Marriage Health with James & Teri Craft
With backgrounds in therapy and coaching, James and Teri Craft help your marriage through issues with communication, intimacy, conflict, or if you're just fighting to fall back in love with your partner. Aside from their certifications, the reason why James and Teri are so passionate about helping your marriage through challenges is because they've walked through the hardest things in their marriage and they wouldn't have made it if it weren't for help.
If you are fighting for your marriage, don’t face this fight alone.
Marriage Health with James & Teri Craft
5 Signs You NEED Couples Counseling (and How to Find the Right Therapist)
Successful couples counseling hinges on key elements like empathy, truth, and the effective management of mental illness, addictions, and trauma. We underscore the significance of mutual desire for reconciliation and the necessity for both partners to be open to individual processes when joint therapy isn't immediately feasible. Additionally, we delve into the critical need for specialized knowledge in sensitive areas like betrayal trauma and sex therapy. This episode aims to be a beacon of hope and guidance, reassuring listeners that professional support is available and that they are not alone in their journey toward healing and growth.
If you feel like you might need coaching our counseling, please visit https://www.livelifeunplugged.org/contact
When a couple hits a wall when they feel like they're having a lot of issues, maybe there's been a huge lie or a crisis in a marriage or a relationship. Should they jump straight into couples counseling?
James Craft:No.
Teri Craft:The most important thing you need to know about couples counseling is that there is a right time to do it. So that might sound funny because you're thinking well, I have a problem, we need to just go take care of it. So that might sound funny because you're thinking well, I have a problem, we need to just go take care of it. But there needs to be some criteria that's met in order for it to be safe.
Producer:Couples counseling is huge and it's okay to feel hesitation, because there are many cases when couples counseling is not actually the right step for you. We're going to show you the five signs you need to see in your relationship to know if couples counseling is the right step for you. But if you don't hear anything else, you need to hear this. You are brilliant. The decision to get help is a really good decision. We don't know what you're going through, but with help, things are going to get better. So we made this to help you figure out what the right step is get better. So we made this to help you figure out what the right step is. But what might be just as important as knowing if couples counseling is right for you right now is finding out if your coach or counselor is the right fit for you.
Teri Craft:If you're going into a situation where maybe that counselor or even coach doesn't have the training and what you're needing and you walk in there, you can actually aggravate the issue more than before you walked in there, and that's not what you're looking for.
Producer:You're looking for help and to help you learn what to look for in a coach or a counselor. We sat down with someone who we think is one of the greatest sex therapists in the world. How valid of a concern is it that people will go to therapy and get screwed up?
Dr Jenna Mountain:Or coaches. Yeah, so you're asking a very big question.
Producer:In addition to talking through the five signs you need to see in your relationship, the Dr Jenna Mountain is going to break down what attributes we need to look for in a coach or a counselor. What you're facing might feel like the end, but getting help is probably more normal than you realize. The truth is that even couples who have really nice espresso machines in their house and vacation in 30A have serious issues too. We know this journey can be really hard unless you have help. These are the crafts, james and Teri. They don't know how the internet works, anything about YouTube, tiktok or social media, and that's okay, because they know a bit about something else Marriage. In fact, they've helped some of the most influential couples in the world, and they've also helped couples going through the hardest situations imaginable. The reason why James and Teri are able to help couples go through really hard things is because they've been through it themselves and they came through the other side, the greatest marriage podcast ever Marriage Health, with James and Teri Craft. Should they jump straight into couples counseling?
James Craft:No, no, why not? They do individual work first. People ask should they just jump right into couples counseling? Yes, if they have individual counseling as well, because obviously there's two brokens don't make a whole, and so we have to look at the brokenness on an individual basis as well, because obviously there's two brokens don't make a whole, and so we have to look at the brokenness on individual basis as well.
James Craft:You might be saying to me, james, my partner is the screw up, not me. He or she went and did the crazy and I didn't do that. So why do I have to go to counseling? Because you need support. You're going to find yourself in a place where, if your partner betrayed you or has been lying or just destructive behavior that's called trauma, the traumatic experience what you're going to need is support.
James Craft:There's going to be a lot of confusing thought processes why me? Was I not good enough? And this and that, and so you have to be able to work through those things. If not, you carry it on your own. So this is advocacy for you today, because you know what You're worth it. You're worth it, and I would love for you to be able to look in the mirror and say you know what I deserve to have this attention brought on me in a positive way so I can have care and support and a partnership so I can move forward in healing and health in my life. And then what I do with my partner. If he or she continues to do the same exact thing, then we can meet there as one.
