Couples Therapy
Is Your Partnership Lacking Attunement And Connection?
Do you feel alienated in your relationship?
Instead of being a friend or teammate, does your partner seem like an adversary?
Is a general sense of dissatisfaction impacting your ability to feel close and intimate with one another?
And has increasing discord and conflict caused you to worry about your future together?
Perhaps you used to have each other’s back, but lately, it feels like you and your partner aren’t on the same page. As you become increasingly disconnected, your communication strategies and ability to problem-solve together are no longer effective. You may be feeling sad and disheartened that a relationship once characterized by harmony has been overtaken by a sense of turbulence. Yet, despite wanting to address relationship challenges in a healthy way, you may find that you and your partner come up against the same barriers over and over again.
What Do You Want To Change About Your Role In The Relationship?
WConscious of the counterproductive dynamics present in your partnership, you may be looking to level up your communication strategies. You don’t want to simply survive in your relationship any longer—you want to thrive in it. By giving yourselves the chance to reflect deeply on your relationship patterns, you can develop the skills and insights needed to reconnect.
Couples therapy offers you a life-changing opportunity to foster a new awareness of your relationship and the people in it. Working together in counseling, we can enhance feelings of safety, security, and connection so that you feel unconditionally loved and supported by your significant other—able to tackle anything that comes your way as a couple.
Relationships Are Hard And Require Ongoing Maintenance
No couple has it easy; every relationship requires hard work, dedication, and commitment. Yet, we’re often conditioned to believe that nothing will ever change once we find our long-term partner and establish a loving connection. Relationships evolve alongside the people in them—if we want to stay connected to the person we fell in love with, we must continue to sustain friendship, intimacy, and connection between one another.
Several factors can prevent this from happening, though. Our families lay the groundwork for how we relate to others throughout our lives, so if unhealthy patterns were modeled to us, we are likely to perpetuate dysfunction in our relationships as adults. Similarly, if we battle with unaddressed emotional pain—including unresolved traumas, mental health obstacles, and addiction—we are likely to engage in maladaptive relationship patterns that will ultimately harm the attachment between ourselves and our intimate partners.
Though difficult, change is possible. By committing to exploration, reflection, and accountability, we can develop new, more effective strategies for relating to one another. A couples therapist can be the key to deeply connecting with yourself so that you can be a more present and effective partner.
My Approach To Couples Therapy
Without realizing it, we often look to our partners to heal the relational wounds we suffered in the past. But just like us, our partner brings their own dysfunctional patterns into the relationship, ripening our connection for conflict and misunderstanding. Therapy affords couples a real-time, transformational experience to heal intimate attachments and the people who share them.
Couples counseling through my practice is available to any couple, regardless of marriage status or sexual orientation. And because I have a substantial background in child and family therapy, I welcome couples who may be experiencing parenting challenges.
What To Expect
The first step of therapy is to become vulnerable, curious, and open to the process. For meaningful progress to take place, it’s essential to view our wounds and the wounds of our partners from a place of acceptance and care rather than shame. We reject others because we reject ourselves, so facilitating empathy will be a significant element of counseling.
From there, I will begin incorporating the highly effective Gottman Method for Couples Therapy into treatment. Using a standard assessment to help understand each partner’s strengths and challenges, we will collaborate on focus areas to enhance your skills in communication, conflict management, mutual understanding, comradery, and problem-solving. Depending on your needs and goals for counseling, I may also incorporate Brainspotting to target past traumas, elements of Internal Family Systems (IFS) to promote compassion for both the Self and the Other, and the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT) to build skills for secure attachment.
Because each session is customized and structured to build skill sets in focus areas, you and your partner are likely to feel increasingly resourced with effective communication strategies, trust, and a more robust sense of shared meaning between you two. This holistic approach to counseling offers new possibilities for connection, intimacy, and friendship for all kinds of couples, regardless of their presenting areas of concern.
As a Gottman-trained therapist, I have watched many of the couples I work with transform their relationship and find their way back to one another. They have witnessed that their barriers are surmountable through willingness, hard work, and a deliberate application of their skills. Counseling has offered these couples a pathway to a deep, abiding love and a bond that can stand the test of time. Working together with your partner, therapy can do the same for you.
You May Be Wondering If Couples Therapy Is Right For You…
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Many of us who are caught up in unhealthy historical patterns begin to feel hopeless that change can happen. When two peoples’ patterns are involved, the dynamics become even more complicated.
The good news is that although your partner may feel like your greatest adversary at the moment, they can actually become your greatest champion and source of comfort through the therapeutic process. Couples counseling gives both of you strategies for lasting healing and change because it offers you a deeper understanding of your individual wounds. As you work together to repair your attachment, you will not only enhance your bond together—each of you will improve your respective mindsets.
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I am confident that if you can get your partner to spend a few minutes on the phone with me, I can develop a strong understanding of where their resistance is coming from while offering hope to them that change is possible.
I’ve found that partners are often hesitant about working with a couples counselor because they don’t want to be blamed or find out that they are the problem. But my relational approach to couples therapy views the “problem” as existing within the relationship’s system—not because of one partner in particular.
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Altering relationship strategies takes time, but the Gottman Method is one of the most effective approaches to couples therapy out there. When combined with approaches like IFS, PACT, and Brainspotting, the Gottman Method can actually expedite the counseling process. *Note that if time is a concern, I am available for couples therapy intensives, wherein we will embark on a deep dive into presenting issues over the course of a weekend to resolve issues more quickly. Contact me to find out more.
In addition, if cost is a concern, I am more than happy to spread out our sessions and create homework assignments to help promote continuity even if you don’t attend weekly sessions. Your marriage/long-term relationship is a foundational part of your life, and it’s worth the investment of couples therapy to heal and strengthen your bond.
Heal Yourself, Heal Each Other
If you and your partner are coming up against ineffective communication, unhealthy patterns, or intimacy struggles, couples counseling can help you facilitate a deeper awareness of yourselves and your marriage/relationship. To find out more about my approach as a Gottman-trained couples therapist, contact me to schedule a free, 15-minute consultation.
