Does Couples Counseling Really Work?
Not many people know this but couples counseling as taught in universities isn't couples counseling at all.
It’s therapy for individuals. 80% of all private practice marriage counselors in the U.S. say they conduct marriage therapy, yet only 12% are in a profession that requires them to take EVEN ONE course on dealing with couples, *(Dr. William J. Doherty, Minneapolis MN)
If you’re considering attending couples counseling, take this as your alternative view. If your marriage problems persist, you're far better off with a weekend marriage seminar or a marriage coach than a couples counselor.
Here's why.
1,500,000 marriages end up in divorce every year in the USA, and 2,500,000 couples marry that same year. You might get the idea that we don't know really how to be married. When a couple wakes up to the fact that their marriage is in trouble, they begin to utter what I believe are the two darkest words in the subject of marriage, aside from divorce of course.
Those two words are:
COUPLES COUNSELING.
As in "Maybe we should consider couples counseling."
But Did You Know That Many Marriage
Counselors Are Actually DIVORCED?
How could they possibly help you save YOUR marriage, when they couldn’t save their own marriage!?!
I teach couples how to do what I did and turn their marriages around so their kids can keep their mom and dad in the same house and not have to endure the troubles of a blended family. You can read the full story of how I came to help couples here.
Let me offer you the Wikipedia definition of what they call "Family Therapy". Take a look at the definition and you'll see that even their word choices stand in the way of understanding what it is that couples counselors and therapists actually do.
"Family therapy, also referred to as couple and family therapy and family systems therapy, is a branch of psychotherapy related to relationship counseling that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It tends to view these in terms of the systems of interaction between family members.
It emphasizes family relationships as an important factor in psychological health. As such, family problems have been seen to arise as an emergent property of systemic interactions, rather than to be blamed on individual members. Marriage and Family Therapists (MFTs) are the most specifically trained in this type of psychotherapy."
Did I read that right? "...family problems have been seen to arise as an emergent property of systemic interactions, rather than to be blamed on individual members."
Before I attempt to understand what "emergent property of systemic interactions" is, one thing their definition says they do is not blame a single person.
So my question is, if they don't want to blame a single person, then why do virtually all the couples I've worked with over the past 13 years tell me that...
... "Our Marriage Counselor Took Sides and Made My Spouse Angry."
How could this be? I thought they wanted the fault to be laid on the door step of “emergent property of systemic interactions."
Look, if your marriage is in trouble, couples counseling should be last on your list of marriage saving solutions. Why? Because traditional couples counseling S.U.C.K.S...the life out of you.
S.U.C.K.S is an acronym for what the vast majority of couples counselors have been doing to marriages over the last fifty years.
Couples Counseling
S= Suspends positive solutions from happening
U= Undermines understanding of the person you married
C= Closes off good communication between spouses
K= Knocks one spouse while defending the other
S= Scrambles issues so they appear unsolvable
S: Suspends Positive Solutions
Counselors dangle the possibility of hope, yet suspend that hope in limbo without ever delivering a real solution to your marriage.
U: Undermines Understanding
Counselors throw a wrench into the works of marriage by encouraging you to talk about problems. This makes understanding each other impossible.
C: Closes Good Communication
Because of couples counseling’s continuous focus on problems, the ability to communicate in a balanced way is nonexistent.
K: Knocks One To Support The Other
Once the couples counselor gets between two arguing spouses with no real solution, it is almost inevitable that one spouse will “ganged up on”.
S: Scrambles Issues So They Appear Unsolvable
In the middle of the turmoil between the two of you, your counselor asks questions about your feelings that leave you both more mixed up than when you first started.
Of course there ARE some good couples counselors, but these people are renegades. They refuse to buy into the systems of their profession and as a result they help more couples. But be warned; these "renegade" counselors are rare!
Over years of working with troubled marriages, I've heard only two couples tell me about such renegades. The rest of the marriage counseling lot sings the same old song and that’s why the process has such a low success rate.
And me? I’m not a marriage counselor, but instead, I'm a layman who works with troubled marriages and after years of hearing so many married couples complain about their marriage counseling experiences…I CAME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT I MUST WARN COUPLES of the dismal success rate in couples counseling.
This is the first video in a series of 8 messages and my message is simple: Marriage Counselors need to take a good look at their massive failure rate and realize that they're doing more harm than good.
In My FREE, 8 Part Video Series, I Will Accomplish Three Things.
1) Establish why Couples Counseling S.U.C.KS the life out of your marriage by explaining WHY it has such a low succcess rate so you will think long and hard before believing that your marriage could be improved in that steril and very often tense office setting.
2) I want you to understand how we got into this 50% divorce rate to begin with and why the two of you DO NOT have to become the next statistic.
3) I intend to show you HOW to be happily married (which means doing the exact opposite of what marriage counselors are doing), and learn what a happy marriage is made of complete with the exact steps to get yourselves there.
One thing is for sure - you won't hear what I'm teaching in this video series in a marriage counselor's office setting. I'm going to explain to you exactly HOW and WHERE your marriage went wrong.
The "Marriage Counseling S.U.C.K.S. video series is currently still being developed, but will be ready for public viewing very soon.
If you would like to be notified when I release my first video in this 8-part FREE video series, fill in the form below with your name and email address to be added to my priority email notification list. |
