Are you walking on egg shells around your spouse?
Are you wondering if they will ever stop yelling?
Do you deeply want your marriage to work, but it just feels so intense and emotional right now?
If you are in a high conflict couple, you may feel tired, hopeless, exhausted, frustrated of fighting, and wanting peace. However, every time you try to share how you’re feeling, it just turns into a huge emotional, blowup. Thinking back on the past, you remember many instances where there was fear, anger, yelling, fighting, and name-calling. At times, you were left numb and confused.
Other times, you felt tearful, were crying, and deeply wanted intimate connection. The cycle of highs and lows doesn’t have to be this way. If you experience high conflict fights in your marriage, Wisdom Within Counseling specializes here.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we offer the specialty of high conflict couples therapy.
If you are in a high conflict relationship, there is often anger in many conversations. You might go from 0 to 100 in a split second. Your partner might also get really angry, really quickly.
As high conflict couples therapy specialists, we know both people are so deeply passionate about their viewpoints and opinions that they get very angry. However, high conflict couples get into issues because they both butt heads and even be yelling at each other. Unfortunately, yelling is not a positive form of communication and often creates more negativity.
What causes a couple to develop into a high conflict couple?
If you have nightmares, low self-esteem, trouble sleeping, trouble concentrating, and mood swings, you may have traumatic experiences in your past. Also, people with PTSD have panic attacks, anxiety attacks, flashbacks to the past, and low self-worth. People with PTSD are quick to jump down someone’s throat or bite their head off, in a conversation. Other symptoms of trauma include brain fog, tiredness, fatigue, and exhaustion.
Trauma and loss contribute to high conflict fights
Plus, people with trauma histories who have experienced a sudden death or loss, are constantly more on edge. And, when two people in a marriage have past experiences of loss and sadness, there is a risk for them to be a high conflict couple.
To begin, click the button below for your phone consult to work with a high conflict couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
High conflict couples have often had a past series of events that are traumatic.
The current conflict becomes so intensified because there are a variety of past unmet needs. Sometimes, one or both partners fixated on how badly they felt or why their partner isn’t meeting their need in that exact moment. Unfortunately, these obsessive thoughts intensify the conflict and our trauma symptom.
To note, there are probably a mixture of unmet needs within your current romantic relationship as well as within your childhood causing pain.
Thinking about your relationship, you might go back even three or four years into the past when thinking about events. To add, think about when you felt unloved, hurt, used, or disrespected. Additionally, any painful, hurtful, saddening, heartbreaking life experience that you have can be talked about in the safety of couples counseling.
Did you know that these moments play roll into your conflicts today?
Also, for high conflict couples, we look at processing these intense events and traumatic experiences. High conflict couples are often trying to force their romantic partner to nurture in caretaking for them when their partner is too triggered or activated themselves. So when you are needing comfort, your partner might be triggered with their own PTSD reaction. But, in the moment of a high conflict fight, this comes off as abandonment and rejection, which is very painful. High conflict couples therapy specialists teach positive coping skills for lifelong success. As well, any unmet needs such as fear a rejection can leave a lasting impact and even be considered another traumatic experience. Therefore, you may also have complex PTSD. In marital counseling, you and your partner can learn to slow down.
How does high conflict couples therapy help with slowing down?
Slowing down is one of the most important skills high conflict couples can learn. Similarly, slowing down helps your spouse hear you better. Typically, high conflict couples tend to get triggered emotionally very quickly. And, they do not recognize they are getting so triggered. High conflict couples start thinking negatively about everything very quickly. Instead, marriage counseling can support reducing conflict in sharing core emotions. A lot of times, high conflict couples just want to fix a problem. Those people are trying to explain their opinion is right. Or, one person is trying to convince their partner to come over to their side and that their opinion is more valid.
Wisdom Within Counseling specializes with lonely, hurt couples who want a safe place to gently nurture each other and rebuild their marriage.
Essentially, these are negative communication strategies that steal intimacy, playfulness, joy, or marital satisfaction. In therapy, you can learn positive communication strategies to truly share how you are feeling and take ownership of your emotions. When you take ownership of your emotions, your partner can hear you better and they becomes less defensive. In therapy, you will learn to share how you are feeling. Then, you can have a chance to try to understand what your partner is feeling before jumping to fixing.
The team of marital and family therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling deeply enjoy helping distant, fighting couples share their true emotions and what’s going on inside.
Our team of therapist specialize in helping couples who get stuck fighting bridge to the positive and create meaningful connection.
