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Over the past week I was lucky to attend two very different events that I found very interesting and which shared a common thread – the importance of resilience and survival.

The first was a strictly orthodox Jewish wedding where Rabbis from every sect and from all over the world were in attendance. One of the UK’s most eminent Rabbis was asked to address the bride and bridegroom under the wedding canopy. What was surprising was how he used this opportunity not to preach about Judaism and orthodoxy but focused on the very young couple in front of him and the importance of working on a marriage, of putting each other first, of showing each other how you love, care and show respect for each other every day for the rest of their lives. Without working on a marriage, he said, a long happy relationship is not guaranteed.

The second event was at Jewish Book week where Lady Rosa Lipworth and Dorit Oliver-Wolff were in discussion with the author Anne Sebba. Here were two women who as very young children endured intense pain and loss of their families during the Holocaust to survive against all odds through their incredible bravery and fortitude. They never gave up hope and today they inspire others with the resilience that kept them alive.

Today we are living in very uncertain times and I have wondered for some time how these feelings of unease and disquiet impacts on our couple relationships.
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Is it a mere coincidence that for some time now many more couples are coming to counselling wanting to give up on their marriages without really trying to understand or work on their relationships?

When couples struggle to live together in any meaningful way they often present with very negative feelings towards each other. They get caught up in patterns of behaviour that leave them feeling very emotionally disconnected and pretty lost and alone in a marriage. Resentments run very high and often become the shopping list for incompatibility.

For some couples the growing apart has taken years, for other it’s very sudden. By the time couples come to seek help from a counsellor, they are often so disconnected that it does feel easier to bail out rather than make the decision to really work on their relationship.

We are living in a quick fix world and some clients give up very easily, believing life will be different with someone else. Some clients meet at a very young age and years later are unable to manage the loss of the life they could have had before marriage. Others feel marriage makes them feel old and after

40 or 50 years of marriage yearn for something different before its too late. Loss of intimacy and sex is often another excuse to exit.

Whatever the reasons – we seem to find it much easier to work on our jobs and achieve success in our careers than we do in working on our marriages to stay strong and resilient together through the difficult times. Sometimes couples never had the experience of seeing their parents really work through difficulties.

So before you give up and walk out of a relationship because you have fallen out of love and feel so detached and disconnected from your partner, take some time to talk to a counsellor who will help make sense of the emotional distress that entangles many couples. Emotional Focused Therapy helps us to understand how to be more open and attuned and responsive to our partners and re-establish an emotional connection to grow together as a team. This takes hard work, strength and resilience.

Letting Go by Dorit Oliver-Wolff

The urge to live life in the fast lane Has become an obsession with me If only I knew how to let go Let go of the past Let go of the pain Let go of others Let go of me
Just drifting in weightlessness In no man’s land Without gravity
To pull me in either direction Just drifting
With nature and myself
In unity with the omnipotent force Where time stops And the endless loop Of eternal continuity
Takes away the fear of entering one’s time of the inevitable end.

If you would like to discuss things further or to make an appointment, you can call me on 07976 403741/020) 8959 9528.

January was a month where we were bombarded in the press about the need to make new year resolutions, make changes to our work life balance, loose weight and go to the gym more, eat less sugar and more complex carbohydrates.

In my counselling room recently, I have been aware of how many couples hope and expect 2016 will be the time when their relationship moves forward. However when the subject comes up couples can be faced with very different views on what moving forward means for both of them.

It is clear that making a commitment to a relationship means different things for different people: for some its moving in together, for others its getting engaged, wanting marriage or deciding to have a baby together. For many, these steps come easily and for others making a decision to commit can bring a great deal of distress and disharmony to an otherwise healthy relationship and often results in looking for help from a couples counsellor.

I often encounter couples who appear to present with a really secure and connected relationship and this all goes out the window when one partner wants the relationship to move forward as a natural progression of a committed relationship and the other is in no hurry to change this and is more than happy to stay where they are.

Often discussing moving forward and making a commitment brings happiness and excitement for one and overwhelming anxiety and panic to the other. This is something that affects both men and women.

