– Embracing Negative Emotions in Marriage Counseling

Last Updated on August 25, 2013 by Chris Roberts

LEARNING HOW NEGATIVE EMOTIONS CAN BE USEFUL THROUGH MARRIAGE COUNSELING

References “What Happy People Do Differently,” in Psychology Today, August 2013, by Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener.

As it turns out, being in touch with and okay with our negative emotions is a crucial aspect to being happy.  Marriage counseling can be an optimal place to learn how to more appropriately allow for our negative emotions to be helpful to our marriage.  Oftentimes, negative emotions either get pushed to the curb or we get stuck in patterns of habitually focusing on them.  In a recent article in Psychology Today, authors Kashdan and Biswas-Diener argue that being able to fluidly move in and out of negative emotions is the most optimal means for having happy, long term relational stability.

As a therapist working in Nashville, Tennessee, I am all too familiar with the southern, social etiquette of being nice and cordial and polite.  These are excellent virtues and serve their place of being hospitable and warm in the south.  However, we oftentimes attempt to incorporate these practices as a catch-all for engaging in all the relationships in our lives.  Especially in the intimate confines of marriage, this can’t be the only means of being with our spouse.  As humans, we are complicated beings with all kinds of crazy longings and desires and cravings.  We are all passionate and irrational and spontaneous, and warmth and nice-ness do not capture the full breadth of who we are.

Marriage counseling helps marriage partners learn to be okay with the swirling and oscillating emotions that come our way everyday.  Kashdan and Biswas-Diener write, “Columbia University psychologist George Bonanno found, for instance, that in the aftermath of 9/11, the most flexible people living in New York City during the attacks—those who were angry at times but could also conceal their emotions when necessary—bounced back more quickly and enjoyed greater psychological and physical health than their less adaptable counterparts….This nimble mental shifting between pleasure and pain, the ability to modify behavior to match a situation’s demands, is known as psychological flexibility.” (p. 57)

Being able to share these fluctuations of emotions with a marriage partner is part of what makes a marriage healthy.  Marriage counseling can help spouses learn to be okay with strange and strong feelings of negative emotions in ways that deteriorate the relationship.  Many people fear having conversations about these negative emotions will only heighten and intensify the feelings.  This occasionally is true, but in the context of having a specific conversation to express the internal discomfort of one partner, there is an automatic containment aspect that lends itself towards connection and intimacy with the other.  As each marriage partner begins to trust the other spouse to hold their own during these negative feelings, both become stronger and more resilient during the process.

Marriage counseling also helps each partner to realize that negative emotional circumstances are happening throughout every day, whether they are talking about them or not.  Most people usually fall into the pattern of either obessesing over the negative emotions, or pretending they don’t exist.  In either case, they are not exercising the psychological flexibility which the authors describe above.  The authors state that psychological flexibility is the key to psychological and physical health.  Whenever we notice we are stuck in habitual patterns concerning certain topics, it should alert us that we are not operating as optimally as we can.  This is never more true in relationships, where stuck patterns lead to boredom and acting out.

Rather than escaping negative emotions, marriage counseling can help us to embrace them in a manner that does not make us afraid of them.  In fact, staying with our negative emotions and sharing them in an appropriate conversation with our marriage partner can be profoundly connective and restorative.

Marriage counseling helps us keep in mind that a marriage is always a work in progress.  It’s easy to forget this in our hectic, everyday lives.  Relating to negative emotions in a new way can be the spark your marriage needs to help you both feel more alive and connected.

If you are looking for a marriage counselor in Nashville, TN, or want to know more about how marriage counseling works, please feel free to give us a call at (615) 800-9260 and discuss more if we could be a fit for you and your marriage.