****News update****

I am delighted to announce that have been approached by a firm of Matrimonial Solicitors called IBB Solicitors in west London. They have requested that I offer help to clients that appoach them, who are not sure if divorce is right for them or not.

I have always believed that this is morally the right move for solicitors, however my requests to other law firms have been met by a reluctance due to their potential loss of business.

Very often couples in crisis get a totally distorted vision of their own relationship and each other and so they think that divorce is their only option.

With my guidance I will be helping couples see their relationships differently to free them from fear and then help them build on growth rather than destruction.

****News update****

There will also be a small interruption in your service due to scheduled maintenance to this website. Normal service will be resumed by Monday 13th September.

I want to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to all my readers.

To your success

Stephen Hedger

If your relationship is in trouble and you have tried everything to fix it yourself and nothing is working then these are the simple steps that will have a massive impact on your relationship and are the steps I use when working with couples in crisis.

Step 1 – Get leverage

I help people understand the true cost of not fixing their relationship problems. When people decide to split-up they don’t think about the true cost both emotionally and financially. The cost is always much bigger than they thought, it’s far more expensive, the emotional fall out goes on for years and massively effects their  future relationships, plus their children are affected for life sometimes hating their parents.

Plus many couples who do split regret their decision after everything has calmed down, because in the moment of maximum pain all they want is the pain to stop so they irrationally end their relationship.

• This leverage activates motivation to discover the truth and stops them living in learnt helplessness as they go round in circles.

Step 2 – Where is your relationship really

The next step is to understand where your relationship really is. Very often the couple feel the relationship is much worse than it really is because they have been focused on their problems for so long that they now can’t see how the relationship could ever change or be different.

This is just a perception based on the state they are in, which is likely to be a state of fear. In fear states not only does the world look and feel different, but in this place bad decisions are made. States of fear take us back to childhood where we cry, thrash out, look for revenge, want to hurt those who are hurting us.

From this place really bad decisions are made.

Step 3 – Understanding your critical needs

The next step is to help the couple understand how their critical needs are being met. When the couple first met the chances are they met all of each others critical needs. As time goes on this can change and when the couple fail to meet each others needs they go outside the relationship to feel good again.

This can have a big impact because the couple stop believing that they can trust each other to give them what they need to feel happy. They could stop feeling loved, not feel important, loose feelings of security all this will stop the relationship from growing and so it starts to die.

By teaching the couple how to meet each other needs through practical steps dramatically changes how the couple interacts and starts to bring them back to where they can be happy together again.

Step 4 – Uncover a conflict in values

The couple with guidance will discover why they have both been behaving the way they have and how this drive to get their needs met is hurting them because they are very likely to be contradicting their own values.

What this does is put someone in a values conflict where no matter what they do they feel pain. So they become stuck.

Women in this place will cry and scream men will seemingly shut down impossible to get through to.

Understanding is the key and shifting values so life and relationships become winnable again frees the couple to help each other again.

Step 5 – Rebuild the trust

Now we have a clearer understanding of what has been going on and why, now the couple is in a position where trust can start to be rebuilt. The couple at this will make a solid commitment to each other to love each other no matter what and to make meeting each others needs their goal every day.

When they do this then unconditional love is possible.

Step 6 – Relationship management

Assume things will go wrong. Life throws challenges every day some small some much bigger. Helping the couple understand how to manage themselves, each other and the relationship is critical to keep each other on track. This covers what to do in arguments, the differences between the sexes and how to be successful with each other.

Step 7 – Planning for success

Planning an amazing future together. Many couples become disillusioned with their relationship because they seem to have no purpose, no direction, no reason for being together.

The reason couple feel this way is because they plan nothing. This next step is to get them excited again about their future and what they want to do and have in it.

Step 8 – The different versions of you

Going deeper, I encourage many couples to gain a deeper understanding of each other by understanding the many personalities they both have and what these personalities were set-up to do.

This will help the individuals in the couple shift the state of their partner from down to happy from serious to sexy. It will also help them understand when they are living to long in one personality that could lead them to depression.