Some sessions with a counsellor would help partners to look at the following`;

1. What are some of the causes of Commitment Anxiety?

– Fear of intimacy and deep emotional connection
– A damaging previous break up or ending of a relationship – A belief this is not the ‘right relationship’
– Trust issues
– Difficulty with attachment needs being met in childhood
– Experience of separation or divorce in parents relationship – Fear of rejection
– Negative media exposure on unhappiness of committed relationships – Over focusing on divorce statistics
– Fear of losing independence and being tied down – Not wanting to parent

2. What are the effects of Commitment issues on a relationship?

– Tendency to avoid long- term relationships
– Closeness and safety is replaced by distance and avoidance – Risk of developing depression
– Loss of confidence in self and partner – Increase in conflict to avoid discussion

Treating commitment issues in couples therapy

An experienced therapist can help identify potential causes of commitment issues in a couple relationship and explore useful ways to work through these issues.

Couples can learn how to understand their fears of commitment, where and how it may have originated and how a rigid way of thinking can be quite paralysing. It opens the way for partners to better discuss fears of making a commitment with each other in a calmer, safer way, and hopefully develops an ability to be more truthful and open about their needs and desires.

Dawn Kaffel

If you would like to discuss things further or to make an appointment, you can call me on 07976 403741 or (020) 8959 9528.

After the election chaos, the atrocities of the London bombings and yesterday’s fire disaster in Grenfell Tower, Fathers Day on Sunday comes as a welcome relief. A celebration first observed in Washington in 1910 to honour fathers and father figures, step fathers, grandfathers and fathers in law. Many families go to great efforts to make special plans, send messages, cards and gifts, to celebrate fatherhood up and down the country.

Fathers’ day provides an opportunity for children to express their love and respect for their fathers’ and acknowledge the important role they play which strengthens the father child bond. However it can also be a time of mixed emotions where there may be an absent father or one who is only seen occasionally. Other male role models may be more reliable and present than the real father.

In our counselling rooms Fathers’ Day gives clients an opportunity to think of the significance of fathers in their lives and perhaps take time out to remember fathers if they are no longer around.

The role of father is often relegated to secondary status compared to a mother. But a father is just as important for a child as a mother is. However research shows that fathers are engaged in caretaking than ever before due to mothers working, longer hours, and there is more recognition of the importance the role of a father plays in family life

Role of fathers
Children depend on a father for emotional physical financial and social wellbeing. For daughters a father is the first man they love and for sons a father is the man they aspire to.
Fathers are central to the emotional well-being of their children. Having an affectionate supportive and involved father can contribute greatly to a child’s language and social development, self-confidence, academic achievement and positive opinions of men.

What a father means to his daughter
A fathers ‘influence on his daughters life shapes her confidence, and her self-esteem and sets an example to her about men.
In her book Women and their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic impact of the First Man in your Life, Victoria Secunda suggests that those women who grow up with a remote and aloof father and do not feel affirmed by their father, tend to respond to men in their lives like they responded to their elusive father: they seek out the intimacy they didn’t receive from their father, but are unable to believe they can trust their partners to deliver.

Working as a counsellor I see many clients of both sexes whose sense of worth as an individual is rooted in their experience of their fathers. How some re-enact their struggles with their fathers onto their adult partners and how having an absent father can remain such a significant influence.

What a father means to his son
The father-son relationship can be complex. Boys tend to model themselves on their fathers. They look for their fathers’ approval in everything they do. They copy those behaviours that they recognise. Boys who have an actively involved father tend to develop securely with a strong sense of self.

If a father is loving and supportive, boys will want to be that and if fathers are controlling, and dominating those could be patterns that boys take into their adult relationships.

So on this Fathers’ Day, especially after the turmoil of the last few weeks take this opportunity to recognise and reward fathers for being there and playing an important role in your lives. Fathers’ need to feel they are special too!

If you would like to discuss things further or to make an appointment, you can call me on 07976 403741 or (020) 8959 9528. Alternatively you can contact me by email dawn.kaffel@couplescounselling.com.

Dawn Kaffel

Husband: “Look. Can you hear yourself? Can you? Do you have any idea what a terrible person you have become? All you give out is this endless negativity, a refusal to see any kind of light and joy, even when it’s staring you in the face and a desperate need to squash any sign of happiness in me or… or… or… anyone else.

It’s a wonder that I don’t fling myself at the first kind word or gesture that comes my way, but I don’t, ou… ou… ou… out of some sense of dried-up loyalty and respect, neither of which I ever bloody get in return.”

