Your best friend rings you as she is upset about an issue that happened at home. Or your colleague is really annoyed with the boss, who never seems to play fair in their mind, and she sounds really upset about this.The list of opportunities we all must support and console others during difficult times is endless.  Regardless of where we are, we all experience distress and have difficulty managing our intense emotions at times. Sometimes we see others who are upset, or angry about something that they feel deeply about, and we may not know how to comfort them. At other times, we may be working with a colleague who has experienced a deep loss, and we have no idea what to say.  We are often afraid of saying anything in case we cause more harm.‘Extending your hand in a time of need can change the course of someone's life’.Will I make it worse if I say nothing?No, you won’t. However, you will make it worse if you don’t check in with them in this difficult time as they may feel you don’t really care about them or what they are going through.  I always say that no matter what, reach out to people you know who are struggling.An Accidental Counsellor is a person who accidentally helps another person in distress, without necessarily having the professional skills to do so. And so many of us find ourselves in this role at times.‘A helping hand can be a ray of sunshine in a cloudy world’What are the skills of an Accidental Counsellor? What do you say to help somebody weave their way through a loss or distress?Skills used by professionals who counsel and coach othersPeople in the helping business have a range of skills and techniques that guide others at difficult times.  Some include:Make time for the person who is struggling. We’re all busy and in these difficult situations, being available for them can make the world of difference to the personBe present in the moment for the person who is struggling. A focus on the individual by positioning your body to face them, square on and lean forward (this makes the person feel that you are present and interested in what is happening for them)Listen actively (the hardest of all the human relating skills) by not talking if they are, watching their body language to get a good gauge on where they are at and repeating back to them what they have said to youEmpathy – putting yourself in the other person’s shoes (but never assuming you know exactly how they feel)Silence – Knowing when to say something to help, and when to sit in silence with them and their distress. Let silence ‘do the heavy lifting’ Over time help them find potential solutions – Over time, exploring solutions they can follow or help they can find will be really helpfulStructure around the issue – often people in distress cannot think clearly. Counsellors (or those who are counselling accidentally) gently guide the person to acceptance of the issue, and help them make greater sense of it all if necessaryA strength to lean on – In desperate times, accidental counsellors are there to lean on. To support others. How are your skills as an Accidental Counsellor?Remember that if you know somebody who is struggling in life, don’t take on the heavy issues they may have if you are not skilled.  Refer them to a Counsellor or Life Coach who can assist them through the difficulty.

Relationships are systems that work very much like our health. What we put in, we get out.If we eat well and exercise regularly, sleep well, drink lots of water, and use alcohol moderately, generally our bodies are healthy. Nourished. Happy. And life becomes more wonderful for us as we feel well most of the time.If we don’t do this, our health is often the first thing to suffer. The thing that so many of us take for granted. Do you?The point is this: To get and stay healthy takes effort, discipline, and a rigorous commitment to making sure we do everything we can to stay well. Most things we do is to achieve this goal. Relationships are the same. If we work at our relationships, constantly working at them to keep communication flowing, supporting each other and ‘being there’ in the tough and good times – generally our relationships flourish.When we take each other for grantedYou’re busy with work, trying to get ahead. You’re stressed and unhappy at work, you feel your career is going nowhere and that nobody listens to you. You complain that ‘nothing in my life works’ and it may feel that way.And whilst our attention is elsewhere, our relationship system is under-nourished, taken for granted, and even… neglected.Like your health, if we neglect the needs of our relationship and put it in the back seat of our lives, you will get the result that comes from this. A back-seat attempt at a loving relationshipAs a relationship struggles, intimacy is compromised (some of you may say ‘what intimacy?) communication is sporadic (at best) and both of you struggle to keep what we used to have in the relationship we have today.Take your focus of the ‘relationship road’ and you may end up off the beaten track wondering what happened or struggling to get back to what used to feel so special.According to loveisrespect, there are 4 things that grow a healthy relationship:Respect;EqualitySafetyTrustThink about your relationship right now. How many of these does it have?Keep ‘feeling the love’Check in with each other. Happy couples reach out to each other when they're apart and together. Make a special time for just you and your partner every day, even if it’s only 30 minutes.Focus on your marriage. Keep it in the front seat of your life.Act generously instead of keeping score. In a healthy relationship, you're on the same team and neither of you counts who does what. We do it all together Show random acts of kindness to each other, lovingly letting your partner know how special they are to you.Give each other compliments - tell each other how good they look, how much you appreciate what they do for you and the family and so forth.Keep the intimacy in the relationship, focussing on it’s specialness and let your partner know how you feel about them.Keep talking, always. Communication is the life-blood or your relationship and without it, neither of you are going anywhere in a hurryKeep up the habit of saying “thank you” and “I love you”- and mean both!Take time out for yourselves and the relationship – a weekend away, a show together, a romantic dinner (not only on Valentine’s Day) and keep working at the ‘specialness’ in your relationship.Listen to each other. That means you don’t talk. Try and listen to their perspective and what they are feeling. What does their internal world look like? Chances are if you don’t know, you’re not listening.Have fun. Enjoy your relationship. Keep doing the fun things you used to do at the start of your relationship. Fun times are good times.

