when the alarm goes off. Any movement is helpful, it doesn’t have to be intense. Stretching, yoga, walking are good examples.
Practice Stillness
As much as body movement is important in the morning, so is practicing stillness. Michael Hyatt, former CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers and best-selling author, entrepreneur, and professional coach, suggests that stillness can be key in helping us begin the day on the right foot.
Activities like meditation, breathing, and prayer are all great examples of what this might look like as part of your morning routine. Practicing stillness can help us feel grounded, focused, and ready to effectively prioritize tasks. Skipping this step can lead us to continue feeling rushed and less effective in our day, which defeats the point of developing a good morning routine!
Key things to remember:
Stillness is just as important as movement in the morning. Practicing stillness helps us learn how to focus our energy. Meditation, prayer, breathing exercises are good examples.
Fuel Properly
Since we were kids, we’ve likely heard the message that a good day starts with a good breakfast. It is true that the way we fuel our body in the morning can have a powerful influence on our physical health, our energy levels, and our mental attitude through the day.
If we feed ourselves food with little to no nutritional value, we don’t feel our best, can find our energy levels peaking and crashing through the day, and feel unregulated. A healthy breakfast allows us to fuel our bodies properly and can lead to more consistent energy levels, as well as feeling more alert and focused.
Key things to remember:
Don’t allow yourself to make impulsive decisions about food. Take time to plan and prep a healthy breakfast. Healthy foods to incorporate include protein, fruit, and whole grains.
Review Your Day As you wrap up your morning routine, it can be helpful to then take an intentional look at your day. Reviewing your day with intent allows you to maintain control over your schedule rather than your schedule controlling you. Be honest with yourself as to the importance of certain tasks and remember that not everything can be a top priority. As much as it may feel that way emotionally, the reality is we can’t function that way without getting overwhelmed.
As productivity coach and entrepreneur Tor Refsland suggests, it can be helpful to focus on one thing at a time. Be intentional in deciding where your energy and efforts need to go, complete that, and then move on to the next. Trying to juggle multiple tasks can lead to ineffective time management, low productivity, and burnout.
Eventually it happens to everyone. As we age, even if we’re healthy, the heart becomes less flexible, more stiff and just isn’t as efficient in processing oxygen as it used to be. In most people the first signs show up in the 50s or early 60s. And among people who don’t exercise, the underlying changes can start even sooner.
“The heart gets smaller — stiffer,” says Dr. Ben Levine, a sports cardiologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, in Dallas.
Think of the heart muscle as a rubber band, Levine says. In the beginning, the rubber band is flexible and pliable. But put it in a drawer for 20 years and it will emerge dry and brittle.
“That’s what happens to the heart and blood vessels,” he says. And down the road, that sort of stiffness can get worse, he notes, leading to the breathlessness and other symptoms of heart failure, an inability of the heart to effectively pump blood to the lungs or throughout the body.
Fortunately for those in midlife, Levine is finding that even if you haven’t been an avid exerciser, getting in shape now may head off that decline and help restore your aging heart. He and his colleagues published their recent findings in the American Heart Association’s journal, Circulation.
The research team recruited individuals between the ages of 45 and 64 who were mostly sedentary but otherwise healthy.
Dallas resident Mae Onsry, an accounts payable manager, was 62 at the time. Raising two children and working full time, she says, she never had the flexibility to fit in exercise, although she knew it was important for her health.
“I have my hobbies,” says Onsry, including ballroom dancing and gardening. But it was nothing routine, nothing “disciplined,” she says.
So when she saw a flyer about Levine’s study, she signed up — along with 52 other volunteers — for a two-year study.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first group engaged in a program of nonaerobic exercise — basic yoga, balance training and weight training — three times a week. The other group, which Onsry was in, was assigned a trainer and did moderate- to high-intensity aerobic exercise for four or more days a week.
After two years, the group doing the higher-intensity exercise saw dramatic improvements in heart health.
