Couples Therapy – Making Sense of the Power Struggle

January 7, 2014

If you’ve ever been in a long-term relationship, you’re probably familiar with the power struggle. It’s the push/pull struggle that couples face, that may leave some long-standing resentment and repressed emotions towards each other. These buried emotions build and eventually blow-up into arguments and disagreements.

Understanding the patterns and power struggles in your relationship will allow you to permit shifts in perspective so that you can move beyond fixed attitudes and beliefs.

Let’s use Chaos Theory to understand the energy that moves and shifts in our intimate relationships:

Chaos Theory explains that a resting state within a relationship is called equilibrium; where energy is in its lowest state of activity and is largely predictable. On the other extreme of the continuum is turbulence, where the patterns within the relationship are unpredictable.

You and your partner may be experiencing a period of turbulence, and you may want to discover what is happening between the two of you. Together, we can determine the repeating patterns within your relationship, find out why you may be experiencing greater turbulence right now, and most importantly, what you can do about it.

Chaos is not disorganization, it is patterned, but unpredictable complexity. The further the distance from equilibrium that a person moves, the more turbulence and complexity encountered.

In chaotic situations, it is common for individuals to withdraw in fixed ways, narrowing their behaviours by drawing their boundaries and walling themselves off from contact. Others in relationship pursue their partners to talk and open up.

Partners may begin to blame each other about the state of their relationship, and round and round you go in an endless series of arguments or the silent treatment. This is a negative cycle.

When we try to control what is happening in our relationships, because we feel anxious, we begin to close ourselves off from our own personal growth and expansion, and the expansion that can happen within our relationship.

In order for us to feel alive, to grow and to experience all of the joy that life has to offer, we are going to to experience turbulence, chaos and uncertainty. If you and your partner are experiencing a negative cycle of turbulence and uncertainty, there is hope for your relationship, along with hope for increased growth for both of you as individuals too.

By opening your hearts’ in the face of uncertainty, you are clearing a path for greater growth and aliveness for you and your relationship in 2014.

Get in touch to learn how this process could work for you.

[email protected] or 647 222-3086

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