Marriage Counsellor and Psychologist Shivani Misri Sadhoo

Whether it relates to your relationships, career, or your own self well-being, knowing how to tough through disturbing situations by finding ways to be emotionally strong can positively impact your life. When it comes to stress, it can affect many people in various ways, some might cry every time they are frustrated or guilty. While others choose to be quiet and hide until they feel good. Though, there is nothing wrong with either of those situations. Being aware of how to manage your emotions and dictate why you are feeling them can help you understand yourself in a better way so that you can stop considering yourself weak.

Emotional strength comes from when you allow yourself to be both independent and dependent. This means developing up your internal resources and becoming comfortable seeking and accepting help,

Learning how to handle life’s misfortunes is a great method to build your emotional strength.

Delhi’s top marriage counsellor and relationship expert Shivani Misri Sadhoo share tips to make yourself emotionally stronger.

Respect the Strength Of Your Past

It becomes difficult to be emotionally strong if you keep living in the past. You need to throw away those thoughts and accept the reality that those struggles made you who you are today, which is a strong, better person. Many a time we have bitterness from the devastation, slavery or even family history of violence and crime. You can instead, respect the struggles and our cultures in a way which are positive. Do not discount the struggle, instead see how it can be a way to respect the strength in your past. If you can honor the strength of the past, you are a result of that past, so you honor yourself and become stronger.

Make Healthy Choices

A lot of your emotional strength generally comes from within. This means you will most likely feel your best if you eat healthily and treat your body with utmost care. Remember that every time you make healthy choices, you actually strengthen yourself. For example, have you selected an apple over a sweet candy, one point scored for becoming stronger? Have you taken a stroll and enjoy the view? Another point scored for resiliency. Honor every time you create a healthy decision.

Help Others in Need

It may sound weird to help other people especially when you are trying to figure out things for yourself. But when you are unselfish you can become strong because the care you show towards others can reverberate and look into caring for your own life, too. Helping others creates empathy and it makes us a better person, over a period of time. This way you become stronger emotionally.

Embrace Your Adversities

Never beat yourself up when things are not going your way. Failing is a part of life and how you look to challenge and accept it can really alter your perspective in a positive manner. Try to practice some positive psychology and start to embrace all your challenges and adversities as your greatest teachers and power for changes.

Identify Your Emotions

Do not look to criticize or punish yourself for having certain feelings. It is natural to feel low, angry or jealous. When you experience any negative emotions, carefully analyze them and figure out what you want your next step to be. Allow yourself to identify and accept every emotion you have and then decide if you want to follow this emotion or let it go.

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.

If you think smiling is just a social courtesy, way to greet a person, and then think again. Research has found that human smile holds an unlimited potential to improve the person’s social, psychological and physical well-being.  Today Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares various reasons why it’s important to smile more often as you can.

1. Smiling reduces stress.

Smiling helps in reducing body stress. According to Smithsonian, people who smile through stressful events (whether the smile is genuine or not) have fewer physiological stress reactions and reduced stress hormones, and they report less stress than those who don’t smile. So next time you’re stuck in traffic or working against a deadline, stop to smile.

2. Smiling helps your heart.

Smiling not only can relax your body, it also has the power to slow your heart rate, reduce blood pressure, and decrease your chances of a heart disease.

3. Smiling improves relationships.

According to a University of California, Berkeley study, people who smile often are more likely to have fulfilling and happy marriages and relationships than people who do not. Try smiling at your spouse every day to see if the research holds true for you.

4. A smile builds trust.

Studies have proved that a genuine smile increases the trust that the recipient of that smile feels. In fact, the bigger your smile (not a crazy smile, but a big approachable smile), the more trustworthy you appear. Building trust is an absolute must for business and individual successes, and when you give your clients a warm smile, they are likely to trust you more.

5. Smiling makes you happier

We know we smile when we’re happy usually but do you know its works in reverse too. The human brain is stimulated when facial muscles move into a smile, whether or not the smile is caused by happy emotions. Hence as per the study, people who hold a smile, regardless of their emotional state, have reported feeling happier afterwards.

