Empowered Marriage

In this first episode of Empowered Marriage, Helen Harrison discusses the importance of and the hurdles and difficulties couples experience when dealing with emotional intimacy in a marriage.

Needy, Naggy and Controlling are behaviours born out of a wounded part in you.  Instead of being an I, you've become a we and you've immersed yourself into the relationship and you don’t know who you are. You don't know what you enjoy, what you like, what you're passionate about, what gets you up and gets you going. If you’re on the receiving end of someone who is needy, nagyg or controlling you may walk on egg shells, dilute yourself down, not share your inner world with your partner.  Feel trapped, chained and restricted. And if you are needy, naggy or controlling, what needs am I not getting met?  Being able to fulfil those needs for yourself, but also communicating clearly.  Having very good communication and speaking with respect, assertiveness to be able to say what you feel and what you need and what you want. We all want to be authentic and real.  Living with freedom, creativity, spontaneous choice, love, openness, respect, for a long-term empowered marriage.

5 secrets to a long-lasting empowered marriage: Have your own identity Be a team A balance between positive and negative Being equal Letting go of the expectations An empowered marriage is filled with love and commitment, trust and openness.  You enjoy each other in your life and your marriage is filled with respect and assertive fantastic communication. There's a very strong commitment and love there. There's a trust. There's an openness. How do we create an empowered marriage? Have your own identity, be your own person.  People can lose themselves in marriage. You are your own unique individual, authentic self.  Working as a team, a partnership with all that occurs in a marriage.  Being able to openly express what you're feeling. Balance the positive with the negative, being able to openly express it and talk about it.  Being equals how ever that looks for you both.  It's about letting go of the expectations that you have on your partner.

What do people with high self-esteem behave like?  How are self-esteem and the elephant in the living room connected?  The elephant in the living room is an expression that means a couple has a problem, but neither partner is willing to face or address it. A checklist to see if your self-esteem is healthy - knowing it can change daily - but the foundation is to know that you are special, worthy and lovable no matter what is happening in your outer world. Self esteem and the elephant in the room are closely linked.  Understanding that its your responsibility to fill your own esteem up and not waiting for your partner to do it for you. Two qualities are needed to deal with the elephant in the living room. Working through your conditioning strategies, patterns from the family of origin and understanding the masks that may be worn are also enormously helpful in talking about the elephant in the living room.

In this episode of Empowered Marriage, Helen Harrison talks about the reasons for resentment, the effects they have on a relationship and the steps to overcome the feeling of resentment so you can live in an empowered marriage. When you're feeling hurt about something in your marriage it can build up over time.  It's lots of little resentments that have built up and built up and you feel that you've been wronged in some way. You’re not being heard, validated, perhaps you feel invisible and not important. Feelings under resentment can include anger, sadness, doubt, grief and many more emotions. Getting to a place where you can learn to stop feeling the resentment and instead feel gratitude, peacefulness and compassion is the pathway to an empowered marriage. When you accept and get to that place of gratitude and that place of peacefulness, you are no longer in the victim role and you can remove yourself from the negativity associated with the hurt that you feel inside. The result, when you're not carrying resentment, is you're very present and you feel peacefulness. There are several steps in the process of acceptance and I look forward to sharing them with you in this podcast episode.

Have you ever stopped to notice your thoughts? The quality of your thinking reflects the quality of your life. If you have empowering thoughts, they will create a wonderful nourishing life with high self-esteem, resulting in you feeling fantastic about yourself. Alternatively, if your thoughts are critical of yourself and the people in your life, they will weaken you and in the long-term affect your self-esteem and the quality of your marriage. Questioning and challenging your thinking helps you to understand the beliefs that you currently have about yourself. Once you have uncovered the limiting and sabotaging beliefs, then it’s necessary to find ways to change them. Be patient with yourself because it can take time for a new positive belief to take hold. It does depend on the amount of internal resistance. If there is no resistance you can instil a new belief in one day. You will know when your new belief has taken hold because you will act in accordance with it resulting in a more empowered you and empowered marriage.

