Couples Therapy

“Nothing compares to the sensation of being alive in the company of another,” -Mark Nepo.

Do You And Your Partner Feel Disconnected From Each Other?

Do you feel crushed by the confusion of a partnership that once held such love and potential?

Are you longing to find your way back to each other, yet so many emotional obstacles seem to be obstructing the path?

Or maybe you’re trying to reconcile differences in opinion and need guidance in coming to a compromise that honors your truth as it deepens your commitment to one another - around cultural values, sex, in-laws, money, or communication styles.

And you’re hoping couples therapy can show you how.

However long you’ve been in relationship - decades, months or days - it can feel increasingly lonely to experience such disconnection with the same ones who you have shared so much love with. Your feelings of fondness for one another might still exist, yet they’ve been covered over by layers of confusion, and the intensity of your interactions result in defensiveness, explosions, and separations that leave you contending with the hurt feelings alone. Instead of, “I feel so seen and held,” it becomes, “why can’t you just listen?!” as your partner retorts “where do I get to be in all this!”

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Have We Lost The Aliveness For Good?

You may be wondering when this disconnection between you began - at what point did the vitality of your love become replaced by cycles of pain and hurt. You long to return to the closeness you once had, those days when the relationship felt like a safe refuge from the onslaught of life’s challenges. Couples’ therapist and founder or the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT), Stan Tatkin, said in an interview that an intimate relationship -when going well - is the greatest buffer against stress and greatest contributor to well-being. Thus, when it’s not going well - it becomes the greatest contributor to the same stress it sought to protect itself from.

So you’re here - and you miss the aliveness you felt when you were a team together. You may be questioning… is this just what relationships go through? Is there bound to be arguing, disconnection and resentment? And maybe another part wonders… does it have to be this way?

In short, no, it doesn’t have to be. And, good relationships take work! And it’s a kind of work you likely didn’t learn at school, in your family, or in your job.

If you want to break through your relationship problems as a couple, and put in the work to make it good, yet you don’t know how, therapy can provide you with guidance from someone who can see your predicament clearly, without judgment.

As a couples’ counselor, I help relationships of all genders, sexual orientations and expressions, and configurations find their way through conflict and disconnection and return to the safety and aliveness inherent in love.

A Couples’ Therapy That Recognizes Modern Relationships Are Tough

Conflict and misunderstanding in intimate relationships are common. Many couples fall into conflictual communication patterns and end up hurting each other. They find themselves caught between desperately wanting to reconcile what’s missing and withdrawing in pain. The more frequently this happens, the harder it is for each partner to reach out to the other and speak openly and honestly about their needs. This cycle can lead to increased feelings of isolation, and from there, the relationship goes from being a place of security and adventure to a place of blockages and resentment.

Not only this, but relationships are often dictated by the fast pace of our modern lives, leaving little time to face concerns, connect and spend quality time together. As modern relationships now play a central role in partners’ needs for fulfillment and actualization, the shared expectations a relationship must uphold can leave partners feeling pressured and overwhelmed under the weight of your obligations.

Couples Therapy Can Help To Restore Your Sense Of Aliveness

Couples often begin with the most positive intentions for the relationship, yet the realities of everyday life can create demands that can feel nearly impossible to fulfill. Attempting to keep up with this pace can dull or threaten a sense of love, connection, security, and freedom. Finding a way to repair, prioritize one another and make compromises is possible if both partners are motivated and willing.

As a couples and intimate partnership therapist, I combine my training in Contemplative Psychotherapy, and family systems therapy to guide partners into using healthy relationship strategies to balance needs for closeness and space, make requests, and establish boundaries. Together you will put into practice the courageous act of reaching for the other to restore connection. Each member gets to establish their sense of autonomy while actively participating in the partnership.

What You May Find In Couples Therapy

When you enter therapy, I begin to gather a sense of who you are naturally as people, and what needs and therapeutic models we might use in collaboration together. I will gather an historical view of the painful threads in your relationship and work with the patterns showing up in the present moment - inside the therapy room - to inquire into the heart of the distressing patterns you experience together.

I will also help you to see the conflict for what it is, as you identify the roles and stances you take to protect yourselves emotionally. I will help you take risks to step outside of these entrenched patterns and reach for one another, building trust that the other is there to catch you in your vulnerability. Through this process, I will help guide you into seeing one another with fresh eyes, to honor the changes as you both evolve and deepen into the humans and partnership you long to be and become.

My approach to couples therapy comes from my training and education in Emotionally Focused Therapy, Gottman, PACT, the Developmental Model and personal life experience.

Therapy That Honors Your Needs, Styles, And Preferences

In our sessions, I will balance individual needs, fears, and desires with that of your partner, so each of you can feel you’re being seen in relationship. I also work with you to develop and hold a degree of sacredness that allows you to explore. By creating a safe, compassionate, and creative space, we together uncover and address the needs of the relationship as a mutually created entity.

I also look at the strengths in your relationship that are already there – the ones that have helped you repair and recover in the past, and together we expand on the strategies to keep you healing and growing together.

Transform Your Relationship

Couples and relationship therapy - is about more than reducing conflict. Relationships are meant to stir us up, and therapy is an opportunity to learn about you and your partner in deeper and ever-expanding ways, while developing unique styles and ritual to meet each other in love and truth. It’s about restoring the sense of aliveness that allows you to meet the dynamic tension of leaving and returning to each other. By increasing the quality of your relationship, you’re increasing the qualities of your lives. Together, you can create something vital and life-giving.

You May Still Be Wondering If Couples Therapy Is Right For You…

Partners might worry if a therapist will take sides or may guide the couple into territory, they’re not quite ready for. The truth is, you probably are, and as a therapist I will be alongside you, honoring your pace while gently nudging you to explore your edges as feels appropriate. Often, couples find the level of challenge in therapy is just want they need to open up and grow, and often walk away feeling relieved, more open and with new insights into dynamics they rarely share with others.
There is a certain degree of uncertainty with starting couples therapy, and it requires facing discomfort. Many times, partners begin to feel relieved when they start to grasp and get hold of the real issues and concerns of their partners and begin to speak directly to their experience. Couples learn to have hard conversations together and it becomes a powerful way to build the necessary to make it through hard things together.
It’s true that therapy can expose thoughts and feelings that haven’t been known in the relationship previously, and sometimes these truths may be hard to hear. That’s why working with a skilled couples’ therapist who can fully be with your emotional experiences and help to metabolize new truths. Often both people find they feel a huge sense of relief when they can share their internal struggles about the relationship openly and are surprised at their partner’s willingness to respond and grow with care and attention.

We Want Couples Therapy - How Do We Begin?

Finding the right couples’ therapist is integral to your healing. Come chat with me! Use the button below to reach out for a free 20-minute consultation. Share concerns, ask questions, and feel out if we are a good fit.