On average, couples and individuals with relationship problems wait six years before seeking professional treatment. However, the longer you put off going to couples counseling, the more your marriage problems will pile up and threaten your relationship.

Marriage counseling Raleigh NC can be a great way to address your roommate marriage issues, such as a sense of disconnection, loss of intimacy, and feelings of isolation and loneliness. If you feel unloved, alone, and unheard in your marriage, it might be time to seek help from a relationship professional.

Marriage counseling Raleigh can help you get back on track so that you can feel secure, loved, seen, and heard by your partner.

At the moment, all marriage counseling sessions in Raleigh are done online, except for EFT intensives, which is a different way to do counseling, and it takes place either at my office in Wake Forest, NC, or at the clients’ homes, depending on what’s most appropriate.

How to Stop Avoiding Your Feelings

An issue that comes up a lot during marriage therapy sessions with couples and individuals is emotional avoidance.

We frequently try to escape from our emotions and avoid them. This attempt to control upsetting emotions often manifests cognitively, as we withdraw into our minds, where we feel safer and more comfortable, and attempt to reason through the situation.

It is a great skill to have to be able to think about a situation critically, analyze things from a rational standpoint, and problem-solve. This strategy works well professionally.

However, it doesn’t work very well in romantic relationships, where it is important to get out of your head, look into your heart, and sit with your partner’s feelings.

It is not feelings in particular that are scary for most people, but being alone with those feelings.

So, if you know that your partner is there for you, your nervous system can relax and feel safe.

Even if they do not immediately know what to do with your feelings or how to mend things, if they know how to sit with you, slow down, and make space around those feelings, you will feel cushioned with love, stability, and connection, feeling secure and safe.

Since negative emotions and distress are an unavoidable part of life, emotional avoidance doesn’t provide long-term relief. On the contrary, suppressing emotions maintains their intensity, exacerbating emotional anguish and suffering.

When you avoid or suppress feelings, you are sending messages to your brain that these feelings are something bad or dangerous, reducing your ability to manage them.

Emotional suppression can lead to problems with your mental health, drug use, and communication, which can make your relationship problems worse.

So, learning to be there for one another can provide a sense of connection, stability, and safety.

How EFT Helps Create Emotional Safety

Emotionally focused couples therapy can help create emotional safety around conversations, so you can learn how to discuss some pretty triggering, difficult, and activating topics in a loving, caring, and secure way.

During EFT-based marriage counseling Raleigh, you will learn how to calm your nervous system even when you feel activated so that you don’t externalize it and lash out at your partner or internalize it and think that something is wrong with you.

Summary

Most of us are afraid of being alone with our feelings, not of the emotions themselves.

So, try not to avoid feelings. EFT-based marriage counseling Raleigh NC can help you learn ways to calm your nervous system and slow down when you feel triggered and activated.

You can learn how to sit with disturbing feelings and create companionship for your partner when they feel upset to create a secure attachment.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions or want to schedule your free 15-minute phone consultation with me, click here or check out the FAQs to learn more.

This is not your typical weekly kind of therapy. I am here to help couples and individuals in relationships do what is proven to work to help them heal their relationships. Through marriage counseling Raleigh NC, marriage retreat in North Carolina, online therapy North Carolina, and individual counseling, there is something for every couple who wants to heal their relationship.

Stop wasting years of your precious life trying to feel happy. Schedule your free 15-minute consultation with me today by clicking here. During the call, you will discover how having a place to heal your relationship with a guide can take you from the hurt to a healthier relationship than the one you grew up with.