What are family and life stressors that add to the challenges high conflict couples face?
For high conflict couples, there are often complex stressors such lack of family support.
As well, there may be tension with extended family, or even stressors like moving or job changes. In addition, cultural stressors can be a factor. If you or your spouse are from two different religions or cultures, this can make a conflict fighting more common.
Often, couples from two different religions make different meanings of experiences.
And, when there is a negative thinking, this creates a high conflict fight. As well, stressors like the holidays, and having to juggle work and parenting, or even having a loved one who is sick can be an added stressor to your marriage. When these stressors in life are not managed properly, couples get into more high conflict fights. Covid and the pandemic may be an impact on your marriage. Any type of social isolation can lead to lack of self-care anti-conflict fighting. Also, daily stressors such as being late for work, skipping lunch or having too much caffeine increase high conflict fights.
To begin, click the button below for your phone consult to work with a high conflict couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
The team and Wisdom Within Counseling focuses on positive lifestyle changes and holistic coping strategies for a better marriage.
We talk about sleep routines, exercise, yoga, food, and your relationship with your mind, body, and spirit. This is the root of your marriage.
The team of marital and family therapist at Wisdom Within counseling offer a holistic approach. Our team helps you make positive lifestyle changes related to sleep, exercise, nutrition, and friendships. Lastly, we look at you as a whole person and help you feel centered in body, mind, and spirit. From there, you can build calm connection with your partner and a meaningful, loving, nurturing marriage.
What is one thing I can do today to help remedy high conflict fights in my marriage before I get to therapy?
On that note, any nervous system over arousal can lead to exhaustion, burnout, and a high conflict fight. Start to understand things that activate your sympathetic nervous system. Then, focus on the things that relax your parasympathetic nervous system. Make it a habit to practice more of those relaxation activities. Also, make a point to have three nourishing meals and a few snacks every single day.
Food and mood play a huge role in how centered you feel.
Reducing and eliminating caffeine can help bring calmness and ease into your marriage
So, if you are looking to reduce high conflict fights, reduce and eliminate caffeine.
Caffeine over stimulates your adrenal glands and can put you on edge more quickly. So, you may notice that by eliminating caffeine, after a week or two, your fights and conflicts are mildly less severe. A professional marriage therapist will still need to be on board to help you learn the communication skills that neither of you have right now. Commonly, communication tools are not taught in school.
High conflict couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling teach calm communication skills for connection.
It is important to note that a lot of adults still don’t have communication skills. You are not alone if you are learning these important communication skills for the first time to better your marriage. No matter your age, it is well worth it to learn how to communicate in a calm way and speak positively to others about how you feel. Frequently, we do not learn communication skills until being married.
Marriage therapists notice patterns in the way couples interact and fight.
Sometimes, you might notice a pattern around your high conflict flights. Perhaps you and your partner fight every time you drive home from your parents house. Essentially, your high conflict marital counseling specialist can help understand and uncover this pattern. Maybe, you get into fights when you are hungry after a long day of work.
The holistic therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling help couples develop a more positive and holistic lifestyle.
You and your therapist can talk about changes to exercise, sleep, and nutrition, that support better self-care. When both people have balanced and grounded self-care practices, the relationship goes more smoothly.
Wisdom Within Counseling offers appointments high conflict couples therapy specialists over video and in person.
How is Wisdom Within Counseling unique and different when it comes to the specialty of high conflict couples therapy?
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we offer you a variety of holistic and creative therapies to rebalance yourself. For instance, yoga therapy, music therapy, art therapy, and walking therapy by the Niantic Bay boardwalk are available. For high conflict couples, a mixture of Gottman marital therapy, emotionally focused therapy, and expressive arts are for you anytime. The high conflict couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within integrate art, yoga, music and walk and talk nature therapies.
A lot of times, we find that high conflict couples have been to a few couples therapists before and it has not gone well.
Wisdom Within Counseling offers unique forms of emotional expression and creativity. Frequently, high conflict couples are looking for something alternative and out of the box.
To begin, click the button below for your phone consult to work with a high conflict couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
What makes the team at Wisdom Within Counseling specialist for high conflict couples?
Many therapists are more generalists and do not specialize with high conflict couples. Typically, a more general therapist might get sucked into the argument at hand. Unfortunately, a generalist does not have the extra training or expertise that the team at Wisdom Within counseling has. Or, they may even get stuck picking sides.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we are a group of marital and family therapists who specialize with high conflict couples.
