Marriage counseling is more than just helping couples to avoid the possibility of divorce. Marriage counseling is also designed to help with understanding and managing attitude, moods and behaviors. The first step to managing attitude, moods and behaviors is to openly acknowledge these feelings and emotion. A marriage counselor will encourage couples to be open with their mood in the marriage counseling session in order to discover the root cause of any behavioral conflict.
Moods, attitude and behaviors
Moods, attitudes and behaviors that result in strong emotional sensations also almost always have physical repercussions. Some examples of these include:
- In marriage counseling, anger is often recognised as a mechanism for social inhibitor, which prevents a person from recognising potential physical and emotional dangers. A more long-term consequence of anger is high blood pressure and potentially heart attack.
- Worry and nervousness can be crippling, both physically and emotionally, which can prevent a person from taking the necessary action to avoid danger. In addition to which, people suffering from chronic anxiety have been shown to exhibit heart palpitations, muscle weakness and tension, fatigue, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, stomach aches, or headaches.
- Sadness or melancholy could potentially be dangerous as in extreme circumstances it could lead to nervous break down or suicide. Melancholy can also lead to obesity or anorexia as people's eating pattern is often effected by depression, people can either completely loose their appetite or start to comfort eat.
- All negative moods and emotions will inevitably affect the immunity system.
It would not be realistic to expect a person not to ever feel any strong negative emotions,
but it is possible to choose how long to experience it for. In order to come to terms with and recover from
a negative emotion it is necessary to first recognise its existence. The next stage is called Positive Empowerment, where a person believes they have the power to over come and change a negative emotion.
Positive Empowerment over negative emotions is achieved by
firstly recognising the fact that emotions are something that is relative and we choose the extent to which we experience it.
Therefore, a person can choose not to become slave to negative emotions at will.
Once the negative emotion is experienced, it is important to make a conscious decision not to dwell on it.
Research carried out by the Duke University, North
Carolina (USA), found that people who suffer from extreme mood
swings will benefit from writing down their feelings as they
happen, as it was shown to be an effective way of developing self
awareness. Once they got their feelings down on paper, they
were able to then move on to the next stage of Positive Empowerment.
Once a negative emotion is experienced, the natural reaction would be to dwell on and indulge these negative feelings. However, it is vital to resist this temptation as it serves to feed and escalate these emotions further. For example, if a person is feeling melancholy they should resist the desire to listen to sad songs and make a conscious effort to will themselves to listen to upbeat music. Another example is anger, where the natural reaction for a person feeling angry is to shout and scream, but this will only serve to prolong the rage, therefore it is highly advisable to indulge in relaxing activities or thoughts that will eventually subdue the rage. As a whole, a person should find a course of action that forces the body to pitch at the opposite level of what is being experienced.
Physical posture and facial expressions have also been shown to directly effect the way we experience emotions.
Dr. Israel Waynbaum, a French physiologist, has found that facial expressions
trigger specific brain neurotransmitters, which have direct effect
on the person's mood. Even a fake smile produces hormones that
stabilize your blood pressure, improve respiration and reduce
pain.
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