"Three Months After Getting Engaged, I Started Feeling Uncertain..."

My uncertainty compounded over a few months of rumination and eventually grew into dread and paralysis. 
​

I was overwhelmed. I constantly had a pit in my stomach. I cried often, and I almost called off my wedding.

I thought that the feelings I was experiencing could ONLY mean that the marriage was not supposed to happen.

Working with Allison quite literally saved my marriage.

She helped me to gain the awareness and strength necessary to get through a very important time of personal, internal growth.

Although there were many, the three categories that Allison helped me with most
were 

1) re-defining what I had previously defined as love.  (Infatuation?  Unavailability? Intensity? By really examining how I defined love, I learned to value the solidity, constancy and loyalty of my fiance. 

2) increasing my emotional intelligence, which freed me from being prisoner to my emotions

3) transitioning from my exciting, roller-coaster 20-something single life (see #1, defining love!) into my
new identity as a 30-something wife. 

She helped me realize I was blaming my poor fiance for my feelings. 

That I was attaching my own uncomfortable feelings about my transition and changes in my identity to him. 

​When in fact, it was my stuff I had to process through.

She gave me practical exercises that really helped.

A few personal favorites included literally rewriting my personal story with pen and paper (going through old relationships, really examining them for what they really were, and also going through -- without anxiety -- the solid relationship my fiance and I have built over the years.)

Keeping a “Richness List” of the experiences, feelings, and character traits I noticed about my fiance, which helped me start to appreciate him more and more. (I definitely had a bridging phase!) 

I felt hope and support after just one session with Allison.

And I continued to work hard with her through seven months of growth.

Luckily, my fiance was an amazing rock through this period.

Together we decided to postpone our wedding date so that I could really dedicate the time to this
transition phase.

Now we are BOTH extremely excited and in love.

Now I feel butterflies thinking about and planning our wedding and our future together.

I finally feel content and at peace. 

It just took some work and time to get to this great space.
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I am SO grateful for my fiancé and SO grateful that Allison stopped me from potentially walking away
from the most amazing man that has ever been in my life, my soon-to-be husband!

​-- Jenna