Producer:The reason why individual counseling for both you and your partner is so important is because it allows you to show up to couples counseling with your voice. Your voice is powerful, and it's because it allows you to show up to couples counseling with your voice. Your voice is powerful and it might be something you've lost in your relationship. A common indicator that you've lost your voice is this I'm terrified of couples counseling because I'm afraid my spouse and my counselor coach will both join together and single me out as the problem and there's nothing I can do about it. Can I ask how do I prevent the therapist and my spouse getting up on me? I feel like I always look like the crazy one in the room.
Teri Craft:Yeah, yeah, I think it's really important when, when you enter the room with in a couple's counseling or coaching process, I think that we're always going to be potentially defended, meaning like I'm gonna go in and I've got sort of my protection up because I don't want maybe the gaslighting I'm experiencing with my partner or maybe I've experienced that growing up and I'm like that's the last thing I want is for some perceived authority figure to do something negative to me. I think that most of the time when you're dealing with good and healthy, knowledgeable professionals, they're going to ask hard questions, they're gonna dig, but I think the important thing that I want everyone to hear that's listening is that you have power. If something feels uncomfortable, if it's moving in a direction that feels unsafe for you to go hey, I want to just back that up for a minute and maybe I need some clarification there. Can you clarify, kind of what direction you're going? Or to say, hey, I might need a minute. I need to understand a little bit more of what's happening.
Teri Craft:I have had some gaslighting. I've had, you know, some experiences where I was really confused by some of this emotional trauma and that's kind of feeling like that's happening right now and I need to put a pause here. The fear is is is that somehow I'm going to look like the deranged one, or I'm you know, I'm not regulated and I'm crazy now and I have to be perfect or I'm going to be manipulated, and I really want to help people to understand what that fear does because of the gaslighting or because of, maybe, the trauma that I've suffered. It moves us into a place where we aren't completely honest and we're not completely compassionate with our own story and with what's going on. We're not necessarily listening to what needs to happen here, so we can tend to kind of shrink back and then we're sort of letting things happen in the environment, that couple's environment, where we're thinking this, this is feeling really uncomfortable, this isn't safe, but I'm not saying anything. So that immediately is going to put me back into that seat where I'm going to feel unsafe.
Producer:So you're saying that you can still have boundaries, even in a therapy setting?
Teri Craft:Absolutely. I mean you should right, there's so many women that I work with and I would say I mean men too, I mean I think in general. But they will come away from couples counseling and say, yeah, that just felt super re-traumatizing because I was experiencing a lot of unsafe language or I was, you know, the stories were flipped or they were not correct. There was, you know, a gaslighting happening within the session. Maybe the professional isn't aware of certain things, and so their line of questionings feeling really uncomfortable, and so I went away feeling super traumatized. Oftentimes one of the processes that we'll work through individually is is where was your voice? And it's like a lot of women are sitting there going. I didn't think I could use it there.
Teri Craft:Absolutely, if you're in a couple's coaching or counseling session, that's when you're supposed to right, be able to express what's going on.
Teri Craft:And then we usually the second layer into that is usually I'm afraid to use my voice.
Teri Craft:I'm afraid Because if I do, then I'm going to get retribution or there's going to be more gaslighting, or you know, the list goes on. You know we're talking about trauma, we're talking about, you know, a really abusive, potentially abusive situation. So at that point we got to like say, wait, let's back up from this and make sure that there's certain criteria that's being met before you even get to that point, and I will go through a specific list with my client, individually or as a couple, and make sure that these criteria are met in order for the couple's process to be as safe as possible. And sometimes my client will go oh my gosh, there's two of these criteria that are completely not being met right now. That environment, invariably, is going to have some unsafe elements, even if the professional is really great and they're doing the best that they can. But if those criteria aren't being met, you're going to feel unsafe. This is where I maybe use my voice and say okay, maybe this needs to pause until there is some safety here or there's some of these criteria met.
Producer:And so these are the five signs you need to see in your relationship to know if couples counseling is a safe place to process and find healing is a safe place to process and find healing.
Teri Craft:Okay, so here are five signs that you are ready. The first sign that I want to look for is now I'm going to use the word sobriety is established. This, basically, is saying that any repetitive behavior pattern is something that has been happening over and over and over, that has been hurtful, damaging, destructive. That there is a sobriety around that, meaning that that is no longer active, right, and that's no longer been active for, let's say, 60 to 90 days, right. So there's like this cooling off period right from this repetitive pattern. Those repetitive behavior patterns could be things like obvious addictions, whether that's substance or that's pornography, that's sexual addiction. We need to have established sobriety there. That could also be things like hurtful patterns of raging, lying, gaslighting. It could even be repetitive behavior patterns around working, workaholism, all those kinds of things. If those things are, there's like there's a healthy control. Because if not, what's happening in the couple's environment is is that you're taking all your time to deal with the repetitive behavior pattern, you're going to be paying for a lot of sessions, you're putting a lot of effort in, when really one of the partners who's dealing with an addiction or a repetitive behavior pattern that's hurtful. They should be working on that on their own right. They should establish sobriety first.
