Marriage Counsellor and Psychologist Shivani Misri Sadhoo

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.

Prior getting your driving license a 30 to 90 days time is required to learn vehicle’s controls, traffic rules and to pass the driving examinations.

So if you are a driver or have a car in your family, you must be aware of the efforts one has to put to learn driving. Have you ever thoughts that just as you needed to prepare for your driving license, it would be helpful if you prepared for your marriage as well?

We are living in a time that perhaps set the maximum challenges at family and professional life than ever. There is extreme lifestyle pressure on youngsters and that is why in today’s time it is important that couples should go for pre-marital counseling before their big day.

In this article Delhi’s eminent relationship expert and marriage counselor, Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares 5 points on the benefits of premarital counseling.

1.     Pre-marital counseling helps develop Communication Skills

When couples go to premarital counselling, they talk together to a professional relationship counsellor who is trained to encourage them to talk to each other openly and helps them better understand each other. Couples who go through this type of counselling surely build better communication skills because they have a neutral party there to help them understand each other.

Undoubtedly this is one of the biggest benefits of premarital counselling. Additionally, by learning how to better communicate individual needs and desires, couples also acquire how to reach an agreement mutually. They gain compassion and communication skills that will help them through tough times.

2.      It Helps Couples Plan the Future

Many premarital counselors do more than only help couples talk through their current issues. They also help them plan meticulously for the future. A premarital counselor can help couples set financial or family planning goals, and can aid them to find ways to accomplish those goals.

Premarital counseling is the perfect place for couples to talk about the expectations that they have from married life and what they want personally in the future too. Premarital counselors help their clients focus on healthy and realistic goals and relationship changes.

3.   It Gives an Opportunity to Address Issues

Premarital counseling also presents a great opportunity for couples to challenge issues that could possibly lead to divorce before they become serious. By talking with a counselor, couples may be able to settle money matters or talk about their roles and goals around parenting.

Addressing issues before marriage is the best way to ensure a solid foundation for the future and to avoid serious conflicts after the big day. Of course, it’s important for couples to be honest when they attend premarital counseling. That’s the only way to realize the benefits of this time-honored tradition.

4.  You will enter into marriage with a framework for building a healthy relationship.

Another reason to get premarital counselling is so that you would not be walk blindly in your marriage. Getting premarital counseling may give you a feeling of stability, safety, direction, and an idea of where you are going and what you are doing. It will take some of the potential fear out of the decision, and give you more hope, reason, and guidance. It will provide a framework for building a healthy relationship, and equip you with the tools and skills necessary to successfully navigate discord and to have meaningful conversations.

For instance, Gottman provides antidotes to criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and obstacles to be used in their place. Rather than being critical, we should have a softened, gentle approach to bringing up complaints. Instead of being arrogant about an offence and how our partner failed us, it is much more productive to be descriptive about how we are feeling and thinking about the offence, how we are experiencing it. So, rather than only knowing what we shouldn’t do, and then being unsure of how to react, we now can have a clear roadmap of what we should do without all the guesswork. We will have a plan.

5.  It Allows Couples to Discover New Things About Themselves 

Marriage Counselors ask a lot of questions when they’re working with engaged couples. Listening carefully to your partner’s answers is a great way to learn more about that individual. Yes, many couples perceive that no one knows their partners better than they do.

However, premarital counseling can help bring out important information that they might have been reluctant to share. This provides great growth opportunities while helping couples learn more about each other. It’s also a safe space for individuals to share things that they are anxious or upset about with their partners. It can be particularly helpful if one individual in the couple has been in failed relationships before.

Tips by Marriage Counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo

Do you know feeling good about yourself can make you more attractive to others?  In fact, the more you can love yourself, the more your relationships can become easier and spontaneous.

A person who can love himself/herself and feel confident is a person with deep inner stability, and one who can adapt comfortably to the inevitable ups and downs that come with various relationships.

Today, renowned psychologist, marriage counsellor and relationship expert Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares 5 ways to make you more attractive in any relationship.

1.  Choose To Be Happy:

When you are happy, others sense it and feel relaxed in your presence. One way to actively be happy is to develop awareness for your internal critic that voice in your head that criticizes and judges. Surrendering yourself into your internal critic is like vaulting off a cliff into a no-zone. This is where your internal critic will lead you if you let it. It’s your job to recognize when your critic turns on you and to tell it “stop!”  Distract yourself with exercise, reading, listening to music, helping others, or doing creative things. Do whatever you can, but dispose-off the critic as soon as you hear its voice. Time and again, choose happiness.