“We took these 50-year-old hearts and turned the clock back to 30- or 35-year-old hearts,” says Levine. Their hearts processed oxygen more efficiently and were notably less stiff.
“And the reason they got so much stronger and fitter,” he says, “was because their hearts could now fill a lot better and pump a lot more blood during exercise.”
The hearts of those engaged in less intense routines didn’t change, he says.
A key part of the effective exercise regimen was interval training, Levine says — short bursts of high-intensity exercise followed by a few minutes of rest. The study incorporated what are often referred to as 4×4 intervals.
“It’s an old Norwegian ski team workout,” Levine explains. “It means four minutes at 95 percent of your maximal ability, followed by three minutes of active recovery, repeated four times.”
Pushing as hard as you can for four minutes stresses the heart, he explains, and forces it to function more efficiently. Repeating the intervals helps strengthen both the heart and the circulatory system.
“The sweet spot in life to get off the couch and start exercising [if you haven’t already] is in late middle age when the heart still has plasticity,” Levine says. You may not be able to reverse the aging of the vessels if you wait.
“We put healthy 70-year-olds through a yearlong exercise training program, and nothing happened to them at all,” Levine says. “We could not change the structure of their heart and blood vessels.”
Anyone considering beginning this, or a similarly strenuous exercise program, Levine says, should check with a doctor first and ask about individual health issues that might warrant a less intense program initially.
For Onsry, who is now 65, the study was life changing. Today she exercises every day of the week, walking and jogging at least 5 miles around the lake near her home.
If she misses a day, she says, she just doesn’t feel as good physically. And the regimen has helped her mental health, too.
“I’m not moody,” she says. “I mean — I’m happy.”
Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a cardiologist and medical director of the Joan H. Tisch Center for Women’s Health at NYU Langone Medical Center, and a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association, says Levine’s research is important.
“Many studies that are done that look at [cardiovascular] health look at improvements in risk factors like high blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes,” Goldberg says. “But this study specifically looked at heart function — and how heart function can improve with exercise.”
Goldberg says the findings are a great start. But the study was small and needs to be repeated with far larger groups of people to determine exactly which aspects of an exercise routine make the biggest difference.
We can find joy even if the holiday season doesn’t live up to our expectations.
Feeling overwhelmed? Wondering how you’re going to get it all done? Wishing you could just lie down? You aren’t alone.
The holidays can be stressful. Often, there’s a lot to do and a lot to buy and a lot of people to see. Sometimes we get so busy we have a hard time enjoying events that we’re otherwise looking forward to.
But we can make this holiday season less stressful for ourselves. Below are two tips to enjoy the holidays more.
1. Accept that the holidays will probably be, at times, disappointing Bet you weren’t expecting that one! But acceptance is a strangely effective strategy for feeling happier and more relaxed at any time of the year. When we accept a person or a situation we find challenging, we let go of the resistance that creates stress and tension. There’s a lot of truth to the adage that “what we resist, persists.”
Here’s how this works. When someone or something is being a pain in your rear, take a deep breath and accept the situation. Say to yourself something like, “I accept that Jane is upset right now; I allow this situation to be as it is.” Then notice how you are feeling, and accept how you are feeling, as well. You can say to yourself, “I accept that I am feeling angry at Jane and disappointed. I allow my feelings to be as they are right now.”
If accepting a disappointing situation or person seems too hard for you, here are the handy alternatives you’re left with:
You can judge and criticize others and the disappointing situation in general, and blame others for your own negative feelings. As a bonus, everyone around you will no doubt feel your judgment. Some people will likely feel wrongly accused, or like you are trying to “fix” them. You’ll achieve the dual outcomes of being hurtful to others while simultaneously making yourself feel tense and lonely.
Another alternative to acceptance is to nurse your anxiety and despair over the situation through rumination. To ruminate effectively, think about what is wrong with the situation or person as often as possible. Don’t let yourself become distracted from the negative. Tell everyone what you don’t like about the situation or person. This will successfully amplify both your negative feelings and the difficulty of the situation.