Right now, it might feel emotionally painful and hopeless to be in this high conflict cycle. There is hope from working with a specialist. Many times, high conflict couples have a history of trauma and PTSD. Trauma and loss play into your relationship because this changes your nervous system.
How does trauma and PTSD play a role in high conflict fights?
Well, your parasympathetic nervous system has often forgotten how to work after trauma. A scary life event shocks your nervous system and freezes it. For instance, if your trauma was being bitten by a dog and you had to run as fast as you could away, your trauma response is running. In life, you always run away when you experience fear, since you are in that trauma response. Then, in a high conflict fight, this might look like you walking out of the room when your partner is speaking to you.
Trauma and high conflict couples
Or, by squealing your car out and aggressively driving away. On the other hand, if you experienced domestic violence between your parents as a child and you had to hide under a table for safety, freezing this is your trauma response.
Freeze responses
In your marriage, you might “freeze” and give your spouse the silent treatment or hide because that is how you survived in your childhood. So, thinking about your childhood trauma response is going to help you better understand your current conflicts in your marriage. Working with a trained high conflict couple specialist can help you playfully improve your marriage, build communication, and heal from trauma together.
So, what exactly is trauma?
If you go through a life experience that is scary like losing a loved one, this is traumatic. When you go through a PTSD experience, your body responds by going into “survival mode.” Even to this day, you might be stuck living in survival mode or fear mode. Commonly, after a traumatic event, you are afraid of it happening again because it was so incredibly heartbreaking and painful.
Maybe, a traumatic event occurred five years ago. So, for the last five years, you’ve been on edge, jumping when someone enters a room, and having anxiety. This means that you are constantly living in fight, flight, or freeze. Holistic therapists help you turn on your relaxation response and calm yourself down.
How do you holistic therapists specialize with PTSD in couples who have high conflict fighting patterns?
From calming your parasympathetic nervous system through holistic therapies like art, yoga, drama, and music therapy, you can get more in touch with yourself and your spouse. Trauma changes your mind to live from a place of survival. But, when you bring your survival mindset into your marriage, it creates intense fear and conflict.
To begin, click the button below for your phone consult to work with a high conflict couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
Couples who are in high conflict fights tend to fight like lawyers and get very bitter and mean with each other.
Commonly, this is a trauma response to feeling self protection. Overtime, holistic therapy teaches you how to be aware of your mind-body connection. Simply put, by being aware of your body, you can slow your breathing and calm yourself down. As well, holistic therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling helps feel more self-compassionate. You can tap into more clear thinking habits and better decision making when you are calm too.
How can working with a holistic high conflict marriage counselor help with relaxation responses after trauma?
In holistic counseling, you can better understand your trauma symptoms and PTSD responses. Also, you can start to learn a more gentler way of responding. In your marriage, sharing how you feel is a great way to deescalate. Instead of telling your partner what you don’t like or criticizing them, focus on how you feel.
As well, you can respond in the future to your spouse by sharing what you are feeling.
Many times, couples get negative by saying what they don’t like about what their partner is doing. By sharing what you feel, you take more ownership. As well, you can practice calm communication tools in high conflict couples counseling sessions.
In what ways experiences of childhood trauma, abuse, and neglect, impact high conflict fights in your romantic relationship?
Often times, if you are in a high conflict couple, both of you have a history of childhood trauma. Commonly, you or your spouse may have grown up with a parent who had severe mental health issues. Maybe, one of your parents abandoned you at a young age and just left. Or, one of your parents at a substance abuse or drug problem and was unstable.
Trauma experiences for high conflict couples can look very different for each person, but create the same survival response.
Perhaps, one of your parents lost custody of you and you had to be placed in foster home for up for adoption. Perhaps, you identify as an adult child of alcoholics. Or, one of your parents was a workaholic and didn’t have enough time for you. Also, seeing a loved one taken away in an ambulance or having a hospitalization yourself are traumas.
Or, having to go to the emergency room in an ambulance is a traumas. As well, another trauma could be having money problems or financial challenges. Moving multiple times in childhood creates a feeling of instability and is another trauma. Additionally, you may of had a parent who was very angry themselves. Often, your parents demonstrated high conflict fighting in your childhood.
Life was pretty chaotic growing up at times. Your parents may have fought a bit and this pattern may influence you today. All of these experiences relate to emotional abuse and neglect.
The team at Wisdom Within are conflict couples therapy specialists. Book your consult below.
In what ways do experiences of trauma mirror high conflict fights in my marriage?
