What a beautiful morning!  There is a bird singing outside my window and the sunrise was breathtaking. While it is not my norm, I am more of a night owl, I woke up early this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I thought I’d blog awhile.  The subject I want to tackle today is of vital importance to not only successful therapy, but is, in my mind at least, vital to a successful life.  And for this amazing thing, there is no substitute and no faking, you have to have the real thing.
So what is this magical stuff?  It is one of the simplest things to understand, yet one of the most difficult things to actually pull off.  It is humility.  Why, you may be asking, is humility of all things the most important thing when it comes to life and relationships?  Humility seems like it would be for cowards and wimps, right?  If I lower myself, I’m beneath everyone else and that’s a bad place to be, right?

I love to find the wisdom in paradoxes.  As is many times the case, particularly in relationships, the way up is down.  The way to a fulfilling, vibrant, and connected relationship is not to be the loudest and most insistent that you get your needs met, or that you know what the problem is with your partner.  Almost everyone tries it, but alas, it doesn’t work.  The real key to having a safe, intimate, and caring relationship is to humble yourself, and ask the question “How can I grow and change so I stop hurting you?”

When I have two people on my couch asking this humble question, amazing and beautiful things happen.  (Even one person will do, to make some positive changes…if your spouse won’t come, don’t let it stop you from making an appointment for yourself.)  It is breath-taking to behold when this kind of humility happens, like watching a lovely flower bloom.  Couples become therapy buddies and work together to build a strong and vibrant relationship.
Do your marriage, your family, and yourself a favor.  Don’t wait until your relationship is hurting so badly that you can’t find your humility beneath the anger and reactivity.  If you’re relationship is suffering from pride, as most are if there is a lot of conflict, come in before it’s too difficult to find the humility to ask the question “How can I grow and change to stop hurting you?”  When both partners approach therapy this way, the prognosis for a full recovery is good.  When partners are pointing their fingers at each other, saying “He/she needs to change this so we can be happy…”, we’ll have some hard work to do to change each partner’s focus before we get down to the business of healing.

I wish you all the best in finding the courage to be humble.  It’s not for wimps.  It does, however, breathe life into a hurting relationship.  Thanks for reading!

Nancy Eisenman, MSW is an individual, marital, and family therapist. She specializes in couples and marriage counseling, individual counseling, group and family counseling. Nancy serves the surrounding areas of Carmel, Westfield, Zionsville, Fishers, and Noblesville. E-Counseling available for residents of Indiana.

©2014, Nancy Eisenman

©2014, Nancy Eisenman