Today, we're tackling the age-old question: counselling or coaching for relationships? Counselling delves into the past, while coaching, like at Sparked Forever, focuses on building skills for the future. If you're working on personal goals, go solo, but for relationship issues, it's best to bring your partner along. Going solo can lead to separate ideas and a tug-of-war dynamic. Remember, fixing a relationship requires both partners. Ready to move forward together? Investing in your relationship fosters mutual growth and interdependence.

Do you need help with relationship-building blocks? Reach out!  https://sparkedforever.com/

About the Host:

Meet Crystal, your relationship and social health coach. Crystal is the founder of Sparked Forever Relationship & Singles coaching. She started her journey supporting the neurodiverse community in navigating this, sometimes frustrating, neurotypical social world. Lessons and inspiration from her earlier work drives Crystal’s passion for bringing couples and singles together through acceptance, understanding and big picture thinking to grow vibrant relationships. Crystal understands that the foundation for our social health and well-being starts with making connections to others. When Crystal is not working with couples, she loves to be out on adventures with her partner and bonus kids or spending time connecting with friends over good food and fun music.

Links:

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https://www.instagram.com/sparkitsocial/

https://www.tiktok.com/@sparked_forever

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Welcome to our love space today. It's so great. I love this time of year, depending on when you're listening to it. I'm actually at this point in the timeline, I'm in mid spring. And I usually find interestingly, that in mid spring, and in kind of mid fall to like, are actually just end of summer. So September, October, I tend to get a burst of new clients, so new clients and new couples and new singles to work with. And I think that, you know, I was just thinking about this over the last week, as you know, a bunch of new intakes come in, and I get to meet new lovely couples and people that, you know, it's interesting that I don't get many in the summer in winter, I don't get as many. And I think we're see, I think I see these kinds of bursts, because kind of like, spring and fall are those change times those times were really, maybe you're not caught up in all, necessarily the seasonal excitement yet, right? Like when we're in the middle of summer, we're out camping, or boating or hiking, or, you know, family trips, or trying to not be driven crazy by our children or, you know, whatever your life situation is, you know, there's a lot going on in summer and probably winters like a little bit too, you know, there's some winter sports to do, there's lots of winter holidays, you know, getting together work, things getting snowed in, maybe not being able to go out as much as regular. And so I think kind of the Fall and the Spring times, are times where we realize what was not working in that previous season that we've been having, or the previous year or the privilege, you know, time. And so we I think are ready for some change, just like the season is ready for change. You know, now this mid spring season, we're seeing where the flowers coming up and you know, leaves popping out, I have a beautiful grapevine on my back deck that I just love. And you know, last week, we just started to see some, you know, beds for the leaves coming out. And now you know, we're like 25% leaves, all of a sudden, I don't know where like it was like overnight, we went from like these little tiny, adorable beds to pop into leaves. So I think we're all ready for that change at this time of year. And, you know, when thinking about this, one of the big things I get asked a lot from couples, and even from singles when they contact me about working with me. So one of the things that couples and singles when we're doing the intakes, and asking me is like, kind of am I ready for this work? Or, you know, I've heard some of your podcasts or you know, I've you know, seen you talk live, you know, what are the things that I need to know, to be ready for this? Or what are all the things we can work on, you know, like I was really interested in where you're talking about, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like I did a talk on best friend energy. And I did another one on, you know, making deeper connections. And you know, people might be like, yes, I want that. But what else can we do? And you know, my big thing is always D stigmatizing. So I think a lot of the work that I do have with singles and individuals, it usually tends to be a lot of neuro spacey people, so people, you know, artistic people or people with ADHD. You know, and I think a lot of that we're really working on sometimes it's just, you know that how do I initiate? How do I reach out? You know, what should friendships look like? But I also really think the important part, when I do the individual work is like what would do those social connections and social health look like for you as an individual. And that's when we take that neuro spacey piece into account and think about what your life in your social circle and your best social health is. And so I think that really