Overall, trauma, grief, and loss of any kind can contribute to an overly activated nervous system. Any type of nervous system activation leads to a more high conflict fight. In order to heal from high conflict fighting, therapy supports calm communication alongside self-care. The self-care component means knowing when you need to make a moment to pause. Yelling is not positive or good.
Do you do that? Wisdom Within Counseling teaches high conflict couples how to loving bond when disagreeing. Couples who continue to yell each other do not have self-awareness. Often, yelling and fighting couples are cycling through frustration and trauma. As well, couples who yell, scream, and explode lack self-care practices.
How can I start to notice a high conflict fight coming on?
Essentially, self-care is available right in the moment when you feel angry. Permanently, self-care is more daily, and a regular routine for self-love skills. So, the first moment you notice yourself raising your voice or your heart rate beating faster, take a moment to pause. Essentially, taking a moment to pause is a form of self-care and helps you gain perspective. In holistic counseling for high conflict couples, your therapist can help you figure out any limitations you may have that prevent you from pausing. Learning how to slow yourself down is an essential skill to reducing high conflict fights. If the fight feels personal, hurtful, or you deeply need support, these can be a limitation to being able to take a moment to pause.
What is the role of self-care within high conflict couples counseling?
Additionally, self-care is important to be a routine in your life. When self-care fall to the wayside, couples get into high conflict fights due to burn out and exhaustion. Without proper self-care and holistic coping strategies, a couple units suffers. Self-love skills and self-care tools are part of what Wisdom Within counseling offers you. Painting, using watercolors, modeling clay, origami, or even going outside for a walk by the beach can provide relaxation right in session.
Additionally, our team of high conflict couples specialists find that when couples are painting or walking, they are more at ease no matter the intensity of what they are talking about.
You might be talking about anger or jealousy, but painting allows you to feel calm and safe. Our team of family and marital therapists specialize in offering holistic options and creative therapy beyond just talking.
To begin, click the pink button below to work with one of the high conflict couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within.
Why creative, holistic, expressive therapies?
Sometimes, you may not have the words to describe what you are feeling on the inside. You might feel “itchy,” “blah,” or “meh.” Therefore, painting and watercolor provide an outlet peacefully. Also, breathing skills, yoga nidra, Ayurveda, yoga poses, mindfulness meditation, and beachside nature therapies are healing. These can provide inner peace right in couples counseling. You and your partner can also utilize these as positive coping tools outside of session to build communication and connection.
Why exactly is self-care so important in high conflict couples therapy?
So, if you are skipping meals, running on caffeine and sugar, and dedicating way too much time to work, your marriage is likely to fail. Essentially, there is no way that you can give him an empty bucketEssentially, there is no way that you can get it from an empty bucket. If you are depleted, exhausted, or overwhelmed, you will not be able to create a loving or meaningful connection.
Learning how to become more vibrant and authentic takes the guidance of a professional marriage counselor.
Just like it takes time and attention to love yourself, a healthy marriage takes dedication, playfulness, and attention. Each person in the couple unit needs to be centered and grounded themselves in order to give to the couple unit.
From two whole individuals, healthy, vibrant relationship can be formed.
The team and Wisdom Within Counseling specializes in helping couples team up, overcome trauma, and nurture each other for a loving, long-term marriage. If you are afraid to interact with your spouse due to their intense emotional responses, you are in the right place. As well, if you deeply want your marriage to work, but you are stuck in a cycle of anger and hopelessness, we can help. Perhaps, when times are good, they are very good. However, when a fight starts to happen, it gets very intense and heated very quickly. Marriage is not easy, especially when you have a history of abuse, neglect, sexual trauma, rape, sudden loss, or another traumatic experience.
We are anxious child, depressed teen, and high conflict couples therapy specialists.
Our team at Wisdom Within Counseling helps frustrated, fighting couples understand how to build clarity, confidence, and a loving bond. When high conflict couples get specialty support, it trickles down to their children in positive ways.
In addition to Naintic, Connecticut, we help the following towns with high conflict couples therapy: Darien, Byram, New Canann, Essex, Easton, Bridgewater, Fenwick, Easton, Norwalk, East Lyme, Wilton, Redding, Greenwich, Weston, Stamford, Washington, Kent, Madison, Glastonbury, Ivoryton, Warren, Woodbridge, Tolland, Stonington, Salisbury, Killingworth, Bloomfield, Rye, Westport, Avon, Wilton, Mystic, Ridgefield, Shelton, and West Hartford. Wisdom Within Counseling also offers telehealth video counseling to Massachusetts and Florida families and residents.