You can also definitely deny how difficult the situation is by pretending that nothing is bothering you. You can stuff your hard feelings down by drinking too much or by staying really, really busy and stressed. Simply avoid situations and people you don’t want to deal with, because that’s more important than participating in meaningful traditions and events.
Criticism, judgment, rumination, blaming, denial, and avoidance are almost like holiday rituals for some of us. But they are all tactics of resistance, and they won’t protect you. Ironically, these tactics will allow the disappointments or difficulties to further embed themselves into your psyche.
This is a long-winded way of pointing out that resistance doesn’t make us less stressed or more joyful in difficult situations. What does work is to simply accept that the circumstance is currently hard. We can accept a difficult situation, and still make an effort to improve things. This gentle acceptance does not mean that you are resigned to a miserable holiday, or that nothing you do will make the situation better. Maybe it will get better—and maybe it won’t.
Accepting the reality of a difficult situation allows us to soften. This softening opens the door to our own compassion and wisdom; and we all know that over the holidays, we are going to need those things.
2. Let go of expectations while turning your attention to what you appreciate Some people (myself included) suffer from what I think of as an abundance paradox: Because we have so much, it becomes easy to take our good fortune for granted. As a result, we are more likely to feel disappointed when we don’t get what we want than to feel grateful when we do.
This tendency can be especially pronounced during the holidays, when we tend to have high hopes that everything will be perfect and wonderful and memorable. You might have a fantasy of a sweet, close relationship with an in-law, for instance, or grand ideas about the perfect Christmas Eve dinner.
This sort of hope, as my dear friend Susie Rinehart has reminded me, can be a slippery slope to unhappiness: Hoping a holiday event will be the best-ever can quickly become a feeling that we won’t be happy unless it is, leading to sadness and disappointment when reality doesn’t live up to our ideal.
Unfortunately, the reality of the holidays is unlikely to ever outdo our fantasies of how great everything could be. So the trick is to ditch our expectations and instead notice what is actually happening in the moment. And then find something about that moment to appreciate.
Can you appreciate that your spouse did a lot of planning (or dishes, or shopping) this week? Do you feel grateful that you have enough food for your holiday table? Are you thankful for your health (or if your health is not great, that you are still here)?
It’s enough to notice and appreciate the small things, but when I’m having trouble with this, I like to practice an extreme form of gratitude that involves contemplating how fleeting our lives may be. There’s nothing like facing death to make us appreciate our lives—and sure enough, research finds that when people visualize their own death in detail, their gratitude increases.
If you feel stuck on what isn’t going well rather than what is, set aside some time to reflect on the following questions. Take each question one at a time, and try journaling an answer to each before moving on to the next one.
What would I do if this were the last holiday season I had left to live? What would I do the same, and what would I do differently? What would I do if this were the last holiday season that my spouse, parents, or children had left to live? What would I do the same, and what would I do differently?
It’s a little heavy, I know, but contemplating death does tend to put things in perspective.
As the holidays approach, we will likely feel stressed and exhausted, but we need not feel like victims to this time of year. We often have a great deal of choice about what we do and how we feel. We can choose to bring acceptance to difficult situations and emotions, and we can choose to turn our attention to the things that we appreciate.
This holiday season, may we all see abundance when it is all around us—not an abundance of stuff, necessarily, but rather an abundance of love and connection. Even during the difficult bits.
Psychologist Susan David shares how the way we deal with our emotions shapes everything that matters: our actions, careers, relationships, health and happiness. In this deeply moving, humorous and potentially life-changing talk, she challenges a culture that prizes positivity over emotional truth and discusses the powerful strategies of emotional agility. A talk to share. Susan David, a Harvard Medical School psychologist, studies emotional agility: the psychology of how we can use emotion to bring forward our best selves in all aspects of how we love, live, parent and lead. To see her Ted Talk, click here.