Dear EditorI became aware of my girlfriend’s cheating just recently. She swears that it was a one-off mistake in a moment of weakness and won’t happen again. She says that she really values our relationship and wants it to work. I really want to believe her, but I feel like I can’t trust her anymore. How do we get through this?Editor’s responseThank you for your letter reader.In my years as a therapist and advice columnist, I've seen countless people through the sometimes devastating aftermath of infidelity and the pain and confusion it brings.No two relationships are alike, and the days and weeks after a betrayal often bring extremely strong emotions that vary by the minute. Sometimes you feel that you are ‘all over the place’ and that you’re going crazy. But you’re not. You’re going through pain and grief and it takes time to recover.There are so many questions in your mind.  How many times have they cheated? Is it only once? Do I want to stay in this relationship or not? Will I ever be able to trust again- and would I want to? How on earth did we get here? What made them take our relationship to such a bad place? Surely, it’s more their fault than mine!These questions will take time to resolve and as you do, more emotions may arise – sadness, despair, guilt, hope, numbness, optimism and so forth.Why people cheatYou’ll ask yourself a million times why your partner cheated, but there is seldom a simple answer as so many variations could be at play here. Some examples are:Is the cheating a symptom of other problems in your relationship? Is there something in your partner’s past? Is communication poor in your relationship that makes them look for sanity elsewhere?  Is sex or intimacy a problem?Do we have the same values or not?What the studies sayWhilst your decision should never be guided by research, studies tell us that while the numbers vary depending on the scope and type of survey, it appears that close to half, (or 45 per cent of individuals in monogamous relationships) admit to having an affair. Close to 25 per cent of marriages stay together after an instance of cheating, and more men than women stay married when they are the cheating partner (61 per cent vs 44 per cent).*Death knell or magical marriage? How to recover when someone cheatsI have worked with particularly difficult situations like this and similarly helped couples separate and work out ways forward, particularly if children are involved. For many couples, an affair (one-off or regular/ongoing) destroys the relationship for good, leading them to divorce, heartache and much difficulty for their kids as well. And getting it right saves the migraines of divorce because of a cheating partner.Avoiding affairs is vital to the health of any intimate relationship and to the long-term health and stability of family life. However, cheating does not always mean the end of a relationship, but it does mean that if a couple wants to stay together, they must both realise that they have a long road ahead (needing lots of commitment) to carve a new relationship moving forward that can be better than it ever was.If both partners want the relationship to work and are super-committed to turning it around into something magical, they have to follow me as I wave my wand and take them through a process that will demand remorse from the cheating partner, forgiveness, relentless commitment and a healthy dose of effort day in, day out, until you both learn how to have a better relationship.Moving forwardCommit to staying together and being brutally honest about your part in the breakdown of the relationshipCommit to no exit strategyFind a good life coach or therapist to help you work through these issuesWith help, work out exactly how the relationship ended up here. Both partners must own their part and what they could have done to improve the relationship before they cheatedScrutinise all categories of things that distanced the relationship – the arrival of children, money, in-laws, stress, money pressures and the likeI go through each category step by step with the couple, helping them design strategies and learning key communication skills to resolve these issues that have built up over timeOrganise date nights and special time together, having learned with your coach how to ‘be’ in your new relationshipDo a range of exercises and skills training around couple communication and values such as good communication, respect, loyalty and honesty as exampleLittle by little the coach will help you build and live in a very different relationshipThe success of this will be up to you and your partnerWhen a partner cheats, no matter when and for how long, it hurts - like hell. It makes us feel awful and unworthy and devastated by the betrayal.Cheating will always damage a relationship.  So, reader, if you choose to stay with your partner, then you can now do so with additional knowledge and an understanding of what to do and how to get help. If you choose not to stay, get a professional to help you separate as well as possible.Best, Caryn

