Difference Doesn’t Have to be Divisive.
Talk things Through
Without Losing Each Other.
Transformation:
Couple Therapy Sessions
Make Room for Two in Your Relationship
Many couples seeking therapy feel frustrated and stuck with each other. If so, you are likely bumping up against the limits of old ways of relating that the relationship can no longer sustain.
It doesn’t mean your relationship can’t go forward, it just means that what has brought you to this point cannot take you to the next level of relationship. The pain means that something new is being asked of both of you.
With repeated disconnects & hurts, it leaves you feeling like you don’t recognize your partner (or yourself) anymore. That’s because you are both spending a lot of time in a protective, defensive mode—you’re wounded. You retreat into yourselves or try to get your partner to change, strategies that end up draining, frustrated, and lonely.
Although this may feel like a time when things are falling apart, it’s a signal to create opportunity for change.
The difficulties are indicating a need to move things forward—to evolve into something that meets both of your needs more fully.
And to do that, I want to help you become your best selves: Strong, kind, wise, clear, & committed. Together.
Our Starting Point
Where Do We Begin?
Simple: I meet you wherever you each are.
It takes courage to come in and talk about what are probably some of the low points and significant frustrations you have been experiencing. I begin with learning where you each are at and taking time to understand deeply what each of your experiences are.
It is okay and normal to have different perceptions of the relationship and different ideas about why there may be problems. My work is to begin with making room for all of your experiences.
My interest is not in laying blame but in helping you be able to know yourselves better and begin to find healthy ways to reconnect.
I am on neither of your sides and both at once.
I am on the side of your relationship.
Common Couple Issues I Can Help You With:
Communication Difficulties: Are you finding that it is hard to talk through topics where you have a difference? Feeling that you are not being listened to (or are having a hard time listening also)?
Conflict Avoidance: Does your relationship have a pattern of “sweeping things under the rug”?
Conflict that Hurts: Do you feel stuck in circles of blaming, withdrawing, and then feeling bad?
Conflict without Closure: Are you unsure about how to make things better after a hurt has occurred between you and your partner? Do you lack a repair process after a fight?
Experiences of Loneliness: in the relationship, do you feel disconnected from your partner? Does your relationship feel like it has lost spark?
Breaches of Trust, Infidelity: Has there been an incident or pattern of deception, mistrust, or infidelity in your relationship? Major ruptures of trust in a relationship are often traumatic to the betrayed partner, but may be also very difficult in other ways for the parter who breached the trust.
How Couple Counselling Can Help
Learn ways to reduce avoidance, build confidence to proactively raise & talk through concerns. Frustrations & disappointments don’t build.
Express your needs in a way that your partner can hear you. Shift to sharing what you desire vs. complaints.
Respond to frustrations, disappointments in ways that are non-harming to your relational bond.
Learn how to engage in an active repair process when a hurt has occurred.
Learn how to shift from defensive postures to a more vulnerable mode so you can re-engage in knowing each other and feeling for each other more deeply again.
Stay in the conversation without resorting to defenses that throw you off topic. Identify what the real issue is in a recurring conflict, as it is often different than what couples think is going on.
I create a safe place to support the very different emotional places each of you are at when there has been a breach of trust, and to help you identify your own individual and couple healing paths to carry forward.
