Couples Therapy
Does It Feel Like A Struggle To Connect With Your Partner?
Are you longing for a deeper relationship with your partner—one in which you feel truly safe, secure, and loved?
Do you want to experience a greater sense of romance and intimacy, but you don’t know how to get there on your own?
Perhaps you’re feeling stuck in frustrating patterns that are difficult to interrupt, and you’re realizing that you could use the help of couples therapy to get unstuck and create positive change.
Or maybe one or both of you have been hurt over the course of your relationship, and you need help finding your way back together to a place of loving trust, empathy, and care.
Relationship Issues Can Manifest In Different Ways For Couples
You may have trouble communicating or navigating conflict. Though you yearn to feel closer or to rekindle the passion you once had, perhaps career demands, child-rearing, and daily responsibilities have left little room in your life for tending to your relationship.
Setting boundaries, expressing your feelings, or allowing yourself to feel loved can be confoundingly difficult. On the other hand, you may not know how to support your partner and make them feel held and loved. These challenges and others can contribute to the sense that you no longer have a secure relational base in your life, leaving you feeling anxious, depressed, alone, and even hopeless.
Couples counseling can help profoundly, enabling you to build a relationship or marriage in which you feel connected, loved, and capable of handling adversity gracefully. Through our collaboration and journey of exploration, you can learn to receive love, express love, and navigate conflict without sacrificing empathy or your own needs.
Every Couple Has Challenges They Can Work On
Some people come to couples therapy because they feel helplessly stuck in difficult cycles with their partner. Others generally feel good about their relationship but want to deepen their connection and inject energy and spontaneity into their lives.
In some cases, partners need support for navigating grief and loss or rediscovering joy in their relationship. Other times, couples don’t have a handle on what’s going on, but they feel their relationship could improve, and they look to a therapist to help figure it all out.
Why Are Relationships So Complicated?
Relationships are challenging, and many couples lack the proper support network to help them get through tough times. Family may be far-flung. Community may be scarce, or best friends live at a distance.
Or you may have a vibrant support network, but even so, it can be tricky talking openly about your relationship with friends who know both you and your partner. In many cases, well-meaning friends and loved ones struggle with how to help you navigate relationship complexities.
Complicating things further, there’s rarely enough cultural support for being vulnerable and feeling and expressing what lies deep within. Sometimes, cultural values interpret a person’s willingness to be vulnerable as a form of weakness, whereas it actually represents courage and strength. When couples feel safe enough to be vulnerable with each other, this is a sign of relationship strength.
Similarly, people often think that going to couples counseling means their relationship is in dire straits, and so they hesitate to seek therapy. But working with a couples therapist or marriage counselor doesn’t mean that your relationship is in trouble. It’s an opportunity to heal and strengthen your bond. It’s a chance to untangle the root problem and feel connected and “in this” together.
Couples Therapy Is A Way To Connect On A More Profound Level
At first, couples therapy and marital counseling can seem daunting because some emotions may be difficult to express, or even to feel. However, working with a couples therapist can support you in gently opening up, which can be freeing and wonderful. It can help you lower your defenses, embrace your vulnerability, and finally feel safe, cared for, and understood by your partner.
Couples therapy enables you to understand the patterns that keep you stuck, giving you and your partner the insight, openness, and strength to find your way out together. You can learn how to set boundaries and find new avenues toward togetherness, excitement, and joy. You can also develop mutual trust—a steadfast belief that you can rely on each other to get through even the toughest times.
How Does The Therapeutic Process Work?
I’ll begin our couples therapy sessions by providing you with a warm, caring environment in which you and your partner feel safe, secure, calm, and validated. At a pace that’s right for you, we can explore your experience of the relationship, what you want to work on, and the cycles in which you feel stuck.
In some sessions, we may focus on helping you and your partner share feelings and experiences in deep and vulnerable ways—a key component of the healing process. Or we may work on supporting you to receive, empathize with, and understand your partner, which is equally important.
Learning how to open up, listen to your partner, and value vulnerability can make a positive difference quickly—and over time, these changes can take root in deep and lasting ways.
How Do I Approach Couples Therapy?
My work as a couples therapist and marriage counselor is deeply empathic. I work to attune to each person and to the experiences of the couple. Everyone deserves to be heard and understood in real and deep ways. So I’m always highly present with my patients.
My approach to healing is also specific to each couple. Together, we follow the thread to find where the partners are tangled and stuck—and work toward untangling, healing, and growth. I tailor sessions to each couple’s needs. To do this, I draw from a wide range of effective treatment modalities.
Particularly germane to couples counseling, I am trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), which is a highly successful form of couples therapy. EFT for couples allows partners to recognize how their relational patterns get in the way of feeling close and secure with each other. It also supports them in moving out of these cycles while strengthening their emotional bond in deep and lasting ways.
I often integrate aspects of attachment-based theory, psychodynamic and contemporary psychoanalytic approaches, relational theory, intersubjective systems theory, Self Psychology, EMDR, and control mastery into couples therapy. Together, these tools help me create a dynamic healing experience that can lead to positive shifts in almost any relationship.
Therapy is often intimidating for couples because it can feel like you’re admitting that the relationship isn’t working. But the truth is quite different most of the time: going to couples therapy can be a profoundly hopeful choice. It’s a process that breaks through “stuckness” and painful cycles, allowing you to grow closer, embrace vulnerability, and experience greater safety and joy.
Perhaps You’re Considering Couples Counseling But Still Have Some Concerns…
I worry that starting couples therapy means we’re on the road to breaking up.
Couples enter counseling for many reasons, and yes, some are struggling and maybe even considering ending the relationship or marriage. However, many couples go to counseling because they are very committed to each other and to making the relationship work and flourish, and they want to improve areas like communication and intimacy.
That makes what you are doing brave and hopeful. Whatever your situation, we’ll establish a healing process that feels safe, calm, and caring—one that’s focused on helping you achieve your hopes and goals for the relationship.
I feel like it will be difficult being fully honest and vulnerable with my partner.
It’s natural to feel like that! If you’ve been going in painful circles for a while, that cycle can seem impossible to break. So, it’s understandable if you worry that your experiences and emotions aren’t going to be met with the balm of understanding, love, and care. However, couples therapy involves establishing a different dynamic in which you trust that you will be understood and cared for so you can be vulnerable and truly open.
Sure, there are areas we can work on, but is couples counseling really necessary?
Counseling provides a wonderful support structure for relationships and marriages that are going well. Even happy relationships are complicated, and patterns can develop that get in the way of partners feeling as secure, loved, joyful, held, and supported as they would like.
Working with a couples counselor can be a powerful way of deepening your already loving relationship. Even if you aren’t sure what you want to work on, we can figure that out together, and I’ll support you in getting there.
You Deserve To Have A Loving And Connected Relationship
If you’re ready to discover a new sense of safety, trust, and love in your relationship, I want help. Please contact me at 510-500-9722 for your free, 20-minute consultation to see how my online and in-person couples counseling services may be able to help you repair and recharge your relationship or marriage.
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