What We've Learned From Couples: The 100th Episode!
Apr 19, 2025
In a reflective milestone discussion, the hosts share transformative insights from years of counseling couples. They emphasize the bravery needed to confront fears and how humility fosters healing. Curiosity is highlighted as a key tool to defuse tension, while understanding your partner's past can reshape conflicts. They advocate for celebrating joy amidst challenges and reveal how parenting often drives couples to overcome dysfunctional patterns. Ultimately, conflict is reframed as an opportunity for connection and growth.
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insights INSIGHT
Humans Are Inherently Brave
Engaging in reflective work on relationships is an act of bravery.
It means facing painful fears and vulnerabilities to ask for better connection.
insights INSIGHT
Humility Opens Doors
Humility opens doors to healing and connection in relationships.
It requires listening to your partner despite discomfort or defensiveness.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Practice Humble Listening
Suspend defensive reactions and listen with curiosity to your partner.
Recognize they want to say something important even if the delivery feels difficult.
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In this milestone 100th episode of Couples Counseling for Parents, Stephen Mitchell, PhD and Erin Mitchell, MACP reflect on the transformative relationship wisdom they've gathered over the years of working with couples facing the unique challenges of parenthood.
The insights they share are both profound and practical. They discuss how true bravery emerges when couples face their deepest fears and vulnerabilities; how humility creates openings for healing; and how our universal desire to be truly seen and accepted drives relationship dynamics. The Mitchells explain why genuine curiosity defuses tension, why understanding your partner's childhood story transforms how you perceive conflicts, and why celebrating joy deserves as much attention as addressing problems.
Perhaps most powerfully, they reveal how parenting often becomes the catalyst that inspires couples to break dysfunctional patterns. "Having kids amplifies what you want in life and makes you fight for it," they observe. "Your life didn't diminish when you had children—it gave you permission to ask for more."
Throughout their conversation, Stephen and Erin weave in practical examples from their own relationship, demonstrating how these principles play out in real life. They emphasize that the goal isn't to eliminate conflict (an impossible and boring aim) but to transform how we approach it, gradually reducing its intensity, duration, and frequency.
Whether you're just starting your parenting journey or navigating its challenges years in, these insights offer a roadmap to more connected, resilient relationships. Ready to transform how you communicate with your partner? This episode shows you the way forward.
Couples Counseling For Parents