Is couples therapy for us?
If you feel like you are:
- Growing apart and losing a sense of closeness
- Not feeling loved, appreciated, or respected
- Not feeling heard and understood
- Having frequent conflicts, arguments, and escalations, that most of the time don’t get resolved
- Dealing with specific problems such as intimacy, infidelity, money, parenting, etc.
If any of those statements are true for you, I may be able to help.
I work with couples to help them deal with all these issues and more.
Therapeutic Approach
In my work with couple clients, I use the research-based approach- The Gottman Method (40 years of research, proving its effectiveness). read more here
I have obtained 3 levels of training in that therapeutic modality.
How does therapy work?
There are 4 parts to therapy:
Assessment
Since we want to make sure that we have the best understanding of your relationship strengths and difficulties, we will start with a thorough assessment.
Session 1
A joint session to understand your relationship history and your philosophy of relationships. Observation of a 10-minute problem discussion between the two of you.
- Before session 2 I will ask you to complete assessment questionaries.
Session 2
Individual session with each of the partners to understand your individual history and your take on the relationship.
Goal setting
After sharing assessment findings with you and coming up with therapy goals that we will concentrate on our treatment. We will decide together on the frequency and duration of our sessions.
Work on the goals
Objectives that you may be working on and tools that you may require:
- Tools to communicate more clearly, openly, and with kindness
- Strategies on how to resolve conflict, stay emotionally connected during a disagreement, or work toward repair and re-connection more quickly
- Support with sharing your authentic truth with compassion
- Opportunities to understand both yourself and your partner in a new way
- Non-blaming, compassionate views on how your relationship dynamic works, how it gets stuck, and how to make sense of dysfunction when it arises
- Identifying strengths and support in building on those strengths
- Identifying abusive behavior along with support in shifting toward healthier attitudes and approaching your partner with kindness
- Appropriate exercises to build trust, explore new levels of vulnerability and intimacy
- Clarity on shared basic values, needs and revising realistic expectations of yourself and your partner
- Support with identifying past wounding when it comes up in the relationship
- Support with accepting responsibility for each partner’s role in dysfunction
- Support with managing resentment or anger and working toward forgiveness
- Support with developing healthy boundaries and emotional availability
- Support in repair of betrayals, affairs, or other rifts in the past
- Support in creating safety, deeper connection, and reigniting passion in long term relationships
Planning for the future
After your goals are achieved, we will plan for the future to help minimize a relapse of going back to the old ways.