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The way to stop your arguments is to understand them and know how potentially destructive they are being to your relationship.

Those that try to win arguments end up paying a bigger price

Many people have a destructive illusion that trying to win arguments is their goal because if they do win (whatever that means) what happens is they are left with an unhappy partner, and this equals trouble too.

So there are no winners in arguments. If you make this your goal, you’ll generate a partner that will never be the one you want, because you will be resented and that can eventually lead to a relationship break-up.

Fears block understanding

Your goal in a disagreement is understanding, but the reason couples don’t focus on understanding their problem is because all they see is trouble, and then they fear a future that might be generated by the argument, or they fear the future that created the argument..

That future could be a split, lack of respect, being controlled, never being free, being abandoned, or rejected,…this is potentially a very long list.

From these places of fear, the couple aggressively go round in circles trying to fix what they believe to be wrong, but they do it through blame, or defending their words.

The reason they go round in circles never getting to the answer is because what they are fighting about is not their real problem.

Couples try to fix the wrong problem

It’s like trying to stop a tap leaking by closing the front door. Yes it’s as ridiculous as that, but couples don’t know this and they keep slamming that door expecting the leak to stop, but of course it never does.

• Moaning, blaming, defending, shouting, making your partner wrong, judging them. Have you ever know this to be the route to a loving unconditional relationship.

Start understanding and get good information fast

If men could understand that their women are shouting at them because they don’t feel safe, or if women understood that the reason men run away is because they never feel they can make her happy, then the relationships would be so much easier.

Of course this is a huge simplification of any conflict, but just understanding this will start to help you understand that there is an underlying intention behind anyone’s words or behaviours in an argument and taking them literally is dangerous for your relationship.

Understand your partner now!

Relationships have to be learnt just like any other skill. Thinking that long lasting unconditional relationships  are natural is also a dangerous illusion. Nature only ever intended the sexual attraction to be real. The rest of what we believe a relationship to be about is made up by man, that’s why after the initial sexual buzz that was automatic, we have to now make lots of effort to keep our relationships alive.

• If your partner is shouting at you, know that they fear something, so shouting back is only going to make them more worried.

It’s likely that their shouting is a cry for help, and they want you to help them which is why they are shouting at you.

You might feel good when you are right, but be careful that you don’t end up being right and alone.

My partner and I have been having a lot of problems. We were together for 4 months and everything was absolutely perfect, everything was going right and we fit well with each other.

Then after the 4 months we were thrown into an unexpected long distance relationship which equals to a few thousand miles between us (17 hours plane journey). Our relationship changed a lot, its now been a year and one month since we started our relationship so 9 months has been long distance and this has been difficult to say the least.

I would say that I have become quite irrational, I am incredibly jealous now but I never was before the long distance. I trust him much less and I can stress a ridiculous amount which leads to getting angry with him for the smallest thing.

I kind of understand my jealousy because I am jealous of any girl that can be near him but I can’t be, that I have to be thousands of miles away and the horrible feeling that something could happen.

I have become a completely different person which he had always been patient about but I could never seem to change. I don’t know if I can ever change my jealousy especially in a long distance relationship, also the problem is that we would have to be in this distance for another few years.

Its been 9 months and the truth is I’ve been finding it absolute hell, I’ve been stressed, I’ve been crying almost everyday, and its horrible. My Partner on the other hand really likes a long distance relationship, hes been understanding because he loves me so much but I can’t seem to do that for him.

I don’t know at all what to do.

Lisa

————————————————–

Dear Lisa

Thank you for your email to me, I really feel for you, this is a horrible place to be.

You enter into a perfect relationship and just as it’s getting going, it’s now been taken away.

Now you are left will all these conflicts inside that are now making you really unhappy. On one hand you know these thoughts are irrational, but every day they’re coming into your mind uninvited.

There are two key areas here that are effecting you.

• 1. The man you love is thousands of miles away from you, and this is not how your relationship or life should be.
• 2. Your constant focus on potential problems has taken you to a place of fear, which has generated a version of you that is constantly worried and now becoming depressed.

