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Building new foundations for the couple: Take a look at the Different Relationship Images document attached to this Podcast. I try to bypass language as much as possible. Feelings do not always tell the truth. We can be very English. Very British!

Question: "How are you today". Answer: "I'm fine thank you".

Observation after the automatic response: "I notice you are on strong pain-killers and on crutches"!

Emotions are very powerful and drive so much of our decisions, including major bridge-burning decisions - in the moment. Emotions live in the Limbic brain.

I use the Relationship Images document with the couple right at the beginning of our work, in order to get at the truth and not what feelings and emotions are telling me if I ask the couple some questions about their relationship.

I want to know how deeply entrenched is the damage done to the relationship. The exercise by-passes the emotional brain (of feelings) and also the intellectual logical reasoning part of the brain. Instead, I connect with their heart. The heart tends to tell the truth. So I use the exercise to listen to the heart.

Each identify an image which represents a time in their Past when the relationship was working at its absolute best; super-doper. Then an image which represents where the relationship is Now (such that they have come for therapy). Finally, which image best represents the Future. Think big. Think miracle. A future where the issues are resolved and they are living the 'bestest' quality couples relationship, beyond what they could ever image.

I am looking for any split agenda as to why each of them have come for therapy; any ulterior motive. Has one of them long left the relationship - (emotional disengagement). Their spoken word may be contradicted by their choice of images.

The discussion which ensues, will be eye-opening for the couple. Mostly, pleasantly surprising!

Help someone access the Recovery Programme: https://igg.me/at/ThekairosCentre

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Gary McFarlane (BA, LLM, Dip, Certs), Accredited EMDR Practitioner.

Episode Keywords: Sex Addiction | Porn Addiction | Love Addiction | Porn Causes | Recover from Addiction | Self-Soothing Behaviors | Childhood Trauma | Inner Child work | Childhood Development and Addiction bullying | Porn Addiction Recovery | Abuse | Sexual Abuse | Sex Addiction Recovery | Domestic Violence | Family Conflict | Overcoming Porn addiction | Porn Addiction Side effects | Porn Addiction Symptoms | Emotional Neglect | Quit Porn Addiction | Peer Pressure | Performance Pressure | Separation | Divorce | Fear | Anxiety | Stress | Mental Health and Addiction | Dissociation | Anger | Husband has porn | Recovery Program | 12 Steps Program | EMDR | Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing | Compulsive Behavior | Trauma Healing | Neuroplasticity | Online Therapy | The Kairos Centre | Neuroscience of Addiction | Porn Addiction Help | Sex Addiction Recovery Program | Authentic Self Discovery | Compulsive Behaviors | Intimacy Issues | Sexual Dysfunction | Obsessive Thoughts | Fantasy Escape | Codependency | Shame in Addiction | Guilt in Addiction | Addiction in Relationship | Infidelity | Therapy for Addiction | Objectification | Hypersexualization | Pornography

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Couples counselling is not necessarily about keeping a couple together at all. All about exploring options. Also to help you both gain insight and understanding about self and how you do life, as an individual.

Whether a Partnership or a marriage, these things are true: “Marriage is not the coming together of two people. It’s a clash of two cultures, two experiences, two memories, two habits, two morals, two values. And that is a formula for destruction” - Dr Myles Munro

“[It] is [also] the place of our healing. So don’t leave it too quickly” - Dr Creflo Dollar.

(You are destined to eventually repeat the issues again with the new person, because you take you with you into the new relationship - where second and third time around each have an even worse percentage likelihood of separation and divorce).

Pinches hurt. Try using your fingernails to pinch your thigh. A pinch in a relationship, jolts the relationship and disrupts harmony.

A crunch not only jolts the relationship, it assaults the very foundations of the relationship. Having pinched your thigh with your finger nail, now open the palm of your hand and hold it as if holding a tennis ball.

Those fingers represents the jaws of a rottweiller dog that has its teeth locked into your bum cheeks. That is much more than just a jolt!

An accumulation of unresolved pinches in a relationship which were never resolved, but put inside self, pressed down on top of years of other compressed pinches, will eventually become a crunch.

Take a look at the accompanying Pinches & Crunches diagram to see the different options presented to the couple during each of those events.

Unresolved and unprocessed pinches & crunches creates ambiguity, Resentment, Anger, Uncertainty, where options include - do nothing, separate, divorce or emotionally disengage. Many, many couples live in 'Emotional Disengagement' for years and years.