Wife: [long pause] “I checked my emails. There’s one from Laura.”

Extract from: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach

How do a previously loving couple get to this place in their relationship? Clearly the wife in the extract above has rather perfected the art of denial. We can see how, in the husband’s emotional outburst that if things are ignored or denied, someone explodes.

We too can be in denial – we pretend that all is fine: ‘for the sake of the children’, because ‘if I don’t rock the boat everything will be OK’, or ‘my family will be so disappointed in me’ and ‘We’ve got a lot to be grateful
for’. Sure we do, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no option to the very real suffering that is being experienced. Denial leads to avoidance and if we ‘do’ avoidance successfully, we believe we don’t have to face the truth of our experience and our feelings. What happens is the suffering continues and gets worse as our feelings get stuffed further and further down.

So why don’t we ask for help? There are many reasons, here are some of them:

– if we acknowledge the fact that we have a problem it makes it real and our continued avoidance becomes difficult if not impossible. What’s stopping us is that we feel afraid, we wonder what might happen if we dare to face it all? We cannot imagine a positive outcome. This can lead to deep unhappiness, an affair, even illness.

– we think we’ve failed: the power of our culture to present the perfectly happy family is socialised into us from childhood. Deep beliefs about how we should feel and act are visible everywhere: in films, magazines, on the
internet and social media. Little account is taken of the realities of day-to-day life. There’s not enough understanding of the very normal challenges that all of us experience in our relationships. There’s little idea of the importance of keeping our relationships going, it’s as if ‘well, we’re here now, we’ve got kids’ and that’s it.
– ‘counselling will ‘break us up’ – things are so terrible that it will all fall apart,
our fear ridden minds can only see what we think is the worst possible outcome.

– the counselling room will be a battleground for blame and accusation and the truth will upset or hurt my partner, making a bad situation even worse. Couple counselling can awaken long dormant sibling rivalry issues. We worry ‘will the therapist love me most?’ Is it any wonder that couples struggle with the idea of counselling, never mind getting as far as seeing a therapist?

Let’s deal with each of these points:

– how would it be if we felt able to talk about our relationship in a place where we can feel safe, respected and encouraged to express our feelings? To be with a well-qualified therapist who is there for both of you: experienced, skilled, willing and able to help you sort out the tangle of your daily reality and the fears and unhappiness it promotes?

– feeling that we’ve failed suggests that there are some expectations not being met. What are your expectations and how realistic are they? Many people have secret fears that often include feeling that they’re not good enough, or it’s all theirs or their partner’s fault. Imagine the relief and release of being able to express your fears and feelings openly and without judgement.

– fear of vulnerability and shame that we can’t work it out ourselves leaves many couples waiting far to long to go to counselling. This delay can lead to further unnecessary frustrations and unhappiness.

– being terrified that going to counselling will ‘break us up’ and ‘it’ll be a battleground between me and my partner.’ This ignores the very common outcome that we haven’t considered – that it can help you to very positively repair and re-build your relationship, to learn together how to do things differently, to connect and to be happier, to remember that you love each other and want to be together.

Relationship breakdown is a slow process and you should expect that it will take time to rebuild. Great relationships don’t just happen, they need to be nurtured and maintained. If only a small percentage of the effort and energy that goes into arranging the ‘perfect’ wedding or managing our jobs was put into our day-to-day relationships, couples counsellors would be out of a job.

Don’t be afraid – it takes courage to ask for help – but, hard as it to believe, positive change can happen.

It is also very important to see a properly trained couples counsellor who specialises in working with couples and is accredited by a professional body.

If you would like to discuss things further or to make an appointment, you can call me on 07976 403741 or (020) 8959 9528. Alternatively you can contact me by email by clicking here.
Dawn Kaffel

We are already three weeks into 2018 and how many of us are still going strong with our new year resolutions to do more exercise, eat less sugar, have a dry January? How many of us have given up already and prioritised on refocusing on work? How many of us have resolved to improve our relationship this year?

Judging from the amount of enquiries that have been received from clients wanting to make appointments, its very clear that many couples are struggling to make the significant changes that they need in their relationships to ensure that 2018 brings them more contentment, excitement and connection.