branches off into my and you know, we again, use the cake model, right for that communication, affection, kind fulness energy because that goes into all of our social relationships into all and into building all of our social health. But I think also we're doing a lot of work on that self acceptance, and that kind fullness, right? First having that kind fullness with ourselves, and really kind of realizing where our relationships and our social health is, where we want to grow it and where we want to go with it. So that's a lot of work I do with that. And again, I do a lot of work with helping to destigmatize this idea of working on your relationships and working on your social health. And as a couple to, you know, come see me when things are good and vibrant and wonderful because that is always the easiest time to come and work and grow on your relationships and get those coping strategies and, you know, improve that communication you have because that's really Ito's are going to help build your foundation as you grow together as a couple on all of your life's adventures, but sometimes maybe we have missed that out, you know, you maybe you didn't hear me earlier. And now that we're destigmatizing things, maybe we have got to that not so good place, maybe we have slipped down that hill of blindness. And we need to get back maybe our relationship is or appears to be in those last phases or in those not good phases that we want, that we're that we don't do it, maybe our relationship is in those last phases that we don't want to be in, right, and we do want to work on it. And we do want to build it back up, we do want to start collaborating and creating together again. So how do we know how we should do that? How do we know if we need counseling, if we need crystal, if we need to go to individual therapy, that's what we're gonna dive into today. And I think this is like some good things to think about. For everyone. Even if you're not at the place that we're, you know, building things back together, if you're already, you know, if you're still at that great place, and you're just working on building things, I think these are some good things to keep in mind. So if you're a couple, and you're thinking of whether I should go to sorry, to individual counseling, or couples counseling, let's just draw that distinction first. So we'll put so we'll talk just about individual counseling slash work, or couples work. So the one caveat, I will say here is that, you know, the work I do is more of that coaching model, we're thinking about how to create our foundational building blocks, we're not necessarily going back and doing what I call archaeology, we're not going back in or not maybe, you know, diving deep into things that have happened in the past, and to personal individual traumas, I mean, those are all taken into consideration. But we're not necessarily here to unpack those things. Okay. So for some people who do need to impact those things, or do need to dive down or may have some other things that are impacting their, their quality of social health. So those could be some mental health reasons that we need to dive into, all of those things are 100%, much better dealt with in a counseling model, either individual or a couple cap, in a coaching model, or in an in working with crystal, you slash me, that's me, working with me, you we are working on building some foundational, you know, blocks for your relationship and your social health. And moving forward into the future with growth. Now, you can do both at the same time, crazy, you can work on moving forward and building up that foundation again, while thinking and while exploring what's happened in the past to get you to this point and unpacking those pieces. So you can totally I've many couples I work with that do do counseling, either individual couples counseling, plus come and work with me. And that's like a fantastic way to go. If you don't think you need to dive into the past, then perfect, then we go with a you know, a model, like I'm doing that coaching model where we're looking more at building the foundation, and moving forward. Fantastic. Okay, so what about so that's just the difference between my model and counseling? But what's the difference if we dive in more into individual therapy, versus coming as a couple? Okay, that is a big important question. So, just on the basics, you know, individual therapy, when you're in a couple is great for working on individual things. So if you are a person who's had like a late diagnosis of autism, or ADHD, and you want to work on figuring out, like, what parts of this are, are the way my brain is wired, what parts of this are, you know, might be more of my personality traits, what parts of the way, you know, I'm dealing with my social health and relationships. And, you know, we can add, that can be something that can be unpacked individually, because that has to do with mostly your interactions, your self acceptance, all of those things, your self understanding, which will help you to be better understood in your relationships, if you are dealing with personal mental health issues, like depression, anxiety, any of those kinds of things and you want to work on, you know, unpacking those on some coping strategies, on you know, maybe processing those kinds of things. That is great for individual therapy.