Has your marriage hit a rough patch? You are not alone. There’s no reason to panic. Many marriages do hit troubled times at some point. You may need some ideas to help smooth this rough patch out. Here are some tips to keep in mind if you are in such a situation.
Be Mindful of Your Commitment to Each Other
Commitment to each other is essential to having a good marriage. That means putting up with each other in good times and bad. But commitment should not be an excuse for people to disrespect or neglect each other. Commitment does not mean handcuffs. Commitment in marriage is a pledge to love each other and stay supportive in good times and bad. This promise also implies that each party will keep faithful to their vows of acting with long-term love and respect. It means the choices you make will have each other’s best interest in mind.
Have a Shared Vision
Marriage partners are a team working toward the same vision. It should not be about one partner acting without regard for the feelings or interests of the other. It isn’t about obtaining some prize and abusing or neglecting it. It isn’t about one partner being domineering. Nor is it about one spouse expecting the other will make them happy and meet all their needs. If you believe one person can meet all your needs, you are being unrealistic and are sure to be disappointed.
Focus on the Big Picture
When you or your spouse become agitated or irritable, and the marriage waters seem rough, it can be easy to become self-centered and decide the marriage isn’t worth the effort. Being overly negative is something you can do in almost any situation. But focusing too much on what’s wrong and what’s missing is bound to bury you and possibly ruin your relationship.
Foster a Healthy Dependency
Having real emotional integrity, though, means looking at the bigger picture which might include asking what need is not being met in your life or in your spouse’s life. Once identified, there is something to address, work on, and seek to correct. It’s perfectly okay to ask for your emotional needs to be met by your spouse. Be prepared to offer the same in return. You both should actively strive to depend on each other and not deny your basic human needs for emotional connectivity. At the same time, know that you can’t burden one person alone to meet all of your needs.
Are You the Problem?
Neither of you may be the problem. Typical challenges of life have a way of seeping into relationships. When one spouse is over-stressed, worn out, feeling shot down at work, feeling like a personal failure in some area, they are bound to become difficult to live with. It’s critical to separate out the actual cause of the distress. It may have little to do with the marriage at all. If the problem or need can be identified, then you can become creative in trying to resolve the problems together.
Neither of you is the enemy. There’s no need to take what was said or done personally. Try to reach out to each other with love and caring instead. If baggage from your past keeps cropping up, make an effort to work on it if it is impacting how you interact today.
Keep Tabs on Your Emotional Bank Account
You should already have enough “savings” in your emotional bank account to get through a marital rough patch relatively unscathed. This means you have been actively nurturing your marriage throughout your lives together. After the rough patch is done, you may need to focus on making a few more deposits! Give your partner as much attention, affirmation, and applause as you can when you have it to give. And when you need it for yourself, ask for it.
These helpful tips should guide you through what is a relatively “normal” time in any long-term relationship such as marriage. Having the commitment to your partner is key, but the commitment should be to work through issues patiently. It also means you both make conscientious decisions together to find your way through this period of time.
Couples counseling is a type of therapy in which both partners attend counseling with the same counselor, at the same time. The intention of couples counseling is to resolve problems in the relationship, which can sometimes include an addiction or substance use problem which one or both partners have. Couples counseling can be used for other issues as well and is particularly helpful when couples are experiencing conflict or are thinking about separating. The therapy is designed to improve the relationship, even if the couple still decides to separate or divorce.
What Is Involved in Couples Counseling?
This type of treatment involves both partners in an intimate relationship forming a therapeutic relationship with a trained counselor, during sessions of about an hour, that they attend together, usually about once a week for several months. Initially, it will involve the couple making an appointment to meet the counselor to talk about what brought them to treatment, what their hopes and goals are for therapy, and to decide whether both partners and the counselor, want to continue to work together on therapy.