There is no room for other characters in your marriage.  Some examples of a character can be a pleaser, martyr, victim or a bragger. When you are acting those out or you are being that character, you cannot be honest about what you want in your marriage or what you think in a conversation or what truly brings you joy. It is impossible for the person that you're with to really know you and love the true authentic you. All these characters avoid loving themselves and you may see yourself in several them or predominantly in one. Looking for love ‘out there’ results in you allowing someone else to define how you think and feel. You don’t have to face and love yourself. Ask yourself how your life would change if you filled up your own love first and you were able to let go of the characters that you may be playing.

We take on characters and behavioural strategies that are designed to get approval and love. For example, a martyr, being a pleaser, being a bragger, being a victim. Numerous characters that we take on, but we're taking them on to seek love and approval out there. Learning how to get your own approval and love from yourself first. It starts with the decision to recognize how you can do that daily, filling your own cup up. To be in an empowered marriage, you do need to learn how to fill your own cup up and break out of the characters.

The sexual energy within yourself when on and open, means you’re alive, you're motivated, you’re creative, you're very much more connected to yourself. What begins to happen when the sexual intimacy is less, is does tend to happen over time, then you start spending less and less time together and you become disconnected. The return of closeness and sexual intimacy can happen - by slowing down, by dedicating the time and the energy that it's going to take to accomplish that. It's about owning what's going on inside of you and being very honest with yourself.  How do you communicate and perhaps make changes in that area so that you can aim for and achieve the empowered marriage that we all deserve and want.

Do you feel responsible for your partners happiness? At all costs are you trying to make your partner happy? How’s that working for you? If you can recognize and trust a higher power and realize that you are not responsible for your partner's happiness you will be calmer and more at ease with the flow of life. Discover what spirituality means to you both and embracing it in your marriage. Mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically you will become richer, resulting in an Empowered Marriage.

Do you value yourself externally through other people's approval especially your partners? You may feel unworthy, inadequate, unimportant and flawed. These feelings may be triggered by something your partner says or does. For an empowered marriage it's vital for both people to have a really strong sense of themselves. It is up to you to actively realise and conquer all that holds you back. Learn the tools to change the picture you have of yourself.

Thinking about making an appointment for a marriage counseling session, but slightly apprehensive as to what actually happens during counselling and what you can expect? Helen Harrison from Power of Change Counselling & Coaching talks you through exactly that, so you can take that first important step to get your marriage back on track. Give your marriage the chance to shine again and become and empowered marriage.

So, your marriage is in trouble and you’re not sure how much longer you can live with the unhappiness and disconnection your feeling. Remember: No Decision is a Decision. Not making a decision, or deciding to remain in the status quo is, in fact, making a decision. So join Helen Harrison from Power of Change Counselling & Coaching as she talks you through the 14 questions to ask yourself so that you can make a truly informed and empowered decision of whether to stay or go.

Do you want to feel more vibrant, centred and whole in your marriage?  Negative energy can become locked in the body and suppressed when you are unable to fully express yourself during emotional times which can create a lot of issues in your marriage. You can feel unmotivated, exhausted, no libido, lazy, sad, stressed, depressed, anxious, lost your mojo, you procrastinate, little focus, no passion, no drive. When you release suppressed energy, you will notice a huge difference as your body goes into a higher vibrational state and becomes more alive and open. The more of your past that is released the more joy, excitement and passion you will have for life in the present moment. Releasing energy takes time, patience and willingness. Learn how to move blocked energy yourself, ground your energy and remove negative energy resulting in you feeling more empowered in yourself which will ripple thru into your marriage.

