“Could you make sure to clean the kitchen today?” My wife asked, eyebrows raised. I hesitated trying to think of something to say. I felt my chest tighten and my breathing get shallow. She cocked her head, “What’s wrong?” I stumbled to explain everything I had to do that day without actually saying “No.” Tension began to fill the room. I knew she was comparing her structured nine to five job to my odd therapy schedule that gives me more time at home. I knew she was wondering why more didn’t get done around the house, and I thought about what it must look like from her perspective, to leave in the morning with me at my computer, and come home eight hours later to find me in the same place. How hard is it to fold some laundry, after all? Her forehead crinkled, “I don’t understand why you can’t put thirty minutes aside and clean the kitchen.”

This is a pretty mundane example of the type of things married people argue about. It seems like a pretty simple matter on the surface. The discussion was about doing chores. So why did I feel cornered? Why did something as simple as cleaning the kitchen make me feel so much anxiety? This argument was about more than simply cleaning the kitchen. I felt torn between two demands of great importance: my career or my wife’s good will. I keenly felt the burden of my family’s future resting on my shoulders, and what seemed like an endless to-do list. How could I stop working on that to do something as trivial as cleaning? What good was a clean kitchen if we were drowning in student loan debt? But not cleaning the kitchen meant the evaporation of marital bliss. How could I focus on my work with an upset wife on my mind? Either way, I was in trouble.

Any fly on the wall seeing our argument probably would have thought the issue was as simple as a lazy husband not wanting to do chores. But as in almost every argument, there was something deeper going on below the surface. To my wife, this was not merely a matter of having a clean kitchen. For her, it was about peace of mind. Coming home to a messy house after a hard day adds more stress. When the house is messy, it makes her mind feel chaotic and disordered too. Not only that, but a dirty house reminds her of the instability of growing up with a father who had bipolar disorder and refused to take his medicine. The issue of cleaning the kitchen was proxy for some deeper concerns. For me it was about earning enough to take care of my wife and to prepare for children. For my wife it was about feeling safety and peace in her own home.

Arguments can draw a couple closer together, or they can drive a wedge between them. What makes the difference? That question has a few answers, but one of the big things is whether we ever get to the deeper meanings under the surface of the fight. If we stay on the surface, we may have conclusion, but we won’t have resolution; whether I did the cleaning or not, I would have had stress and felt disconnected from my wife. That’s because what I needed, and what every person needs, is to know and feel that their partner understands and respects them. The reason we had an argument had nothing to do with cleaning at all, it was really about her basic need for safety, and my basic need for competence. We couldn’t fix the problem until we acknowledged the source of our strong emotions and what the fight was really about.

The moment we feel understood by our partner, we can think clearly, and then it’s easy to do problem solving. Next time you’re arguing and feeling upset, ask yourself about the deeper issue behind the disagreement. Find out from your partner what their position means to them. Empathize with their thoughts and feelings, and see how much easier it is to resolve arguments.

Originally published on Utah Valley Health and Wellness

Written by: Kenneth Jeppesen, LAMFT, MMFT

Kenneth is a therapist at the American Fork Center for Couples and Families and is a licensed associate marriage and family therapist. He enjoys helping individuals and couples find peace and happiness and spends the rest of his time learning about everything!

As I have traveled across Scandinavian and Europe recently, I have noticed one thing – people are the same everywhere. They need love, connection, relationships and seek for happiness. As I was with my wife in Oslo, Norway at Fronger Park (most notably known for the ‘Angry Baby’ statue), I noticed several couples showing interesting tendencies. One couple I noticed was on a date. They were sitting in the grass with a bottle of wine and food between them. They were leaning towards each other – literally. I could tell that they were on a date and enjoying themselves and each other. Another couple I saw were in obvious distress. The woman was laying on the grass, turned away from her husband who was standing 10 feet from her looking the opposite direction. She seemed angry as she was in tears and holding her child. I happened to run across this couple a few times in the park. I never saw them talk to each other and the look on the woman’s face remained upset. I could tell that they were in the middle of an argument and not getting along.

