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A Smiling Day Counselling

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A Smiling Day Counselling

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Xiaoting (Smiling) Chen | Christian Couples Counsellor普通话伴侣家庭咨询
Emotionally Focused Therapy for Christian couples beyond pastoral support, Perth & Aus-wide. 为没人理解的珀斯华人提供改善情感和家庭关系的普通话心理咨询。Get in touch!

01/11/2026

Trying to force yourself to behave like what you know when all the complex emotions are activated is extremely difficult. Because your nervous system wouldn't allow you to do that, until it experiences something different.

The pain you experience does not mean you lack faith or not having a blessed marriage—it simply means you are human beings wired for profound and safe connection in your marriage. Your whole system protects when you can't find it.

As a specialist in Christian Couples Counselling in Perth, I help local couples step out of blame, guilt and shame, use their God given nervous systems to guide them, and find emotional safety and connection in their marriage.

📍 Christian Marriage Counselling | Beckenham, Western Australia (6107)

👉 If you are ready to slow down the clock, click the link in my bio to book a free, completely confidential 15-minute phone consultation.

31/10/2026

1️⃣ Name the challenge, not denying it. Tell God your honest feelings and thoughts.

2️⃣ Tell each other what's hard for you. What's hard for you physically, mentally, socially and spiritually when facing this challenge?

3️⃣ If it turns into an argument, try again when you feel calmer.

Share this with your partner. Try the following if you get stuck ⬇️

Getting to know clearer what's happening inside of you first. What are your thoughts and immediate physical responses?

What emotions are involved? Can you feel them in your body? Can you describe them using words or images?

Tell your partner what's hard for you AFTER you understand your inner world clearer.

You are telling your partner what's hard for you to gain their understanding of what you are experiencing, not to blame them.

Listen to your partner telling you what's hard for them without getting defensive.

If you keep going around circles and always spiral into the same arguments, tell each other you're caught in a cycle.

You need to find ways to stop the cycles first, then you are able to understand each other better and face the challenge.

➡️ Follow this page for more breakdowns of how to call out and stop the argument cycle.

28/10/2026

☑️ People who honours your reaching out, and see it as your strength not weakness.
☑️ People who listen attentively and try to understand your experience, without dishing out quick advice.
☑️ People who don't gossip about others, so they won't turn your story into another gossip.
☑️ People who don't take sides just to please you or to prove themselves right.
☑️ People who values commitment and encourages you to seek support and help.

❤️ This kind of people do exist. Maybe one of your friends is like that. Maybe a church leader comes to your mind. Maybe a small group member you can trust. Maybe a therapist you know enough about.

🌞 Talk to someone about your struggles. Don't let Shame silence you and keep you in the shadow.
🗣️Talk to someone, talk to God, ask God to give you the right person to talk to.
👁️ Come to this page, let me talk to you too.

26/10/2026

What's usually sitting underneath the pursuit of happiness, is the arguments you don't want to revisit, the complex emotions you are not able to untangle, and the hurt you wish can just go away for good.

If you have tried so hard to avoid dealing with it, you are certainly not alone.

What you are actually saying is: "I'm not sure how to deal with the hurt. I'm not sure I want to go there."

To say this has already changed your direction, because you just named the "key".

"Hurt" is the key to your relationship challenges, "happiness" is not.

If you have just decided to acknowledge your hurt, you've made the first step to change the situation.

Follow me for more unpacking and nuances.

23/10/2026

1️⃣ What actually set me off before I have a go at my partner?
Do I hear the tone in their voice? See them raising an eyebrow? Or not making eye contact with me? Do I see dirty laundries everywhere again? What do I tell myself before even hearing what they have to say?

2️⃣ How does my body feel when I'm about to go off?
Do I feel a lump in my throat? Or hot flushes on my cheeks? Does my chest tighten? Guts twitch? Stomach flutter? Or do my heart drop?

3️⃣ What do I tend to do when I feel like this?
Do I raise my voice? Or do I go cold in my tone? Do I try to reason and give advice? Or do I frantically start to do whatever I am told.

4️⃣ What does my partner tend to do when I do that?
Do they get more pushy? Or do they turn their back and try to walk away? Do they get more angry? Or do they go cold and dismissive?

5️⃣ When they respond like that, do I tend to do more of what I did?
If your answer is YES, then you just tracked a negative cycle: the more you do what you did, the more your partner will do what they did. Then the arguments get worse.

☑️ Good news is, when you can track the cycle, you are able to learn how to pause it and get out.

➡️ Save this and send to your partner. Follow for more.

20/10/2026

Knowing you reacted to "false threat" is not enough to disarm the alarm set off in your body.

Safety needs to be felt in your body, through your nerves system. You simply can't think your way through to feel safe with another person.

Your body had glimpses of safety before, it will know when it senses safety again.

A caring presence and company when you feel sad creates safety. A gentle pat on the shoulder when you need encouragement creates safety. A reassuring warm smile when you feel anxious creates safety. Acceptance when you expect to be judged creates safety.

Safety is not about agreeing with each other all the time. It's when disagreement unavoidably occurs, you don't feel attacked or degraded, which allows you to respond in an open, curious way.

The more such experiences in your relationship, the safer it becomes.

The safer your body feels with each other, the easier it becomes for you to use knowledge to guide your actions, and behave in a desirable manner.

