Category: Couples Counselling

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Relationship Skills: Change your life, not your wife!

Relationship issues are sometimes cause and sometimes effect. You feeling stressed and dissatisfied often has several reasons. You might feel that you don’t get enough out of your intimate relationship with your loved one. Or you might go through a breakup or recovery from it. 
Under any circumstances it helps to learn about yourself and to acquire skills that make you a better partner in your current relationship or any future one. What is love? Most people seek intimacy, commitment and passion in the attachment with their partner.
We are together as couples for an emotional bond, caring and safety. We are also together for affection and desire. And we seek continuity and loyalty often interpreted as exclusivity. Dissatisfaction often arises in the conflict zone of passion vs. companionship.

We are NOT together to pursue agendas against each other and consciously dedicate our togetherness to misery. You have spent some time with your partner. There is attachment, there is or was intimacy and desire.

There is a love map that connects the two of you. That means there is a deeper understanding and sharing of who you are and of whom you are with. You know each other fairly well and you share some part of life’s journey. Before giving this up, you want to understand where you get stuck and what goes wrong when you fight about things that matter to you.
The knowledge of how you see yourself and your partner in the relationship enables you to better comprehend your behaviour. The analysis of your communication is based on disecting your interaction.
I will work with you on how to define what a secure bond means to you and how to make it happen with your loved one. The current one or the future one. That might be the same person.

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My upcoming Events in Central Hong Kong

Check out the upcoming events for ambitious people with limited time. 
FOCUS TRAINING AND ATTENTION GYM
Increases attention and awareness helps us to be the way we want to be at work and with close ones. The focus training is 3-hr workshop to introduce you to simple practices and give answers to the most common challenges for your concentration, empathy and emotional balance. It’s meant to refresh your insight and understanding of how to train and maintain your attention throughout challenging days and long weeks.

Learn how to use simple and effective concentration practices to benefit from increased awareness in your daily actions and interactions. Understand and apply insight for mental strength and emotional balance.
Date: Saturday 4 June 2016
Location: Central Hong Kong
Facilitator: Sebastian Droesler
Cost: HKD350.-
Details & Registration: Just Focus

MINDFUL MEN’S GROUP mini
This men’s group enables men who want to address issues and phases of their lives in a group of likeminded others. This is a great opportunity to experience the benefits of a closed group within a shorter timeframe. You will learn to reflect and engage with yourself and others in a much more effective and effcient way. The group will produce an in-depth richness of stories and experiences.

Why purpose, feminine energy, nothingness and other men can inspire us and make us mad at times. How to resolve issues in relationships, at work and with yourself.
4x Wednesdays 1, 8, 15, 22 June 2016
Location: Central Hong Kong
Facilitator: Sebastian Droesler
Cost: HKD1600.-
Details & Registration: Men’s Group

RELATIONSHIP CLINIC
Increased awareness and understanding of your ‘signature’ behaviour, perceptions and emotional responses in relationships helps us getting the love we want. This 3-hr workshop is for everyone who want to understand for her or himself the way he/she operates with partners or spouses. You will be able to find out how much power we have to change the way we interact. The chance to uproot fights and arguments fundamentally motivates each of us!

Workshop for individuals and couples who want to get a basic understanding of their relationship ‘style’ and how they can change to improve their relationship skills. Based on the Emotion Focused Therapy approach.
Date: Saturday 18 June 2016
Location: Central Hong Kong
Facilitator: Sebastian Droesler
Cost: HKD400.-
please contact Sebastian 

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Retirement from problem solving as a couple’s win win

The video below is Couples’ Skill Building (CSB) par excellence. We find ourselves witnessing a scene, which might have happened this way or another in your living room or in a typical session of marriage counselling. A woman and a man get into an argument which results in both of them getting slightly frustrated with each other. What starts as a normal conversation turns into marital issue. In less than two minutes we dive into a very common clash of wants and needs in adult attachment and intimate relationships.
Couples therapy will guide you through the various levels of cooperating cognitively and emotionally as a team – as a marriage. What you find in this video is a sharp and precise description of two different modes of operation of the feminine and the masculine energy in action. The conflict arises out of the the husband’s unhelpful reaction to his wife’s way of reaching out to him – connecting with him. In a nutshell: she wants to engage in meaningful conversation; he wants to engage in a problem solving process. Hence the clash!
The feminine energy often engages in meaningful conversation by recounting stories and thereby processing and disclosing emotional episodes. She wants you to shut up and listen. Now: most men misinterpret LISTENING as a state of hibernated passiv standby of the mind – often obviously detached verbally and in bodylanguage. However: listening is the art of connecting with the storyline AND to empathize with your counterpart. Playing quietly with your blackberry is NOT LISTENING.
The masculine energy is often solution focused and finds conversations which aim to solve a problem utterly meaningful. Let’s face it, that is what the feminine energy tends to like about the male brain. Most likely it’s his problem solving mind which made him successful in his job and in sports.
Hang on! You will ask now: So why is it wrong for the man to bring up the nail here? The answer is: It is about the timing. Have you considered and actually heard from her how she feels during this episode? Have you? or have you made up your mind by simply looking at the nail? then thought “well that must hurt, so we need to get this thing out”? Thinking for her, not with her.
The challenge for a lot of my male clients is, to actually accept that all they need to do is LISTEN. The huge benefit of this communication skill is a happy spouse and every other benefit that comes with that. AND frankly: much less effort!
An easy way to learn proper LISTENING is to … see me individually … as a couple … or join one of my men’s groups
Do you hear me?

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INSECURE ATTACHMENT STYLES

How to heal your avoidant attachment style?

Yes indeed, lots has been written about attachment styles and even more has been published. 

I will focus here on what to do better if you have an avoidant style.

As adults, those who are securely attached tend to have trusting, long-term relationships. Other key characteristics of securely attached individuals include having high self-esteem, enjoying intimate relationships, seeking out social support, and an ability to share feelings with other people.

Here I will focus on the avoidant attachment style – not so much on the anxious one. Reason being that I am currently dealing with several male clients suffering from their avoidant attachment styles. They are all facing serious issues in committed long term relationships or relationships they want to make work long term.

With high probability they would not be my clients, if they did not have committed partners with most likely secure attachment styles. That’s not because they are not hurt. Its because they don’t even know they have been hurt at some point – which then made them likely to become avoidantly attached. 

In counselling and therapy I will work with you on the being and acting avoidant and how you would be more secure and act more securely in relationships and social contexts. Self-awareness is key in order to tackle these cognitive and behavioural areas. Mindfulness practices will help you to develop awareness and also to cultivate your emotional balance.   

Therapeutic relationship: as a therapist I provide …

  1. safe place to experience and to try new behavior
  2. gather and explore typical avoidant behaviour, habits and attitudes

My approach to counselling applies the theory and practice of Mindfulness:

First: Self-awareness (in particular in difficult relationship situations) – what is going on with me and inside of me right now?

Second: Focus on affective self-regulation, communication and insight – what mental strategies can I apply to work it out?

Time off as “alone time”: taking a break (like a holiday) in order to become proficient in observation skills (being present and at the same time being non-judgmental) 

Often with the target to improve relationships!!

Couples counselling