COUPLES THERAPY

“The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.” – Hubert Humphrey

 

Couples Therapy

Having a neutral person to help you navigate conflicts within the family dynamic and in relationships is key. As your therapist, I will help you resolve conflicts.

There are many reasons why a couple might seek couples counseling. Some reasons that bring couples to therapy are

  • Infidelity

  • Sexual desire discrepancy

  • High conflict

  • Premarital counseling

  • Bickering/spiteful interactions

  • Helping couples who want to break up successfully

  • Blended families

  • Parenting challenges

  • Domestic violence

  • Poor communication

  • Lack of connection

In couples counseling, partners learn to be emotionally available for their partners, empathetic and engaged with each other, strengthening their attachment bond and the felt sense of safety between them. New positive cycles of emotional responses are developed and create a permanent change in the relationship, creating a healing environment for both partners.

Pre-Marital

Premarital counseling is a form of couples therapy that can help you and your partner prepare for marriage. It is intended to help you and your partner discuss several important issues, ranging from finances to children so that you are both on the same page

Topics can include: finances, debt, expectations, love, trust, respect, love languages, communication, family dynamic, adjusting, expectations.

“Every competent counselor knows that no matter what the marriage problem, the system that sustains it is found in both people”

 Couples Reunification

Can separated couple’s still reconcile?

If you and your partner have decided on a trial separation to fix your relationship issues, you need to get one thing straight: Unless you work together on those issues, don’t expect change. Nothing will be different when you reunite, unless you’ve made changes in your relationship. Once your relational space has become polluted, it’s not immediately cleansed by a separation. If you want the space to become sacred once more, the only way is through couples counseling. Couples need an expert to learn how to navigate through the gauntlet they co-created. Separating is just that: separating. It doesn’t include healing. Healing requires a professional, time, money, and, most of all, commitment.

“Nearly half of all separated couples give it another go. Science has an explanation—and with the right mindset, reuniting may not be such a bad idea, after all.”

METHODS AND STRATEGIES USED…

GOTTMAN METHOD
for COUPLES

Gottman Method is an approach to couples therapy that includes a thorough assessment of the couple’s relationship and integrates research-based interventions based on the Sound Relationship House Theory. The goals of Gottman Method Couples Therapy are to disarm conflicting verbal communication; increase intimacy, respect, and affection; remove barriers that create a feeling of stagnancy; and create a heightened sense of empathy and understanding within the context of the relationship.

Attachment Theory

Change occurs through exploration of past and current relational attachments and trauma in the environment of a healing, secure and reliable relationship.

Goals • Raise awareness of client’s problematic behavioral and emotional patterns, formed in early childhood as attempts to maintain attachment to primary caregivers • Repair the capacity to regulate affects • Resolve any emotional or social disruptions within the patient’s life • Improve quality of attachment with others.

Explore Attachment behavior system. infants and caregivers have an organized pattern of signals and responses that leads to a development of a protecting trusting relationship. The emotional bond that develops between adult romantic partners is partly a function of the same motivational system

Phases of Treatment and Interventions

Beginning: Attunement is the key intervention in the early stage and consists of forging of a personal relationship between the therapist and the patient. The therapist provides a secure base by reliably demonstrating empathy and care. Collaboratively identifying client’s “attachment style," that is, problematic behavioral and emotional patterns, formed in early childhood as attempts to maintain attachment to primary caregivers. Middle: Disruptions are explored in the middle phase. Disruptions include those in the early life of the client as well as those in current relationships, including the relationship with the therapist. Support client’s ability regulate and express emotions in relationally difficult situations, teaching clients to have a reflective stance toward themselves.

End: Repair occurs during the late middle phase and the end of treatment. Repair stage of the therapy aims to alter the patient’s current reactions to the events that cause them emotional distress by sharing their own interpretations of the event. By sharing their own subjective interpretation, the therapist helps create a new reality of the painful events for the patient in order to get rid of unwanted emotions and reactions.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy

“Cognitive therapy is based on the idea that when you change the way you think, you can change the way you feel and behave. In other words, if we can learn to think about other people in a more positive and realistic way, it will be far easier to resolve conflicts and develop rewarding personal and professional relationships.” – David D. Burns

Communication Skills Training: Used in couples therapy to help couples talk about feelings and problems.