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empathy in relationship advice blog

The Biggest Challenges Empaths Face in Romantic Relationships

Has your partner ever said, “I understand why you feel that way, and I’m here to listen and work through this together”? This simple yet profound statement can be a positive and comforting experience in a relationship, especially during challenging times.

Empaths possess an innate capacity to put themselves in another person’s shoes and understand the feelings of those around them. Empathy can be both a blessing and a challenge. It’s a powerful tool that allows individuals to connect on a deep emotional level, but it also comes with its own set of challenges.

Biggest Challenges Empaths Face in Romantic Relationships

What are the biggest challenges the empaths face in romantic relationships?

Let us find out how empaths deal with their difficulties in relationships from Delhi’s top marriage counsellor and relationship expert Shivani Misri Sadhoo.

1. Self-neglect

Empaths intensely feel their partner’s emotions and often become people-pleasers. They prioritize their partner’s feelings and avoid confronting issues. Self-care takes a back seat as they prioritize their partner’s needs, opinions, and decisions. Escaping this cycle can be tough for empaths, entangled in putting their partner’s needs above their own. Balancing empathy and self-preservation is important for a healthy relationship.

2. Communication is a real challenge

Communication can pose another hurdle for empaths. The intense connection they feel can sometimes make it difficult for them to express their own feelings openly. They may fear burdening their partner with their emotions or struggle to articulate their needs and desires effectively.

Learning to communicate openly and honestly, without letting the fear of overwhelming their partner hold them back, is crucial for a healthy relationship.

3. Lack Of Emotional Boundaries

Empaths have a heightened sensitivity to the emotions of those around them. While this is a beautiful gift, it can also become overwhelming, especially when it comes to romance. The ability to absorb and feel the emotions of their partners can lead to a constant state of emotional flux. They may fail to distinguish between their partner’s feelings and their own, making it hard to maintain emotional boundaries.

4. Fear of Intimacy

Empaths struggle in relationships due to overwhelming closeness. Their heightened awareness absorbs others’ energies, leading to exhaustion. Relationships, already emotional for non-empaths, are even more draining for empaths. Some empaths fear dating or commitment to avoid this emotional overload. They seek ample space—energetic, emotional, and physical—for recovery. Empaths can enjoy relationships by balancing closeness with their need for space, improving their overall experience.

5. Often Too Intrusive

Empaths naturally sense others’ emotions without control. Imagine the constant awareness of your partner’s mood. It’s both a valuable trait and a challenge. Empaths can’t switch off this sensitivity. While partners appreciate the support, it can feel intrusive. Occasionally, they want space to handle a bad day privately. Balancing an empath’s caring nature with respecting personal boundaries can be complex.

6. Attract Narcissists

Empaths often attract strong personalities like narcissists or toxic individuals, but this can harm their well-being. Both empaths and narcissists seek attention, but they express it differently. Empaths focus on caring for others, while narcissists want attention for themselves. This mismatch leads to problems in the relationship. Empaths try hard to please narcissists, who may mistreat them. It’s a cycle with no winners and is tough to escape.

7. Misinterpretations and Conflicts

Empaths are excellent at reading between the lines and picking up on subtle cues. However, their heightened sensitivity can sometimes lead to misinterpretations. They may detect emotions that their partner isn’t explicitly expressing, which can lead to misunderstandings and unnecessary conflicts.

8. Feeling of Loneliness

Empaths may experience loneliness in relationships due to their intense emotional sensitivity. Partners often struggle to comprehend the depth of their feelings, causing isolation. Even caring partners may not fully grasp their emotional needs. For example, needing alone time after a taxing day is a necessity, not a preference. Without solitude, empaths feel drained and unhappy.

Empaths face profound challenges in relationships, juggling intense empathy with self-preservation, communication struggles, emotional boundary issues, and fear of overwhelming closeness. They must overcome these hurdles while seeking a delicate balance between compassion and their own well-being for a truly fulfilling and harmonious connection.

Five Ways Couples Can Survive Cheating

Relationship Tips by Relationship Counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo

Human relationships are quite fickle and tricky at times, particularly in marital life. You never know what will happen next in your relationship. More so if it involves cheating on your partner. When someone you love and betrays your trust, it can feel like a hopeless situation. But when you learn how to move on after cheating, it’s completely possible for your relationship to survive.

