Why ‘Traditional Therapy’ Might Be Failing Your Relationship

Introduction

Albert Einstein famously said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” 

This truth applies to relationships more than almost anything else in life. We often try to fix our communication problems or struggles with intimacy by using the same patterns of thinking and behavior that caused them in the first place. Unsurprisingly, this rarely works.

The reality is that none of us were born knowing how to succeed in relationships. Just like learning to read, throw a ball, or drive a car, we need training to master the skills that make relationships thrive. Complaining about what’s wrong or endlessly analyzing the past won’t bring the solutions you need. What will? Feedback, coaching, and actionable guidance that help you break out of unproductive habits and create real change.

Relationship Training vs Traditional Therapy

If you’ve tried traditional therapy for your relationship, you may have found that it focuses heavily on rehashing the past in an attempt to “understand” why you feel the way you do. While understanding the past can be useful, reliving negative feelings often keeps people stuck. 

I’ve had many people say left therapy left with the same problem they came in with. Why?

Too much focus on “venting” and too little on resolving.

Therapy usually takes months… sometimes years, and most people don’t want to wait that long. Because it’s advanced and focused on outcomes, Relationship Training is a much faster process, usually getting substantial change in a few weeks.

Therapy keeps people complaining about the past, instead of giving them tools for the future.

Think of Relationship Training as an advanced education for mastering communication, trust, and intimacy. Your goals/outcomes are the most important thing… not how you “feel” or what happened in your past! Your feelings are supposed to be reacting to the future, not how you feel today. So training focuses on helping you learning how to control your mood, emotions and state of mind so that your perceptions and intentions line up with what you most want in your life. For most people, that means discovering how to let go, forgive, change their communication to resolve problems and improve their emotional connection.

Action Is the Key to Success

Every success begins with action. Relationship Training is about taking concrete steps to move toward the relationship you want. 

It’s important to recognize that when people go through the phases of a relationship, the strategy for how they think changes so much that they don’t realize or remember why they felt the way they did in the attraction phase when they’re in the commitment phase. They may even think they made a mistake or missed something… whether they did or not. The strategies you use to handle the hurt or pain are usually where the problem is. And that can all change with hormones, sleep deprivation, health issues, etc.  So being in one phase is almost like being a different person… and this is normal. These strategies and patterns are frequently outside our conscious awareness.  

So it makes sense that actively creating the future you want through all these changes would be more effective than looking back to see what used to happen. Or, as Tony Robbins so beautifully said it:

​​ "Identify your problems, but give your power and energy to solutions.".