When your life conditions don’t match how you think things should be, you can become miserable, depressed and in this place of fear you have unconsciously gone on a search to discover what problems this long distance relationship could create for you, for him, and the relationship.

• What’s happened is you have come up with loads of ways this relationship could hurt you or end.

Your boyfriend who seems to be trying to fix this relationship from thousands of miles away knows how unhappy you are, and is telling you that everything is OK and that a long distance relationship with him is not to be feared.

In fact you believe either through his words or your feelings that he likes the relationship this way. If you also believe that, then there is no end to living hell for you…

…I don’t believe any man that loves his woman wants to be thousands of miles away from her ( if you also share that thought, that could be making your feel worse, however…), I expect he is fearful of you getting so upset that you end the relationship, to escape your own fears, and so he could be playing his own feelings down to protect you.

Something needs to change, because you are making yourself unwell and these behaviours in you could create the thing you fear most and that’s a break up, because you both can‘t see away forward.

At the moment this situation for you equals the possibility of the end of your relationship every day.

The other part that I know is hurting you is that you want to give him love and yet from this place of fear you can’t, and that’s deeply hurting you too.

The bottom line is you feel out of control, not able to do, or be, what you want in a life situation you never saw as perfect for you or ever wanted or asked for.

For you to be happy again a change is needed, and so your focus and the meanings you are giving that focus has to be different for you to be OK.

Lisa I am going to contact you direct, I can tell you what needs to change, but I will have to work with you to make that change happen.

If Lisa is happy to work with me, we will be back to share the results.

Is our relationship a mistake… I get many letters from individuals that are frustrated with their relationships because they feel that they have nothing in common with each other and so they think they must now be incompatible.

So have they suddenly lost what they had? Did one of the couple suddenly stop liking something they once shared.

• No, what’s happened is the couple has lost it’s purpose and so the relationship became directionless. All the excitement in the early days such as dating, holidays, weekends away, marriage, houses, babies… and then nothing…!

They stop dating, the sex life starts to die, they feel the passion for each other has left, and every day is becoming predictable and boring and they start to blame each other and the relationship.

They both go to a place of fear where the future not what they imagined where they feel unsafe, unloved, alone. When they go to this place they start to search for proof that all this is true. It’s not long before they find it and so scared they go outside the relationship to get their needs met to protect themselves from this future, not yet ready to leave their partner but prepared for if it happens.

• When this happens the couple feels distant to each other wondering where the love has gone, now sure they have made a mistake.
  

Where is your partner going to get their needs met now?

All the things they used to get from the relationship now has to be met outside the relationship if they feel they can’t get what they need from you, of course this works both ways .

• So if you want excitement, maybe a now night out with the friends is now more exciting than your partner.
• Maybe you are working more and more, because you feel more valued there than you do at home.
• Maybe you look for love from your children or you family because you don’t get the love you need from your partner.
• Maybe you have felt an attraction to others and secretly want to act upon it. Maybe you have acted and now you regret it.

If you are getting what you need outside the relationship then one, or both of you has stopped doing what worked when you first met. It’s not that you have nothing in common, it because both of you have stopped giving each other what you need to be really happy.

When you first met you gave you partner everything they needed without knowing and because you didn’t know what you did that triggered the love the joy the passion you think you did nothing except just be you.

Because you are still just being you, you are confused as to why the relationship is dying and so you must be incompatible.

If you had the chance would you want to make this right again..?

Stephen Hedger helps couples understand what changes will re-ignite their relationship. Most couples don’t know what changed and they fear the future. If they believe their own hype, they can end their relationship even if they have children. If this is you please get in touch click here

Do you ever feel out of control of your emotions or feelings? Would you like to know what you have to do to get them, and how to change them.

Would it be better for you if happiness now becomes a choice, would that be a good thing for you to have in your life?

Our emotions are governed by three things that we do.

