You might benefit from some cognitive-behavioral therapy for you perfectionism and worry. An example would be the program at http://stresscenter.com. Changing your thoughts (which is a behavior within your control) will change your feelings. Your thoughts are habits that can be changed.

I believe Dr. Harley is considered (and considers himself to be) a Cognitive-behavioral psychologist. His methods for eliminating LB's (like AO's) are very much cog-behaviorially based.

The mantra "behaviors repeated beget habits, and habits repeated beget character" (or something like that) has helped me eliminate AO's, drinking, porn, and now I'm changing to a plant-based diet (for heart and overall health reasons).

It works, I believe on about a 3 month cycle (that's a generally agreed-upon time frame for the brain to accept changes in behaviors).

I have to say that anxiety seems to me to be a different kind of animal, but I would definitely look into it. I know a few people with anxiety who also exhibit a lot of behaviors that don't help anxiety at all: smoking, caffiene, television drama, negative thinking, blaming. I'm also coming to believe the American Diet (e.g. high fat content and chemical additives) is contributing greatly to the stress (not to mention heart disease, diabetes, and possibly dementia) in this country - hence the diet change for me.

I do believe in "locus of control."

opt

Had a situation over last weekend that we tried to do POJA. ( Which btw, when I gave him the article to read he said, but we already do this! Because he never makes a decision without asking me about it first. I'm just not always honest about how I feel. So here is the situation:

This past weekend our two boys had a youth retreat and so my husband had planned to do a special weekend with my daughter. That was before the crisis this summer when I found marriage builders. I suggested that my mom keep my daughter and WE go somewhere for the weekend. He still liked the original plan, but then thought of camping. That it would be a great time for the three of us to take a last rv camping trip for the season. He's been wanting to do that, but can't with the boys' school schedule. But then on the other hand, he was gone for a week and a half last month on a mission trip and will be gone for a week next month, so he was tempted to just stay home and get things done around the house..

So I made a list of the options: take my daughter to Beaver's Bend alone for a father/daughter weekend; for the 3 of us to go; for us to drop her at my mom's and have romantic weekend alone ( even reserved a hotel room), stay home but still have me drive halfway to have my mom take our daughter, or stay home all three of us. We went back and forth and I could tell he REALLY wanted to take out the trailer one last time. It will be next spring before we can take it again. I told him I really preferred the romantic getaway, but could see how we could go on dates the other weekends, but we won't be able to go camping because of various committments one of the days..

We kept going back and forth over what are you ENTHUSIASTIC about..what can you be ENTHUSIASTIC about.. Well, honestly he never even considered the weekend away with me.. it was never even close to his top choice.. He promised me he would take me on a date, so I said ok..

We decided Thursday afternoon and were up until 11:30 getting the trailer ready. We did have a good time. We went canoeing, hiking, horse back riding, played games. My husband and I played a hilarious game of badmitton while my daughter was off on the playground. I had a good time. ( Not so good, though cleaning the trailer today!)

We had great conversation: all weekend and the the 3 hour drive back and forth. My daughter listened some but got bored and watched a movie on her ipod. We did some recreational activities which we all enjoyed. We made love every night and sometimes in the morning. He cuddled with me and held my hand. We just were not alone.

I've been keeping track of his hours and activities since I've been on this site. We are averaging between 9-12 hours of ua each week. It wouldn't be this much if I wasn't planning some kind of fun activity for the two of us. He is averaging between 27 and 32 hours of family commitment time where we are all together doing things or he is doing something with one child: building a computer with oldest, teaching middle one how to drive, watching the debate and talking it over with middle one, feeding the catfish and taking a walk with my daughter.

To him family is all. I'm not sure he understands what is so important about UA...and I wonder if I should even worry about it. This past week he spent 44 hours at work Monday-Thursday at noon. A regular week has him putting in 60 hours or so. I'll tell ou what a call weekend week is like later.

So basically his work week looks like this: 56 hours of sleeping ( bed at 9 wake up at 4:30/5ish), 12 hour days ( leave at 6 get back at 6 4 days out of the week. Plus another half day of 6 hours. Plus add extra for one call day so around 60 hours a week. 30 hours with the kids 10 hours with me. Add 7 hours each week for eating breakfast/quiet time/exercise, etc. He has spend around 4 hours doing work for his mission trips. And that is just about his 168 hour week.

He is spending 40 hours a week with us just not with me alone. I know he is thinking what would the extra hours with me be accomplishing if he is talking to me all the time ( he does. He is much, much more open than I am and I know EVERYTHING that goes on. Remember honesty and openess are his top need.) and we are making love and having affection. What is missing is recreational companionship which we typically only do on a family camping trip or something..