Teri Craft:Second thing is is empathy is present? Now, when I say empathy, that is obviously empathy is being able to sit with or hold space for the feelings and experiences of another. So if I'm unable to have any empathy for my partner or my partner is unable to have any empathy for me, meaning like I can sit with their feelings, I can hold that with them and I can even feel that within my own heart and look at them and be able to say, okay, wow, I see you, I see you. If we're unable to do that to any degree, somebody doesn't have any ability to even hold space for their partner. That's not going to make for a good couples healing environment.
Teri Craft:The third thing is is that truth has to be established couples healing environment? The third thing is is that truth has to be established? So if I'm sitting in a couple's environment and I'm wondering if my, my partner, is telling the truth, because there's no truth. They haven't even told me what it is that I've asked them over and over and over about and they're like I'm not telling you the truth or you know you're crazy, but you know that. You know that truth hasn't been established and they're withholding the truth because you can't handle it is how they would maybe phrase it. I'm just protecting you by not telling you the truth, or you know it's. It's none of your business or whatever. If that hasn't been established, if truth hasn't been established, the couple's sessions are not going to work. They're not. There's no success there, right?
Teri Craft:The fourth is is that mental illness, addictions and trauma are being managed, meaning, if any of those things exist, if there is an ongoing mental health issue, there's no shame here. We don't have to feel like there's failure. What we need to do is we need to own it and we need to get help for it, right? So if there's something like anxiety, depression, if there's failure, what we need to do is we need to own it and we need to get help for it, right? So if there's something like anxiety, depression, if there's bipolar that's happening, if there's personality disorder, if there's narcissism, if we're dealing with an addiction and we know that there's an addiction, yet I'm not, you know, attending my group work or I don't have a therapist that's working me or a recovery coach that I'm digging in with on a weekly basis and I'm just not even going to own that Then then how can we kind of work forward with our relationship when those things aren't even being managed?
Teri Craft:If I've got a lot of trauma from my childhood that's not being managed when I go into a couple's environment, what's gonna happen is it's gonna bring up things. That's what a couple's environment does. It kind of takes two people and all their brokenness and all their wounded places and we start to kind of look at it together. Well, you're going to feel an increase in symptoms. Sometimes, let's say, one of us or both of us have trauma from our past. If we don't have that managed or someone helping us with that, then this is going to feel really, really, really re-traumatizing. So that's really a really important step.
Teri Craft:And then the fifth really important one is that reconciliation is mutually desired.
Teri Craft:So if I'm in a couple's environment and I want to see this thing move forward, then we both have to kind of want that.
Teri Craft:If you're actually looking for there to be a built intimacy, or we're building connection and we're trying to heal from our attachments and we want this to feel better, we want it to look better, we want it to be more together, then you both have to want that. That's one of the most important things we start with. This is do you both want to be here? Those are the signs that are really going to show whether a couple's process is going to be successful. So if you're not seeing, you know one or more of these signs. Then my encouragement to you is to um both be open, both get curious about what it looks like to continue in an individual process, um, and if your partner says, no, I won't do it, then do it for yourself. That's where you start. Listen, a couple's coaching or counseling process can get really really traumatizing, really really fast If it's not the right timing and you don't see those signs or your professional doesn't know about what you're dealing with.
Producer:No matter where you are on the spectrum, whether you're ready for a couple's counseling or coaching, or if you just need someone to come alongside and support you, we want you to know what's important to look for in a coach or counselor. Dr Jenna Mountain runs a massive practice. She knows this world extremely well and she's one of the most qualified people doing this work, and so we asked her for her insight. How valid of a concern is it that people will go to therapy and get screwed up or coaches?
Dr Jenna Mountain:Yeah. So you're asking a very big question that I'm would like, in order to answer it well, to come out at a couple of different angles, if y'all are cool with it. All of these coaches and counselors are humans, that's right. We don't have to be perfect to be good at what we do. There are some terrible garbage ones out there.
