Relationship counselling, also called couples therapy, helps couples whether married or not, to recognize and resolve conflicts or challenges that may be impacting on their relationship.

 

Why do we need a Relationship Counselling?

 

Often things don’t go as expected as relationships go through ups and downs. Therefore, it is not unusual to get stuck and find it difficult to get a position or balanced solution. However, what matters is how and when you get out of the challenging situation and enjoy your love again.

 

Marriage counseling can also help couples who are married or are planning to get married. Premarital counseling can help couples achieve a deeper understanding of each other and iron out differences before marriage. It is essential to get a clear and mutual marital vision before one makes the commitment.

 

Relationship Counseling can help to address various issues and some are listed below;

 

• lack of trust
• betrayal or affair
• jealousy
• lack of communication
• Poor communication
• financial issues
• differences in cultural or family background
• different sexual needs
• barriers to intimacy
• family conflicts
• different goals and values
• different parenting styles
• life changes
• Plus more….

 

Benefits of seeking help by the Professionals

 

Relationship skills needed to maintain a fulfilling marriage could be learned!

 

A Relationship Counselor can teach you those skills while monitoring your progress, mediating conflict and giving objective feedback. The professional environment can provide “neutral territory” to help couples agree upon and work through tough issues.

 

Some of the benefits include;

• Improving communication
• Enjoying in a conscious relationship
• Gaining insight in your relationship
• Resolving conflict
• Gaining clarity of your fears
• Improving relationship satisfaction
• Exploring concerns at any level and with any perceived weight
• Getting and enjoying the love you want
• Awareness of giving receiving and giving in the relationship
• Healing childhood wounds impacting on the relationship
• Working on the relationship based on a mutual understanding
• Ironing out cultural or generational barriers
• Regaining your independence through separation or breaking up
• And more……

 

Whether you want to make or break your relationship or married,  relationship counseling always provides the safe environment to achieve your goals.

 

We are here to listen, advice and help you get the LOVE you want

 

Call 07445766096 or email: ultimatecounselling@gmail.com 

 

visit: www.ucts.co.uk

Anxiety is the body’s way of responding to being in danger. Adrenaline is rushed into our bloodstream to enable us to run away or fight. This happens whether the danger is real, or whether we believe the danger is there when actually there is none. It is the body’s alarm and survival mechanism. Primitive man wouldn’t have survived for long without this life-saving response. It works so well, that it often kicks in when it’s not needed – when the danger is in our heads rather than in reality. We think we’re in danger, so that’s enough to trigger the system to go, go, go!

People who get anxious tend to get into scanning mode – where they’re constantly on the lookout for danger, hyper-alert to any of the signals, and make it more likely that the alarm system will be activated.

There are different kinds of Anxiety Disorders, so it might be helpful to identify if one of these fits for you:

• Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD):Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a general, long-lasting worry and anxiety about everyday life, about anything and everything. People with GAD imagine the worst happening (and worry about all the possible worst case scenarios). They believe future events are almost always negative, and they won’t be able to cope ‘when’ these things ‘do’ happen. However, as in all anxiety, we tend to over-estimate the danger, and under-estimate our ability to cope.

GAD can feel overwhelming and can in some ways seem contagious…. it is often identified as the anxiety         disorder that makes therapists worry and feel anxious during sessions! These resources are aimed at both GAD sufferers and therapists.

• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD):Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder dominated by obsessions (intrusive thoughts, images) and compulsions (rituals, urges and behavioural responses to the thoughts).
• Panic Disorder:Panic disorder is an anxiety disorder where individuals experience repeated panic attacks.  The normal physical sensations of anxiety are experienced as “dangerous” to the individual who then believes the symptoms mean they are going to die (heart attack, will suffocate etc).

Naturally, no-one wants these panic attacks, so we start to avoid situations where they might occur, and “fear the fear” – we are scared about experiencing the panic attack.  Avoidance can lead to Agoraphobia (from the Latin for fear of open spaces), where we avoid certain places because of the fear of a panic attack and of not being able to escape, which eventually may keep us from going out at all.