Anyway, did I handle the POJA correctly. To be honest, the only thing I was enthusiastic about was the romantic weekend away. The default position would have been staying home... To be honest, the camping appealed to me more than staying home if I couldn't have a weekend with just him. At least I was getting out of this house and having fun.

So.. did I handle it correctly?

I also wanted to check since all of you advised me to drop activities.. But as an extrovert and now basically only teaching 1 instead of 3, I am bored and lonely. So:

Monday
8-12 Teach my daughter while boys are gone at school, though even this isn't straight teaching. She has a lot more independent work now..so maybe 2 hours of instruction.

12-6 Do housework, help my older boys if they need it. Like yesterday I was one of the people that reviewed my son's essay for his dual credit class at the cc. I talked over PSAT strategies with my oldest. Planned out my co-op class

6:30-8 Drove my daughter and her friend to a neighboring town for orchestra. My husband had meetings tonight, so it was a good day for me to do this. Ran my errands. I have a friend that I carpool with so I don't always have to do this.

So no adult interaction today other than the clerk at Mardels.

Tuesday

8-1:30 Supervise all three children's school as needed with the main teaching with my daughter
1:30-4:30 Drive with my daughter to a music prep school an hour away for violin lessons and back home.

Adult time is with my husband whenever he gets home.

Wed[b]nesday
[/b]8-12 Homeschool co-op. I do see adults here, but mainly I am teaching music to 4yo, 5yo, a 1st/2nd class and 4th grade recorder.

1-3 Home supervising school.

3- Take daughter to piano and set up for children's choir at 4:30

4:30-5:15 Teach children's choir. I do have an adult helper, but mainly 20 kids ages 1st-5th.

Now I have been going home lately. But when I do that means again my main interaction is with my husband. Otherwise I have Praise Team and Adult choir with other adults 6:30-8.

Thursday

I take my middle son and a friend to their history/literature co-op at 10am. ( My friend brings them home at 5.) Other than that I am teaching youngest and doing housework/financial stuff. So no adult interaction today.

Friday
Home all day teaching/supervising like Monday.

Saturday
Chores around with family.

Sunday
Sunday School and church- adult interaction

So other than my husband the only adults I see is Sunday morning, Wednesday morning..sort of and then Wednesday night if I go.

Do the rest of you really only have that much interaction with other adults?? It feels so claustrophobic to me. I like people.

"Adult time" is a risk in a good marriage, and a disaster in a weakened marriage.




http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5069_qa.html

Once a week is completely normal for someone who isn't employed and has kids/spouse. I am also a stay at home mother and usually 'interact' with others once a week with my toddler group on Fridays, that's it.

If you choose to homeschool rather than work during the day then it is only natural that you are greatly limiting your interaction with other adults on a daily basis. I admit, I really like to spend time with other women (which is why I go to the mother's group) but there isn't enough hours in the day to go out shopping with the girls when I can spend it with my husband.

I understand you like homeschooling and obviously feel a great benefit to it for your children, but are you becoming resentful of the fact that it keeps you home-bound in that sense?

Yes, I am beginning to resent it and am ready to be done. I am especially resentful of my daughter. (She is 10.) Unlike my sons, she wasn't planned. I was on birth control pills and yes, I took them regularly. If I didn't have her, I would pretty much be done with homeschooling. Instead, I have 8 more years... That feels like eternity. Our ps is not an option. There are gang fights. The average ACT score is 19.9. My oldest made a 34. Although they offer a few AP classes, very few take the tests. They don't prepare them well. Out of the 34 that took AP exams only 7 of them made a 3 or higher. My oldest has made a 5 on AP stats, 5 on AP Gov and a 4 on AP Chem. He is taking AP Economics, AP Physics and AP Calc this year. Of that only AP Calc is offered at the local school and they don't do well on the exam. Drugs and fighting among the races is rampant. Lots of pregnancy. Just don't think I can send her there. There is one private school that offers strings and voice/choir. However, it costs $6,500 a year and I don't know that it would offer that much more than what I can and good grief.. I paid that much for a year at Baylor when I attended..

I guess part of it is that growing up and in college and early marriage I was in choirs, show choirs and drama. I'm was used to being with people 24/7.. Then I had the summer to kind of recoop and recharge.

I would suggest looking for a style of homeschooling that puts more of the work on her and less on you! At 10 I can understand she still needs you for things, but it shouldn't be long before she should be able to take the lead in her education, researching careers and college requirements and deciding what she needs to do in order to make that possible, then doing it.

