The Couples Paradox

Bill and Robin Shearer have specialized in working with couples for four decades. They are dedicated to helping couples overcome relational difficulties and move beyond stress, anxiety, anger, fear, and depression to deeply satisfying connection. Together, they have developed Mindful Choices Couples Therapy for a lasting relational transformation.

Mindful Choices Couples Therapy was created out of the Shearers’ recognition that relational well-being and thriving are multifaceted and rooted in awareness, choice, and healthy habit development. When mindful awareness is coupled with making great choices, and systematically practicing those choices to the point of powerful and enduring lifelong habits, relational well-being and thriving result. It’s transformative, and Mindful Choices Couples Therapy is designed to systematically bring about that transformation.

This book is about the application of Mindful Choices Couples Therapy to helping couples resolve “The Couples Paradox. If you are like most people, you have a natural tendency to respond when emotionally triggered in ways that are unhelpful to the relationship — even though being connected and securely attached is your biggest need.

The heart of Mindful Choices Couples Therapy is an incremental, step-by-step mastery of 10 Mindful Choice areas, all interconnected and all having great impact on couple well-being. The focus is on assessment-based awareness and systematic and focused practice using knowledge derived from neuroscience as well as many other powerful tools for change. We call our systematic habit development “Habitualizing.”

For the past 10 years, the Shearers have used Mindful Choices Couples Therapy with hundreds of couples. The results far exceed anything they and their clients experienced when the focus was on merely reducing conflict and relational stress utilizing traditional approaches.