Relationship Coach

Relationship Coach

Chocolate prepares your brain for something pleasant!

I am quite surprised by the relationship coaching information I am finding online.

I did not know that you could go into such detail about getting prepared for relationships, beginning them, sustaining them, or ending them.

I am reminded of a quote by a musician once who was talking about playing a horn in a classical piece, and he said, "You know, even the most exquisite piece of music for me comes down to blow, suck, blow, suck."

Human behavior is similar in that we are going to do one of three things; think, feel, or behave.

And all of those things can get complicated by love, which is where the work of Helen Fisher, Ph.D. becomes useful.

She helps us to understand the phenomenon of love from a brain based position, which makes love a little more predictable.

If you are looking for a romantic relationship, then I think the chemistry based model that Helen Fisher,Ph.D. has created is a great place to start, given that it is based on research and fMRI of brains in love done by Dr. Fisher.



A relationship coach will need to help you brush up on your communication skills, and especially your listening skills.

Listening done so that the speaker feels affirmed is a rare skill and it takes professionals some time to develop a feel for listening.

For a discussion of listening skills please click the link below.

Listening Skills in Counseling

And once you have begun a relationship, particularly a romantic relationship, the model that I have directed my domestic violence clients to is the John and Julie Schwartz-Gottman model called The Art and Science of Love, and an important part of that model is nurturing positive feelings. Please look at the video below for an explanation.

Nurturing positive feelings happens thought by thought, and the feelings that flow from them are very fast, as fast as 1/45th second according to Michael Merzenich,Ph.D., who is a neuroplasticity expert, and is actually one of the designers of the Posit Science Brain Fitness Program.

So if I can move from a feeling of love to a feeling of resentment in 1/45th second, what tools will help me move back to a feeling of love just as fast, which is a key component if nurturing positive feelings?

Besides the old standby of paying close attention to your thinking, HeartMath is the best I have found, and the HeartMath tool has some excellent side effects for my health and brain fitness.

But here is Dr. Gottman on nurturing positive feelings.

So what is Heartmath and how can it help me in relationship coaching?

HeartMath is a biofeedback tool that I load on my computer and practice.

It is based on the science of neurocardiology, which is a new field studying the heart's own nervous system. You can say that the heart has a brain of its own, and I can learn to access that brain heart beat by heart beat, feel and act cooperatively and affiliatively, which is a great place to be for relationship, I believe any relationship coach will tell you.

Remember what it is that we humans can control, our thinking, our feelings, and our behavior.

Relationship coaching will involve all three of those, of course, and if I and my relationship partner can get on the same heartbeat, we just might be able to establish a wonderful connection.

Getting on the same heartbeat opens up the higher perceptual centers of the brains involved in the relationship which means negotiations will be enhanced in the problem areas, which Gottman calls moving from gridlocked problems to solvable problems.

To summarize where we have been so far, relationship coaching begins with using the newest relationships tools, like Chemistry.com, and then learning basic relationship and communication skills, and then learning how to access a sophisticated cooperative and affiliative heart intelligence which is wonderful for nurturing positive feelings in the relationship.

All the basics of thinking, feeling, and behaving, and rapid modification are covered.

Here are links to the HeartMath program, vital to relationship coaching.

A Couples Guide To Transforming Your Body and Relationship

Would You Share What You Are Most Grateful For?

Very early in my personal growth experience, a wise person taught me to use the phrase "gratitude is the attitude" when I was resentful or afraid and that phrase has helped me feel better tens of thousands of times.

Would you share your favorite gratitude story by clicking here? Your story may be just what another person needs to renew themselves.

Your story becomes part of this website (which shows the site's most recent pages) and a permanent part of Ask Mike the Counselor2 for others to read!

And I'll tweet your Web page at my Twitter account, too!