Relationship patterns are hard to break, but if you start to think more and use some of these strategies there is a strong chance your relationship can really improve this year:

Here are some things to think about:

• It’s the small everyday things that can make the biggest difference: how we greet each other, show kindness, respect and appreciation. What tone of voice and words do we use with each other.
• Can you let go of past hurts and focus on sharing your goals for 2018 to help each other achieve what you want.
• If you really want to make your relationship better, you both have to focus on making time to put energy and commitment into overcoming your problems to make your relationship the best it can possibly be. It won’t happen without this.
• How well do you know yourself and what you are looking for in your relationship? What do you bring to the couple? Is it what your partner needs?

How often do we check this out? 

• The importance of feeling you come first for your partner.
• Do you feel supported by each other? Couples who feel they have each other’s backs and see each other as team-mates are usually more positively emotionally connected and see a future as an exciting time for growth.
• Are you still curious about your partner or do you think you know and understand everything about them and how they work?
• Recognising we have different needs and drives in our relationships that change over time. When was the last time you checked this out?
• Focus on your partner’s strengths rather than their weakness. Start by complimenting more and criticising each other less
• Taking responsibility for what each of you are bringing to the relationship and is that what you want?
• How good are you at making compromises that will help strengthen your bond?
• Recognising that we all make mistakes and the need to rebuild our trust in each other. Can we forgive?
• The importance of keeping your sexual energy alive and growing
• Take responsibility for your own behaviour in the relationship and how it makes your partner feel.
• Instead of closing down and turning away from your partner, turn towards your partner to share how you feel.

Of course the New Year will bring challenges – that is part and parcel of being in a relationship. With a shared desire to put more effort into spending time focusing on what you both need and what needs to change, you are on your way to a more loving and fulfilling relationship for 2018.

Dawn Kaffel

If you would like to discuss things further or to make an appointment, you can call me on 07976 403741 or (020) 8959 9528. Alternatively you can contact me by email dawn.kaffel@couplescounselling.com.

Mental Health Awareness week takes place from 8-14 May and this year’s theme is ‘Surviving or Thriving’. Since 2005 mental health problems are on the rise – we are making progress on our physical health but not doing the same with our mental health. Thanks to journalists and TV programmes speaking out against the stigma of mental health, our awareness is being heightened as to the effects of mental health issues on daily lives. Thanks to Prince Harry leading the charge of his own experience of depression and anxiety and his work with the Heads Together Campaign with The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge they have highlighted the importance and power of conversation and how being able to talk openly about mental health challenges can be life changing. It now seems a good time to think about how mental health issues impact on our couple relationships.

Mental Health Professionals tend to focus on symptoms and treatments with the individual and overlook the huge impact this has on our couple relationships. Any couple relationship can have its proverbial ups and downs but what about when there is the extra challenge of being the partner of someone who has a mental illness. Losing harmony and connection in a relationship is difficult enough but especially so if some of the relationship changes are brought about by one or both partners developing mental health issues. Things can be very challenging for a partner without mental illness who has to assume a care giving role.

Most people fall in love because they are enjoying each other’s company, have fun together and live harmoniously. Life doesn’t always work out as planned. When a partner becomes depressed, they often tune out, withdraw and have little energy to do much except sleep. This can often give the impression to a partner that they are no longer cared about, and there is no interest in them, or going out or having sex. This often leaves the other partner having to pick up the slack especially if there are children. As frustration and exhaustion develop over time, this often turns to anger and resentment at a partner who cant seem to ‘get over’ the depression. If this pattern continues it can often lead to affairs and a complete breakdown of the relationship.

Issues with mental health can be debilitating and its important that partners recognise some of the signs that suggest a partner is suffering.

Here are some signs to look out for:

• withdrawal
• agitation
• hopelessness
• acute tiredness
• poor self care
• change in personality

In my work with couples I see how a healthy relationship can serve as a buffer to help ward off mental health conditions. Equally it is well documented that relationship stress can negatively affect the person who is struggling with mental illness and make the condition worse.

We all come to our adult relationships with conscious and unconscious patterns from our own experiences and feelings around mental health. For example growing up with a parent or family member who may have been depressed, anxious or suicidal can greatly influence how we manage mental health issues in our current partnerships.