Relationship expert and marriage counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo suggest if you are in dating world or if your family is arranging a meet with prospective guy or girl for an arranged marriage, here are 4 qualities of a romantic partner that you can look for in the person.

1. Look for similarities between you two

A lot of relationship research across the world has identified that opposites do not always attract in the long term. People tend to find more opportunities to develop their marital relationship when they share similar interests, value system and attitudes. For example, a girl who loves to trek would possibly get better opportunity to enhance her relationship with her husband if he loves to trek as well and they can trek together. However, if there are differences in taste and/or hobbies largely, the couple then should check if they both hold the capacity to respect each other’s individual preferences and can offer each other the freedom to explore their individual interests.

2.  Kindness, fidelity, and support

While selecting an ideal life partner, a person and his/her family in India put a lot of emphasis on personality, career, and earning potential and physical attractiveness. But remember more than anything else, it’s the person’s kindness, loyalty, emotional support and understanding that really defines who he/she is and that will determine if you would really be happy with this person in life.

Since all superficial traits are conditioned to time and situation, like someone who is an average earner today could reach an excellent career point in future or vice versa, or someone who looks extremely beautiful today would be overweight after child birth or vice versa.

But someone who is kind, capable and puts efforts to understand another person’s unspoken words i.e. emotions and feelings–will be like this possible for rest of his/her life. Hence look for these traits and check if it’s genuine or pretended.

3. Have to mean in life.

Appreciate and value the person who is leading a purposeful life, holds a passion, a mission or larger meaning to his/her life. This happens when a person uses his/her strengths to help something they believe in. It might be volunteering with NGO, being an active part of a spiritual process, contributing to a good cause.

Remember a person, who has a bigger mission in life and live more than its materialistic dimensions, holds much better chance to live an emotionally healthy and peaceful old age and that would certainly make them a better life partner than others.

4. Check for emotional stability

This trait is the most important harbinger of relationship success, and should ideally be at No 1. Those who lack emotional stability and are high on the trait of neuroticism, tend to be moody, touchy, anxious, and quicker to anger, all traits that can be destructive in any given relationship. Those who have low emotional intelligence or EQ, tend to be negative and are more prone to be combative with others and their partners. There is a strong link between high levels of neuroticism and divorce.

How to check if the person is emotionally stable? Marriage Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo suggests looks for the following clues.

• An emotionally stable person treats others well. They view other people with compassion and treat them with kindness that is a hallmark of their own emotional well-being.
• An emotionally stable person is flexible. People who have emotional wellness have an ability to adapt to all kinds of situations that life throws at them. They’re able to assess a situation mindfully — they notice their surroundings, their own emotions and other’s reactions to a given situation — and then they use these factors to decide what the best course of action would be for them. Hence if a person shares a difficult period of his/her life and how they overcame time, try to identify how they coped with it, took help of others or used situational assessment, searching inner strength, overcoming fear and doubt etc.
• An emotionally stable person holds gratitude in life. If a person is emotionally healthy, it’s likely he/she easily feels and shows gratitude for the people and the things in their life. Holding gratitude is a way of purposefully looking at our life with a sense of appreciation for what we have, rather than focusing on what we are lacking. And indeed, research has shown that counting our blessings has added strong benefits to our emotional well-being.

Developing and maintaining work-life balance can seem impossible in today’s competitive workplace and fast lifestyle. Technology has made employees accessible around the clock. Fears of job loss increase longer working hours. Physicians and mental help experts agree that the compounding stress from the never-ending workday is damaging. It can hurt relationships, health and overall happiness.

According to Couples Therapist Shivani Misri Sadhoo, despite these realities, there are people who are managing to carve out satisfying and meaningful lives outside of their work and maintain good work-life balance. She suggests for bringing work-life balance, people must understand and try to bring certain habits in their life. These habits are:

Make Deliberate Choices

Instead of just letting life happen, people who achieve work-life balance make deliberate choices about what they want from life and how they want to spend their time. They talk to their partners, spouses, and others who are important in their lives and come up with a road map of what is important to them, how they want to spend their time and commit to following their path.