We change behaviour when we own what we are doing.  Sometimes we become so toxic and are not conscious of the pain we are causing.  Do you criticise? That’s the first damaging behaviour to avoid. In the long-term, this causes extreme damage to self-esteem, causes distancing within a relationship and makes it difficult for a couple to connect on an equal basis. Understanding what it takes to create an Empowered Marriage and consciously stepping into that arena beginning with assertive communication. Think about when you have been the closest. One of the easiest ways to get your relationship back on track is to do the things that you were doing when you were closest, or to do something similar.

On average I would get one couple a week who’ve experienced infidelity. People experience an array of emotions from sadness to anger, shock, disbelief. If your partner cheats, it's hard to understand why they would do that. What you do and what you decide to do afterwards is so important and so, therefore, I've created the 11 tips on how to cope with the shock of infidelity. Take a very, very big deep breath because you will be in shock. Scream, yell and cry.       I think far too often people just don't give themselves the time and the space to simply be. This is such a personal deeply painful experience for both partners and particularly the injured partner.  A time of personal growth can occur and big shifts in behaviour, thinking and patterns.

Couples, they must go through a process of healing, Gottman calls the overall process atonement, attune and attach. The first stage is recognizing the need for that hurt person to hear again and again the offending person is genuinely sorry. It cannot occur if the offending person applies some of the blame on that hurt partner. The offending person must take responsibility for the painful way they have acted. Regardless if it’s a one-night stand, a one-month affair or continuous partners over the last 6 years. What has happened is there's been a massive interruption to trust, a betrayal. And at the same time, the injured person must continually work on forgiveness. Listen to my podcast while I discuss the six different stages that a couple must work through that will help to build back that foundation of trust.

Sometimes we can get caught up with the busyness of life and before you know it the two of you are friends, not intimate partners. The longer you leave it the harder it is to come back from this. It’s not going to get easier so it’s about facing it head-on and looking at what you can do to “bring your sexy back in your marriage”. In this podcast, I discuss "10 Ways to Bring your sexy back" that may help you reignite a passion and an intimacy that you may not have had for a long time. A rock-solid relationship is about having no expectations, not judging and learning about what love truly is, which is unconditional and that is very sexy. That’s loving someone but also letting them go at the same time. Too often we try to control our partner, but unconditional love is continually about loving and letting go, loving and letting go, loving and letting go. It also means accepting and loving the parts in them that we don’t particularly like. This understanding and acceptance will encourage and support bringing your sexy back.

No one can control their emotions. The key to dealing with emotions is living with them, loving them, managing them, feeling them and releasing them. Sometimes people look like they are coping and then suddenly explode over a tiny issue. This is a sure sign of someone trying to control their emotions. The feelings must come out eventually and the chances are that, if you repress them, they will come out at the most inappropriate times and in the most dysfunctional ways. It is most important to remember that emotions are neither good nor bad. They are energy. It is the judgement that we put on them that alters our experience of each feeling. When you allow yourself to feel the emotions, to be there without internally fighting against them, they slowly pass and disappear. To live a happy and harmonious life in your marriage it is vital that you can feel what is happening at that moment. Fully feeling these emotions and being able to express those feelings means that you are present in the here and now.

Victorious is about developing your own strength so that you can be successful, triumphant and the best version of yourself. It means becoming the number one person in your life, building up your self-esteem and recognising how awesome and brilliant you are which ripples through into your marriage. Looking outside of yourself for your partner to do this will just set you up for disappointment, heartache and pain and a victim mentality. Some people carry pain and hurt around without dealing with it. By entertaining thoughts, again and again, they hurt themselves over and over, reliving the pain, hurt and loss and thus becoming a victim. Deciding to be victorious helps you to recover from the pain of your past. Living in the present is the key. Self-empowerment involves developing your strength to enable you to be the driver in your life and marriage rather than a bystander. People become victorious by making a choice about what they want. Sometimes the choice can be that they just want their life to be different, their marriage to be different. The energy that they previously used to stay in the victim phase and nurture the baggage and the pain is instead used to live a more fulfilling, contented marriage. Ultimately that person becomes a participant and that is empowering. Victorious versus victim, it’s a choice.