Lifestyle Choices

4. Discover Your Own Guidelines

Find out how many different principles and ways of managing stress you can successfully incorporate into your life. Then do it. Stress in a relationship can be a way of improving not only the quality of the relationship but also the value that one places on it. This demands facing discontent clearly and squarely and expressing it in a way that doesn’t try to make someone else responsible for it. For instance, there are two ways of complaining when your mate squeezes the toothpaste in the middle. One is, “My God, you did it again. What’s wrong with you?” and the other, “You know, I have a problem. I am really bothered by people squeezing the toothpaste in the middle. I can’t seem to get over it. I’d be grateful if you didn’t do it. It would help me a lot.” (more…)

Alternative Approaches and L.T.E.P.

All the alternative approaches can be used for long-term psychotherapy. The form the therapy takes is very variable. A fairly average example would be one session a week for three years, possibly combined with attending a group for group psychotherapy for one evening,every two weeks.

Advantages

A therapist who uses some of the alternative techniques may provide the following:

• A far faster process costing less time and money.
• A more effective route to self-expression.
• The possibility of exploring body, feeling and spirit as well as the intellect.
• An emphasis on being more vital rather than understanding why you are not.

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