Blog Posts On Improving Your Relationship

Living By Intentions – What’s It All About For You?

By Ian Tomlinson

What’s the point of you coming to psychotherapy? Why bother coming to couples counselling? Here’s my premise: it’s easy to start both activities and forget why you started in the first place. This is a reflection of how we live our lives. You fall into autopilot and do things because you’ve always done them, never…

How To Deal With People In Your Life That Are Self Absorbed

By Ian Tomlinson

Let me tell you about Dave (not his real name, his real name is Mike – only joking, let’s carry on…) Dave has the fascinating capacity to turn every conversation back to himself.  If I say I’ve got toothache, he’s had root canal surgery.  If I like The Smiths, he will have seen them live in concert…

How To Improve Your Relationship In Only 4 Minutes A Day

By Ian Tomlinson

What can you do in 4 minutes?  Make a brew?  Boil an egg?  Shift your relationship with the one you love?  Oh yes my friend – all of these are possible and I will tell you how. Now given that you’ve probably mastered the brew making and the egg boiling, let’s jump straight into how to improve your relationship in…

The Drugs Of Love – A Simple Guide To Love Hormones

By Ian Tomlinson

Can you remember when you first fell in love?  Awesome wasn’t it? And there’s a reason for that – you were off your face on drugs! Not in a bad way I hasten to add, and you couldn’t help it.  It was just your bodies very cunning way to get you to find a mate and reproduce.…

4 Ways To Make Your Partner Feel Loved

By Ian Tomlinson

Want to make your partner feel more loved? Making your other half feel cared about is straightforward, honest! Here’s 4 simple but important ways of doing it. 1. Show Up You will have been in one of those situations that has resulted in you saying, “I’ve really found out who my friends are with this”.  That’s…

committed action in acceptance and commitment therapy

The Magical Power Of “So What?”

By Ian Tomlinson

Committed Action In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy I cringe at myself every time I ask a client to “tell me about your childhood. ” As a psychotherapist, it’s a legitimate question, but it’s so bloody stereotyped! It reminds me of one of my favourite tracks as a kid – “Hyperactive” – by Thomas Dolby. Now,…

Win The War In Your Relationship

How To Win The War In Your Relationship

By Ian Tomlinson

Is your relationship a battleground?   Want to know how you can get the upper hand? My guess is that you will engage in one of two strategies to win this war. Strategy 1 – Maximising Maximisers are very good at pushing forward and getting their point of view over, often loudly. If you’re a maximiser…

hear all, see all, say nowt

The One Thing My Grandad Taught Me That You Need To Know

By Ian Tomlinson

My Grandad, Walter, was a man of few words.   I can only ever remember him saying three things. A traditional man, working class to the core, he’d sit in his armchair smoking whilst my Gran would whizz around him tending to his every need.  It was a relationship that seemed to work.  This was the…

Imago Relationship Therapy and Transactional Analysis

Crossing The Bridge: An Interview With Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt

By Ian Tomlinson

Imago Relationship Therapy is a couples therapy created by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt.  Imago is a contactful and effective way of working with couples and closely related to Transactional Analysis. I’ve spent over a decade training in Imago Relationship Therapy, almost as long as I’ve been a practicing TA therapist and supervisor.  Imago…

the Space-Between

The Biggest Single Mistake Couples Make In Their Relationship

By Ian Tomlinson

I see many stuck couples in my couples’ therapy practice in Cheadle.  Why are many of them stuck? They’re focusing on the wrong thing The Single Biggest Mistake You Can Make In Your Relationship  The single biggest mistake you can make in your relationship is to focus on the content – the who said what, when,…