One Marriage Under God: Faith-Based Marriage Counseling

Hello Shiloh, While I was glancing through the Marriage and family counseling association website, I came across the protection of electronic client information. It discusses how the electronic methods for communication, recordkeeping, est must be protected (American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, 2012). It awesome to know benefitted you in

I think that the most challenging part of treating the couple would be for the husband to ask for forgiveness. As mentioned in the previous discussion question, he has deep feelings of “emptiness” in the current state of his relationship. To ask for forgiveness, he would have to first relief the core issue of needing something more from the relationship or just suppress his desire for more. He wants to be understood and his desire for more is so overwhelming that it is driving him to situations such as the one described above with his female coworker. Before any resolution takes place, I think both of these individuals need to work on the underlying issues that are driving this dynamic. To ask for forgiveness or to forgive is only a bandage to cover a deep rooted issues within the system if done in a superficial way.

No human deserves to be unhappy but a study found that they won’t be unhappy forever if they stay in that marriage. “A survey found that 86% of people who were unhappily married in the late 1980s, and stayed with the marriage, were happier when interviewed five years later (Why). Actually, 60% of them rated their marriage to be either “very happy” or “quite happy” (Why). It makes you wonder if the couple in the story could’ve sucked it up and stayed together it could’ve resulted in happiness for the couple and less emotional toll for their daughter.

It is known for couples to reach out to therapy for numerous of reasons. One of the most major issues that takes place in marriages is infidelity. According to Olmstread, Blick, and Mills, “extramarital affairs is ranked as the third most difficult therapeutic problem to treat as having a damaging impact on a relationship” (Olmeastread, Brick, & Mills, 2009). When treating infidelity, therapists are required to be prepared in successfully treating couples with infidelity issues. According to research, therapists presents therapeutic treatment for infidelity as a two chronological groupings known as helping the couples to face the impact of infidelity and working toward forgiveness (Olmestread, Blick, and Mills,

This writer would utilize psychosocial assessments strategies that consist of active listening, observing, patience, and making suggestions (Martin, 2014). This writer must keep in mind that perhaps Ricky may not be ready to fully disclose all his information in the first session and it might very well take several sessions (Martin, 2014). This writer would ask, whether if Ricky would be interested in seeking the help of a Marriage and Family Therapist. An MFT would assist Ricky and his wife work on addressing issues from their own points of views in order to cohesively work on these issues. Second, this writer would welcome individual counseling or therapy. The types of therapy that this writer would recommend would for sure be CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) to address irrational beliefs (cheating, not being good enough, insecurities), negative interpretations (his wife loving their son more than him), or thinking distortions (not able to take constructive criticism from his employer, thus he thought that his boss was humiliating him) that are sabotaging the marriage and Ricky’s life (McCarthy & Archer, 2013). Reality therapy would also be beneficial to address basic needs that Ricky has not met (McCarthy & Archer

In contrast to Crabb, Worthington’s thesis for his guide is: “Hope-focused marriage counseling is a comprehensive and tightly organized theory of Christian marriage counseling based on promoting hope and teaching couples a strategy to build love, faith and work into their relationship.” Worthington’s approach and foundation for marital counseling is two-fold: research based and scripture based. The first part of his approach is evidence-based. He first studied trends and research in the field of marriage and family counseling, focusing on integrative behavioral couple’s therapy, cognitive-behavioral couples therapy, emotion-focused couples therapy, and insight oriented couples therapy. In this research, he found that it is important to change

Adaptation Christian therapists doing family therapy have never had a resource to help them navigate the various family therapy theories from a Christian perspective--until now. In this book Mark A. Yarhouse and James N. Sells survey the major approaches to family therapy and treat, within a Christian framework, significant psychotherapeutic issues. The wide array of issues covered includes crisis and trauma, marital conflict, separation, divorce and blended families, individual psychopathology, substance abuse and addictions,mgender, culture, economic class and race,,sexual identity

Infidelity is one of the most challenging issues that come up in marital therapy for the simple fact that it usually layers a major issue (the infidelity) over other major issues (finances, intimacy, communication) and each layer involves a unique and, at times, competing set of interventions. The latter grouping

Abstract Marriage is hard work and sometimes can become very challenging based on the situations and circumstances that the couple is facing. You make ask yourself “how will the couple endure these challenges such as infidelity, financial hardship, or romantic woes”? Couples counseling has increased over time despite the stigma that comes along with seeing a “therapist”. Studies show that couples tend to wait until it’s too late to seek couples counseling because breaking up is a challenge but staying together and fighting for a marriage is a bigger challenge. Seeking and utilizing couples counseling before divorce becomes an option allows the couple to effectively restore a broken relationship. This paper will discuss the couple’s marriage,

It is imperative to acknowledge the seriousness on extramarital affairs because of the detrimental effects they can have on both the guilty and injured individuals. Marriage is a life-long commitment between two individuals and the incident of infidelity compromises the marriage relationship and results in a very difficult road back to normalcy. Couples therapy has a long, verifiable record for successfully treating marital discord and P. Dews (personal communication, March 26, 2016) believes that couples seriously considering reconciliation should work through their situation under the guidance of an experienced counsellor. Although there are different approaches to the successful treatment of extramarital marital affairs, the most successful methods including relapse prevention planning and forgiveness (Cordova, 2006, p. 193).

Their case is complicated and needs a long-term therapy. It is better to use Emotion-Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT-C) which “treated differentially depending on which emotion is expressed and how it functions for both the individual and the couple.” Firstly interviewing both of them separately to get more information about what happened in the past thirty years, and then according to the information they provided to design relative interventions for both of them together. For Owen, the individual system which focuses on biological and psychological aspects of the biopsychosocial systems model works because his behaviors started the long journey of marital drama. It is better to understand their circumstances at that time. Owen’s behavior did not match his image. What were the factors (relationship with Shirley, parents or other family members, work or colleagues, etc.) that cause his dishonest? How did he explain and deal with Shirley when she found out the affairs? Did he have feelings to those women he had sex with? What was his attitude to his behavior? Did he think of divorce since he was not a Christian at the time and did not care about religious commitment? It is also important to ask him how did he convert to Christianity 12 years later after the affairs, as well as his feelings of giving up career firstly in China, and then in Canada. Did he sacrifice his careers out of love or guilty?

A few short term adjustments are children often feel guilty or responsible for the divorce, they tend to become uncooperative by lashing out at one or both parents and others are them, often they are emotionally needy out of fear that they will be abandoned, depression can occur, feelings of resentment toward one or both parents for deciding to split up, and children often lose concentrate which typically always affects their school work and academic performance. Also, they have this intense feeling of loss and in some cases they maybe begin to wet the bed (younger children ages 0-7). Most of these short-term effects can be corrected behavior by parents supporting one another and helping to create a healthy environment for their child to express

Watching parents take a home from a traditional family lifestyle to a "broken" home by getting a divorce is very devastating to a child's mental well-being. As Judith Seltzer notes, "Recent reviews summarize evidence that children are emotionally distressed

. The couple first of all started a marriage with no family support what so ever. This is where the toughest adjustment comes, and the cultural differences the couple had to deal with. The family refuses to socialize with them. The couple was not prepared and never

When couples realize their relationship is starting to fail, they will try different things such as marriage counseling. That is when the couple will sit down with a therapist and they will try to work their problems out. Sometimes therapy can help the couples work their issues out and get to the root of their problems. Another solution is a vacation or a second honeymoon where they can reconcile or rekindle the relationship that they use to have. Or even as far as moving away to get a new start on life, to try to get away from the old way of how things use to be and try to start a new life together again.