Do it yourself ways to help a troubled relationship
This page begins to respond to people who are not flourishing, but have troubles and problems.
Here would be more self-help ways, and other web sites, to have a go at helping yourself with troubles in relationships. Like many ways of helping, RU emphasises the positives, the solutions, the strengths and resilience of the people affected. Most family systemic psychotherapies now are resilience-based.
This is not to be like "Pollyanna" who was always cheerful and looked on the bright side to avoid pain and distress. We do not pretend that troubles are not sometimes very upsetting or serious. Sharing and listening to distress and hopelessness is part of how many people cope. Turning to talk or get support from someone else is our opening suggestion on RU. Relationships are for both flourishing fun and for sympathetic support.
Some prefer to be stoical and not weaken. People who don't talk much can still be towers of love and strength to their families and friends. In extreme crises, stoicism can be essential. And we are all faced with how we get on with life anyway whatever troubles face us.
Different people and professionals may forget there is a balance to how to respond to troubles. If RU seems too positive that's because we start with how relationships flourish and we find that is also important when they are troubled.
When people are troubled, we look for and find people's strengths from the start - even while we also listen to how serious their troubles have been. Some approaches focus more on the troubles and miss out on people's strengths and the resources in their relationships with others in their lives.
Here's an example of a self-help website for adults/parents can use the helping children with troubles at www.handsonscotland.co.uk. RU should emphasise and point people to self-help networks and groups.
Some of Karen's own stuff would fit here again. Where it is framed for couples, it could be de-coupled (!) to have wider applicability. Or we could note things that are for particular kinds of relationship including couples things, or parenting things, or workplace conflict self-help resources, etc etc
People use labels a lot now for emotional and behavioural troubles. It may help to understand the help and the confusion caused by using labels. Click here for more on labels. Being clearer about how labels work can help us all be calmer.