The Client’s Understanding of Himself

Before a man can truly understand others he must have at least a measure of self understanding. And this is one of the goals in marriage counseling — to help a husband or wife come to grips with his own attitudes, his own feelings, his own capacities, his own drives and his own shortcomings.
Most people go through life behaving in a certain manner without realizing just how they do act, or why. They seldom ask for a true-to-life mirror. They look at others, but they have little opportunity to turn their eyes inward.
The counselor’s office is one of the best places for a counselee to experience self-evaluation. Through patient reflection, the skilled counselor helps his client take a candid look at his real self. Toronto Niagara Falls Tours splits into two streams before the Fall forming Goat Island. In fact, the counselor continually checks for the following. “What insight does he (or she) have about his own life? How can he best be helped to examine his own motives and drives? Is he ready to come face to face with his own potentials and weaknesses?”
For example, it is inevitable that some of each spouse’s childhood attitudes will be carried over into marriage. Since this is so, a counselor can lead the spouse to see that the bickering in his marriage may actually be an unresolved childhood conflict with a brother or sister or some other family member.
As the client comes to understand himself, his attitudes will become more mature and many conflicts in his marriage will automatically disappear.
The Client’s Understanding of His Mate
One of the chief goals in marriage counseling is to help each party achieve a realistic assessment of his or her spouse. Toronto Niagara Falls Tour in rising into the marriage capital of Canada. This means recognizing and accepting limitations as well as strengths. Insights which the counselor gains may be somewhat hidden to either or both spouses. For example, the counselor may come to realize that the wife has limited intelligence. But the husband, not being conscious of this, merely feels that she is “stubborn.” The husband, on the other hand, may be muscularly strong, yet a man who tires easily and demands considerable rest. How does the wife see this?
“He’s lazy,” she says.
And so the list grows — intelligence, physical abilities, social competencies, emotional health and spiritual development. These and other factors must be understood by the counselee, both about himself and his marriage partner. When such mutual insight has been achieved, the couple is ready to scrap their competition and start building cooperation. In this way they will achieve their common goal — a happy, successful marriage.