Time for family, Friends and Important Interests

People who have managed to bring work-life balance in their life, commonly don’t just wait to see what time is left over after work. They make a point of planning and booking time off to spend outside of work and powerfully guard this time. Hence when they are home, they don’t think or get bother about office worries, when they are at the office they guard themselves against having any home worries.

Strong sense of what they expect from their life

People who manage work-life balance have developed a strong sense of who they are, their values, and what is important to them. Using this as a guideline for everything helps them determine what success means to them. They know what makes them happy and strive to get more of that in their lives. In short, they don’t run a blind race that causes professional, mental and emotional complexities.

They devote time to healthy habits

People who manage work-life balance often develop an interest in healthy activities and perform them daily. Activities like yoga, aerobic, meditation, music, sports, or some other interests allow them to get away from the pressures of everyday life to relax, rejuvenate, and regenerate themselves.

One of the hardest things to do in a relationship is to be nice to your partner when you’re upset with them. It’s also one of the most important moments to be kind.The act of not choosing kindness is therefore doubly hurtful to our partners and to ourselves because it undercuts our efforts for growth and the potential for greater intimacy.

I see couples in my chamber who want to “solve” their issues first before going out for an ice cream or relaxing over dinner. It will never work. It’s not possible to solve problems with someone you don’t want to collaborate with.

About the author:  Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo is the consulting Counsellor at Fortis Hospital, IBS (Indian Brain & Spine) Hospital and with Express Clinics. She has served over thousands plus happy & satisfied individual and couples in India and abroad. She is one of India’s eminent Marriage Counsellor & Relationship Expert, who is frequently been featured by leading newspapers, magazines and TV channels.

When we get married, most of us experience a “best days of my life” kind of phase. Everything seems so awesome and so romantic, we start believing that nothing can ever go wrong. Then slowly the time passes by and without our notice, our life situations starts to change and we add– work stress, financial pressure, kids, in-laws interferences, no time to spend with our partner and etc.

Then suddenly we realise that something has gone terribly (intensity differs from couple to couple) wrong in the relationship – we don’t feel that sexual attraction towards each other that we used to feel before, we hardly talk with each other and when we talk, it’s all about issues at home or with kids. Lately, we have started fighting too frequently and gradually we both have increased the bar of insults, violence and hurt we give to each other during a conflict.

This happens to most couples in today’s fast-paced lifestyle and the reason for it could be in general, couples don’t go into a relationship with the know-how or understanding of how to manage their relationship challenges. Hence it’s essential if the couple finds themselves incapable of bringing back their romantic relationship and eradicating the distance between themselves, then they should ideally consult a professional, i.e. a marriage counsellor.

Now the question is: how do you know at what stage you should immediately consult a marriage counsellor before things turn complex, painful and devastating? Today Delhi’s eminent Marriage Counsellor and Relationship Expert Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares some of the important trigger points and behaviours in relationships that are signs you may need help.

Early stage indicators

1. When there is too less communication between you too, and whenever you talk, you talk about matters related to home, kids and EMI’s. Even if you try to talk something about your relationship, those conversations generally start by accusing each other, gradually end up into ugly quarrels.
2. You have started finding it okay to spend days or month without your partner expressing his/her emotional support and love.
3. You are living more like roommates rather than husband and wife.
4. You have started finding it difficult to get sexually attracted to your partner and gradually you both has lost the physical urge to get connected to your partner.

Advance stage indicators to consult a marriage counsellor immediately (when you miss to consult a counsellor at the early stages of marital issues and let your marital life reach the following adverse conditions)

5. Gradually, either you or your partner or you both have trust issues with each other.
6. You or your partner has started feeling attracted to someone outside marriage.
7. You or your partner or you both have started having an extra marital relationship, the only reason you are together is for of kids or you are waiting for your partner to initiate the lawful separation.

How people trip on the slippery slope of relationship?

