Free Downloads The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide To Finding Peace, Intimacy, And Validation
You hear and read a lot about ways to improve your relationship. But if you've tried these without much success, you're not alone. Many highly reactive couples—pairs that are quick to argue, anger, and blame—need more than just the run-of-the-mill relationship advice to solve their problems in love. When destructive emotions are at the heart of problems in your relationship, no amount of effective communication or intimacy building will fix what ails it. If you're part of a "high-conflict" couple, you need to get control of your emotions first, to stop making things worse, and only then work on building a better relationship.The High-Conflict Couple adapts the powerful techniques of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) into skills you can use to tame out-of-control emotions that flare up in your relationship. Using mindfulness and distress tolerance techniques, you'll learn how to deescalate angry situations before they have a chance to explode into destructive fights. Other approaches will help you disclose your fears, longings, and other vulnerabilities to your partner and validate his or her experiences in return. You'll discover ways to manage problems with negotiation, not conflict, and to find true acceptance and closeness with the person you love the most.
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications; 1 edition (December 3, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 157224450X
ISBN-13: 978-1572244504
Product Dimensions: 0.5 x 6 x 8.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #12,154 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #111 in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Marriage & Adult Relationships #171 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > General #374 in Books > Self-Help > Relationships
High Conflict Couple is a concise, easy to understand guide for couples seeking to deepen their relationship and ease their conflicts.Its tone is a bit crisper, cooler, and more analytical than most marriage guides. This is actually its strength, speaking to the analytical half of your relationship in a straight-forward way they will appreciate and understand even if they shy away from most relationship-help books as being too touchie-feelie. The message is the same as many guides, that validation (lingo for healthy supportive loving communication) is the key to a happy, intimate relationship-- and it is the key. This book helps approach that need from the angle of couples or individuals who have already been conflict-prone.The book has open-ended exercises that are useful if a bit vague, precise examples, and very good flow from chapter to chapter, start to finish. Even the layout is accessible with short measured segments that allow the reader to pause and reflect frequently.Pair this with The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert for a complete set of paperback marriage counseling: that book contains many accessible examples, detailed exercises, and 2-person activities to try with your partner. I highly recommend the combination of the two books.Regardless, if you're the emotional half of your relationship, get High Conflict Couple for your emotionally-challenged partner. If you're the analytical half, the guide will speak to you right away, and you'll wonder why nobody ever explained it to you in such a direct easy to understand way.Highly recommended whether you are in a happy relationship, a struggling one, or struggling to understand why a relationship failed.
This is a good book, provides some interesting insights into the complexities of relationships, especially relationships with long histories, but becomes a little redundant by constantly reiterating the same ideas, sort of a repeat and retain approach. I guess the main theme(s) to take away from this book is embracing this idea of mindfulness, which is a fundamental component of DBT. Basically the idea goes like this: every relationship has flaws. Your partner is going to disappoint and frustrate you. You are going to feel under-appreciated. You are going to argue. Every individual in a relationship maintains some sort of ideal version of their partner, which slowly erodes as the relationship progresses and flaws begin to surface, a history develops, resentments build, etc. However, mindfulness essentially embraces this idea of flaws and promotes this idea of remaining in the present, finding ways to appreciate your partner, finding ways to validate, and developing an effective schema or frame that aids in remembering why you fell in love with that person and why you are still together. This is essentially achieved, as the book would have you believe, through constant open communication, not brooding on past difficulties, and essentially changing the way that you think about and view your partner. Instead of dwelling on negativity and inherent flaws, you look for all of the positive things that your partner does while embracing and accepting the realization that your relationship is not always going to be rosy and full of magic. There are a lot of exercises in the book that could be helpful and there are some different techniques that you can use to emphasize the positivity in your relationship, increase healthy communication, increase intimacy, and `reactivate' the relationship. Recommend for counselors and curious minds. The language is not technical and the book is not long. It generally gives a good broad overview of DBT, radical acceptance, mindfulness, validation, and approaches to conflict resolution (taking a conflict and turning into a growing experience from which to evolve as a couple). It's basically a self-help book for couples applying DBT principals.
This book is full of practical tips on how to make any couple's relationship better. It places a lot of emphasis on validation (what it is, how to validate and how we frequently inadvertantly invalidate each other without realizing it). Each chapter includes exercises to practice what was discussed. The exercises essentially help a couple to start to immediately put into practice what was discussed in the chapter; it's amazing how the techniques, though not complicated, really seem to work. In summary, the book is well organized, easy to read, and an extremely effective way for a couple motivated toward change to move forward in a positive way. Thank you!
This book is an important new resource not only for people concerned about relationship conflict. Anyone struggling with anxiety, depression, or other "individual" emotional problems who is also in an intimate relationship could benefit. More and more, psychologists are discovering just how important relationships are to what we once thought were individual personal problems. This wonderful book is rich with real life examples and straightforward exercises every reader can do. This book is highly recommended for anyone wanting to improve their relationship with their partner!
This book really helped me understand some of the dynamics of my marriage that I had previously been confused by. I couldn't figure out how two people who love each other so much could rip each other to shreds in times of conflict. It's written very clearly and the exercises are great for helping you become more aware and less reactive. I would recommend this book for anyone who is struggling in a relationship and seeks to make it better.
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