Marriage Counseling Seven Tips To Live Longer

Marriage Counseling--seven Tips To Live Longer

We have all heard the stories; the executive retires in Spring and dies before the first Winter snowfall. While some may conclude that the former exec just couldn’t adjust to retirement, it is more likely that they burned themselves out working. That is, years of shortchanging their own personal well-being finally caught up with them.

It is so easy to get trapped on the treadmill of demanding schedules and too many priorities using caffeinated energy to get things done. It is often self-care that gets put on the shelf first because there just isn’t time to exercise and eat right. Yet, there is increasing research that even small lifestyle changes can be a major factor in a long healthy life.

Some suggestions:

• Keep a long fuse. Scientists use to believe that “Type A’s,” those people driven by ambition, were most at risk for heart attacks. But recent research demonstrates that it is not striving for goals that have people dropping like flies; it is being hostile, angry and cynical. A hostile disposition is also dangerous once cardiovascular disease sets in. Dr. Murray Mittleman, a cardiovascular epidemiologist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, interviewed 1623 men and women who had heart attacks. He found that the risk of having an attack was twice as great in those that were angry in the two hours before the incident.

• Lighten up. There is increasing evidence linking depression to heart disease. Johns Hopkins researchers interviewed 1551 people in the early 1980’s who were free of heart disease. They followed up fourteen years later and found that those who reported a history of a major depression were four times as likely to have a heart attack as those not depressed.

• Get off the couch. Not only for weight control, better circulation, reduced risk of diabetes, but exercise actually works as an anti-depressant. In a recent study at Duke University, 60 % of clinically depressed people who took a brisk 30-minute walk at least three times per week were no longer depressed after 16 weeks. Increasingly psychiatrists are finding that exercise can often work as well as anti-depressants for the mildly depressed individual.

• Flatten the middle. It’s been more than 50 years since French scientist Jean Vague noted that people with a lot of upper-body fat (those that look like apples, rather than pears), often developed heart disease, diabetes and other ailments. Since the introduction of CT and MRI scans, Drs. have discovered that a visceral fat, located within the abdomen was strongly linked to these diseases. The good news is that this type of fat also burns off the fastest. This is why even a small reduction in weight can reverse the deadly factors of heart disease.

• Limit bad habits. Heavy drinking, smoking, overeating, and overcaffeinating are major factors in the development of heart disease and other problems. It has been found that both drinking and smoking tend to increase the abdominal fat that puts folks at risk for heart disease. Excessive caffeine increased blood pressure to dangerous levels for people experiencing job stress.

• Fire up your metabolism. New research shows that a healthy metabolic profile counts far more than cardiovascular fitness or weight alone. In a Japanese study, a group of men were put on a low-intensity exercise program for one year. Although they did not lose weight, nor improve their cardiovascular fitness, their metabolic health improved dramatically (measured by how well the body utilizes insulin). States Glenn A. Glaesser of the University of Virginia, “Metabolic fitness is one of the best safeguards against heart disease, stroke and diabetes.”

• Approach sleep like Goldilocks—Just right. In a recent study of 72,000 nurses published in the January Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers found that getting too little sleep—or too much—may raise the risk of developing heart disease. Women who averaged five hours or less of sleep a night were 39% more likely to develop heart disease than those that got eight hours. And nine or more hours of shuteye was associated with a 37% higher risk of heart disease.

Your best investment for the future is in your health today.

BONUS : Marriage Counseling Therapy

Marriage can be wonderful and complicated; happy and sad; exciting and mundane. Rarely is it “smooth sailing” throughout its course, which is why many couples seek out marriage counseling. Therapy can be very beneficial if your marriage is hitting some rough seas. With a qualified therapist you and your spouse can find new ways to navigate the course of your marriage more effectively. Conflict will never disappear altogether, as you are both human. But it can be minimized at least to some degree so your marriage stays intact.

There are many different issues which may come to the surface if you and your spouse decide to go to marriage counseling. Therapy for couples will help you look at things in a new light, consider unhealthy patterns, and find ways to communicate better. Sometimes things may get worse before they get better as you face tough issues and open up wounds which have never really healed. But these wounds must be opened and dealt with if things are to get better in your marriage.

In marriage counseling, therapy is like cleaning out the infected wound so it can finally heal once and for all. It will hurt at first, but it is well worth it in the long run. A skillful therapist will work with you to find the best ways to manage the pain as you go through the process.

One of the key issues that often comes up is difficulty letting go of the past. Hanging on to old hurts, harboring resentment, and refusing to forgive will keep you stuck. Letting go of the past is difficult for a lot of people, but it is essential for the sake of your marriage and for you to make progress in the course of your marriage counseling. Therapy won’t fix you, but it can help you to get “unstuck” and find a way to let go.

Holding on to the past is destructive to a relationship. If either you or your spouse are doing this then it is going to show up in various ways in your relationship. What often happens is that whenever there is a conflict, one of you brings up the past and uses it as ammunition against the other. While it may give you a sense of leverage or power in the moment, it keeps you both stuck.

Dredging up past wrongs is like pulling a scab off a sore and letting it bleed all over again. Needless to say, it is a destructive behavior which must be addressed in your marriage counseling. Therapy can be the safe place to address this once and for all, and to start working towards letting it go.

If you are the spouse whose past offense is frequently thrown back in your face, you no doubt know the sting and guilt that accompany such painful reminders. We all make mistakes. And we all desire forgiveness. It is difficult to be in a relationship with someone who just can’t let something go.
Sometimes it’s easier to forgive others and let go when we have experienced real forgiveness ourselves. But when you haven’t, and it is hurting your marriage, then you may really benefit from marriage counseling. Therapy is much less costly than a divorce. And if you give it a chance, you may find that you and your spouse can finally heal the wounds and have a stronger marriage than ever!