If they do, the counselor will help the couple to identify goals for future sessions. Both partners will have the opportunity to communicate their point of view, and the counselor will provide feedback, and sometimes homework for the couple to complete between sessions. This might be practicing a particular type of communication or taking or resisting certain actions that have been the source of difficulties.
What If We Don’t Like the Therapist?
Sometimes, one or both partners decide not to go ahead with couple counseling. There can be several different reasons for this. Sometimes, the differences in background or worldview between the counselor and the couple may be too big for the couple to feel that they are really being understood by the counselor. At other times, one partner may like the counselor, while the other may feel less enthusiastic. While couples counseling can be effective even if there is an imbalance in motivation between the two partners, if one person feels blamed, and is cast in the role of “bad partner,” couples counseling may feel more like a punishment to them than a treatment, and making it hard to get any benefit from the process.
Sometimes, a counselor may decide not to go ahead with providing counseling to a specific couple. If one partner or both partners are being abusive and the couple does not appear to see this as a problem, a counselor may feel they will make little progress. Similarly, if one or both partners have serious addiction issues that they are continuing to deny or minimize, the counselor may feel they are fighting a losing battle.
As it is very important that the couple and therapist work together on addressing the problems in the relationship, the process of finding a therapist that is the right fit for the couple should be respected. It does not mean that the couple can’t still be successful with another counselor, perhaps at a different time.
How It Helps Addiction
Relationship difficulties often underlie addiction issues — even if the relationship problems related to the addiction go back to childhood, they can continue to play out in adult romantic relationships. Similarly, addiction problems always affect the quality of a relationship. Counseling can help both partners become aware of these patterns, and can learn new ways of communicating and behaving that support each other to live without addictions.
Couples counseling is often an important part of effective treatment for addictions, although not all treatment programs offer couples counseling. Typically, you can get couples counseling outside of your addictions treatment program, although it is a good idea to let your addiction counselor know so that the two therapists can collaborate to work on complementary goals.
The focus of couples counseling is on improving the quality of the relationship for both partners. Couples counseling looks at issues like communication, honesty, shared responsibilities, commitment, and mutual support. Problems such as abuse will also be addressed.
Many types of partnership can benefit from couples counseling, including married couples, couples preparing for marriage, cohabiting couples, dating couples, separated couples, and couples preparing for a divorce. Although originally developed as marital therapy, couples counseling now equally recognizes and works with unmarried couples, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender couples.
By Elizabeth Hartney, PhD, Reviewed by Steven Gans, MD
When I recently moved my youngest son into college and felt unexpected grief at my “empty nest,” I turned to my friends for help. These are women I’ve known more than 40 years, who know me better than anyone else and gave me exactly what I needed: a sympathetic ear, lots of hugs, time in nature, a dose of laughter, and the warm feeling of being loved and understood.
Despite how much we rely on friends, there is little science about the power of friendship. In part, that may be because friendships come in so many flavors—from people we connect with on Facebook, to colleagues who are our close confidants, to friends who are almost like family. How can you capture all of these different facets of friendship in one place?
A new book, The Friendship Cure by Kate Leaver, aims to do that. Filled with interviews, insights, and at least some of the science behind social connection, the book explores the many physical and emotional benefits of friendship in all of its forms—from “besties” to “bromances” to work buddies and more.
The roots of friendship
It’s clear that humans are social animals, and that’s why our bodies and brains evolved in ways that help us bond with others. We make friends and create intimacy through activities like touch (which releases the hormone oxytocin and increases trust), gossip (which helps us understand our place in a social network and prevent unsavory characters from entering it), and moving in synch with others (which releases endorphins and increases bonding). That’s why you see teenage girls heaped together at slumber parties, dancing and gossiping their way through the night, writes Leaver.
Though we are driven to create connections with one another, we also have limits on how many relationships we can tend to. Or so says the research of Robin Dunbar at Oxford University, who studies friendships and whom Leaver interviews. He has found that people generally can maintain around 150 social connections of varying degrees of closeness: Five very close friends, 10 close friends, 35 friends, and 100 acquaintances.