When I work in counseling with couples, I often notice where the couple is ‘leaning’ – literally and figuratively. Researcher Dr. John Gottman has found that this matters to the health of your relationship. Do we find ourselves leaning into our spouse when things get difficult or do we lean out? Leaning in towards your spouse might help you find solutions to your problems that you might not find on your own.

Most of us try to avoid uncomfortable emotions. Who likes to feel sad, depressed, lonely, hurt, scared or betrayed? Don’t we try to NOT feel this way? Some may even engage in unhealthy behaviors to avoid their emotions.  I encountered this as a common theme in my work at drug and alcohol rehab facilities.  Though it may be unpleasant, I propose that if we want to feel the comfortable emotions in life, we have to get good at feeling the ones that are not so comfortable.

It is important to realize that uncomfortable emotions are not bad.  We all experience a myriad of emotions; some make us feel better than others.  Because of the discomfort that comes with some, many try to avoid them all together, take them out on others, or deal with them in unhealthy ways.  The trick to dealing with emotions in a healthy manner is not to get rid of them, but rather to embrace them and then let them go.  As I work with couples or individuals in therapy, I often review three simple steps to dealing with emotions:

1. Recognize: Identifying what we are feeling is the first step. If we don’t know what we are feeling, then we will not be able to do anything with it. It will unwittingly control us. When I ask a client what they are feeling they will often reply, “I’m angry.” Anger, however, is what I call a false emotion. It only exists as it attaches itself to what we originally felt. For example, if someone were to post something mean about you on social media it might make you feel hurt. What is our natural reaction to something like this? We might want to lash out at that person. This is us embracing anger instead of hurt. In this case, the anger covers up the hurt and offers the illusion that it is protecting us—that it is keeping us safe from future hurt—when all it is doing is making it so that we remain hurt. Anger is insatiable. It can never be satisfied. Have you ever felt good after embracing your anger? No. We feel even more angry. That is why I call anger a false emotion. Let anger be the first sign that you are actually feeling something else. Ask yourself the question, “What am Ireally feeling?” in order to recognize your true emotions.
2. Feel: This is the hardest step. After we have recognized that we feel hurt, for example, we usually don’t want to embrace that feeling. This goes back to not wanting to feel uncomfortable feelings. When we allow ourselves to feel these emotions, we then have power to do something with them. Consider the following example: You have a couch in your house that you really detest. This is the ugliest, most horrible piece of furniture ever created. It is so ugly that no one will touch it. How do you handle it? You can’t magically make it disappear—you actually have to pick it up and move it yourself. It seems ironic that in order to move something out of your house that you don’t like, you actually have to get closer to it and touch it. The same goes for our emotions. When we feel them (get closer to them, touch them, pick them up) then we have the power to do something with them.
3. Cope: This is the step most people want to skip straight to. We want to cope with or let go of our emotions without feeling them. But doing this can get us into trouble. When we try to cope with our emotions without first picking them up, what we are really doing is distracting ourselves from feeling something uncomfortable. This is similar to taking a blanket and covering the ugly couch in our house—it’s still there! What we choose to distract ourselves with (i.e., social media, pornography, substances, food, work) then becomes our go-to every time we feel uncomfortable, and an addiction is born. Coping with an emotion involves not forcing it to leave and not forcing it to stay. We let it go after it has run its course. Then we can do something that helps us recover—such as reading a book or talking with a friend.

Learning to deal with uncomfortable emotions can feel counterintuitive at times. Our initial response may be to react with anger or push them away.  But, as we practice embracing our feelings in order to let them go, we will develop habits that will improve our emotional health and overall internal peace.

Originally published on Utah Valley Health and Wellness

Written by: Triston Morgan, PhD, LMFT

Dr. Morgan is a director and co-owner of Center for Couples and Families, a counseling center, in Utah Valley. He is licensed as a PhD marriage and family therapist, and is originally from Oregon. He and his beautiful wife, Cristina, love to travel and see the world.

Come see Kenneth Jeppesen present on how to improve your marriage. He will present on John Gottman’s 40 years of marital research at the Orem Utah library on July 13th and August 17th.