2.  Stop Taking Yourself Too Seriously:

You don’t need to be perfect to have stable relationships and love in your life. In fact, it’s being imperfect that puts people feel relaxed. There is a type of intimacy that takes hold, a feeling that you can be open with this person because they are being open with you. Yes, it’s important to connect with supportive and non-toxic people. Mainly, speaking, most of the time, with most people, the negative things others communicate or imply about you are not insults to your character. Don’t give any attention to perceived slights let the small stuff slide off your back. When you’re faced with valid or invalid criticism, try if you can laugh at yourself or make a joke. In the end, you are not defined by others, no matter what they say or do.

3.   Look After Yourself:

People who look after themselves are more attractive because they exude self-discipline. Being in complete control of yourself means others don’t think you as a burden to be taken care. Eating nutritiously, exercising daily, and attending to your emotional psyche should be a part of your daily routine.

4. Do The Correct Thing:

Whenever you struggle with self-confidence, you are likely seeking the approval or suggestion of others. You’re stealthily on the lookout for praise, and a sense that you belong and are doing the correct thing. When you do this, you’re not worrying about the bigger picture because you’re too focused on yourself. A busy search for validation from others won’t certainly bring it; in fact, your insecurity may force people away from you. Instead, do the correct thing for yourself, for others, and for society by and large. Be kind to the people in your life and to those who have less listen, support, and give them your attention. See if this brings you affirmation.

5.   Live For Yourself:

A person who has a sense of purpose and meaning are irresistible because they exude strength. Concentrating on how others may or may not be judging you waste so much time that could be utilized on getting what you expect out of life. Ask yourself questions, what gives me happiness? What would I like to achieve in this life? What provides me a feeling of being at peace? And then shut the voice in your mind that questions your choices, and start living for yourself.

About Shivani Misri Sadhoo: Counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo is one of the best marriage counselor in Delhi NCR. She has served over thousands plus happy & satisfied individuals and couples in India and abroad. She is India’s best expert on Marriage and relationship issues and gets frequently been featured in leading newspapers, magazines and TV channels. 

Counsellor Shivani is an experienced and certified counselling psychologist with a specialization in the area of Personal Crisis interventions like coping-up with Relationship Issues, Marital Counselling, Separation and divorce, Child and Adolescent issues, Depression, Stress, Loss & Grief. Counsellor Shivani is currently working with India‘s top hospital groups like Fortis Hospital, IBS (Indian Brain & Spine) Hospital and with Express Clinics.

Sometimes people can be surrounded by their spouse, kids, friends, and in-laws and still amongst all these people, deep down underneath they may be living a lonely life. Loneliness can come not only in absence of physical company but also when you don’t feel connected with the people you are living with.

When your spouse and kids are too busy and too focused & busy in their own lives that they just see you a part of the house and not part of themselves, then loneliness can turn into a real burden. It can leave you not knowing how to make things good? Should you try to talk to our partner? Or whatever causes this sense of loneliness makes it difficult? Apart from leaving you feeling isolated, loneliness can also make you feel vulnerable.

Eminent Marriage Counselor (Delhi) and Relationship expert Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares 5 pointers which state How to respond to loneliness in marriage? Here they are:

1.      Learn How To Apply ASLAN To Your Marriage

The big lesson which we need to learn in life right now is accepting circumstances and people the way they are. You should practice ASLAN, which stands for Acceptance, Surrender, Live And Know, this is the way it is supposed to be. ASLAN may not make sense to you, but the bottom line is that accepting your lonely marriage is the first step to coping with it. Instead of resisting your loneliness or hoping things were different, you need to accept that your marriage the way it is.

2.      Cope With Your Loneliness In Healthy Manner

You need to take care of your own emotional and social needs. If you are married and lonely, you may need to create relationships outside of your marriage irrespective of your spouse is willing to build a better marriage with you or not. You may need to make friends by doing volunteer work, joining recreational clubs or hiking groups, joining a sports or spiritual organization, or taking continuing education classes. Test yourself by pursuing a different career or going back to school.

3.      Accept What You Wish Your Spouse Could Give You

Do you want your spouse to support you, have more sex with you, speak to you, or give you company to events or functions? What do you want from your spouse? Before you learn how to cope with a lonely marriage, you need to figure out what you’re missing. It’s essential to accept that you’re married and isolated, but you also need to be certain about what you want from your partner. He/she may not be able to give you what you need, but you need to be clear on what you want or expect.

 4.      Realize That Married Yet Alone Frequently Go Hand In Hand

What are your expectations from your marriage and your partner? A friendless marriage is something we all cope with from time to time, but it’s not as complicated when we expect to be. Our partners can’t be there for us all the time. If your spouse is never there for you or is emotionally abusive. You may need to pull away, in order to protect yourself.