Couples coping with some mental health issues are not that different from other couples in therapy. Often individuals experienced a difficult childhood, a history of low self esteem and lack of confidence, trauma and loss. Although many of these things happened in the past, they often find a way of infiltrating the couple relationship resulting in on-going conflict. They too develop patterns of poor communication, increased conflict and loss of intimacy. They too have got stuck in negative cycles leaving them feeling distant, helpless and sad.

Give therapy a try

Coming to Couples Therapy with your partner is a positive step forward. Every Mental Health issue presents its own unique challenge and can be complicated and testing on our relationships. It requires special attention in couples therapy from a skilled couples therapist to help give clarity to the situation. Finding a qualified couples therapist is a valuable option to help explore the roots of the mental health issues and to try and understand how it affects each partner. At Coupleworks we pride ourselves in taking care to consult with the patients GP, primary care worker or psychiatrist so that we can all work together for the patient to bring about change. We don’t have to just Survive we can learn to Thrive.

If you would like to discuss things further or to make an appointment, you can call me on 07976 403741 or (020) 8959 9528. Alternatively you can contact me by email dawn.kaffel@couplescounselling.com.

Dawn Kaffel

As we watch with astonishment the battle that is being played out between Clinton and Trump and the bitter attacks that are being thrown at each other, its very difficult to believe that we can trust either of them to fulfil the role of President of the United States.

Being able to trust your partner is one of the cornerstones of a healthy strong relationship. Without trust it’s difficult to build a strong connection that helps deepen and grow a relationship. We need trust to feel safe and secure and have confidence that our partners are there for us physically and emotionally.
Building trust in a partnership is a gradual process and requires commitment from both parties. It is the foundation of any long term relationship and helps to
make us feel confident and secure with each other. It also helps us cope with challenges that may arise in the future trusting that our partner is there by our side throughout more difficult and testing times.
Being able to trust ourselves is an important element in being able to trust a partner. Perhaps you may have been hurt in the past, which may affect your ability to trust yourself and therefore others.

I see many couples struggling with trust issues in their relationships for many different reasons: money, addiction, texting, emotional and physical affairs. Trust is one of the easiest feelings to loose and the hardest to regain. Without it couples find it hard to deepen their relationship.

How to build Trust – It’s worth checking out these pointers:

• Are we there for each other?
• Does your partner listen to you and is open with you?
• Do you feel your partner supports you?
• Do you feel genuinely cared about?
• Do you feel its safe to talk about feelings and you don’t get a negative response?
• Can you depend on your partner?

Is there consistency in what your partner says and how they behave?

What happens when we lose Trust

Not being open and honest with each other, keeping secrets erodes

trust.

At times lack of trust can be something we experienced as children growing up in our family of origin. This imprint we can take into our adult relationships and may make us feel more vulnerable around trust issues. Its important to understand whether the mistrust is a pre-existing condition or something that has developed in the relationship due to the behaviour of your partner.
Believing that your partner does not have your best interests at heart can lead to a lack of trust creeping into your relationship.
Loosing trust in one another can be damaging and long lasting often creating wounds and scars that prevent closeness and intimacy growing between partners.
Betrayal of trust such as an affair can lead to trauma and injury.

Affairs can completely rock a marriage. According to psychotherapist Esther Perel while infidelity can shatter trust, it doesn’t mean couples cant find a way to rebuild their relationships.

How to repair Trust

• Understanding this is a crisis in a relationship
• Consider each other’s views and feelings and listen to each other calmly
• Engage in positive and constructive discussion
• Strong shared motivation to work together to resolve the issue
• Understanding and appreciating the damage caused

The more effort put into the repair process the more you will make it through the crisis

Sometimes, despite all efforts, repairing a relationship when trust has been tested is not possible, seeing a couples counsellor may be a good idea if you are stuck and unable to move forward.

“The most precious thing in the world is trust – without trust you have nothing – with it you can do great things.”

If you would like to discuss things further or to make an appointment, you can call me on 07976 403741 or (020) 8959 9528. Alternatively you can contact me by email dawn.kaffel@couplescounselling.com.

After all the uncertainty over the past weeks and months we know now the UK has voted for a Divorce from our European neighbours.

