{"id":936,"date":"2013-07-09T11:24:16","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T18:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/?p=936"},"modified":"2013-07-09T11:24:16","modified_gmt":"2013-07-09T18:24:16","slug":"in-praise-of-naps-and-other-couples-therapy-verites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/in-praise-of-naps-and-other-couples-therapy-verites\/","title":{"rendered":"In Praise of Naps (and other couples therapy verites)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have frequently said that a turning point in my marriage came when my on-the-go wife accepted my naps.\u00a0 For the first couple of years m\"\"<\/a>y afternoon fade into crankiness bucked up against her “How can you waste\u00a0perfectly good day time,” plea.\u00a0 Eventually, to the blessed relief of my amygdala and the balance of life in the cosmos, weekend naps were accorded\u00a0their rightful place in our home.\u00a0 I came across another confirmation in Slate<\/em> today – an article <\/a>which describes how lack of sleep contributes to heightened couple conflict.<\/p>\n

Fatigue isn’t the only other stressor that may tax a couple.\u00a0 I have worked with couples who have no time with each other and haven’t since their first of three children came along or who have suffered with financial setbacks that have necessitated pulling back on a previously comfortable lifestyle or who have opened their home to one’s parents.\u00a0 While the heart of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy is the exploration and calming of attachment-related anxieties and wounds inflicted in the whipsaw-like cycle which grabs the couple, we can never ignore the presence of stressors which attack and challenge connection we all hope to maintain in our relationships.\u00a0 Many years ago, Holmes and Rahe<\/a>\u00a0engaged in a study which attempted to identify and rate the intensity of various life stressors.\u00a0 A review of these events is an excellent summary of the kinds of external “psycho-social stressors” which can put pressure on a relationship and result in conflict over repeated issues – which may just be seen as symptomatic of the stress as much as\u00a0(or more than) anything else.\u00a0 These include: trouble with the law, bankruptcy, illness, trouble with in-laws, beginning or ending a job, a child leaving home (or hitting adolescence), change in residence, change in work situation and loss of a close friend, among others.\u00a0 This is why, in any assessment of intimate stress, we must always ask, “What is happening now<\/em> in your lives?\u00a0 Has anything changed recently?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have frequently said that a turning point in my marriage came when my on-the-go wife accepted my naps.\u00a0 For the first couple of years my afternoon fade into crankiness bucked up against her “How can you waste\u00a0perfectly good day time,” plea.\u00a0 Eventually, to the blessed relief of my amygdala and the balance of life Continue reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,5],"tags":[25,41,8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=936"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":938,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936\/revisions\/938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}