Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

The only thing you can do is change yourself. But a miraculous thing happens when you initiate changes in your own behavior—you become a catalyst for change in the other person, and suddenly things get better.

Truth.In my workshops, I often say that Truth is the cause of nearly all the suffering in the world today.

Feeling Words when you’re practicing the Intimacy Exercise on this page. If you photocopy this page two-sided, you’ll be able to take the Relationship Satisfaction Test four times on each piece of paper. To download a printable PDF of this toolkit, please visit http://rhlink.com/9780767930901a001

our problems getting along with each other might result less from the fact that we don’t know how to love each other, and more from the fact that we don’t want to. Maybe we sometimes choose conflict and hostility because they seem far more appealing and desirable than getting close to the person we’re at odds with.

Behavior therapists, for example, believe that our problems with getting along result from a lack of communication and problem-solving skills.

When you Change the Focus, you call attention to the fact that you’re both feeling awkward or frustrated, and that there’s tension in the air. You stop arguing or competing and point instead to the river of emotion that’s flowing just under the surface.

Competition.

Cognitive therapists have a different idea about the deficits that lead to relationship problems. They emphasize that all of our feelings result from our thoughts and attitudes, or cognitions. In other words, the things other people do—like being critical or rudely cutting in front of us in traffic—don’t actually upset us. Instead, we get upset bec

Downward Arrow Technique