Here’s how to turn your relationship around, repair trust, and get things back on track. India’s eminent marriage counsellor and relationship expert Shivani Misri Sadhoo reveals 5 ways couples can survive cheating.

1.    Practice Gratitude

Does not matter what happened in your marriage, coming back to gratitude will set the groundwork for positive transformation.

If you feel destroyed by betrayal and despair, take a moment to focus on appreciation. Think about all the things you appreciate about your mate. After a few minutes of refocusing in this way, notice what changes inside you.

2.      Completely Face Your Feelings

When you are hurt or emotionally broken, you may tend to blame, run, fight, judge or explain. If you can stop and fully feel the heartache gently, you will be surprised at what is possible. When you step completely into the sensation in your heart, beyond thought and explanation, the feeling commences shifting.

3.    Try to Do Things Together

Couples who spend time together and have shared interests recover from cheating much more rapidly and effectively. Try to discover or rediscover things that you can do together that you both enjoy. Always remember that not all hobbies or activities are costly there are plenty of things you can do together that do not cost money.

4.   Create a Vision of the Past And The Future

One of the ways that couples can learn how to move on after cheating is to think about the past like when they first met or got married. How did you fall in love? Why did you get married? How did the relationship look like back then?

Now, assume about the future you wanted together enjoying your golden years of togetherness, travelling, playing with the grandchildren, and enjoying family activities. What would it look like? Create an image of these things and how nice it can be to share this with the person you love most the person with whom you are married.

5.   Start a better-than-ever relationship

Take a relationship education course or counselling that starts by helping you identify the weaker areas in your relationship and then try to strengthen them for future happiness together. The more powerful your skills for talking together about sensitive issues are, the less likely you will be to drift apart or to let anger or disagreement rifts lead to resentment or fights.

Does Couples Counselling or Therapy Really Work?

In general, couples who are fleeting through distressed relationship doubt if couple counselling would never work for them or not or would it be a wastage of time and money – and that stops them from seeking professional help from an expert who can save their relationship and marriage.

The problem arises because there are myths about the low success rate of couples therapy. People with no experience of good counselling or who don’t know about the subject, give the worst advice to distressed people. “Couple Counselling is a waste of money”, “rather wear gems or consult an astrologer, do yoga, meet new people” but don’t trust a trained and certified expert who is trained and experienced especially to help distressed couples and to save their relationship and marriage.

Delhi’s eminent Psychologist and Couple Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo tell us that the success rate of couple therapy is extremely high. She says there has been much research done to check the success rate of couple counselling and the results are always extraordinary, for example recently a research was done by the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, families and couples who have attended family or couples therapy sessions indicate high levels of patient satisfaction. Over 98% of those surveyed reported that they received good or excellent couples therapy. Respondents also reported improved physical and emotional health and the ability to communicate better at work after attending therapy.

So how couple counselling work? Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo says good couple counselling works on certain basic principles and that pulls out couples from their distressed state to a positive and healthy relationship condition. These principals are:

1. Good couple counselling changes the views of the relationship.

First, the couple therapist helps both partners see the relationship in an objective manner.  The therapist helps the couples to learn to stop the “blame game” and instead look at what happens to them when they involve each partner negatively.

2. Modifies dysfunctional behaviour.

Effective couple therapist attempts to change the way the partners actually behave with each other. This means that in addition to helping them improve their interactions, therapists ensures that their clients are not engaging in actions that can cause physical, psychological or economic harm to self or to their partner.

3. Decreases Emotional Avoidance

Couples who avoid expressing their innermost feelings put themselves at a greater risk of becoming emotionally distant and hence grow apart. Effective couples therapist helps their clients bring out the emotions and thoughts that they fear expressing to the other person. Attachment-based couples therapy allows the partners to feel less afraid of expressing their needs for closeness.

4. Improves Communication

An effective couple counsellor focuses on helping the partners to communicate more effectively. The new communication mode which the counsellor redevelops within couples is not abusive, nor does it ridicule partners when they express their true feelings. The counsellor helps the couples learn to listen more actively and empathically.

5. Promotes strengths

Effective couple therapists point out the strengths in the relationship and build resilience particularly as therapy nears a termination.  The point of promoting strength is to help the couple to gain back their trust, their love, their bliss and satisfaction which was put on the back burner by both the partners.