LOVE LOST-LOVE FOUND
Rational Relationship Recovery
Whether you feel lost, angry, scared or devastated--leaving, separating, breaking up or recovering from a divorce--it's easy to feel overwhelmed. You may have expected it or been blindsided. You may not know what to do next. As a Group, we work together to help you move forward--by identifying the triggers and responses, the thoughts and feelings that are holding you back. Through rational, evidence-based group therapy you will gain the tools and techniques to move forward and experience happiness. The LLLF Group is a place to be heard, supported and challenged. Change happens NOW
Let's face it: Going through divorce or a serious break-up can be a lonely road to travel. It's easy to feel alone, overwhelmed and misunderstood. Friends may try to listen, but if they havent gone through it, they may not understand your feelings and they may not want to continue to listen. Many friends will give you aphorisms, pithy bits of wisdom and cliche speeches but few have the tools to truly guide you on this road. And too, many friends will tire easily if you don't 'get better real soon.'
In a Rational Relationship Recovery support group, you will be surrounded by people who know what you are going through.
You'll also get:
1. A 'No B.S.' Reality Check. Your Rational Relationship Recovery peers will challenge you to take an honest look at your situation and your part in it. We're going to help you shake off the old B.S. you may have subscribed to--and by B.S. we mean 'Belief Systems.'
2. A Sounding Board for Your Decisions. Divorce changes many aspects of your life. Having a tribe of others going through relationship transition who can listen to you and help you evaluate major decisions that divorce brings can be a true gift.
3. Real Change. When you work on yourself in a RRR Group, you change. You also change how you 'show up' in all of your relationships, including your relationship/marriage/
While you might not be able to save your relationship as it is, you may find that you are able to separate and part with integrity.
4. A Support System When Your Previous Supports May Disappear. Many men and women invest so much time and energy in their partnerships that they forego other close connections or simply adopt the friends and family of their partner. If your primary emotional supporter has always been your spouse or domestic partner, when you lose him/her (or go into battle against them) you've lost your primary emotional support system.
Friends who never knew you as part of a married couple may feel more supportive of the adventures you embark on as a single person. A Rational Relationship Recovery Group can fill that void. Group members provide you with a community, a tribe of others who are there to support you, and help you through, not only your divorce, but your life well after your divorce is behind you.
5. Wisdom from Collective Experience. No matter how alone you feel, how misunderstood you think you are after going through a life-disrupting breakup or divorce, the reality is: you are not the first,nor last person breaking up or getting divorced.
Even if you feel your breakup/separation/divorce is different from the other group members, you can still gain deep insight, from their experiences, wisdom and even their mistakes. You gain access to knowledge and wisdom from those who've walked the same path.
Figuring out "Normal" During a Divorce? It's easy to feel as if you are 'going crazy' as you go on the rollercoaster ride of breakup and divorce. Rage, Apathy, Sadness, Fear, Hope, Despair. Conflicting feelings of attraction and repulsion. At Rational Relationship Recovery you learn that what you are feeling is completely normal during a divorce.
Believing you'll never love again or trust again is not uncommon, nor is hating your ex and missing them at the same time.
6. Deeper Emotional Awareness. By gaining more understanding of your emotions, you can start to heal those emotions. RRR groups provide you with the tools you need to learn to feel your emotional state and to communicate what you are feeling to your partner. This often improves every relationship in your life.
7. A Safe Place to Feel. Rational Relationship Recovery groups not only allow men and women to express their feelings in a safe environment rather than stuffing them away.
By allowing for difficult emotions and giving expression to them, we avoid 'leaking' our feeligs, or having them 'come out sideways' in inappropriate behaviors with our ex-partner, our kids or our new partners.
8. A Group That Can Help Make Your Divorce Less Ugly. Divorce often happens because one or both partners feel that they dont have an equal investment in the marriage.
When you own your own part of your marriage, and you learn to express yourself openly, and without judgment, to your partner, you create a safe space for you and your partner to communicate, and to either heal or to resolve issues while saying goodbye with kindness and integrity.
9. Transforming Your Relationship with Your Kids. Through the work you do in a RRR Group you will become better at identifying your thoughts and emotions. It will then make it easier to be more of aware of your children's thoughts and feelings, thus increasing your ability to provide compassionate parenting.
10. The Wisdom and Growth That Will Help You Become a Better Communicator. By having a more intimate knowledge of your own thoughts and feelings, you will be able to identify rational from irrational thoughts and reduce unrealistic expectations. This in turn will allow you to experience more satisfaction and even joy in all your relationships.
In the Rational Relationship Recovery Group, members will learn how to:
- · Evaluate and Dispute the ‘dire need for love.’
- · Accept the loss of love, and of being actively disliked.
- · Cope with an ex who actively engages in ‘alienation of affection’ with the children.
- · Identify the advantages of singlehood
- · Identify the disadvantages of the ‘terminating relationship.’
- · Re-identify personal passion, mission, vision
- · Identify personal interests and pursuits
- · Identify your Life Values
- · Identify Triggers (Activating Events) that lead to overwhelming emotions and ineffective behaviors.
- · Use the Scientific Method to Dispute Irrational Thoughts
- · Identify Belief Systems
- · Identify Command/Demand Thinking
- · Identify Negative Self-Talk
- · Identify Irrational Thoughts
- · Dispute Irrational Thoughts about your Ex, yourself and your life.
- · Reevaluate the idea of vacillating Self-Value
- · Confront low frustration tolerance
- · Confront the concept that another person must be fair, kind or reciprocate.
- · Confront the concept of perfectionism
- · Create Effective Coping Thoughts
- · Identify New Goals
- · Divide Goals into manageable sub-goals with manageable time-frames
- · Practice Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy Dispute Method (ABCs)
- · Practice Rational Emotive Imagery
- · Practicing Behavior Reinforcement
- · Practice Assertive Behaviors
- · Practice Calculated Risks
- · Practice Progressive Relaxation
- · Practice Shame Attacking Exercises
- · Practice Mindfulness
- · Practice Loving Kindness
Also note, we believe its every therapist's duty to assist clients in maintaining a strong, ongoing connection with their referring therapist. RRR group members will be directed back to their referring clinician for questions related to individual counseling.
Potential Group members can write to us at [email protected] and request Rational Relationship Recovery Group or simply say they would like the Divorce Recovery Group. We look forward to hearing from you!
PROCRASTINATION STOPPERS GROUP:
Difficulty with getting things done? Distracted? Unmotivated?
Check out our groups at: