Preventative medicine focuses on keeping people healthy instead of just treating them after they are sick. Along with this approach is early intervention. The sooner you catch a problem the easier it is to cure. The same is true for mental health. 

Too many people see therapy as a last resort. They only want to come in when things are hopeless. They are afraid people will think they have problems if they go to therapy. This is like the person who won’t go to the doctor because they may get bad news. One report I read said the average couple waits about six years past the time when they first should have gone to counseling. It is much harder to fix a relationship that is deep into a negative cycle, full of resentment and contempt. 

It is better to be proactive and go when things are mostly positive. You are coming to improve what is good and make it better. This is true for couples as well as individuals. You may wonder, “Why would I want to go when things seem ok? It is like the Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared.” You buy health insurance before you get sick. You buy life insurance when you are young and the rates are cheaper; and no one controls tomorrow. You save money before the rainy day. Get the picture? 

Fix the unresolved issues from the past before they affect the present. Get new tools or sharpen the tools you have. That way you will be ready if and when you need to use them. Here are a few areas of preventive care I can think of off hand. This is not an exhaustive list but it is a good place to start. 

Self-image 

Self-image is how you think and feel about yourself. It is critical to a happy and successful life. It will affect my relationships from friends, to the kind of people I date and marry. It will affect my ability to launch into the adult world with confidence; and to accept the reality of the world as it is. It is a major reason why many parents can’t get their adult children to leave home and move into the next phase of life. Self-image affects my fear of failure; my willingness to try new things. It helps me not see myself as a failure if I try something and fail at it. I see failure as the price of success. 

Self-image includes two areas of my core beliefs. One belief is I am loveable. Someone will want, love and accept me for who I am. This makes me comfortable in my own skin. It is ok to be me. The other belief is I am adequate. I am just as good and valuable as everyone else in the world. I don’t see myself as “less than.” From a Christian perspective both of these core beliefs are based on the fact that each person is created in the image of God. So every human, regardless of race, gender, age, or nationality has innate worth and value.We all deserve to be treated with dignity, respect and without prejudice. 

Change 

The one constant of life is change. People move through various life stages from birth to death. The world changes around us at a blazing speed. If you are an adult, look at all the scientific and technological changes that have happened in your lifetime. There are societal changes. Changes in our family as people grow and age. We go through health, financial and relational changes. We change where we live, work, play, and go to school. 

Some of these changes we like and some we don’t. But most of them we are powerless to stop. Every change will produce some kind of loss. Every loss will produce some level of grief. The greater the loss the longer the grief period. This is true even if we are choosing to make the change. To adapt to change we must learn how to grieve in a healthy way. How to transition from one old normal into a new normal. The new normal is unknown and we are not sure what to expect. We have to learn to deal with the fear of the unknown through our faith; trusting God is in charge of my life and the world. 

Prepare For Marriage 

A majority of people are still choosing to get married. People don’t get married with the idea of getting a divorce or to be fighting and miserable all the time. They get married because they feel they are in love and expect to be happy with their mate until “death do us part.” So how can we increase the likelihood of having a long-term, happy marriage? Most people have no training in how to make a marriage work. Most people today have never seen a model of a happy marriage in the home they grew up in. What they have seen is the normalization and acceptance of easy divorce. Forty percent of first marriages end in divorce, sixty plus percent of second marriages and seventy plus percent of third marriages end in divorce. 

Premarital counseling, when done right can improve the odds of a happy marriage. First focus on laying a good foundation for your marriage. Don’t wait until the wedding date has been set and the invitations have been sent to then think, “Oh, we should probably do some marriage counseling.” For some couples it is an afterthought or a requirement of the pastor to perform the ceremony. Do the premarital counseling before you have decided to get married. Make it a part of the decision making process to figure out if we are a good fit for each other. 

A good pre-marital program will take several weeks to be done right. It will help each of you decide if you are a good match before your emotions are ruling your brain. If you decide you aren’t a match it is easier to end the relationship; rather than feeling trapped because the wedding is all set and money has been spent. The course will help you figure out if you have any deal breakers in your relationship. It will talk about the foundational areas necessary for making a marriage work.

Many of these areas aren’t necessarily romantic but they need to be talked about. Here you are dealing with the nitty-gritty subjects a couple will need to face in understanding each other and your differences. A good program will teach you the realities of what traits characterize happy marriages. I call these things, relationship realities. 

Communication Skills 

Communication skills are usually taught in a good pre-marital course. However, communication and conflict resolution skills are for everyone, married or single. Because we all have to communicate with other people. At the heart of these skills is the ability to truly hear and understand the position of someone I don’t agree with. This is called active listening or listening for understanding not agreement. We can’t solve problems or negotiate with someone when I don’t have a true grasp of the other person’s position on an issue. I must also make them feel I understand their position.

Once we do this for each other, then we can identify the problem. Only then can we solve the problem. This solution must be a true win/win for each person. The goal is not to win the argument, get my way or beat the other person. The goal is to solve the problem to each person’s satisfaction. This is easier said than done because of each person’s emotions and emotional trigger points.

Today we have lost the ability to listen to an opposing point of view and think logically. Because of our insecurities and loss of critical thinking skills, when we don’t agree we react emotionally. We attack and demonize the other person. This response only reveals our shallowness, prejudice and intellectual emptiness. 

Emotional Control and Regulation 

Emotional control is also referred to as emotional regulation. One major difference between adults and children is this ability to emotionally regulate ourselves and verbalize how we are feeling instead of acting out our feelings. Most of us adults have unresolved childhood hurts that in certain situations make us feel like a child again, then we act out our feelings. Acting out your emotions doesn’t work in adult settings. It only creates conflicts in our relationships, gets us fired from the job or leads to legal problems; just to name a few of the possible consequences that can happen. It causes others to see us as a bully or a jerk to put it mildly. 

As I mentioned earlier, this ability to self regulate is critical to effective communication skills. People act out for several reasons: 

1. As a child they didn’t have a good model they could watch and learn from. 
2. As a child they developed acting out as an effective defense mechanism, so they carried it into their adult life. 
3. They have also learned it to be effective in manipulating and controlling others to get what they want. 

Like any character trait or skill it is easier to learn or change it the younger we are. It is not impossible to do this when we are older but it usually requires a motivational crisis (some kind of pain) to get us started. Once we have the motivation to do something then we must reach out to others to help us work intentionally to make the changes we want. If you see some tendencies in these or any other areas of your life; be proactive, reach out for preventative help. Deal with it now before it grows into a major life issue.