A little over a year ago, I was in a dark place. I had a boss that had me doubting most of my professional abilities. I was applying to business school and failing at preparing for the GMAT (the demonic cousin of the SAT), working on about 4 side projects, and I was getting 3 hours of sleep a night. After halting the HR process with a major consulting firm because I was getting sketch vibes from the human resources manager, I had my first panic attack. This was new to me. I thought I was dying. Anxiety was a beast of unknown strength and origins. I was afraid of my own mind; I was petrified of my body and its responses to stress and pressure, I felt out of control, I felt lost. My husband could not keep his cool, he saw my need for isolation as a rejection of him, and he was stressing me out with his worries about our relationship. I had to explain to him over and over again that this was about ME!
I felt super broken. I felt super hopeless. I felt unable, inadequate, uncertain. My husband scheduled a mini life coaching session, and it was super helpful. She really listened to my story, she made me feel safe, and she helped me look inward and really analyze the source of my newly formed anxiety and adequacy issues. She was the opposite of the guy my husband chose as our marriage counselor.
It took my husband nearly a week to convince me that we shouldn’t get a divorce.
The couples counseling experience only got worse from last week. It was more confusing. We were going in circles. The counselor kept misconstruing our statements. He kept forgetting the point he was trying to make. This counselor kept using examples from the solo sessions he had with my husband but garbled the stories.
He kept using definite adverbs like “always” and “never.”
He kept trying to broad brush and create one-sentence summaries of our most complex marital issues.
He was on the cusp of villainizing some of the most tried and true manifestations of our faith in our marriage.
I kept asking him to clarify.
I kept saying I disagreed with his statement.
I kept being confused by his examples.
I kept feeling powerless.
I kept wondering why my husband chose this person.
I kept thinking that my husband wanted to be in conflict, wanted to be unhappy about minutiae that maybe this entire marriage thing was a mistake. Why else would we be in this damn situation?!
This counselor didn’t get us, yet he was trying to “fix” us and succeeded in almost breaking us.
That night we drove home separately. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t talk to him. He was in the ever clichéd dog house. And he was extremely contrite because he knew he had messed up. He led us into the lion’s den of crazy. He made bad decisions. Exercised poor judgment. He was so focused on magnifying the idea of our marital issues that he created ones we didn’t have.
We had a come to Jesus conversation a few hours later after I filtered my inner monologue of anger and hurt into something more digestible and less harsh.
With all this said, I still believe in both solo AND couples counseling/therapy, but you have to do your research, and you have to be careful because this guy my husband chose was a good enough solo therapist (or so he says) but was not equipped for couples therapy.
Disclaimer: The following is my opinion, based on some research and a lot of individual experience. Please do your own individual research and invest time in figuring out what might work best for you and your relationships.
How to Choose a Couples Therapist or Counselor
After some research, it pained me to read that we were not alone in our unpleasant couples counseling experience; a fair number of couples have reported that couples therapy made things worse in their marriage. Couples therapy requires a different skill set than individual therapy. Individual therapy is about helping the individual attain a personal goal or overcome individual issues. About 81 percent of all private practice therapists in the United States say that they offer marital therapy, but only about 12 percent of the nation’s licensed therapists are in a profession that requires any course work or supervised clinical experience in marital therapy. Couples therapists need to have a keen understanding of marriage, the conflict that can arise when two people try to build a life together, and need to be able to manage and facilitate between two people who may have a history of conflict or poor communication. For this reason, you must check a stranger’s qualifications and be bold in your questions; I recommend you:
- Confirm your counselor is pro-reconciliation. I assumed this was universal but, maybe it isn’t. There are therapists, like the one we visited, who advocate leaving over and helping to find marital solutions. Make sure to ask about their views on the topic.
- Make sure you feel comfortable with and respected by your therapist. You need a therapist that understands your perspective and feelings. The therapist my husband chose was an atheist; we, on the other hand, are deeply spiritual and faith-based individuals. You won’t get us or our marriage without understanding our faith ocular.
- Make sure the therapist’s stance on relationships can really play a part in what they do. There aren’t many universal rules for being and staying in romantic relationships. If your therapist insists that there is only one way to have a successful marriage, find another therapist.
- Choose a counselor that does not take sides. My husband had a few solo sessions with our couples therapist, and it definitely created conflict for us. He made some major assumptions about me based on my husband’s prior narrative.
- Set concrete goals early on and know why you are showing up each week so you don’t lose sight of why. If you don’t see progress after two or three sessions, address your concerns with your therapist.
- Feel comfortable with your therapist’s suggestions- like creating a deadline to make a marital decision- if not tell them so. Your therapist should honor your feedback, if they don’t, leave.
- Check a therapist with finite opinions. Some believe their therapist is able to tell when a person should stop trying to work on their marriage, therapists don’t truly have this sort of knowledge. So if a therapist says something like, “It seems that you are incompatible,” or “Why are you willing to put up with this,?” or “It is time to move on with your life,” they are simply laying their own values on you. This is believed to be unethical by some. This is also very similar to some sayings that our failed couple therapist said during session one before hearing our full story. It was strange.
- Stay focused on the now and the future but understand your trauma and triggers. Most of us have past traumas to work through, I highly recommend setting up solo sessions with another therapist to really unpack those well. The solo work my husband and I have done has been so important to the health of our marriage.
- Remember, many marital problems can benefit from counseling. No one should lead you to believe that change is impossible, especially when both people are showing up and are open to doing the work. People are capable of amazing good when they are truly willing and able, especially with support.
- Understand a potential therapist/counselor’s background and training and ask how much of their practice is devoted to marriage counseling.
One of the best ways to find a therapist is word-of-mouth. Satisfied customers speak volumes. Don’t feel embarrassed about asking friends or family for a referral and ask questions, your marriage very well may depend on it.
What did you say?