Why that limit? “Friendships are not like relationships with family members, whom you can ignore from time to time because you know you have a biological contract to love one another,” writes Leaver. “They require temporal and emotional commitment, or they simply disintegrate.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to have more friends in these categories, or hundreds of “friends” on our social media networks. But “we’re still beholden to our neocortex”, she says—meaning we don’t have the cognitive capacity to maintain many additional friendships in a meaningful way.
A little help from your friends
The benefits we receive from these different types of friendship vary. In dealing with my newly emptied nest, I was calling on my inner circle—very close friends who are available for deep emotional support and even practical support (like giving me a ride or cooking me a meal) that might otherwise come from a partner or intimate family member.
The next layer of friends might be folks you actively arrange to meet for a cup of coffee or to see on your birthday, while the next group might be people you can count on for simple favors that you’d be willing to return. The largest group are what researchers call “weak ties,” who are less emotionally tied to you but who might offer a different perspective on what’s going on in the world or help when you go job-seeking. Facebook friends you actively follow might fall in this group.
Friends provide physical, moral, social, and emotional support when we need it, writes Leaver. Researchers believe that friends act like a circle of altruism, helping protect us from suffering or from being harmed by others. Perhaps that’s why research suggests that as we age, friends become even more important to our well-being. Friends also help reflect back to us who we are and where we belong in the world, writes Leaver. Of course, some are just great fun to be around, people with whom we can laugh, play sports, grab a drink, or watch a movie.
Leaver also covers the dark sides of friendship: As with romantic relationships, not all friendships are healthy and not all last. Sometimes “besties” end up parting ways, or people you thought you could trust betray you. Friendships end for many reasons, such as misunderstandings, relocations, changing values, or simply growing apart. While it’s natural, losing a friendship can be deeply painful and add to our sense of loneliness—one of the great scourges of our time, says Leaver.
Loneliness is “a very real danger to us all,” she writes. It puts us at a greater risk of clinical dementia, heart attack, stroke, and death—more so than smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being obese.
As she explains, some people feel lonely even when surrounded by other people—especially if they don’t feel they can be their authentic selves. That’s why developing supportive relationships (in general) is what’s most important for our well-being and a true source of happiness, something science confirms over and over again.
Strangely, Leaver doesn’t write much about how people can go about making friends—something many curious readers might like to know. But she does veer into a less scientific but nonetheless entertaining inquiry about different friendship issues, like how men negotiate close, platonic relationships with other men, why it’s both good and bad to have friends at work, and whether it’s possible for men and women to be friends without experiencing sexual tension. Though I enjoyed her foray into these subjects, I didn’t necessarily come away with any solid conclusions.
Still, her book provides much food for thought about what friendships mean and why they are important. Without friends, I’m convinced my life would be diminished in many ways. For sure, I would have had a much tougher time recovering from my spell of grief. My only hope is that when my friends need me, they know they can count on me to provide the same support for them. After all, that’s what friends are for.
During my second year of graduate school, I moved in with my sister’s family to save money. “You must get the flu shot if you are going to live here,” my sister declared. Both of my nieces were under the age of 5, putting them at a high risk of flu complications; therefore, it was critical that I do my part in, first, getting vaccinated to minimize my risk of getting the flu, and second, not passing the flu to a vulnerable population. A key part of this was, and still is, washing my hands regularly.
This is serious business. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 900,000 people were hospitalized from the flu last season and more than 80,000 people died in the U.S. As the flu season approaches, it’s important to marshal all our defenses against influenza.
As someone who has a history of fainting after shots, including an experience that resulted in multiple stitches just shy of my temple, I understand high anxiety when it comes to needles. But in the evenings when my 4-year-old niece is looking at the intriguing images within my microbiology textbook and asks with each turn of page, “Auntie Chelle, what’s that?” I couldn’t fathom putting her at a higher risk of the flu or any sickness by not getting vaccinated or not washing my hands regularly.
