Too many of my Houston marriage counseling clients come in complaining that they just can’t see how their marriage will survive because they have too many problems. How could they possibly solve everything?
My response to them: one thing at a time.
Houston Marriage Counseling: Concentrating on Individual Problems Makes Them Easier to Solve
We live in an age where people brag about their multitasking abilities like it’s a badge of honor, but when you’re going through relationship therapy, trying to do too much too fast is a recipe for disaster.
Why? Because complicated emotional problems quickly become overwhelming, and attempting to reach the mountain summit when you’re standing on the ground can make you want to give up. So rather than staring up at the peak, so to speak, I encourage my clients to focus on individual legs of their journey. Or, in terms of their marriage problems, a single specific issue between the two of them. Put everything else aside and deal with that before moving on to the next problem.
This isn’t often easy at first, but once my clients fall into the rhythm of relationship therapy, they’re often surprised by how well it works. It’s because when we look at the big picture, too many things intermingle and make individual problems muddier. Pushing everything else away brings problems – and their solutions – into focus.
Houston Marriage Counseling: Solving Smaller Problems Makes the Whole Thing Less Daunting
Besides making the individual issues easier to solve by letting you focus on them, taking things one problem at a time also makes the big problem of fixing your marriage less imposing. By breaking it down into bite-sized chunks and solving them, you’ll also receive a feeling of accomplishment that will make you want to continue working at it.
Oh, and about multitasking – experts have discovered that what really happens when we multitask is that our brains pay less attention to each task so that we can accomplish multiple things at once. Forget the big picture and figure out each of the pieces of the puzzle in Houston marriage counseling.