Dr Jenna Mountain:So, like both can be true, and I hold space for both, there are some basic things that go into being a good therapist, a good counselor and a good coach that, unfortunately, not enough people in our field do. In fact, I just had a conversation today with someone who's wanting to get into the field, and they just wanted to sit down and have coffee and ask me like, where would you go, what would you study, how would you do it? And more than the academics although that is a really big piece I think the best coaches and counselors are the ones that are doing their own work, and so I actually think I mean you need all of the training. I do think that is important, but how you apply the training, how you sit in front of someone, I think the biggest component is your own personal health, that's right.
James Craft:I know that I have my own therapist that I go and I spend time with on a biweekly basis, and so she drills in me, I'm working on me and I'll probably do that till the day I die. But every time I go and I work on me I'm able to go and work on other help with others where they're at oh yeah because one it softens my edges, I'm able to give more to them in that process.
James Craft:You know, and I know that my therapist she's been honest, that she still works on her yeah, I do.
Dr Jenna Mountain:I still work on me.
James Craft:I'll return, yeah and I know Teri, you work on you. It's something that if we aren't doing that, how in the world can we meet people in their place of trauma and pain?
Dr Jenna Mountain:Yeah, I think so. One of my mentors said this. This is like you know. She says it all the time. She says you can't teach what you don't know and you can't lead where you won't go. Yeah know, and you can't lead where you won't go, and so it doesn't mean that you haven't been able to do good work up until that point, but you will hit a rock at some point, and my personal and professional belief is that we just never arrive on this side of eternity.
Dr Jenna Mountain:So there's going to be always something you work on, just like the next layer, the next piece, and so we can't know it's happening, unless we are going seeing our own therapists and coaches Right.
James Craft:So that's where the destructive pattern. We can be reactionary, we can shut down, we can be non-empathic to that person. That person feels like they're being stonewalled in that process, right?
Teri Craft:You know what does it look like for somebody who's on a journey, who might be listening, who's on a journey and they're like I just don't want to get hurt by a therapeutic process Therap and they're like I just don't want to get hurt by a therapeutic process Therapists I would say by and large all of them, genuinely really care.
Dr Jenna Mountain:Their ability to care well is going to depend on the work that they've done on themselves. Like can they be differentiated, which is, like you and I are separate people, right, Like therapists, are still human. So, again, the quality of their ability to hold that space with boundaries that create the safety needed for that deep work is all going to be dependent upon. I have gone and done my attachment work.
James Craft:That's right.
Dr Jenna Mountain:Right, you know? Yeah, because from jump, if we really knew how to work with pain, our clients would be learning how to not avoid it.
James Craft:Okay, that's a broad, to not avoid it. Okay, that's a broad, that's huge.
Dr Jenna Mountain:Yes, and I, you know, if you came to my office, sat in my intake we're going to talk about how this is going to hurt Like from jump. I am talking about this is a painful process. That doesn't mean it's an unsafe process. It doesn't mean it's going wrong. I mean I think we and to some degree I get it right, like if I go put my hand on the stove and it hurts, the pain tells me to pull back right. So there is some like natural wiring in us to be pain avoidant as protection. But we are also higher level beings in creation and there is a part of the pain that actually draws us into some growth and so not all pain is supposed to be avoided and I am always gonna say this when I talk about these things in this context, and that idea sometimes feels like it's in conflict with the very important thing of the cycles of abuse. I'm not telling those people to go back into pain.
James Craft:Yeah.
Dr Jenna Mountain:That's not the type of pain that I'm talking about, so I'm not so some people will take that and stay in cycles of abuse. That's not what I'm talking about. You have a whole number of set of people that, like every time something hurts, it means something must be wrong. That's not always the case, or that it should be. Maybe something's wrong, but it doesn't mean you should pull out of this process. It means that this, this has touched on something and we can engage it to fix it. We can engage it to heal it. So working with pain is a nuanced and complex dynamic. That because we've avoided our own work as helpers we don't tend to do well.
James Craft:When someone's dealing with their own pain on an ongoing basis, it creates a not a familiarness to it, but kind of a tolerance of I can handle pain I can do. I'm resilient to the resiliency they like their pain.
Dr Jenna Mountain:The reason that good counseling and coaching works when you're with a healthy helper is that the human experience doesn't have some hard formula that you could just easily apply to navigating your pain, but a safe, trained and educated coach or counselor is going to help you readjust your relationship with your pain. Wow, that's good.
Dr Jenna Mountain:Okay so whether you're overplaying and doing too much pain and you're not getting out of, you know, unsafe situations or your pain avoidant to the point where you're like not doing your growth or not doing your healing work. And so I think I, and that's why it's so complex I mean if you've ever looked at like master's degree requirements for like counseling, compared to all the others they are two or three times as long oh, yeah, it takes so much time just to get the like basic breadth foundation.