The Chore DilemmaSo often, it’s the little things…….Often when I am working with couples, they come to see me frustrated with each other, or agitated about things that need to be done around the house and they argue over who does what?Sound crazy? Well, that may be the case, but a key issue that couples bring into the room where I coach them is chores.The trouble is that most couples fall into the gender typical roles in which they perhaps grew up. She’s in the kitchen cooking and cleaning and sorting out the kids and he’s outside doing the lawn, the hedges and everything in between. The same applies to same-gender relationships or friends living together.Whilst it looks like an even distribution in getting things done, it often isn’t. The problem is that neither persona has sat down with the other and worked out who does what and when. If they had, so many of the bigger issues may not appear.The issue with chores and how to solve itBoth partners in a relationship need to be responsible for helping around the house and positively contributing to the family and this can include children if they are old enough.ActivityTake a A4 piece of paper and draw three vertical columns down the page.Column 1 – ChoresColumn 2 – WhoColumn 3 – By whenSpend an hour together (or as a family) writing out all the chores that must be done each week/month in the first columnWrite the name of the responsible person in column twoWrite the time frame for the chore to be completedPut the list on the fridge and as a couple (or family) everybody commits to doing their chore/s by the time decided on the chore list on the fridgeRewards with childrenIf your children are old enough, get them to contribute to this exercise too. In some cases, parents like to reward their children with small amounts when they do what they say they will do, so an ice-cream on a Friday or an hour extra on an i-pad is suitable.For older children or adolescents, this can be a small cash incentive or more time to drive the family car or money to go to the movies. Some families don’t like this reward system and feel that all people living in the house should contribute – living in a lovely home and sharing in a family life is reward enough. Families are different but do whatever suits.Remember the golden ruleIntegrity! Doing what you commit to doing. This strategy outlined above works again and again and again. It only does not work, if you don’t work it.Give it a go. You might be really surprised at how well it works!

I have read your “Revitalising Relationships” column and I am impressed that you are covering this subject, especially because topics such as domestic violence are so topical in the news right now. All couples fight from time to time – that’s normal, but I have a friend who I have suspected as being a victim of an abusive husband. He is stressed from his job, and they have some heavy financial worries (surprise surprise), but this is no excuse for taking it out on his wife. (I think he hits her, and I know that he is emotionally abusive.) It’s not her fault and his behaviour is no solution! I feel sorry for him too. She keeps forgiving him and tries to be understanding, but the cracks are showing.We are living in a very different world than we did in the past, and there are many reasons why people (and couples) are under stress. The huge increases in the mortgage rates over the last year, the significantly high cost of living, working in a role or environment where a person is not happy, daily challenges of raising children, looking after ageing parents, feeling they are carrying the world on their shoulders …. the list of stressors seems endless. Couples who relate well in times of stress are those relationships that fare well. They understand each other and the pressures they are both under, to offer comfort and leniency in times when most needed, they are supportive and loving of each other within the boundaries of kindness, care, respect and trust.  People living in stressful situations However, people under stress behave differently to others who are not stressed - and often ‘unacceptable’ behaviours raise their ugly heads – name calling, belligerence, hostility, hitting their partners, being emotionally abusive, sulking, ignoring their partner and getting angry often with their partners are some examples of dysfunctional behaviours that occur. Domestic Violence is defined as ‘violence committed by someone in the victim's domestic circle. In its broadest sense, it also involves violence against children, parents, or the elderly. It can assume multiple forms, including physical, verbal, emotional, economic, religious, reproductive, or sexual abuse’ (Source:  https://www.government.nl/topics/domestic-violence/what-is-domestic-violence)  How can she deal with this? Firstly, your friend needs to recognise the nature of the relationship in which she is living. Many people deny they live in a violent relationship and over time, it gets worse. Never better.She needs to acknowledge that what she experiences, is not ok. Ever.If she continues to accept this behaviour, it will continue. And frankly, it can cost her her life, and that of her children.  Domestic Violence and its impact on Children Children respond differently when living in domestic violence, depending on their age and stage of development. For example, babies living in domestic violence appear to lower levels of health and poorer sleeping patterns.Studies show that children are at greater risk for abuse and neglect if they live in a violent homeStudies show that 3 million children witness violence in their home each year and those who see and hear violence in the home suffer physically and emotionally. Source:  https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/children-youth/australias-children/contents Getting help is her first port of call. Right now, she is suffering in silence, and if this continues, the impact on both she and her children will worsen.  Strategies to help your friend Have an honest chat with her and ask her if she is experiencing domestic violence in her relationshipExplain that you are talking about it to her because you are concerned for her safety (and children)Explain that by making plans to move away from her dangerous situation, she breaks the cycle of domestic violence in which she is currently living. Staying in this Cycle continues to reinforce itExplain that there is always help out there as – there are many resources available - the 1800 RESPECT line is a great startThey will guide and advise her about where she could find a safe place for her and the children to live, even if temporarilyShe needs an Escape Plan – talking key items for she and her children. (1800 RESPECT)Show her research about the damage that domestic violence has on her children – she may downplay the impact her husband’s violence has on her (but there is no denying it has on her children) Concluding this column, you are the most wonderful person for wanting to help your friend. I hope you found this information useful. CarynSO...The first thing to do if you suspect a friend is in DV is to gently approach them and talk to themTell them you are there to help them in any way you can Explain that if the DV continues it will negatively impact them and their children If you can, explain to the partner that you are here to help too – and perhaps help them get help If DV exists, both partners and the children are in pain and at risk