The aftermath of this vote seems to be causing mayhem and anxiety amongst the political parties and stock markets around the world as everyone tries to come to terms with the biggest political decision made over the past 40 years. Millions of people are even signing a petition to reverse the Brexit decision. Tensions are running high as Europe and the UK start to battle out how long the divorce will take and when the procedure for separation should start. Today Jean-Claude Juncker announces that “its not going to be an amicable divorce”.

Couples who come to counselling are usually initially looking for ways to prevent separation and divorce and find a way of working through their difficulties. What we are witnessing being played out in front of us are parties who, as yet, have found no way of working through issues and building a future together.

However there are also couples who come into therapy recognising they have grown apart and reached the end of their relationship and are looking for ways of achieving an amicable divorce.

Here are some frequently asked questions that perhaps the political parties should have asked themselves before the vote to avoid one of the most bitterly fought political battles in living memory.

This is unknown territory – how do we start the process?

• Do we need a solicitor, or should we go to mediation?
• How long will the process take?
• What are the grounds for a divorce?
• How much will it cost?
• Can we afford to break up?
• How will we live and will everything have to be divided?
• Do I need to move out?
• Who gets the house and the pension?
• What about the children and who will they live with and where?
• How often will I see the children?
• How do we prepare for divorce?
• How do we tell the children?
• What happens if we change our minds?

Sessions with a couples counsellor can provide personalised support to help and prepare clients emotionally through what can often be a long and painful ending process as they come to terms with the choices they have made.

Hopefully this country and our politicians in the weeks and months ahead will start to slow down and reflect on the best way forward for an amicable working Divorce rather than go into free-fall that seems to be happening today.

If you would like to discuss things further or to make an appointment, you can call me on 07976 403741 or (020) 8959 9528. Alternatively you can contact me by email: dawn.kaffel@couplescounselling.com.

Dawn Kaffel

Couples come to therapy for a range of different reasons and one of the most important requirements for any good therapeutic experience is that there is openness and honesty in the sessions. However, clients are not always honest with themselves, or their therapists and this often leads to a breakdown in the therapeutic alliance and a breakdown in the relationship.

From the start therapists need to be clear with their couples as to what their policy is on secrets especially if they have some individual sessions or if one partner contacts the therapist between sessions to reveal a secret. It is not a therapist’s role to hold onto secrets for the couple but to help and prepare them to have a more honest relationship with their partner. To understand and explore together what their fears about what might happen and why it seems easier to withhold than be honest and open. Sharing these difficulties and bearing the tension and the shame is the path towards a more open and intimate relationship.

Definition of Secrets and Lies

Keeping secrets from your partner is a deliberate intent to keep information hidden. This choice is usually because you fear the impact on yourself or others that the information may have. What often underlies secrecy is a fear of judgment and reprisals. A lie is a deliberate act of deceiving another person by hiding the truth or trying to manufacture an untruth.

Secrets and lies jeopardize trust in our relationships and can cause irreparable damage in the following ways:

*Trust and vulnerability are blocked

*The need to constantly cover up and watch your back leads to tension

*Easier to blame a partner than recognise your choice to maintain secrecy

*Jeopardises sexual intimacy

Being honest in a relationship doesn’t mean you have to share every single detail all the time. Knowing what to share and what not to share is an important communication skill in any relationship.

It may seem like your relationship is smooth sailing but having secrets can cause catastrophic results:

SECRETS THAT HURT A MARRIAGE

Unhappiness
In my experience the reason that couples come into therapy often too late is because sharing their unhappiness or discontent with each other is too
difficult. The reason for keeping these feelings a secret for so long is hoping that the problems will eventually sort themselves out, or the fear things could get a lot worse if true feelings were disclosed. Sometimes it’s hard to just be honest and admit we are unhappy.

Finding intimacy outside a marriage
Disconnection between couples is often around for a long time before an affair happens. If you have stopped having sex for a long time and there is a lack of affection and intimacy, it needs to be understood and talked about. Often it feels that it’s easier to turn to someone else and get emotional and sexual fulfilment than manage the honesty and vulnerability that is needed with your partner.

Financial Decisions
Keeping secrets about how you spend money or make financial decisions without sharing with your partner is a major violation of trust and can have devastating consequences.

