Attaining Love and Joy

Many couples struggle with problems in their sexual relationship. The research shows that 8 out of 10 couples at any time are feeling their sex life in their marriage is dissatisfying. Few couples will openly talk with their friends or family about this concern. Each person in our culture does experience “heavy doses” of shame about their body and their sexuality at some point in their life time. Shame is the feeling many describe as ” I feel not good enough”, “I feel something is wrong with me”, or “I feel I am broken in some way”. The feeling of shame will stop most people from talking about what is happening for them sexually and/or shame will “push” people to act on their feelings of dissatisfaction, i.e. developing a sexual relationship with someone other than their partner.

How to effectively deal with the struggles you and your partner are having sexually is to follow the following 5 steps.

Step 1: Acknowledge to you partner that there are feelings of dissatisfaction sexually.

Step 2: Express these thoughts or feelings about your sexual relationship with kindness, openness, and staying calm in your words and actions.

Step 3: Tell your partner what the specific struggles you are having with sex and use “I” statements.

Step 4: Make a plan on how together you as a couple will move forward to make the changes so you both have a deep satisfaction with your sexual relationship, i.e. plan regular date nights, read together books on marriage (Getting the Love You Want), or make an appointment with a psychologist or marriage therapist.

Step 5: Get a physical from a Functional Medicine Doctor, Gynecologist, or Family Physician. A Functional Medicine doctor can also check on many facets of a person’s physical health that is broad and deep in the assessment of your health including your sexual health.

As each couple progresses in their life together, often there comes a time when the emotional and/or physical connection becomes strained. One partner may be more pre-occupied with work. Or a partner thinks more of him or herself at the expense of a partner feeling neglected. Also sex may have become infrequent, to little, or no contact, which may alarm one or both partners.

A first suggestion is to remember and remind yourself of the commitment you have made to your self, your partner, and your marriage. Commitment does imply rather directly that when times are tough, we, as a couple, become creative.

Here are seven steps to take when one or both of you are feeling alienated, scared, or confused about what is happening to your marriage.

Step 1: Act from love, i.e. respond to what is in your marriage now as an opportunity to know your self and your partner in a deeper manner. Such as keep alcohol use to minimum now, spending time getting other peoples advice, i.e. family, may feel supportive yet pick wisely who you listen to.

Step 2: Keep your verbal communication to “I” statements, i.e. I feel, I think, I want.

Step 3: Remember the order of a successful marriage is God, Marriage, Business.

Step 4: Empower yourself as a partner in your marriage by listening totally to your “other half” with no agenda as you are listening.

Step 5: Take time to soothe your self with a behavior that is uplifting so as you approach your marriage when it is strained you feel more refreshed.

Step 6: Share your daily agenda with the other and follow it. If your day changes send off a quick update to your partner and ask what thoughts they have about the change in the lay out of the day.

Step 7: Always put yourself “in the shoes” of the other person, your love of your life, at least this person was at one time, needs to know you get them and are willing to be learn, grow, and be teachable.

I, Laurie Grengs, Psychologist am here if you have any questions. You can contact me via email at laurie@lauriegrengs.com or via telephone at 763-572-2326.

When encountering struggles in your marriage or primary love relationship, you may be deeply wondering and asking your self, “What do I do”? A few first steps is to ask your self what is the struggle I am having in my marriage? Follow with asking your self how committed am I to risking exploring what I may need to do to bring a new solution to the problem.

A key to understanding the core common struggles with couples is about communication. Communication involves the ability to listen with the tools of active listening. I, Laurie Grengs,M.A. Licensed Psychologist can you teach all the aspects of active listening, which is the cornerstone of a healthy, long term marriage. When having marriage problems, I recommend to not make a decision about changing the commitment to the relationship before some deep exploration of what is at the heart of the problem or struggle, i.e. changing the listening pattern in the relationship.

To be able to express feelings with respect and openness is central to keeping trust alive in a love relationship. If trust is broken all the research on marital therapy and my clinical experience clearly confirms if both partners want to explore healing the “betrayal” or “break in the trust”, it is very doable to achieve renewal of trust and a deep long lasting bond.

In marriage struggles and problems the triangle of victim, persecutor, and rescuer are often being played out unknowingly, thus creating very dissatisfying communication and the lack of an emotional connection that is nurturing and positive. To move off that triangle to a communication style that comes from a place of empowerment for each person in the marriage is key to both partners feeling safe and secure to be vulnerable with each other.