Now I want you to hear this, nobody chooses to feel unsafe and on guard __ your nerves system gets activated into protection mode, when it picks up warning signals similar to what it experienced before.

You can have lovely personalities by nature, or genuine deep faith in how Jesus has renewed us through his death, but STILL holds your armours up in protective mode.

What you need, then, is not a change or personality, or more faith in your head.

Your faith will deepen, when your body can feel the invitation to drop the guards, then you choose to do so, taking the risk to be open and curious again in that moment.

Sometimes you may need a little bit of help to do that, but that makes absolutely sense. A soldier who has been fighting hard in dangerous situations needs to taste enough safety first, before accepting the new reality that peace has come.

Good news is, help is available, safety is possible in your relationship.

Share this post to someone who needs to hear it.

18/10/2026

You hear this from your friends, your family, your colleagues or loving people from your church.

They genuinely mean it. They see a hardworking, loving husband, or a beautiful, capable wife, a couple of cute kids, or a happy family showing up at church every Sunday.

Only that you don't always feel so blessed. Hearing this makes you feel ungrateful. It takes away the permission for you to struggle in your relationship with your spouse or kids.

The truth is, everyone has struggles in their relationships. We are only imperfect humans, works in progress, Christians or not.

To admit you are facing challenges in your marriage, is the first step to be able to do something about it.

If that's you, send me a private message and say you are struggling. That's already taking a huge step forward.

16/10/2026

Live realities in the bodies of distressed couples are intensive emotions, so much and so fast that words would naturally fail to convey.

When words do come out at the hot moments, though, are words that attack the other, defend oneself, cause hurt and create distance.

To feel attacked or dismissed by the very person you committed to love, who also committed to love and care for you, is an extremely painful experience.

It's not a scratch on the skin, it's a shake to the core of who you are. Are you lovable? Are you enough? Do you have to prove and earn your worth? Do you have to fight and defend your needs?

Essentially, we are trying to catch a glimpse of the kind of unconditional acceptance, the value and worth Jesus says about us, from another human being __ one of the most significant human beings in our lives __ our spouse.

We naturally do this, simply because that's how we are wired by design.

We are wired to seek and find connection in the depth of our souls. We are only going to be convinced in our body, though, when we can feel a little bit of such connection with another human being.

That's why this is not the time to quote Bible verses Christian couples already know in their heads.

This is why we do what we do in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy work: we slow down the fast and furious emotions, make sense of them, make sense of your behaviours, make sense of how you each contribute to the ongoing pattern that sends each other into distress.

Eventually, the therapy is aiming to help you catch a glimpse of the depth of connection you are designed to crave, and feel it in your body.

If this echoes your own experiences, it will be helpful for you to find out more of our services with the link in bio.

14/10/2026

You don't want to be grumpy, dramatic or feeling crazy. You know they don't bring the closeness you desire with your partner: being seen, understood and held.

Problem is, you don't know HOW to do that otherwise.

These were the ways you saw growing up. These were the ways pulled you through in the past.

Your body knows how to get into such positions, to fight for yourself. They built armours around you, shielded you from more hurt.

The cost, though, is you always have to fight alone.

On top of that, in your relationship now, they are the very things that push your partner further.

To drop those armours is not easy, sometimes it's even foolish. Because they are there to protect. They have always been on guard.

However, a deeper part of you, like all of us, is aching to matter to someone, to feel not so alone.

Here, then, lies the dilemma. How do you hold the armour up still, and truly to be seen at all?

It's not possible to do both. There's going to be risks you'll need to take.

The good news is, emotionally focused couples therapy we work with, is designed to help you take those risks in a controlled safe environment, one step at a time. And when you fall, I'm there to catch you.

When the risks start to pay off, your body will feel the difference, and your default ways will be open for modifications.

If this kind of work would potentially benefit you, follow me here and head to my link in bio to find out more!

12/10/2026

You are on the edge for very good reasons, but probably not the reasons you assume.

You assume your husband is just lazy, but that doesn't line up with how hard he works. You assume he doesn't care about what you said, and that makes you even more angry and wanting to make him listen, only that hasn't worked.

Then you assume you must be too fussy over nothing, being too dramatic. Or what's important to you doesn't deserve to be taken seriously at all. These thoughts would send you directly into a deep dark hole, where you can't find any footing to get back up.

None of those assumptions is going to help you. Because they are missing the mark.

What actually happens at that point when you spot dirty dishes and laundries lying around, is that your nervous system was activated, by familiar experience, and all those emotions from the past have come back online, alive in your body.

The live emotions happen too fast, the only way you know how to deal with them is to fall back to the default ways you know: to snap at him or to swallow it bitterly and turn you back.

The only problem of letting the default run is that you end up feeling terrible, and your husband ends up feeling terrible too.

It's hard to change the default ways on the hot spot, regardless of your communication skills.

Emotions need to be slowed down, teased out, felt and responded to, so there can be safety for you to risk new ways of reaching when help is needed.

If you have no idea how to do that, you are not alone. If you can relate to this, emotionally focused couples counselling will be helpful to your situation. Check out the link in my bio to find out more about this work.

Address

Perth, WA
6107

Opening Hours

Wednesday	9:30am - 2pm
Thursday	6pm - 7pm
Friday	6pm - 7pm

Telephone

+61861030123

Website

http://asmilingday.com/

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