Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is really one of the most versatile forms of mental health treatment.
It can be effectively applied to so many different problems and situations that you might be facing in your life.
And of course, that means you can usually use CBT for relationship problems as well.
As with so many of the other issues you’ll face throughout your life, challenges in your relationships are frequently rooted in something deeper than the problem.
More often than not, the problem itself is only the symptom that you see on the surface.
CBT helps us dig down deeper to uncover the origin point where things start veering away from ‘good’ and going off into the negative zone.
1. Learn to Tell When You’re Starting to Spiral We’ve all been there at least a few times before: Everything’s fine, and then, next thing you know, it’s 2 hours later, your entire day is ruined, and you just want to give up .
How did it happen?
Where exactly did you start veering off the Happy Highway and careening into Turmoil Town?
Well, it all started with something you probably didn’t even notice…
Identifying Cognitive Distortions This is what we call those unrealistic and unreasonably harsh thoughts that you often have without even realizing it.
It’s strange that you don’t notice them when they happen, but you’re so used to them that they just flash by like a normal thing.
And once you have one without immediately recognizing and countering it, it will tend to cascade into another and another until you’re completely in the dumps .
2. Learn to Control Your Emotions As you might guess, when you develop the skill of identifying and countering cognitive distortions, you will also tend to be able to control your emotions more easily.
More specifically, it’s not exactly that you’re controlling which emotions you experience.
Instead, it’s that you’re controlling how you respond to those emotions and how out of control they get.
This is because cognitive distortions are a large part of why your negative emotions get out of hand in the first place.
4. Learn to Communicate Better If you learn to be more reasonable with yourself, that will also often translate into being more reasonable with your partner.
You’ll become more able to spot points where you’re about to say something unfair or unnecessarily negative to them .
On top of that, you’ll also get better at spotting when they probably don’t mean what they just said.
This can make you more able to determine when it’s time to just take a break for an hour or two because you’re both no longer in a state of mind that’s conducive to a healthy conversation.
Since it takes two people to have a conversation, it will only be possible if both of you are in a healthy headspace.
5. Learn to Empathize Piggybacking off the last thing, CBT for relationship problems helps you empathize more with your partner.
That’s because the core of CBT is basically learning to be gentler and more understanding toward yourself.
It’s not a huge stretch to apply those same lessons and techniques to your relationship with your partner as well.
And if we’re being honest, we’ve all had times in our relationships when we could have had a little more empathy .
6. Learn to Set Healthy Boundaries In the same wheelhouse as empathy is the skill of setting healthy boundaries.
And it is a skill that you can develop.
It’s not healthy to be a doormat who lets others walk all over you.
But it’s also not healthy to have your walls up so high that they block out the sun and so closed-in that you yourself can barely fit inside them.
Realistically, there are certain things in relationships that are dealbreakers and certain things which, while not immediate dealbreakers, do require attention as soon as possible to ensure that an offense (even an unintentional one) doesn’t happen twice.
Every person has a right to certain boundaries.
But most of us have at least one that isn’t healthy and are missing at least one that we really should have .
7. Learn to Have More Reasonable Expectations Disappointment is what happens when reality falls below your expectations.
You can’t experience disappointment otherwise.
Now, we’re not suggesting that you should have no expectations at all.
But if you find that you’re constantly feeling let down by everyone , it might be because you’re simply expecting too much from them.
It’s one thing to rightly be disappointed and even angry when the mayor of your city gets caught doing insider trading or plundering your tax dollars.
However, it’s a very different thing to be disappointed in your partner because they forgot to pick up something at the store on their way home from work.
The first is a conscious act of malice that amounts to someone literally stealing your money.
The second is just your partner forgetting something because they were tired or got distracted by some emergency that their boss chose to dump on them via an unexpected phone call or group text after they had already clocked out and left.
In other words, the first is a conscious act of evil, while the second is just your partner being overwhelmed by life .
It’s not healthy to get equally upset at both of them or to rank them into the same moral category.
Learn to Learn About Learning. 📚 Ok, we’re messing around a bit here, but only a bit.
The truth is that one of the biggest benefits of CBT for relationship problems is that it teaches you to learn how to learn.
What do we mean by this?
Well, as you’re being introduced to all the skills we just listed, you’re also being taught how to approach and use them as well as how to deepen your knowledge of them.
Whether it’s through reading self-help books, practicing in support groups, or getting more time with your therapist, you’re learning how to learn and practice new skills.
And more importantly, you’re learning how to step outside of yourself and explore new ways of perceiving things and relating to someone else’s point of view.
At the end of the day, that’s most of what conflict resolution in any relationship boils down to.
