{"id":27777,"date":"2015-03-23T06:55:14","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T06:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/riverpathcolorado.com\/2023\/why-marriage-counseling-and-photography-are-similar\/"},"modified":"2015-03-23T06:55:14","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T06:55:14","slug":"why-marriage-counseling-and-photography-are-similar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/riverpathcolorado.com\/2023\/why-marriage-counseling-and-photography-are-similar\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Marriage Counseling and Photography Are Similar"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Marriage Counseling & Photography: So Much In Common<\/h1>\n

Many people know that when I am not sitting in the therapist<\/a> chair, one of the things I do as a hobby is photography. While these days I don\u2019t have as much time for capturing moments on (digital) film, it is never very far from my mind. It\u2019s a great exercise in mindfulness and a great way to look at things from a different perspective. Well, not long ago, I was in a session with a couple and saw a connection. I had a fleeting thought, \u201cHuh. Photography and marriage counseling<\/a> have some interesting things in common\u201d. Now, I know that\u2019s a loaded statement and you\u2019re probably unsure as to what those connections are but I had the chance later that evening to think about this while on my drive home. Here\u2019s the story:<\/p>\n

I was in a session with a great couple and, in the session prior, we made some intense and productive discoveries; the type of light bulb moments that you think about for a while. When they sat down at the beginning of their next session I asked them, \u201cIs there anything that we need to do post-processing on from last week\u2019s session?\u201d; that\u2019s a question that I ask many of my clients; especially if there was new information that came up toward the end of the previous session. Normally, I would refer to this as \u201cdebriefing\u201d but for some reason \u201cpost-processing\u201d came out in the sentence that night. After the session was over, I found myself intrigued by the potential connection.<\/p>\n

In photography, post-processing is what you do to a photo after it\u2019s been captured. In the digital age, that means importing them into some computer software. Once it\u2019s in the software, you can tweak the pictures to see them in whatever way you\u2019d like them to look; you adjust them to be as relevant as possible to the image & feel that you were trying to capture. For example, maybe we want to see this picture as black-and-white or maybe we need to see this picture in full, vivid color.<\/p>\n

Any given counseling session can be defined as \u201ctaking a picture\u201d; we are looking at events in history, events in present time, and interactions to see how couples engage with one another. We are looking for what their needs really are, why things aren\u2019t working currently, and how we can do things better. Each session, though, is just a snapshot over a one hour period of time. Sometimes, however, that one session alone isn\u2019t enough to really have the best picture of what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

Some days it takes couples going home from marriage counseling<\/a>, letting their minds relax a little bit and then coming back with a different perspective on the things that we had discussed to really \u201cget it\u201d. Many times, clients will show up to their next marriage counseling session and will still have some feelings left over from the snapshot that we took the week prior.<\/p>\n

It is then our job as a team to help refine the picture that we have, so as to make it as functional as possible. Often times there were things that were said that didn\u2019t come out right or struck a chord. Sometimes, out of context, the comments seem to mean something that they actually don\u2019t. Again at times the sessions were too vivid and everything needs to be toned down without the heightened emotions that the week before may have presented; we may need to turn the volume up on the messages that were being sent so that both members can really hear what the other person was saying.<\/p>\n

I find this last part often to be true when clients are telling each other how much they mean to one another, but in a very coded way. It frequently doesn\u2019t come across correctly to their partner despite the fact that it might be coming across to me as the therapist. After all, marriage counseling is a tricky endeavor for everyone involved because of this level of nuance. There are some really often-heard concerns that couples have when entering marriage counseling that inform that nuance:<\/p>\n