How does the flu virus spread?
The flu virus spreads by droplets made from a cough, sneeze or talk of people who are infected. These droplets can land within the mouths, lungs or noses of people up to 6 feet away. Heavily populated places, such as schools or airports, could increase the transmission of the virus and put people at higher risk of getting the flu. It’s also possible to get the flu by touching a surface, such as chairs, tables or door handles that has flu virus on it and then touching your own mucous membranes in your mouth, nose or eyes. A behavioral study of medical students at the University of New South Wales found that of the 26 participants, students touched their face an average of 23 times per hour and 44 percent of the time it was in contact with a mucous membrane.
With flu season ahead of us and also our holiday travels, do we really stand a chance of preventing the spread of the flu and other germs by keeping our hands clean? Yes, but it takes some work.
Two-fisted approach
There are two main strategies in hand washing.
The first is to decrease the overall biomass of microbes – that is, decrease the amount of bacteria, viruses and other types of microorganisms. We do this by lathering with soap and rinsing with water. Soap’s chemistry helps remove microorganisms from our hands by accentuating the slippery properties of our own skin.
Studies have shown that effectively washing with soap and water significantly reduces the bacterial load of diarrhea-causing bacteria.
The second strategy is to kill the bacteria. We do this by using products with an antibacterial agent such as alcohols, chlorine, peroxides, chlorhexidine or triclosan.
Some academic work has shown that antibacterial soaps are more effective at reducing certain bacteria on soiled hands than soaps without them.
However, there’s a problem. Some bacterial cells on our hands may have genes that enable them to be resistant to a given antibacterial agent. This means that after the antibacterial agent kills some bacteria, the resistant strains remaining on the hands can flourish.
Further, the genes that allowed the bacteria to be resistant could pass along to other bacteria, causing more resistant strains. Together, the “take-over” of resistant strains would render the use of the antibacterial agent essentially ineffective.
Also, the long-term use of some antibacterial products may harm your health.
For example, animal studies investigating the antibacterial agent triclosan, which used to be in soaps, toothpastes and deodorant, has been shown to alter the way hormones work in the body. The Food and Drug Administration has prohibited the use of over-the-counter antiseptic wash products containing triclosan and many other antibacterial active ingredients.
Nonetheless, the flu is caused by a virus, rendering products with antibiotics useless.
With this in mind, you may want to stick with plain old soap and water.
Best practices
To clean our hands, the CDC recommends that we:
wet hands with clean water
apply soap and lather/scrub every nook and cranny of your hands for 20-30 seconds (about the time to sing “Happy Birthday” twice) rinse well with clean running water
dry hands with a clean paper towel or air-dry.
I was shocked to read a study that indicated that 93.2 percent of 2,800 survey respondents did not wash their hands after coughing or sneezing. Also, one study showed that across a college-town environment with observations of 3,749 people, the average hand-washing time was approximately six seconds.
If soap and water are not unavailable, the CDC recommends using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent ethanol. Alcohols have a broad-spectrum of antimicrobial activity and are less selective for bacterial resistance compared to other antibacterial chemicals.
However, alcohol-based hand sanitizers may not work on all classes of germs.
So what is the take-home message?
There is no doubt that washing our hands with liquid soap and water is effective in reducing the spread of infectious microorganisms, including those that are resistant to antimicrobial agents.
When you don’t have the opportunity to wash your hands after touching questionable surfaces, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Limit the touching of your hands to your mouth, nose and eyes.
Further, build additional protection against pathogens via maintaining a balanced gut-bacteria community by “fertilizing” them with a diversity of plant-based foods.
It’s not only a small world, but a dirty one as well.
By Michelle Sconce Massaquoi, Doctoral candidate, microbiology, University of Oregon
