It’s been said that marriage counseling is either the first or the last step toward divorce. In conventional marriage counseling the counselor acts as an umpire.  Instead of fighting in private, they now have an audience! Perhaps this is good training for a reality television show!  Somethings have been revealed to me in counseling and in life.  One – you cannot change anyone else. Period. You may try love. You may try withdrawing love and even withdrawing sex, but you cannot manipulate or bring about change in anyone but yourself.  Two – you can never win an argument with someone you love or care about. You can hurt them.  You can point out how they are wrong. You can even make your point… but you will never win an argument. Think about this.

When we were two years old we went into “the terrible twos.” That was when we developed an agenda. It never coincided with anyone else’s,  but we tried. We felt that if we could only get our way in the world… we would be happy. How we tried. We manipulated. Some times with temper. Sometimes with anger. Sometimes we withdrew our love or warmth.  We learned how to show “conditional love. “If you give me my way, I will love you or be nice to you.” Our behavior was based on the concept of conditional love. Conditional love became one of our main tools in the continuing battle for what we believed to be our right… happiness. We felt that if things only went our way, we would be happy. When things did go our way, we weren’t happy. We’d moved on to something else that if we got our way in… we would then be happy.

It didn’t work then, and it hasn’t worked yet. It never will. Unfortunately, many of the people who are married – shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place.  Before they got married they knew that there were deficiencies in the other person that weren’t acceptable. But… they really liked or though they liked a lot of qualities in the other person, and  knew that if they could only bring about the changes in the other person that they desired, everything would be okay. We still hadn’t learned the concept of unconditional love. If playing nice didn’t work, we withheld nice… just like when we were a child. If love didn’t work, we withheld love… just like when we were a child. And then as an adult we withheld intimacy. We actually inter spaced that with threatening divorce. Not much different from saying “I hate you” to your parents or grand parents or to your friends.

We grew into adulthood with the concept in our head that if we got our way, we’d be happy. And we strove to get our way then and now, regardless of the consequences to anyone else.

How do we then change our mate? You’re not going to like this but we first start making changes in ourselves. One immediately quits condemning, complaining and criticizing. Furthermore, we discontinue threatening divorce. Many couples begin this threat soon after they get married. At that point they really aren’t contemplating it, but it is a tool designed to hurt. And it did and it does. Is there a way to salvage our relationships in a win win scenario. Actually there is.

A film was released called “Fireproof”. It showed the deterioration of a young couple’s relationship and marriage. The film was on target. If getting our way is the only way that we can be happy… and if unconditional love instead of conditional love is a concept that we won’t buy into, there isn’t much that can be done.

Remember when you were courting each other. You were considerate. You respected each other’s desires and opinions. You were thoughtful. You were caring. You always put your best foot forward. But when you were sure that you had captured the other person – you began to take them for granted. This could well have happened before you got married. But, there was a certain momentum going and anyway it was too late to stop things as the invitations had gone out.

Your first and foremost objective  should not be to cut and run. If you want to fix your marriage, it is counter productive to spend great amounts of my time and your energy attempting to prove just how wrong, how unjust, and how unfair your mate is. Once both of you have stated your case, and you’ll have plenty of time to do so, what is needed is to move on and fix things. I am not going to sit there each session and be a referee. What is the point in that? Once again – the relationship needs fixed… not rehashed. In all but a very very few cases, not only will the relationship be saved… but it will be much much better than it ever was before. I’ve never seen a troubled relationship where it was all one persons fault. What if your focus was to change deficits in you and let your partner change their own deficits?  We all have them. Wouldn’t it change the dynamics of the healing process? It was stated earlier in this article that you cannot change the other person. You really can’t.  There are many many things that can be done to save most marriages… as long as the parties do not let false pride get in the way and they both give it a 110% effort.  Once again, fixing blame is not as rewarding as fixing the relationship!

If you want to save your relationship call Bob Crow at 404.277.1827 for a complimentary appointment.

You had a great week going diet wise.

You ate right Monday.

You ate correctly Tuesday.

The same on Wednesday.

Ditto Thursday.

No slip ups on Friday. Wow!

Saturday morning and you are still on track.

However. You went grocery shopping after breakfast on Saturday and even though you promised yourself that you wouldn’t, you did have a sample at the grocery store. Well, “one sample can’t hurt, besides it wasn’t that many calories.” But, you circle back and have another. When the sample lady wasn’t looking you grabbed another. The guilt is starting to set in. Now you go past the sausage samples and grab a couple. It is meat. Right? Next come the pizza samples and you grab two this time. Telling the lady that you are taking one for your husband or wife. You eat them both. “I am not going to eat anything else.” But… the lobster dip with crackers is too hard to resist. So are the little cookie samples. Likewise the pieces of truffles.

You stand in the checkout line and mentally add up the calorie and carbohydrate damage. You are sick. You are angry at yourself. You feel guilty. You’ve really ruined your diet. You’ve ruined a whole weeks worth of diet. You feel depressed and you are upset with yourself. What you really want to do is make yourself feel better. You are going past the snack bar and say the words of defeat and self sabotage. “What’s the use? I’ve totally ruined the day diet wise. I’ll get a couple of pieces of pizza at the snack shop. And I’ll really give it 100% tomorrow.” “That will make me feel better.” You do. It does. It makes you feel better… for two or three minutes.

Sound familiar? Isolated incident? Or is this part of a pattern that you have followed for years. Why can’t you lose weight?

The answer is simple. You are trying to lose weight with the willpower and discipline of your conscious mind. That simply can’t be done. Try and think of someone you know that has lost weight and kept it off for a couple of years. Let me repeat. One cannot lose weight and keep it off by using the discipline and willpower of the conscious mind. It doesn’t matter what diet you use, if you are trying to lose weight in the conscious mind, with only willpower and discipline going for you, it will not work.

What is the solution? Hypnosis. You need to change your behavior, and you cannot make behavioral change in the conscious mind. Behavioral change can only be made in the subconscious mind. The subconscious is where you find your behavior, your personality, your memory banks, your moods and your habits. It’s where your cognitive maps are located. The cognitive maps guide us through our automated behavior. It’s where our inclinations to act come from.

No one overeats because of  nutritional concerns. Everyone who over eats, does so for emotional reasons. They are upset. They are sad. They are angry. They are worried. They feel lonely. They want to feel better. Wouldn’t it be better to find out why you are overeating and fix yourself? Make the correction? Many confuse eating healthy with losing weight. You can put on fat by eating healthy too.

Are you serious about losing weight? If you are committed to losing your weight and keep it off for the rest of your life call me. Most, if not all of my Atlanta, Georgia weight loss practice, are men and women that have repeatedly attempted to lose weight their entire life. Once your subconscious mind is on your side, and your inclinations change, you will be thrilled with your permanent weight loss. I offer a complimentary  consultation to see if hypnosis will work for you! Call Bob Crow at 404.277.1827 to lose your weight and keep it off.