If you have, you know, trauma or things you need to unpack from your childhood, that you think are maybe affecting you and maybe they're affecting also. I mean, you know, they're probably impactful in all aspects of your life. So, you know, If you need to go to individual coaching or counseling to unpack those, and to think about those, those are great things for individual work, because they're all very you focused are all right, they're all centered on your abilities, your skill set your personal history. Okay? So those are all great choices for individual counseling. Now, what are not great choices for individual counseling, and this is where things can get tricky and can get messy and what often can happen with couples. So sometimes when we you have a resistant person, and the couple who doesn't who's not maybe ready to work on the relationship yet, you know, that can also be a great time to go to therapy, because that is, you know, something that you may want to work on processing and to work on your next steps, and you know, where you're going to go with that piece. But the thing is, is that if, if you are going to individual counseling for your relationship, or individual coaching for your relationship, me, or whoever you're working with, we can only give you kind of, or we can only work with you exploring and developing the best coping mechanisms and strategies, you know, and things you can try for you. We don't really know the other entity, right? We don't know the entity of your relationship, and we don't know the entity, there's actually like two more entities, we don't know, we don't know the entity of your relationship. And we don't know the entity of your other partner. Right? We only know one, right? Because I always like to say your relationship is this special creation, right? That that is kind of outside of you both. So it's like we don't know that piece and what that piece looks like and working with just the individual just do as a person. We also don't know what your partner looks like, right? We don't know how your partner reacts. We don't know, you know, if there's lots of miscommunications happening, or like, you know, if you haven't listened to episode, I think it's 18. And 19, I want to say, on what kind of centers you have, if we you know, we can speculate on what center the other person has, or maybe what's going on in their thought process. But how counterproductive is that, because we actually don't know, we're just making a bunch of guesses and assumptions. And guesses and assumptions aren't great for making improvement and forward growth, right. And that's why a lot of times I feel a lot of people, they will go to individual therapy, or coaching, and they will get great information. And when they go and implement it in their life in their relationship, it doesn't work. And that is really, really difficult. Right. Also, you know, the same thing when I work with I love to work with companies and on how to be more inclusive for Neuro diverse brains and you know, for you know, including everyone's work abilities in the workplace or social, you know, health in the workplace, rather than an individual, a company sending an individual out to me and being like, hey, this person needs to work on their social relationship skills in the workplace or in the office. And I give them the best advice. But the other all the other people, all those other entities that they're interacting with in the office don't also know the best advice, they haven't also explored their own confidence or self acceptance or communication pieces. And so you know, this person could be doing the most ethical gold standard of behaviors, or of you know, social interaction pieces that we've come up with, and no one might be responding. And that's because in that work situation, place with that individual, you know, it's a system, right, and office is a whole cultural system. But guess what your relationship is also a system, right? When we're making improvements in relationships, if we look at it from a behavioral standpoint, we're really looking at a systems change. Right? Your relationship is like a, like a company, it's its own system has its own culture, it has its own dynamics. And if we're going to make a positive change in that culture and dynamics and system, then we need to have everyone on board, just like we would if we're making you know, a systems change our culture change in an office or a company or something. Okay, that's a bit of the difficult problem with going to individual therapy or coaching for couples issue is that we don't have those other people there to either confirm or deny, share their perspective, explore with us to write to get kind of more a fuller answer of what's going on and where we fallen off track or where these miscommunications or oopss are coming from, and what tweaks and things are Are we willing to change and do together as a team? Remember, I'm always talking about collaboration. And it's really hard to collaborate when only one person is on board. Right? Okay, so the other piece, so that's one of the things that can happen if an individual goes for therapy on a couples related issue. Also, sometimes if you have two people, right, and they're each going to their own individual therapy, fantastic, if they each have their own individual things to work on, if we are each going to our own individual therapy, and we're going there, and we're sharing what's going on in our relationship and in our couples issues. And, you know, we're venting, maybe we're exploring, we're getting our feelings validated, without maybe perspective taking on the other person's feelings or the full situation. And maybe we're given a strategy, or some coping ideas, and now maybe our partner, right, because not all counselors, not all coaching is the exact same, maybe our partners, counselor who comes from a different perspective, a different, you know, approach has some different strategies or coping ideas, or maybe because the way the information has been relayed to that counselor, or that therapist, that now that like, it's like a totally different perspective, right. So we have one person who comes with one set of strategies, and another person comes with another set of strategies. And that's actually very counterproductive, because we were maybe as a couple having difficulty being on the same page, maybe as a couple were having difficulties, choosing what's going to work to grow our relationship, maybe as a couple were having whatever difficulties we were having. And now we have been each separately validated by a professional, who's telling us we're both right. And you know, which could be the case, but remember, the miscommunication no one's 100%, right? No one's 100%. Wrong. And maybe when people were validating when these professionals were validating our feelings, and our behaviors and our actions and our words and our concerns, we were not taking into account the at the other person in that piece, that they had any valid validity in their actions, behaviors, feelings, the whatever have you. And so we come back together with maybe two opposite plans. Maybe we come back together with two, you know, this person's like, well, this plan is that what we should do, and the other person is like, No, this plan is what we should do. And now we're arguing over what coping strategies and things to use, it often becomes counterproductive, because we have two different plans going on. And if we're at such a place where, you know, we might need therapy and coaching, to move forward and to make any traction, you know, we've just given ourselves another opportunity to miscommunicate by working on couples goals, individually, with two different therapists, right, we've get we've now we're making an opportunity to tell each other that the other person is wrong. I've talked to professional that's professional is right, all of those kinds of things. Like, you know, that happens a lot too, when you have one person who's maybe very interested or can see that there are cracks in the relationship. And the other person cannot see that there are cracks in relationship. And, or as maybe not maybe can see that. Yeah, we need to tweak and change some things and grow some things and put some foundational pieces back in. But I'm not ready to be that vulnerable yet. Okay. So sometimes that can happen and so you'll have one person who's going out and reading articles and you know, and by articles you know, I probably made like things on Facebook, or videos on Tik Tok, very good reading article, but anymore. Right? Rarely, let's be honest. Okay, so