Dr Jenna Mountain:There's so much that happens post degree, post licensure in your training. So I think the point is there's no hard formula. It is that we want to help you navigate the human experience healthier the relationship with yourself, the relationship with your ability to listen to your nervous system and and emotional and physical pain in a way that is proportionate and directionally appropriate. Yeah, right, so some of the questions I would ask when people are wondering if their responses are are healthy or not, is I'm like, okay, like when that happens in that relationship, do you feel like your response is proportionate, like it? Maybe it's that you, it is healthy for you to have a response, like an emotional response or reaction to that, but maybe it feels too big. Yeah, and we're gonna talk about okay, tell me how you got to too big. What's the measuring stick?
Dr Jenna Mountain:This all backs up to what we did not get as little kids to trust our guts, listen and have safe relationships. So it feels like a very like floating in space type magnitude. I did not get what I needed and I have no idea, so it just takes time to acquire. It's like in a skillset and a practice that you have to develop in yourself, and you you have. In my opinion, you have to sit at least in front of one human, to go back and forth and volley the experience and have them give you feedback and have and have them reflect back, reflect back. Okay, here's what I hear you saying. Like to be the mirror, for sure so what does a listener do?
Teri Craft:yeah, to figure out if they're in a. I mean, we can't give it completely, but good, healthy or bad?
Dr Jenna Mountain:yeah, like, how do we help?
Teri Craft:someone know like what is a good and healthy environment, as opposed to, maybe, a counseling environment where it it might be borderlining like it's, yeah, and there are there are bad, unhealthy, there's like bad therapy, and then there's like unethical therapy and like that's not the same thing.
Dr Jenna Mountain:But yeah, um, I don't want anybody in either of them. I I would say that like. So, first of all, like I would look at the resume of training because a lot of the specialization comes post degree in my opinion. So, like I am an emdr therapist, right, so I do eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing. I did not get trained to do that in grad school. That was post grad school. Um, not all emdr therapists are trauma informed.
Dr Jenna Mountain:Not all therapists are trauma informed, shockingly like that is actually like a practice and a specialty that not everybody gets. You can get it through courses. You can get it through experience and consultation and supervision. I had both Um, but I've spent years becoming a trauma therapist. You know there's also some that.
Teri Craft:I'm just going to be honest. Like they don't know a specific. You know I work with a lot of of people that have dealt with betrayal trauma, so if they go into a counseling or a coaching environment and they have no clue about that and they don't know how to assess that, that can cause more damage.
Dr Jenna Mountain:Yeah, I mean a lot of people come into counseling and coaching and if we start to funnel down to what's the core issue here, there were lots of variety of experiences and things like that. Like what's the core issue here? There were lots of variety of experiences and things like that. A lot of it comes down to a betrayal, an attachment wound, like how do I connect as a human to a human? Well, you're having a human to a human experience with that therapist, coach or counselor. I have also, you know, become a specialist in sex through training, through consultation and through experience. Some people think that just because someone is an expert in relationships, they know how to deal with sex but sometimes they're really true, Nope it's not true.
Dr Jenna Mountain:Pretty territorial about that. Just because you're a specialist in marriage doesn't mean you actually understand everything that you would need to understand educationally and training wise to sit there and mess with someone's sex life educationally and training. Wise to sit there and mess with someone's sex life? Yeah, that's true, but you will have a lot of people, professionally and as a client consumer, think that that makes sense and I get a lot of leftovers on that front.
Teri Craft:It's good for someone to understand that the time and effort that someone takes to get the experience and the knowledge and the information is going to translate into a potentially safer place with specific things.
Dr Jenna Mountain:It's safe. It's safe Educationally training and information.
Teri Craft:Wise now, right, but but the the person has to do their work as well. We have coached couples with so many different situations, so many things that they're dealing with all over the world, and we understand that it takes a lot of time.
Teri Craft:Well, I don't know, we know that it takes a systematic way of walking through this, and we want to be able to be an encouragement to you as well. So listen if you feel like I want to be able to be an encouragement to you as well. So listen if you feel like I want to know more about that, reach out. Life Unplugged exists to bring healthy coaching to individuals and couples regarding all of the things that I spoke about today, and I just want you to know that you're not alone in this and that there is hope. If you want to connect with us, the link is in the description.
Producer:Marriage Health with James and Teri Craft. If you feel like you need someone to come alongside you, a coach or a counselor, reach out to us. The link is in the description.