Emotional Disengagement is insidious. Vote for the outcomes to your relationship, rather than let default decisions blow it up over time, leaving the two of you scurrying around picking up shrapnel from the explosion fall-out.

So, let’s begin our work together to detoxify the issues and get you closer to your abundant life living - bringing colour back to life - without Shame.

Give a little to my fund raising page. Help someone access the Recovery Programme: https://igg.me/at/ThekairosCentre

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Gary McFarlane (BA, LLM, Dip, Certs), Accredited EMDR Practitioner.

Keywords: Sex Addiction | Porn Addiction | Love Addiction | Porn Causes | Recover from Addiction | Self-Soothing Behaviors | Childhood Trauma | Inner Child work | Childhood Development and Addiction bullying | Porn Addiction Recovery | Abuse | Sexual Abuse | Sex Addiction Recovery | Domestic Violence | Family Conflict | Overcoming Porn addiction | Porn Addiction Side effects | Porn Addiction Symptoms | Emotional Neglect | Quit Porn Addiction | Peer Pressure | Performance Pressure | Separation | Divorce | Fear | Anxiety | Stress | Mental Health and Addiction | Dissociation | Anger | Husband has porn | Recovery Program | 12 Steps Program | EMDR | Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing | Compulsive Behavior | Trauma Healing | Neuroplasticity | Online Therapy | The Kairos Centre | Neuroscience of Addiction | Porn Addiction Help | Sex Addiction Recovery |

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Shaped by circumstances from birth

Picture the new born baby which starts life with innocence and a brain with few impressions. It starts to experience life and living and soon the brain has some impressions and templates being carved out. Good and not so good experiences and impressions. A distorted image develops.

The individual distorted image of a male coming with his own unique impressions and experiences of life and the individual distorted image of a female also coming with her own unique impressions and experiences of life, get together (perhaps marry) and become an item. The two distorted images are suppose to live a lifetime together in harmony. Their differing impressions and experiences of life, including the adaptations they have had to make to survive life, may no longer serve them well in the new twosome. Adapt and survive or live with conflict is now the choice. The two individuals look sound from external appearances, but inside they have many unresolved issues.

Diagram: Pinch & Crunch

(You really need to see the Pinch & Crunch diagram to make sense of this episode. Send me a message to get it, as I cannot add images to the Podcast).

We enter relationships at the courting stage, bringing with us all our stuff (good and not so good). We are actually negotiating with each other as we adapt and seek to ascertain whether there are enough common attractions that can hold and carry the relationship. There is a collusive fit which brought us together, but that is not enough to keep us in courtship.

If time proves to be a glue, then time may also see the relationship develop to permanency or marriage. A pinch will disrupt harmony and we must decide which option to take to deal with the pinch which has the potential to de-stabilise. Options include fight, flight, separate, divorce, counselling or going back to an earlier stage in the relationship and starting again to renegotiate needs and expectations.

Crunches are an even more painful and de- stabilising assaults on the relationship and like pinches, we must choose an option, including doing nothing. Doing nothing is to coast in the relationship. We are then at the mercy of an event in the future which will occur and take the choice out of our hands, so that outcomes are no longer determinable by the parties.

Get some help from The Kairos Centre.

Give a little to my fund raising page. Help someone access the Recovery Programme: https://igg.me/at/ThekairosCentre

British Podcast Awards 2025: Would you consider voting for this Podcast?

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Gary McFarlane (BA, LLM, Dip, Certs), Accredited EMDR Practitioner.

Keywords: Sex Addiction | Porn Addiction | Love Addiction | Porn Causes | Recover from Addiction | Self-Soothing Behaviors | Childhood Trauma | Inner Child work | Childhood Development and Addiction bullying | Porn Addiction Recovery | Abuse | Sexual Abuse | Sex Addiction Recovery | Domestic Violence | Family Conflict | Overcoming Porn addiction | Porn Addiction Side effects | Porn Addiction Symptoms | Emotional Neglect | Quit Porn Addiction | Peer Pressure | Performance Pressure | Separation | Divorce | Fear | Anxiety | Stress | Mental Health and Addiction | Dissociation | Anger | Husband has porn | Recovery Program | 12 Steps Program | EMDR | Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing | Compulsive Behavior | Trauma Healing | Neuroplasticity | Online Therapy | The Kairos Centre | Neurosci

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