I saw this thing on Facebook, I'm now sharing it forwarding it to you. I saw this thing on Tik Tok I've now sharing in 42. You know, I'm I saw this great couple on Instagram, they have a workshop we could go to I'm sharing for it. And so this person has been bombarded. And every time they read something, they're probably not agreeing with it, because they're not at that spot. Even if maybe in six months, they'll be like 100% this is the right idea. And you're like I just showed that to six months ago. Why don't you listen six months ago? Well, because that person wasn't ready, and they weren't maybe ready to hear it in the method that you were sharing it in. Right. And that's often the same thing when we have the people going to individual counseling for couples problems is that we come back and we're not ready to hear it from that particular person. Or, you know, or we feel now because we've been, you know, struggling and feeling unheard and we've had someone hear us and validate us that that's 100% right answer now, and that's not going to that doesn't help us move forward as a couple that usually antagonizes us and puts us again against each other. So that would be another time where you know where in or a time where individual therapy doesn't work. So, or it doesn't work for a couples issue, right? So it's not going to work for a couples issue. And same thing, like if I coach people, if I coach an individual, and they want to come for couples coaching, I, that's a no go for me, just because I know that it is counterproductive and there won't be much traction. But you know, we can work on your individual social health, we can work on some other individual goals, but that couples work we can't do. And again, like I said before, it's also like a systems change thing, we need to have all parts of the system, right, you've you've probably worked at an office or a company, where you know, HR comes in with a great idea. And then maybe only HR is going to the trainings, and maybe only HR is getting excited about it. And the employers are like mad change, I hate change. And the bosses are like, I have no idea what they're talking about. And I'm only half paying attention. And then so when that happens in a company, do we ever actually see a systems change? Do we ever actually see the program or whatever, HR whoever was trying to get fully adopted? Do we see it fully adopted? answer is no, we, that doesn't happen, right? We have to have everyone at those conferences, everyone at those meetings, everyone doing the training and getting involved and excited. And that's what we need to do when you come work with me, right is that we need to emphasize working on our couples goals together, we need to emphasize collaborating, we need to emphasize thinking about how we're going to communicate together, we need to emphasize, you know, thinking about what is actually manageable, and what we can actually tweak together, right? Because that one person might be able to, you know, have the energy to make 100 changes in a week and one person has the energy to make half a change, well, maybe we're gonna go with three quarters of a change. That is sort of where we're gonna go with things. So how do you know you're ready. So now you can understand the difference between when when individual coaching or therapy is great, and when and when we need to switch to couples. And that's really bottom line is if we have a couple of goal. If we have a couple of goal, we need to do couples work in order to get any traction on that goal. So how do we know we're ready to do that? How do we know we're ready to move forward as a couple? Well, one of the things is just that one for forward motion. If you guys can both agree, hey, it sucks where we are right now, we both kind of want to get back on track. Okay, let's just pick something if you can be like a, you know, certain, we'll take whatever spot three is on the internet, I don't know, come work with me, whatever you want to do. So if you can just agree like, Yep, let's find a person and and we'll just book in, we'll do an intake, we'll just at least see what this is all about. You're ready. You're ready, because you're ready, at least to take that one step. Okay. The next is kind of a little bit different. But if you're ready to be able to pause, now, for some people this this might take, it might be a little bit of an individual goal to be like, hey, you know, I need to work on personally being able to pause being able to be and when I say pause, that means to be able to you know, give yourself that moment, sometimes afterwards, after something has happened, or sometimes in the moment be like, Ah, okay, I can see that this thing is coming up. Right. And I do work a lot with couples on thinking about where we need to pause. Right, and, and what are just, some couples love a safe work, right? Like if we're in a situation, and, you know, we're trying to use a new communication tool that one person is having to stop, the other person can say like, you know, ice cream sundae, or, you know, dunkin donuts or whatever their, whatever their safe word is. And then the other person is, ah, ha, okay, cool. I totally, you know, we're starting to just get into, you know, a disagreement over this miscommunication we have, but we're actually trying to use our new skill, and oops, I totally forgot our new sale, because that's gonna happen