5.      Practice The Skills Of Enjoying Your Own Company

We often feel that he/she isn’t comfortable being alone because he/she feels uncertain and lost. People haven’t found themselves, their identity, self-confidence. They haven’t learned to enjoy their own company and more significantly they haven’t learned how to take care of their own needs. People are setting themselves up to cope with a lonely marriage because they expect too much from their partner.

Generally, in today’s lifestyle, couples find their mornings chaotic; there is a pressure to send kids to schools, getting themselves ready for office, finishing household chores and so on. Similarly, on weekends they get up late to supplement their weekday tiredness & sleep.According to eminent relationship expert and marriage counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo, it is essential for couples to find few minutes every morning to connect with each other. Otherwise, day to day professional and household pressure may weaken their romantic bond.  Counselor Shivani suggests that to connect with your partner in every morning does not need much efforts and time rather it can be done by the following 6 things that happiest couples do every morning.

1.      Happy couples try to get up at the same time (if they don’t work on different or odd work shifts):The first step to find a few minutes with your spouse is to get up together at the same time. To achieve this goal, a couple should try to bring a disciplined routine of going to bed every on time.

2.      They Enjoy A Cup Of Tea Or Coffee Together:Having tea together is another great way to keep in touch with each other. Prior a challenging morning starts, the couples may get up 10 minutes early and sit together to have their tea. Even if it’s only for 15-20 minutes, they have their coffee and talk about plans for the day and watch the beauty of nature if they sit in their balcony.

3.      They Make Eye ContactHappy couples often brush their teeth together. For those few minutes, couples look into each other’s eyes. They usually, touch each other, a hand on the waist, gentle touch on the cheek or head on the chest.

4.      They Share Up The Morning Chores:Getting the kids up, preparing them off to school every morning can be a tough task. Usually, we think that it’s the mom’s job. But happy couples share these kinds of family and parental responsibilities. Acting, as a team in the morning, builds connection and relationship happiness that carries throughout the day.

5.      They Bid Kiss Goodbye: It is very important for a couple to always show affection amongst each other before they leave for their respective offices. For example, if a husband or wife leaves home for work an hour before the wife or husband gets up so they always say goodbye with a kiss on their forehead. It’s not about needing the affection but more so knowing that he or she is thinking of them before they head off to 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.

According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau India reports a maximum number of depression cases of depression, anxiety and the suicidal tendency among teenagers originates from exam pressure and from pressure to perform. But the question is why today’s young generation is emotional & psychologically fragile? so much so that they become highly prone to suicide and psychological disorders and issues?

According to Delhi’s leading Psychologist & Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo, among many reasons, today’s teenagers are more prone to psychological issues due to a massive shift in food habits in metropolitan Indian families. Today’s Indian kids find extreme joy by consuming nutrient deficit burgers, pizzas, cold drinks etc. These foods not only hamper adolescent’s physical growth but affect their brain development too and when the time for exam pressure comes and huge numbers of them just get emotionally and psychologically shattered.

Junk foods” such as cakes, croissants, and doughnuts) and fast food such as hamburgers, hot dogs, cold drinks and pizzas not only misses essential vitamins and minerals (required for child growth) but they also contain a very high glycemic index. High glycemic index foods are referred to those which are rapidly digested, absorbed and metabolized and result in marked fluctuations in blood sugar (glucose) levels and blood sugar fluctuation images a person mood.

Counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo suggests that no one should eat junk food on a regular basis. Kids especially should be encouraged to foods rich in the B-vitamins, folic acids, such as lentils, bean, spinach, oranges, asparagus, avocado, seeds, tomatoes, and fortified cereals along with foods high in vitamin D develops can help their child’s brain development and better functioning process.

Along with balanced died today’s parents should also encourage their kids to play every day and keep them away from fast food joint and from junk food, as much as possible.

Loneliness is not the same as being alone. Being alone is a fact whereas loneliness is a feeling. You can feel lonely when you are with friends or with your partner.

At the same time, you don’t need to feel lonely when you are alone.

In other words, loneliness can be termed as the desire to get connected with someone and that someone is not available. This can certainly occur when we are alone, but it also occurs in relationships when one or both partners are unavailable for connection perhaps due to anger, doubts, distrust, withdrawn, tired, ill or just being complacent in the relationship.

So what really causes loneliness in a relationship? According to Delhi’s eminent Relationship and Marriage counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo, in relationship loneliness is created by certain situations and conditions and there are:

1. When a person is emotionally fragile, many times it’s seen that such personalities start protecting themselves from getting emotionally hurt by expressing anger or by withdrawal. In such a scenario, their partner finds it difficult to connect with them.