• Health Anxiety: Individuals with Health Anxiety have an obsessive preoccupation with being seriously ill.

If someone believes they have a serious illness, such as cancer or a brain tumour, then any innocent or normal physical sensation can be seen as a symptom of that serious illness, and serves to confirm that they ‘MUST’ be seriously ill.

This is turn, causes them to check for other symptoms, read up and find out more about the illness, focus their attention on their body sensations, and continually scan their body for sensations or more symptoms.

• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can occur following a severely traumatic incident, or a series of less severe incidents.  Complex PTSD can be experienced as a result of repeated childhood traumas.

PTSD develops because the trauma experience was so distressing that we want to avoid any reminder of it.  Our brains don’t process the experience into a memory, so the experience stays as a current problem instead of becoming a memory of a past event.  Each time we are reminded of the event, the ‘flashbacks’ mean we experience the trauma again, as though it is happening again, right now.  That is very distressing, so we do our utmost to stop the flashback, and avoid any further reminder of the event, so the event remains un-processed.

Symptoms include flashbacks (traumatic re-living of the event, including images, sounds, emotions and physical sensations) and nightmares, resulting in severe anxiety and/or angry reactions or avoidance of any triggers that may remind the individual of the incident in some way.

 

• Social Anxiety:Social Anxiety is an anxiety disorder where we believe that others will judge us negatively (“they’ll think I’m an idiot” etc), and it is therefore experienced most acutely in situations when we are with other people.  Our attention is very self-focussed – on what we must look like to others, what they might be thinking of us, trying to interpret every glance or other unspoken gesture or expression and what it might say about what they think about us.  We become ‘mind-readers’ and imagine that we can correctly assume what others are thinking about us.

Because we don’t want to experience this anxiety (and it’s normal body response), we tend to avoid situations when it might happen, and therefore are unlikely to learn that it could be ok and we could actually enjoy ourselves.

If we do have to go, then we use ‘safety behaviours’ to help us cope, such as trying not to be noticed, avoiding eye contact, holding or fiddling with something, trying to hide (e.g. sit in corner, hair over face), don’t talk, and maybe have an escape plan (e.g. sit by door or in aisle, make excuse to leave early).  This all increases the self-focus.

• Phobias:A phobia is a fear of a particular thing or situation.  Phobias can often have a first triggering event, which then results in the individual feeling very frightened when they then think about, see or are reminded of the feared object / situation.

When a person with a phobia sees or is reminded of the feared object or situation, their mind says they are in danger, which sets off the body’s alarm system (adrenaline) resulting in our experiencing many different body sensations.  These feelings seem to confirm that we are indeed in terrible danger, and we feel an urge to escape.  To stop us experiencing these feelings, we will try to avoid seeing or hearing about the feared object or situation.

Stress is our psychological, emotional and physical response to pressure.  We feel there are too many demands, and too few resources to cope.

That pressure can arise from external factors including life events, illness (ourselves or someone close to us) living conditions, work, home and family, study, lack of some necessity, or the demands we place on ourselves.

Even those events which we see as enjoyable can be stressful, such as holidays, moving home, starting a better job, pregnancy, parenthood, Christmas etc.

 Symptoms:

Thoughts

• This is too much – I can’t cope!
• It’s not fair. Someone should be helping me.
• There is too much to do, and too little time
• I’ll never finish
• I have to get this done

Emotions

• Irritable, bad tempered
• Anxious
• Angry
• Depressed, hopeless

Physical sensations
The physical response to stress is caused by the body’s adrenaline response – the body’s alarm signal and survival mechanism when faced with a threat.

• Heart racing, pounding
• Breathing faster
• Tense muscles – e.g. neck, shoulders, abdomen
• Hot, sweaty
• Headache
• Difficulty concentrating
• Forgetful
• Agitated, restless
• Bladder or bowel problems

Behaviour

• Unable to settle, constantly busy, rushing about
• Lots of things on the go, but don’t finish them
• Sleep disturbances
• Shouting, arguing
• Eating more (or less)
• Drinking more
• Using drugs
• Smoking more
• Crying