Dishonesty
Making decisions together as a couple is an integral part of any relationship. However feeling that you have to agree all the time for a quiet life is not being honest with yourself or your partner. This leads to unresolved feelings and resentments. Working through disagreements and difference is essential for a closer emotional connection.

Past relationships
Couples often find it hard to share or hear experiences they had with previous partners for fear of exposing aspects of themselves that partners may not feel very attracted to. However part of growing closer together is knowing and understanding each other’s different experiences and how you were affected by them both positively and negatively.

Knowing you are being lied to is often worse than being hurt by the truth. This quote sums it up for me:

‘If you tell me the truth I’m going to get mad but I’ll get over it.
If you lie to me, I’m never going to be able to trust you again. Your choice!

If you would like to discuss things further or to make an appointment, you can call me on 07976 403741 or (020) 8959 9528. Alternatively you can contact me by email: dawn.kaffel@couplescounselling.com.

Dawn Kaffel

Mental Health Awareness week takes place from 8-14 May and this year’s theme is ‘Surviving or Thriving’. Since 2005 mental health problems are on the rise – we are making progress on our physical health but not doing the same with our mental health. Thanks to journalists and TV programmes speaking out against the stigma of mental health, our awareness is being heightened as to the effects of mental health issues on daily lives. Thanks to Prince Harry leading the charge of his own experience of depression and anxiety and his work with the Heads Together Campaign with The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge they have highlighted the importance and power of conversation and how being able to talk openly about mental health challenges can be life changing. It now seems a good time to think about how mental health issues impact on our couple relationships.

Mental Health Professionals tend to focus on symptoms and treatments with the individual and overlook the huge impact this has on our couple relationships. Any couple relationship can have its proverbial ups and downs but what about when there is the extra challenge of being the partner of someone who has a mental illness. Losing harmony and connection in a relationship is difficult enough but especially so if some of the relationship changes are brought about by one or both partners developing mental health issues. Things can be very challenging for a partner without mental illness who has to assume a care giving role.

Most people fall in love because they are enjoying each other’s company, have fun together and live harmoniously. Life doesn’t always work out as planned. When a partner becomes depressed, they often tune out, withdraw and have little energy to do much except sleep. This can often give the impression to a partner that they are no longer cared about, and there is no interest in them, or going out or having sex. This often leaves the other partner having to pick up the slack especially if there are children. As frustration and exhaustion develop over time, this often turns to anger and resentment at a partner who cant seem to ‘get over’ the depression. If this pattern continues it can often lead to affairs and a complete breakdown of the relationship.

Issues with mental health can be debilitating and its important that partners recognise some of the signs that suggest a partner is suffering,

Here are some signs to look out for:

• withdrawal
• agitation
• hopelessness
• acute tiredness
• poor self care
• change in personality

In my work with couples I see how a healthy relationship can serve as a buffer to help ward off mental health conditions. Equally it is well documented that relationship stress can negatively affect the person who is struggling with mental illness and make the condition worse.

We all come to our adult relationships with conscious and unconscious patterns from our own experiences and feelings around mental health. For example growing up with a parent or family member who may have been depressed, anxious or suicidal can greatly influence how we manage mental health issues in our current partnerships.

Couples coping with some mental health issues are not that different from other couples in therapy. Often individuals experienced a difficult childhood, a history of low self esteem and lack of confidence, trauma and loss. Although many of these things happened in the past, they often find a way of infiltrating the couple relationship resulting in on-going conflict. They too develop patterns of poor communication, increased conflict and loss of intimacy. They too have got stuck in negative cycles leaving them feeling distant, helpless and sad.

Give therapy a try
Coming to Couples Therapy with your partner is a positive step forward. Every Mental Health issue presents its own unique challenge and can be complicated and testing on our relationships. It requires special attention in couples therapy from a skilled couples therapist to help give clarity to the situation.
Finding a qualified couples therapist is a valuable option to help explore the roots of the mental health issues and to try and understand how it affects each partner. At Coupleworks we pride ourselves in taking care to consult with the patients GP, primary care worker or psychiatrist so that we can all work together for the patient to bring about change. We don’t have to just Survive we can learn to Thrive.

If you would like to discuss things further or to make an appointment, you can call me on 07976 403741 or (020) 8959 9528. Alternatively you can contact me by email: dawn.kaffel@couplescounselling.com.

Dawn Kaffel