2. One may feel lonely with his/her partner when their partner deliberately shuts them out with work, TV, food, hard drink, hobbies, the Internet so on and so forth.

3. One may feel lonely when he/she tries to have control over their partner’s feelings. Since no one in this world likes to be controlled and such tendencies soon pushes away the person’s partner physically and emotionally.

4.  One may feel lonely if the other half keeps judging them regarding their thoughts, feelings, looks or actions. Judgment creates disconnection, and disconnection can be very lonely.

5.  One may also feel lonely when their partner can’t connect with them due to being overly tired, frazzled and overwhelmed or unwell.

Be it be proposing a girl, pitching to a client, talking to an investor or appearing for a job interview, in fact in every important conversation that we have in our life, it is utmost important that the other person should recognize our intelligence and maturity. On the contrary, people generally get nervous, tense and anxious during important conversations that suppress their intelligence and they feel being a loser.

It’s true that the more we experience a particular situation, the more we become better at it, but that involves a lot of time wastage and loss of opportunity till the time one develops his/her mastery conversation skills. But is it possible for a person to boost his/her first glance appearance to others and convey to strangers immediately that he/she is intelligent? Or in other words is there a key that unlocks people’s perception for you as intelligent or not?

The answer is “YES” says Delhi’s leading psychologist and Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo. Counsellor Shivani says the factors that determine the first glance perception of strangers to be intelligent or not are his/her tone of voice and how fast he/she speaks.

There have been many scientific studies done in this area, one of the famous one is the study published in the Journal of Psychological Science where MBA students had been videotaped while they had given pitches on why they should be hired. Prospective employers and professional recruiters were then given three options: viewing the video, listening to the audio, or reading a transcript. Here’s what the study concluded:

The evaluators rated a candidate as more competent, thoughtful, and intelligent when they heard a pitch rather than read it and, as a result, had a more favourable impression of the candidate and were more interested in hiring the candidate. Adding visual cues to audio pitches did not alter evaluations of the candidates. For conveying one’s intellect, it is important that one’s voice, quite literally, is heard. To summarize, when it comes to first impression on intelligence, looks don’t matter; your voice does. The reason behind this finding is attributed to human evolution; our voices are the tools that have been carefully honed for communication.

Here are 3 Keys To Making a Good First Impression

Since your voice is important in making your first good impression, Counsellor Shivani shares the key factors that help a person to make a good first impression.

1. Use a lower pitch and vocal inflexion.

People associate a high pitched tone with nervousness or childishness. Hence deliberately lower your vocal pitch if you generally talk in high pitch during an important conversation or to important people. This will help you to express both your confidence and maturity.

2. Avoid Filler Words

Filler words, sometimes called vocal crutches, are words such as “aha”, “um”, “like”, “so”, “you know”, “yes yes” and other similar phrases. And while everybody uses filler words, overusing it makes a person looks under confident and incompetence at times.

The problem with filler words is that people generally are not aware that they use them. Hence to avoid using filler words, one can record themselves in conversations and listen to the recordings five minutes a day for two weeks. The awareness of using fillers helps a lot along with conversation practice where one can learn to substitute silence for these fillers; verbal pauses, even when overused, only serves to increase a speaker’s credibility.

In today’s fast moving lifestyle, building a healthy and long lasting relationship with your spouse is not easy; a large portion of the population that daily faces professional, travel and financial pressures, find the least time and energy to devote to their family and spouse.

According to Delhi’s eminent marriage counsellor and relationship expert, Shivani Misri Sadhoo, the key to maintain a healthy and long term relationship is not to take relationship or spouse for granted rather put a constant effort to enhance the romantic bond by – building healthy relationship habits. These good romantic relationship habits could be:

1.  Always go to bed together.

One of the effective good relationship habits is to go to bed at the same time. Remember happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times. There’s nothing more soothing than a bedtime cuddle.

2. They don’t expect their partner to read their mind; they ask for what they need: 

The happiest couples generally ask for what they need and listen to each other’s needs. Running around hoping that another person will know what you need or that you are supposed to know exactly what they need is a recipe for disaster. The happiest couples are delighted to openly talk about needs and honour differences in needs without feeling like anyone should have already known or that their ‘soul mate’ will have the same needs as them.

3. Always trust and try to forgive.

In every relationship, there would be arguments and small fights but couples who are dedicated towards their relationship make a habit to trust and forgive, rather than distrusting and begrudging as their default setting after an argument.

4. They focus on what they do right, not what they do wrong.

Positive reinforcement is an age-old concept used with children but it’s also important for fully grown adults too. So compliment your partner when they deserve it and try not to look for things they do wrong.