3 Reasons Why Marriage Therapy Doesn't Work | Growth Marriage

When you’re struggling in life with your mental health, with past trauma, or in your relationships, it’s normal to hear the advice, “You should go talk to someone.”

The implication is that a therapist - any therapist can help.

But searching for a good therapist is a lot like searching for a good doctor. You want to find someone who knows what they’re talking about.

You wouldn’t go see a foot doctor if you had a sore throat. You’d be much better off seeing an ear, nose and throat specialist.

Both are doctors, but only one has the knowledge and skill set to help you!

Therapists are very similar. The very best therapists have a specialty. They’ve devoted the majority of their career helping a specific type of person navigate a specific type of problem.

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[WalkerHoundGal]

You don’t “get over past traumas, ” you heal from them. There is a vast difference. When people understand that trauma is the aftereffects left within us after a moral injury, a traumatizing event, experience, circumstance, condition or relationship, they can heal the emotional, psychological, biological, relational and neurobiological aftereffects (wounds). Trauma is a deeply wounding thing and “getting over it” is a repeated request that flies around trauma survivors so frequently that many of them choose to go non physical from being invalidated and minimized in this way.

[TheRichCouch]

Hi! Thanks for the video! As a Licensed Marriage and Family therapist, I think couples therapy work is an excellent tool to help couples who want to stay on the preventative side. I think a skilled couples therapist can work well with high conflict couples. I do agree that consumers need to interview their therapist to make sure the experience aligns with their needs. A free 15 or 30 minute consultation is the standard protocol to "interview" a therapist and to make sure this is a good fit.

[carrielaw]

We definitely fell into the 6 year seeing a therapist. Another problem I discovered with therapy is if one person in the relationship doesn't have a clue what is wrong. I saw 2 counselors. 1 time for myself to improve myself and the other one a few years down the line for couples counseling. Not one of them picked up that I had my husband on a pedestal and didn't think he had any personal weaknesses. The first counselor thought I had a problem using words and so communication was the problem. I remember thinking that it didn't sound correct, but went with it because I couldn't put my finger on what the problem was. I do wish I had listened to my 2nd counselor and taken the anxiety medication when she told me to. By this time I had OCD repetitive thought patterns. I was on it for about 8 months. It had numbed my feelings enough that the day after I got off of it I could feel who I really was. One of the things I realized for the first time is that my husband had personal weaknesses. I hadn't a clue before. We are still together (we're hanging on), but it wasn't until he asked for a divorce and we quit couples counseling) that I realized other things about him. He had a conversation with someone that led to him finding out he made up stories in his head. Somehow he came to the conclusion that I had told the guy that I thought he was abusing one of our kids and some other things. I called the guy and asked him if he had said that. The guy hadn't said anything at all about any of the things my husband told me. That is when my husband knew he had a problem. Counseling didn't work for us. I didn't fit the norm. How would they guess that I'd probably never gotten over the honeymoon stage? How would they guess I didn't know he had personal weaknesses and had him on a pedestal? I didn't even know. My husband didn't know. I didn't know that it was a problem when he told me what I really thought and felt. I thought he was a genius, and trying to help me (that's where my OCD repetitive thoughts came from...trying to think of the right words and so making sure I actually knew my thoughts and feelings). And he genuinely believed he knew what I thought and felt and my motives. So try making a marriage work when my husband doesn't even know what happened is daunting. He literally has no clue what happened. He still thinks my spirituality went down the tubes because of the anxiety medication even though it was 100% him. I had a friend like him. She told me she would have an assumption and go to her husband to prove if she was right. My husband was 100% sure of his assumption as fact, so when I'd tell him what was wrong he'd take it as nonsense....because that wasn't the problem. So he never heard me when he did this....and he did this for years! And I thought I was the problem because I wasn't "healthy" enough. Anyways...I had no clue. I didn't even know such issues existed. We had/have some weird issues.

[barryhanson]

Thank you this was a very insightful video.