I suggest when your marriage is struggling the dynamic of pursuing and distancing is often being played out. Such as when one partner is hurt or angry, he or she may pull away physically or emotionally. Then when the one partner pulls away, the other starts to pursue that person that is distancing in hopes to re-connect. Often then the person pursuing stops and the person distancing moves back into the relationship only to start to pursue the person who was pursuing yet who may now be distancing. This pattern can change to a flow of connection that includes some deep connection and some minor moving apart to a flow of closeness to slight distance to closeness to slight distance where each partner knows the other is available emotionally even when slightly separate from the other.

In another post, I will write about how unhealed wounds from previous times in a person’s life does get projected onto their partner only to find themselves in a deep power struggle with the one they deeply love now or did deeply love at one time. This can definitely be healed and transcended by both partners.

Sabrina’s brainwashing was deep and broad. She spent the first eighteen years of her life tortured and raped, yet Sabrina’s persistence would become a cornerstone of her character. Sabrina needed in her trauma psychotherapy and marriage counseling was to break down every belief she was indoctrinated with in the cult and revisit the truth of these beliefs. Sabrina showed up at many psychotherapy sessions crying and in her tears sobbing “I do not want to face any more of this”.

Trauma psychotyherapy is a delicate process of dealing with a client, i.e. Sabrina, and all the internal splits she created to cope with this catastrophic abuse. A psychologist, i.e. as myself, needs to develop a strong therapeutic bond with the client of trust and authenticity. Expert skills at assisting Sabrina reach inside herself step by step to face, feel, and get free of horrors, that parallel the darkest of evil on this planet, is of primary importance.

This psychotherapy process is delicate and demands an expertise from the psychologist of balancing many different facets of Sabrina, so she, Sabrina, can tackle each aspect of the aftermath of this trauma.

As a psychologist it is critical to have extraordinary knowledge and expertise to assist a trauma survivor and assist them to transform and transcend to thriving.

In coming posts, I will discuss and share how I as a psychologist and marriage therapist balance my life so I may bring the very best to my clients. I will discuss personal interests that nourish my heart and soul, so I may then nourish my clients hearts and souls, ultimately to teach and guide my clients to uplift themselves and surround themselves with uplifting friends and family.

Sabrina bent over sobbing, she yells “I am so angry that they touched me”. “How dare the men and women of the cult rape and drug me!” I encourage Sabrina to scream as loud and as long as she needs in the psychotherapy session for her trauma recovery. “I hate those bastards”, she screamed at the top of her lungs. I said thank you and I want to hear more of your feelings. She looked at me with the shock. You want to hear my feelings, she says to me. Though this was close to the 500th time we had gone through her anger, rage, and hurt, it was a continuing journey to challenge her beliefs that I really cared what she felt and I believed her. For depression is anger and rage turned in on ourselves. When these feelings are turned in on ourselves, it poisons the heart and soul. Those toxins from that poisoning manifest as depression.

In telling you the reader that it was about the 500th time she had expressed those feelings is not to discourage you in any way. It is to encourage you that when in the presence of an expert healer even the deepest feelings based on two decades of severe trauma can surface and be worked through to attain freedom. For Sabrina would say why do I have to do this and how come it takes so long? Because it was so serious and devastating, I told her many times. I also told her another truth, that you, Sabrina are making major headway. You, Sabrina, made your way through the cult experience to be here to get the healing to get beyond it to bliss. The qualities, I would tell Sabrina, that got you through that experience is what will take to your joy and bliss now, i.e. tenacity, courage, strength, willingness, and love deep in your heart for your self and others.

Sabrina often said to me this process”sucks”. I would ask her to tell me more about that feeling and experience and then she would move into the next level of healing. The next level at this time, as her psychotherapy is unfolding in front of all of your eyes, is how to access the feeling that are stored in her body that often manifested in physical pain. As Sabrina entered my office, she would say my stomach hurts, my back hurts, my legs are bloated, or my head is pounding. I would suggest how about breathe into the pain and report out to me what you see, feel, what memories come up, what colors do you see, what sensation is the pain in your body, i.e. hot, burning, stinging? This is the part where removing the internal obstacles allows for healing and abundance to show up for Sabrina or for anybody who engages in psychotherapy with me.

Sabrina screamed out to me, “I can’t do this. It is to hard. I don’t know where this will take me”. I would say to her you do not need to know where this will take you for being a trauma survivor and being in trauma therapy, it is understandable that the unknown is frightening. Having gone through trauma, you have developed an “unnatural relationship” with the unknown. I also would say to Sabrina it is a defense of intellectualizing that you need to have it figured out in your head or mind before you move in to the pain. So we bring in resources, I say to her. Sabrina says how about every police office there is in existence surround me in my mind as I go into the pain? Sabrina said I often got through the rapes and torture by visualizing dialing a phone by putting my finger in the number zero in hope the operator would pick up and get help for me. So Sabrina visualized thousands of police officers and she said I would like to have every swan that is alive now to surround me as I go into my body. In her body Sabrina went. She reported to me what came up and we kept moving deeper into the pain. As Sabrina moved into her body, she said as she was facing and feeling the feelings, I feel I am ascending. I said to her that is it. For when you go deep, you face what was and is, feel the feelings, have an expert witness/psychologist guide you, you transform and transcend.Then Sabrina smiled.