1. Your focus, or where your mind takes you, or what you think about.
2. You physiology how you stand, sit, walk.
3. How you talk to yourself

So when you look at that list what would a depressed person have to practice every day to become depressed.

How to be depressed

They would focus on all that’s bad in their life, they would have their head looking at the floor, maybe head in their hands, moving slowly, tense shoulders, frowning.

At the same time they would be talking to themselves in a way that hurts them (self abuse), they might say things in an aggressive voice such as “you’re useless, you’re never going to be good enough, you’re fat and ugly”… etc.

They will practice all these three things many times a day until they become really good at them. A person who does this is guaranteed to create what we call depression.

Being aware that you can do this means that you’ll also be able to stop it.

If everyday you focus on all that’s great in your life, or what you can be grateful for, then your focus has started to change. What you will notice is you can’t focus on happy thoughts at the same time as unhappy ones. So if I were you I’d choose happy thoughts, they’re are a much better choice.

Now get active run, dance, walk, do gardening, paint a room, anything, but get your body moving. Your movement will help to release feel good chemicals that also combat depression.

The next is great fun and when you next talk to yourself in an abusive way, change the voice you have been using. If you have ever inhaled helium from a balloon, then you know how ridiculous you sound. Use that voice from now on if you get abusive at yourself, or find a voice that you think is silly, or makes you laugh.

• Try it now! Say what you normally say to abuse yourself in that new silly voice and what do you notice about how you feel. You may laugh, or want to move away from that voice, either way you have changed that destructive pattern.

If you practice these 3 things then your mood will dramatically change. To start with you it will be an effort because you are so used to things happening to you as you live in reaction to the world out of control of you.

But if you drive a car then learning to do that was once a real effort, that now you don’t even think about, just like this will be, all you have to do is practice, practice, practice.

Stephen Hedger the life & relationship coach on this website offers individuals help where depression and anxiety affects their quality of life. If you would like help please click here

The summer holidays are now coming to a close here in the UK and as you reflect on the past few months and how much has happened for you, what would you do differently if you had the chance.

It’s never too late to start to make changes to your life.

When you look around you now, and you look at everything that is in your life, is this the life that you wanted?

• If not, why not? What’s missing? How should your life be?

You could be over weight, not have enough money, dating the wrong people, or always fighting with your partner. Whatever you are  doing, or have been practising is what has created where you are today and everything in it, and this is down to the decisions and choices you have made.

If you feel that the world is responsible for what you have not got, or you are just not lucky, or not  intelligent enough, or maybe you have not got the money you need to do what you want, then you are in what we call, learnt helplessness.

Unless you take charge of your life and take 100% responsibility for it, and that includes your relationship(s), then you will always stay where you are, feeling that either you will never be enough or feeling that the world is somehow against you.

If you know that something is not right, then know this, you have the power to change it… TODAY!

Is today the day when you say enough is enough?

The Mail Online reported yesterday that, Ultimate Big Brother’s Chantelle admits: ‘I should have had therapy after my divorce, not plastic surgery’

Women in particular feel a big need to change their appearance to help them feel good after a relationship break up. The problem is because the change they usually choose is external the initial feelings are artificial and so they don’t last very long.

A woman’s natural beauty and confidence comes from within her and so unless she puts her focus into this area of her life and herself she will always ultimately feel the same no matter what she does to her hair, clothes, make-up and now the extreme make-over, plastic surgery.

If a woman really wants to reinvent herself what she needs to do is understand that she has many versions of her already and the shift to get from the painful and fearful version of her into the version that will make her feel happy, attractive and sexy again will never happen though any external intervention long-term.

The many versions of you

Imagine if you knew all the different parts of you, and you knew how to bring them out on demand.

• The fun you
• The sexy you
• The you that always knows what to do to make you happy and keep you safe.

In that process of getting to know these different versions of you and in women there are 20+, you’ll also get to retire the versions of you which feel exhausted at the life you have been living, these parts of you that might always be worried or fearful, maybe depressed or anxious.

When life conditions change people change automatically

When relationships are in trouble both parties go into fear states where they are protecting themselves from what might happen in the future.

