Rules for relationship repair: We must increase the positive before working on the negative.

Many people come to my office and want to immediately work on their problems. This is great and this is indeed a goal, but as you will see from the chart above, it is not the first goal. Why not? Solving the problems and managing the conflict is an emotionally draining process. In order to successfully manage conflict, you must have enough positive emotion built up that you can work through the conflict and still have a bit of positivity left over. For this reason, we cannot start therapy by focusing on solving problems. Rather, we must start by building up some positive feelings and some positive regard. Think of your emotions like a bank account: positivity adds money to your account; negativity drains it. Managing conflict is a very, very expensive process. In order to afford conflict, you need to have a couple of weeks with a positive cash flow and some savings before you can spend it on conflict.