Couples Relationship Healing (Part 1): When Confusion & Crisis Are Partners in Breakthrough

“There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” – Leonard Cohen

[This is part 1 of a 3-part article]

I work with couples in crisis – loss of connection, loss of trust, betrayal, affairs, addictions, loss of communication. I also work with individuals seeking inner peace, self-love, and a renewed hope in life. This is not a career I’d intended! …But the nature of my soul – and life’s own unfolding experiences – led me to this, the expression of my true gift. What a blessing.

And what a miracle too: to discover the awakening art of breakthrough into one’s creative and authentic being …and then to be given the gift of showing others their own way to this spiritual awakening and artistry of being!

Couples in Crisis Or Healing Breakthrough?

So when a woman or man reaches out to me from a state of utter despair, and wondering if there is any one last hope for their frayed marriage, I am present to an odd mixture of feelings:

I feel sadness that we live in a culture that fails to teach us about the real nature of love; inner self-reflection; and the natural self-healing that arises through honest “eyes wide open” dialogue.

But I also feel a great sense of anticipation: a titillating inner prayer that the call and the crisis faced by this couple may be their breakthrough into what I call “the quantum leap” from common secular marriage and into the inner sacred marriage of true intimacy that awaits all who make this awakening passage.

I realize that most people do not work with people in crisis. Nor do most of us share our deepest darkest secret shames or fears – even with our closest friends and mates. Most of us then do not have the experience to know this one important first breakthrough social realization: You are not alone in your hidden most self-shaming feelings or sense of inadequacy.

What we each have in common in our psyche when we “go under the hood” of our projected self-protection identities, is one or more of these hidden fears:

“I’m afraid of not being good enough”
“I am secretly afraid that if I looked too deeply inside there wouldn’t be anything there”
“I’m stuck and afraid of losing control”
“My mind never stops. I have no place of peace of mind”
“I’m afraid to trust my heart”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore”
“Others around me seem to have it all together and that makes me feel ashamed”

If those feelings aren’t sad in and of themselves, what truly is sad is that people hide in shame of — and victim to — these self-doubt feelings buzzing around in their heads, all the while not realizing that every person they meet has some or all of these negative self-talk doubts running in their background psyche as well. And the most sad? We are largely unconscious to these negative “not good enough” self-thoughts that run behind the scenes of our life-stories where they impact our relationships, effect our daily decisions, and influence our behaviors and beliefs.

The next post in this 3-part series will go more deeply into the why, how, and the surprising good and bad of our self-protecting strategies. This second post will hopefully give you the clarity of meeting life challenges and relationship crisis from a much clearer and compassionate position – from a perceptual understanding that is key to the self-freeing breakthrough inherent within times of confusion and these uncomfortable disruptions of our status quo. Please stay tuned and enter the self-reflection.

Link to POST #2 | Link to POST #3

relationship marriage difficulties