At this point, is your husband on board with this program? Is he dropping his activities, too, to focus on your marriage and finding enjoyable interaction with you?

If he is not, then THAT is the problem that needs to get fixed ASAP.

If he has read this site, he should know the answer to that. Have you sent him the articles on this site? If he reads them and then rebuts them, or still believes it is unnecessary, then I would suggest contacting Dr. Harley on his radio show for suggestions.

Don't delay this. You are too tired to put this off for much longer. It will only get worse.

[quote=markos
At this point, is your husband on board with this program? Is he dropping his activities, too, to focus on your marriage and finding enjoyable interaction with you?

If he is not, then THAT is the problem that needs to get fixed ASAP. [/quote]

What activities. He goes to work and comes home and spend time with the kids and doing chores. He is more of an introvert and lives for family time. We enjoy our time together. We don't fight. On the show on depression, it said to rank your happiness scale for every hour of the day. My highest rankings were when he was home. I forget all my problems and we have a great time. It was also high for choir. It was low when I was by myself/with whiny kids that complain about doing math!!

He says I am meeting his needs. The are 1. Openess/honesty 2. Affection 3 Family Commitment 4. sex 5. Attractive spouse.

Do the two of you stay in contact during the day? I know that for my wife it is mandatory that we stay in as much contact as possible. We IM all the time, all day long.

Ok, you guys have answered to keep my non outside activity thing going.. But no one addressed if I POJA correctly our options for last weekend.

I believe that some of you said that Steve was good at helping men with career counseling/changes? How do you know that? When I look on the site it says that 90 percent of his work is with couples dealing with infidelity. If hubby sees that he will be very confused about why I would like for him to call. There are several things that have happened at the office that have multiplied his stress and I have an opening as he is asking me what he should do. I have absolutely no idea. I had thought about having him brainstorm what parts of his job he loves (operating, mission work, most patients) and what part he hates ( being on call, dealing with egos and stupid hospital politics, insurance regulations, paperwork, being held responsible for whatever anyone in your sphere of influence does wrong: partners, pa, business office etc I mean think about it if the business office does something wrong or codes something incorrectly then the buck stops with him, if the pa does something wrong-the buck stops with him etc So he tries to micromanage/supervise it all but there are not enough hours in the day...)

So is it Steve or is it his father that did all the career counseling and has his father pretty much retired from everything but radio?

I have personal experience with Steve on a person's work. When we started coaching with him, my H was insisting that he couldn't commit to the 15 hours of UA time per week because of his job. He simply would not be able to avoid travel and functions. So Steve told him to change jobs, to one that would not interfere with our marriage.

He was about four months into the new job when he started trying to slip travel and functions back in, it's detailed in my thread Duped. No more travel, no more parties without me now. Sometimes it takes a LOT of persistence to get rid of the stuff that's killing your marriage.

Anyone else have any experience?

On a side note, oldest got accepted to his 1st choice college witha 15,000 a year merit scholarship!!! We are celebrating around here!!!

Uh, you're welcome?

sorry.. Of course, thanks!!! But yours did seem to be more marriage counseling ( which we may need as well but for now I'm interested in career counseling)

tw - I think you might have misunderstood. Steve Harley is not a careers counsellor or coach, in the way that specialists carve out this niche.

All the Harleys deal with jobs and careers in so far as they impact on the marriage. Their impact is very likely to be felt on UA time, but also on travel and on family finances (and no doubt in other areas).

The MB coaches look at ENs and also at UA time, and advise spouses on how to adapt their careers to maximise and serve their marriages, and not the other way around. Dr Harley talks about his own career change, made when he and Mrs Harley were about to be married (or were about to have kids - I forget which). He opted for a career change from engineering (I think) to psychology, because it would be more compatible with the couple's goals.

In HNHN he discusses a couple who need more money for their growing family but who also wanted the wife to be a SAHM. Their solution was for the wife to get a job for a couple of years while the husband improved his skills. He forbids couples from having travelling jobs unless they can travel together at all times, and he suggests that couple set up a business where they can work together if it is easy for one spouse to hide an affair via workplace communications.

And so on. Careers are central to marriages and thus MB, but they are not what the Harleys coach in, as such. They give advice and provide accountability for weight loss, too, to meet the ENs of attractiveness and RC, but people do not go to them as diet experts. There are other people whose expertise is diet.

In your case, the career is a problem in your marriage, so coaching with Steve is precisely what you need.