Every time we think of the word ‘cheating’ we imagine someone engaged physical relationship. But cheating is a wider term and also includes emotional intimacy. “Emotional cheating is a modern term used to describe an infidelity condition where one or both partners maintain emotional and psychologically (non-sexual) intimate romantic relationship outside their marriage and hide it partially or completely from his/her partner,” says Delhi-based Shivani Misri Sadhoo, relationship and marriage counsellor and founder of Saarthi Counselling Services. It applies to unmarried couples too.

There seems to be a rise in this phenomena and of the several reasons attributed to it, counsellors say that lack of emotional fulfillment in a…..

Read here: http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-emotionally-not-yours-2489771

According to past sociological & psychological studies & surveys, 67% of couples experience a decline in relationship satisfaction in the first three years of a baby’s life and this deterioration often persists into subsequent years.  In fact, one study showed that couples notice a 40% increase in arguments after having a baby, and two-thirds of these couples admitted that these were often “silly” arguments caused by stress or exhaustion.

Though many couples are over the moon about their new bundle of joy, they also struggle with work-life balance, more loneliness, financial stress, friendship changes, more chores, and minimal free time.

New parents are also sleep-deprived, which, research suggests, greatly diminishes their ability to stay positive, communicate, and manage your emotions. One study revealed that working couples felt their daily workload increased by 4 hours each day after they had a baby.

Today relationship expert and Marriage Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares some important tips that new or would-be parents can follow & practice to avoid the decline of their relationship & closeness after having their baby.

1. Understand, Communicate and except that there will be change in Sex life

Women and men are wired very differently – a new mother can be totally consumed with baby care all day and night. She may simply feel ‘all energy drained out’ after giving so much of her body to the baby and energy to household chores. Conversely, the guy’s way of feeling close is to have sex. As this is where things can break down, communication and understanding play a vital role in increasing the intimacy.

Counsellor Shivani suggests all husbands that during their early fatherhood phase, instead of ending up staying away from the wife and feel rejected in their heart, they should put efforts to do baby care & household chores and try to get their wife as much as possible the free time to take rest. This will definitely go to win their wife’s attention and heart and gradually will make them come closer their husband.

2.  Mothers should find some time for themselves

Remember if you feel worn out after a long day, you can’t expect to feel excited about your relationship: you need to keep loving yourself in little ways so that you have good energy and loving feelings towards your partner.

“It’s important to find ‘me’ time as well as “we” time,” says Counsellor Shivani. It can be good to stick a reminder  fir the things you need to do for self-care – from painting your toenails to watching a movie on Youtube while you feed the child or call a friend or check emails while baby has a kick on the floor,

3.  Plan The Time You Can Spend with your partner.

Good relationship maintenance requires couples to spend quality time with each other and after the baby comes, free time looks like a distant dream. Hence couples must recognize the requirement to spend quality time and they should plan accordingly. Like every weekend you may keep you child with his/her grandparents and go to watch a movie or have a dinner in the restaurant.

4.  Both the partners should try to join parenting classes

In today’s nuclear family parents put too much attention on their single or two children and as result, today’s parents commonly argue over whose way is right, because both partners are adjusting to their new roles and responsibilities.

Many young fathers feel left out, especially if the mother acts as the baby’s primary caregiver. New moms often feel as if their husbands are ill-informed or less experienced and that sparks the frequent arguments.

Hence before the baby is born, both the partners should conjointly visit the doctor and most importantly both should try to attain parental classes that generally been organized by all major hospitality chains or by individual counselors.  This way they will adopt coordinated parenting style early in their life instead of wasting their precious time arguing, criticizing each other parenting style and distancing themselves from each other.

About the author: Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo is the consulting psychologist with Fortis Hospital, IBS (Indian Brain & Spine) Hospital and with Express Clinics.

Counsellor Shivani has served over thousands plus happy & satisfied individuals and couples in India and abroad.She is one of India’s eminent Marriage Counsellor & Relationship Expert, who is frequently been featured by leading newspapers, magazines and TV channels.