I’ve been in a long-term relationship for over 15 years and sometimes I feel bored and that we’ve drifted apart. I’m not sure if my wife feels the same or not… I’m a little afraid to ask. How can we turn it around? This is a good question because any relationship which lasts that length of time may from time to time find itself in waters that have become ‘too comfortable’. Whilst this can be a good thing (we know each other really well) it can move into the more ‘it’s boring’ category, which can be a natural progression of a relationship. Look back at your early days together If you think back to the early days/months/years of your relationship, you’ll probably remember how much ‘fun’ it was. The two of you did great things together – camped, trailed, travelled, laughed…. Even partied. And all of this was important to build ‘credit’ in the relationship and it gives us a great peek into whether a relationship can move into the next phases – often called the honeymoon and then nesting phase. Then when mortgages, children and the stress that comes with both arrives (along with a myriad of other day-to-day stresses and challenges), many couples scramble to find careers (yes, being a homemaker is a career), meet regular commitments and provide for the family. All admirable, except while you used to make each other the top priority, now you may not be the first. Or second. Or even third priority. Aging parents, sick children, interest rate hikes… the list gets longer. Putting your relationship first Talk to your partner and express how you feel, calmly and kindlyTell them you still love them, and you would just like to get back to making each other matter most.Discuss what you used to do when you first got together – what made things fun, what made you laugh and what you both enjoyed?Begin to realise the most important aspect you have between you is not the children, or the in-laws, or making money.It’s each other, because if you don’t take your relationship seriously and make it a top priority, you won’t have one.Start planning things to do together, without the children or your parents.Go back over old photographs (as an idea) and talk about the fun you had – then build those fun things back into your relationship.Examples might include a date night every two weeks, having a picnic on the beach in warmer months, visiting art galleries, and so forth. The golden role is that BOTH of you are responsible for making your relationship fun and enjoyable, not just one partner. With this in mind, ask yourself this question – in everything I do with my partner, am I part of the problem or part of the solution? Because if you are not taking responsibility for doing the things that make your relationship work, then you are part of the problem contributing to it not prospering.  If you have a question, please send it to Caryn at [email protected]

Revitalising RelationshipsLet’s face it. Some relationships are hard work. And often you may feel as if you are putting in much effort, and the other person is doing very little. That could be true of course, or it could be your perception, and often they differ.Whether it is with your partner, child, sibling, friend or parent, there are some really simple things we can do each day to keep our relationships strong and able to steer the challenges we are faced with in life.Relationships thrive when people show loving care for each other and work at their relationships. So let’s not forget some simple important parts of having great relationships around you. 6 Simple things never to forget 1.   Be kind. It costs you less energy to be kind than it does to be angry – so stick with being kind 2.   Give – a lot. Our relationships are not a loss and profit column, but research tells us (and we support it) that the more you give in any relationship, mostly the more you get in return 3.   Communicate – the life blood of your relationship. Without it, the relationship system slows down and unless addressed may not always survive 4.   Compromise – be more agile in arrangements and with ideas that the other person brings to you – don’t get stuck in a rigid way of thinking. Explore options together to work out what fits best 5.   Create time for intimacy – One couple asked me to help them rebuild their 11-year-old marriage, but when we worked it out, there were two hours a week where they could build their relationship. Two hours isn’t going to hack it. So, make your relationship (whatever it is) a priority 6.   Show respect- treat each other with fragile gloves and always be respectful and sensitive to the needs of each other. When you look at these 6 factors, how well do you go on each and where do you think you can pay more focus?Human relationships are not about you. Or me. They are about us.   How well do you ‘do relationships?’ and where can you improve.

The Bugle is our community newspaper. It is for you, for us, for all.We’ve been asked to include a column about relationships and families and life in beautiful Kiama, so we have enlisted the help of Caryn Walsh, who is a distinguished life and executive coach, counsellor and psychotherapist. She has worked with countless families, couples and individuals over the last 20 years and is well known for her ability to help others deal with life’s challenges. Caryn is also a leadership and team development specialist and works in Australia, Africa and Fiji.Caryn will address different topics in each feature, and you are very welcome to pose questions for her to answer.Pose your questions to Caryn to answer in each Bugle edition EmailAll information is confidential and whilst we may publish your question, all names will be changed to protect your privacy.