- How do you contain and handle the joy and sorrow in the relationship?
- How is grief therapy and grief management part of couples therapy?
- How can you become better at handling emotions in a relationship?
Relationships, joy and sorrow
Grief as well as joy are central and important emotions in the relationship. They are pervasive and mutually dependent. Sorrow and joy are like night and day. There would be no day without there also being night. In this way, there also needs to be room for sadness so that there can be room for joy in the relationship. Love, relationships and family are a constant source of joy and sorrow. We cannot avoid attaching ourselves to something or someone, without also at some point feeling failure or loss. This is the explanation for the fact that grief is relational.
Joy and sorrow are relational
Grief is a natural part of the relationship, life and death incl. that of meeting and parting. Everything has a beginning, middle and an end. When things are going well in the relationship we are happy and when things are going badly in the relationship we are sad. When we get what we want, our ego becomes happy. And when our ego doesn’t get what it demands or gets something it doesn’t want, it gets frustrated. It can be difficult to be aware of, accommodate, handle and navigate in. At the same time very confusing. Because what is me and what is my ego. What is the difference between me and my ego’s desires and feelings? What am I really feeling? What do my feelings mean? So what is it that I want? How do I create it in respect for the partner and myself? It is like the essence of the self-regulation we learn through psychotherapy and an important element of the attachment skills we learn in couple therapy.
Emotions and self-regulation in the relationship
Many couples also seek mindful and mentalizing couple therapy or imago therapy for personal development, which also lies in becoming better at understanding each other, distinguishing between each other’s feelings, setting boundaries, becoming better at communicating and regulating individual wishes in the twoness and to become better at solving problems and conflicts in the relationship.
When we enter into a close, loving and intimate relationship such as a couple, our nervous system, energy and mood cannot avoid also influencing the partner. Then it becomes difficult to notice whether it is, for example, me or the partner who is happy, angry, afraid or sad. Other times, the emotions mix with each other. Many couples thus complain in couples therapy that they each have no space for their feelings. That, for example, there is no room to be angry, afraid or sad. Or that one cannot be happy when the other is sad. It is especially a challenge in times of crisis, loss, death and grief.
Grief, relationships and couples therapy
The relative rarely knows what is right to do and can find it difficult to be happy sometimes when the partner is grieving. Conversely, the grieving person may find it difficult to find space for their grief, without feeling that it goes beyond the partner. Since grief is a natural element in the relationship and family, grief therapy and grief treatment are also a natural element of family and couple therapy. Unfortunately, grief is often a taboo or something that most people seek to suppress and get away from. But it doesn’t help, on the contrary. It can prolong, postpone, delay or complicate the grief. As a grief therapist and couple therapist at Parterapi-parterapeut.dk in Copenhagen, I thus meet many couples where, after many years, both partners and the relationship still suffer due to untreated grief or incompletely treated grief, which is due to one of them having, for example, lost a parent or grandparents. But the problem of grief in the relationship can also be caused by childlessness, abortion and stillbirth or other grief in connection with, for example, failure, violations and crises such as infidelity.
Mixed and conflicting feelings in the relationship and couple therapy
The consequences of joy and sorrow are anxiety and anger. It can be, for example, the fear of losing (separation anxiety) and the fear of not succeeding and being good enough (self-confidence / self-esteem) or the fear of being let down, violated and swallowed. On the other side of grief, there is anger. Grief and sadness is not a popular and naturally accepted feeling. Grief can feel deep, bottomless, endless, consuming and shameful. In this way, grief can be both difficult for the bereaved and for the relatives to contain.
Therefore, many people get angry instead of bored. It is easier to contain the anger and the anger can seem more action-oriented. You can also become angry at the person who failed, rejected or left you. Others seek couples therapy because of anger, which in reality is rooted in not being able to talk about the grief in the relationship and the family. It can be sad in itself when communication fails at the same time as not feeling seen, heard and acknowledged.
Actually, we are probably both angry and sad – in the way that the emotions are followed. You can, for example, be angry about a rejection or that a girlfriend breaks up, at the same time as being sad about the loss itself. As something special, in reality you can also be relieved or happy. In other words, you are in some way at the same time relieved or happy to get out of the relationship, if it was, for example, challenging and full of problems. Joy, sadness, anger and anxiety are thus often mixed and opposing emotions that can be difficult to understand, distinguish, accommodate and handle in the relationship, marriage and family.
Couples therapy, grief therapy and different forms of grief
In summary, grief can be simple as well as – complicated grief, delayed grief / postponed grief, avoided grief, chronic grief or a form of crisis and trauma. Grief is not always a crisis in itself, but there is always grief in a crisis. Within the various forms of grief, there can be, for example, grief of rejection, grief of a lover, grief of failure, grief of violation, grief over the loss of an object and grief in connection with illness, loss of working ability, disability, crisis and death. In addition, grief arises from sexological problems and infidelity. It can also be a form of underlying pervasive or chronic grief, which originates, for example, from childhood and adolescence. It can be grief after neglect, failure, neglect, violations, abuse, placement and grief in connection with sick or absent parents due to alcohol problems, work addiction and travel activity or physical as mental illness. What you also know about inner-child problems, antenna children and adult-child-of-alcoholics.
Unprocessed grief, incompletely processed grief and complex grief
It can also be untreated grief or unfinished grief in connection with the death of one or both parents early in childhood or adolescence. Even at a late age, we are greatly affected when a parent or grandparent dies. It can be difficult to handle in the relationship and the family. Especially in a busy everyday life with house, children, work and projects. As a grief therapist and couple therapist, I therefore often experience in grief therapy and couple therapy that one party is left with a violent and untreated or suppressed grief that affects both the psyche, the relationship and the family. Grief is therefore always relational. And grief is about a loss and a break with something we have attached to and care about. Grief therapy and grief management are therefore a natural element in family and couple therapy.
Parterapi-parterapeut.dk in Copenhagen has many years of experience in helping individuals, couples and families to deal with life, emotional life, love, sexuality, the relationship and the family by means of grief therapy, grief therapy, couple therapy, imago therapy and family therapy.
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