If their relationship problems have been going on for a while they can get stuck in these fears states and so they live in a distorted version of themselves always on the look out for problems.

So if the fear was massive as in Chantelle’s case she would go for a big change, which if you have watched the UK’s Channel 4 programme “Ultimate Big Brother” you can see that after her surgery she didn’t get the change she really wanted… She is not alone!

If you would like more information on how to get to know the different versions of you or you would like help with your break up and how to reinvent you so it lasts please click here

If you have a partner that feels insecure for any reason then your mission is to find out the route cause and support them through it, without judgement or resentment.

Getting fed-up with your partner or punishing them will never help, because all you will get is more insecurity as they feel you moving further away from them emotionally.

They may become so insecure that they cannot bear the relationship any longer and so they will end it just to stop their own pain so be careful how you handle them.

Relationships that don’t work are 50/50 relationships because these relationship are conditional, on your partner always doing something for you and whilst they are insecure this will be a struggle for them.

Unconditional relationship

What works best is an unconditional relationship, because you are the strong one at this time it is up to you to take control and 100% responsibility for the relationship to make this right in their time of weakness.

If you feel that you cannot offer this unconditional love to your partner then maybe you are a contributor to why they feel a lack of security with you. A lack of  ability to offer a partner unconditional love is driven by a fear within that person.

Your job is to help you partner feel secure every day so ask them what needs to happen so they feel secure and do not judge them, or their answers, because one day you maybe the weak one needing help.

We may not always understand what our partners are going through, so we must respect them at all times, and help them through what may seem ridiculous or irrational to us.

If I please my partner I will hurt myself

If you feel that your partners requests to help them feel secure compromise your own values then it’s possible that professional help maybe needed to help you both.

But again you can seek help yourself so you understand what they are going through and what behaviours you can generate that will support their recovery.

Understand this, the lack of security they might feel is not an attack on you, it is an automatic response mechanism within them designed to protect them from harm and is usually not rational.

So understand that the underlying intention is not to hurt or disrespect you. It is easy to feel that you are not trusted, and as trust is the foundation of your relationship and it’s a hard one to hear if you don’t understand where within them it’s coming from.

• If you are in this situation and are stuck with what to do,
  please get in contact today please: Click Here.

Many people I see in relationship coaching sessions suffer from an inner conflict of some kind where no matter what they choose they are unhappy. This can bring on feelings of being depressed, stressed, anxious or unhappy either for what they think is the reason, or for no reason at all.

They go round-and-round in circles with their own thoughts, never really knowing what seems right. They know something is wrong, but they can never put their finger on what is really causing their pain.

The most usual route to success with this kind of problem is…

Step one

…is to understand if there is a gap between how they think their life should be compared to their perception of their own reality. A difference here will give anyone a feeling that they are not living the life they were born to live, yet their might be really good reason why they have not got what they want, but they either can’t accept it, or their map of how life should be is out of date.

Step two

…to understand how the different personalities within themselves have created the life they have today. They are usually are living in a fear state were they are ready for problems to hit them all of the time and this version of them is usually exhausted, so they feel down, or depressed, stress, anxious or all four.

Step three

…to understand their critical needs, values and rules for life. What we usually discover is that without knowing they have set these up so they can never win and so they always go round-and-round in circles, looking for answers that never appear. They look for what they think the problem is and so they either blame it, or remove it and this could be their relationship,

Step four

…is to realign all these parts of them so they are working together and then to build strength and confidence within the individual so they are able to create resourceful states at will, so they are always in control.

Taking these four steps whilst getting leverage so a change become easier for the individual makes a massive impact on how the individuals now sees the world.

They can see why they have gotten to where they are today and what is hurting them. This detailed information helps them choose a better way to live and still creates the happiness they were always after.

Does this sound like something you are suffering with, maybe your partner is unhappy, but they don’t know why, or perhaps you have a friend or family member who suffers from depression or stress and can’t seem to break that pattern

• If so I can help please get in touch today click here