Our Core Philosophy
Marler Counseling LLC specializes in marriage counseling utilizing emotionally focused therapy. With compassion, we help you get back to the love and trust that once was at the heart of your relationship. We are driven by a few core convictions:
One is that Beauty is at the core of all existence. That no matter how difficult the hard things are that life throws at us, there is still hope because of Beauty.
And one of the most beautiful is the gift of relationships – spouse, partner, child, parent, friend, our heavenly Father. Relationships are what make life worth living.
Because of this, our ability to relate from the core of our being in a healthy manner is critical to living a full life.
While this leaves many unanswerable questions about the hard things and sometimes evil things in life, it does underpin everything by hope, and hope is critical because hope is what keeps us pushing forward.
Therapists use the term “attachment” to describe the relational aspects of people. It is from our earliest relationships – our earliest attachments – that we gain our sense of who we are at core– our sense of worthiness – our “wholeheartedness” if you will.
Our internal sense of who we are determines how we interact with our world and how we handle the difficulties of life. It determines the degree to which we rely on unhealthy or healthy ways of living.
The list of unhealthy ways of living is huge and includes:
addictions,
depression,
pornography,
alcoholism,
drug addictions
and performance based living to name a few from a long list. All are trying to compensate for an internal sense of unworthiness. All are driven by unworthiness.
This results in a host of relational and marriage problems including:
marital discord,
communication problems,
lack of intimacy,
loneliness,
sexual intimacy,
arguments,
and the tendency to get stuck in a negative cycle that tears each partner down through destructive arguments that end up leaving each partner feeling alone, isolated and/or frustrated and angry.
Healthy ways of living involve living from the core of our being with an inner sense of goodness and beauty - wholeheartedness. We then live by radiating – allowing our inner goodness and beauty to flow outward to those around us. Others are then able to relax around us and enjoy the beautiful and sometimes quirky unique aspects of who we are. We are then able to enjoy truly being known and enjoyed by others, which interestingly enough, has the effect of deepening our sense of worthiness when we are in loving relationships.
Marriages have the potential to make the most of this by engaging a positive cycle – a cycle where each partner builds the other up by seeing and affirming the good heart that exists in them. This then enables each partner to live and love better from their good heart, which ends up building up the other partner - a beautiful cycle of love and intimacy! Increasing vulnerability in a safe relationship enables each person to be affirmed and known at a depth often unattainable in other relationships as each person opens the inner-sanctum of their heart in the presence of love.
This is what makes life worth living. This is what makes life full and vibrantly alive.
While it is a lifelong journey, moving towards living wholeheartedly is a critical aspect of our life’s journey – one that we at Marler Counseling would like to be a part of fostering.