Sabrina displayed an effort in achieving freedom from her trauma that I have rarely experienced as a psychologist. The reason for that this willingness is rather rare, is the belief that many people have that psychotherapy does not help, because most therapy is based on “quick fixes” and medications.The psychotherapy that Sabrina has and did receive was not a quick fix. It was based on assisting her to move into her body to identify her feelings from the trauma, work through the feelings, challenge her beliefs she was taught in the cult, my teaching her about The Law of Attraction, and couple’s therapy.

The teach ability index is a critical factor in whether people will access the help they need through psychotherapy and stay in the process through the completion of their goals. On going psychological maintenance is a valuable process upon completion of a persons’ goals as it was for Sabrina. What on going maintenance means is that in order for the psychological goals to continue to manifest a person needs to be teachable for their entire life. The Law of Attraction is based on the proven concept that the removal of internal obstacles through psychotherapy and then implementing the concepts of The Law of Attraction provides the complete process for achieving and attaining love and joy.

As the public is more accurately informed of what successful psychotherapy entails, more people will be reaching out. Sabrina’s journey in her recovery and healing from one of the most difficult traumatic experiences people face on this earth, is a testimony to the world that if your experience is even more painful or is less intense and of a different sort, there is proven successful psychotherapy.

If you believe in your search for solutions, help and answers to your struggles that I might be the right person to help you, please email a brief description of your issue and I will email you directly to let you know if I can potentially help you.

In marriage therapy, often each person is unknowingly “putting” on their spouse unconscious feelings they have about themselves and/or past experiences. Erica was struggling with how do I go into my body to “identify” and “locate” the feelings I am having. Paul said no way do I want to do this process. At this point in the psychotherapy, the reluctance and fear that show up is common. Often in our families growing up and in our culture to be connected with our feelings in our bodies is not encouraged and/or taught. As a result when suggesting to Erica and Paul they breathe into their own bodies and report out is met with resistance.

Resistance is a manifestation of fear of the unknown. It is often the experience of a client when I suggest “go into their bodies to locate the feeling” to pull away from therapy or “freeze” in their fear of this unknown process. Erica said to me, her psychologist and marriage therapist, I will do “it”, yet please guide me. Paul said I want to watch as you work with my wife, so I may gather more of an idea of what this looks like.

In speaking to Erica as her marriage counselor, I suggested breathing in gently, put aside the brains wanting to ask questions and/or doubt, and report to me what shows up, i.e. memories, feelings, thoughts, colors, or images. Erica said to me the back of my neck hurts and the bottom of my feet throb. I, Erica’s psychologist, asked what about the pain in your neck and feet? Is it burning, throbbing, or sharp? Erica said my feet feel like they are on fire and my neck aches as if it was hit hard with a hand. I then suggested to Erica keep reporting out to me as you go in to fire feeling in your feet and hit with a hand feeling in the back of your neck. Erica began to cry. She bent over in the chair she was sitting in and sobbed. “I do no not want to feel these feelings. I have worked so hard to not feel this and I want it to go away now.” Paul was now on the edge of his chair and wringing his hands as he witnessed his wife, Erica, crying. Paul said this so “sucks”. Is this really going to help? I answered him, as his marriage therapist, has dealing with your feelings thus far the way you have assisted you to get free?

Paul at this moment screamed out in the marriage counseling session, “I hate this. I do not want to feel and yet it has not worked to bury my feelings. I want this marriage therapy to go fast and quick. I do not like this process.” He, Paul, then fell to the floor and pounded his fists on the carpet. He was screaming I am so mad and I do not know what I am mad about. I, his marriage counselor, said to Paul at this time you do not need to know what it you are mad about. Please keep going with your feelings, for this is so positive to have your anger come up and move out of you, especially since you are in a a safe place. Paul kept pounding his fists on the carpet, yelling I am angry, and then added I am angry at you Dad for leaving every time you drank. I was left alone with my brother and I hate you for that. Yet I needed you Dad so much. Why did you leave me? Where are you now? I need a Dad.

At this moment Erica was sobbing and staring at Paul. Erica said, “Paul you have often in the middle of the night said in your sleep those very words, Dad I am so angry you left me when you drank”. Then Erica stood up and walked around the office during the marriage therapy session and cried out Dad stop touching my feet. Erica proceeded to talk about her experience of her father tickling her feet every time he went to her room at night to get into bed to rape her.