when you're practicing something new. Right? So if you're ready to pause, right, and not everyone's ready to pause right in the moment, sometimes you have to say like, Hey, we were not using your strategy, we need a pause. Now, if you are at a spot where you could go, Ah, yes, okay, and walk away. And we don't need to get intertwined in a disagreement, then you are definitely ready. Get if you were ready, and I love this if you're ready for growth in yourself and as a couple. Now, I think if you've already made the decision that you want to move forward, you're probably ready for this But the wonderful thing about working on your couples things together is that it's inter developmental. So what that means is I get into developmental. So what that means is that you are going to realize that as you start to think about your communication as a couple, how you show affection as a couple, using your mindfulness, thinking about prioritizing your energy and where it goes, that's gonna cause growth in your own personal, you know, soul in your own personal life and your other interactions outside of your couple, you are going to find yourself using some of these skills in other social relationships in your social health, you are going to be growing as a person, not just in your relationship with the love of your life, but also as a person and how exciting is that, that you also get to be on that personal growth journey with someone else. And I think the important piece of that is there's lots of people who will I mean, it all it this is, again, very personal. And it really depends on what you're going through. Some people do need time away. But you know, some people are really under the belief that you can't work on yourself as a person, if you are in a committed relationship with another person. Now that 100% nonsensical, you know, I think there are definitely times say if you're having difficulties with addiction, or things like that, where maybe there needs to be some space from all of your environments, not just your Couplehood note, just a couple minutes with your partner, but like, you know, some people need to go to rehab, some people need to be away from all of their environments. Okay, well, that's a different situation. But if you're like, ah, you know, I need to do some personal growth things, you can 100% do those within your a couple minutes, because it is very odd for people to go away, work on themselves and apparently grow, and then come back and be like, oh, now I'm this wonderful, perfect person, and I can recover with you. Well, maybe not because now that person has become maybe that growth has done, maybe it no longer suits or a couple minutes, right. And that's the wonderful thing of working together as a couple is your personal growth, you will grow yourself, you will grow your couple minutes, and they will all be inter locking and interdependent, not dependent now codependent interdependent, and that is beautiful. That is what we're striving for, and going for, in our relationships and social connections with our friends. And as a couple with that beautiful, interdependent Ness. Oh, and that inter developmental, you know, bonus is just beautiful. And if you're able, this kind of goes with being also the, your, you know, you're ready, if you're also able to start reflecting and self monitoring, if you're able to start that journey of growth, then you're ready to go. And most of the couples that I meet most of the people who come in and see me for intake, they're already because they have made that first step. Now there has been one or two couples where they've come in, and, you know, we're in a yelling, match. Goodness. I mean, I laugh cuz, you know, sometimes it's shocking, you know, some of the things you see, but you know that that couple may not be ready, because we're not ready to be in a room together. If we're not ready, that actually might also also be a prerequisite to know, if you're ready, that you're ready to be in a room together, you're ready do talk to each other. And it doesn't always have to be in a neutral way. Because there there are times when we're working on a relationship, or we're at home where things are going to be heated. But if we are ready to at least when we're around a professional rock crystal, if we're willing to, you know, talk materially and confidently and neutrally to each other. And then we're ready, also.

Right. So that's kind of a lot to digest about whether whether you're ready or not, but probably if you're starting to listen to these podcasts, if the love of your life is, you know, willing to be open to a few of these conversations about whether maybe this could be a good choice, you are probably on the pathway to being ready. Because even though we're wanting to destigmatize working on relationships and working on them, right from the beginning, it is important for us to know and important for us to realize that we can still work on it. Even when things have gone not as planned. Even when we're in that darker, more difficult place to work out of. We can put the energy into it. Don't remember we don't have to put the work in. We need to put the energy, the prioritization into it. Thinking about it, right? Having that kindful land with being ready to work on it is important and be ready to work on our relationship and grow together. is what's going to keep us sparked Good evening