Connection
Rekindle love and communication
Rekindle love and communication
Most couples come to see us because they are having difficulty managing conflict in their relationship. A well-trained and skilled couples and marriage therapist will get to the bottom of these difficulties, and will help you work through unresolved hurts that keep the relationship from moving forward.
Our contracted couples therapists will teach you SKILLS to keep your relationship healthy, happy, intimate and satisfying. They don’t just talk about skills. You practice these proven relationship skills in the office until you feel confident that both of you can use your new skills to turn toward each other instead of turning away.
Healthy relationships are emotionally rich without being dramatic, addictive or abusive. If you want to create a conscious, healthy, emotionally connected, mutually-supportive, happy, intimate relationship, research-based approaches to your relationship challenges can help you guide your relationship to where you’d like it to be.
Our contracted therapists understand that you are looking for practical solutions that work. Couples therapy requires specialized training to be effective. A well-trained couples therapist understands that your relationship is your therapist’s primary client. You can be confident that they won’t take sides. Our contracted therapists will skillfully work to heal your relationship by actively guiding the process.
According to John Gottman PhD, world-renowned couples researcher, healthy relationships that last are based on:
John Gottman identifies four negative qualities and behaviors of a relationship that indicate danger. They are the biggest predictors of relationship failure. Gottman calls these the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They are:
Healthy relationships tend to have far fewer of these behaviors than relationships that are in trouble. And, when people in healthy relationships use these behaviors, they know that they are off track and work to use more helpful behaviors.
The good news: you can learn skills that are antidotes to these relationship-killers. With the right couples therapist, you will practice and learn these powerful antidotes to create an emotionally connected, mutually-supportive, happy, intimate relationship.
If you are experiencing any of the Four Horsemen in your relationship, contact us to schedule and appointment with one of our contracted, specially-trained couples and marriage therapists. Your relationship is worth the effort.
It is important that you have confidence in your counselor and that he or she has the knowledge, training and skills to help you make the changes you desire. Many therapists who practice “couples therapy” do so without specialized couples therapy training.
This is unfortunate because Couples and Marriage Counseling is VERY different from individual therapy and requires specialized skills. It is wise to seek a couples therapist who has had training in skills-building, changing communication patterns and habits, who gives insightful feedback, who knows how to help you rekindle trust and loving feelings, and who encourages you to practice, practice, practice until you become the expert of your own relationship!
Couples therapy is not about hiring an “audience” to watch you have conflicts. It’s about helping you make positive changes in your relationship.
To do this, your therapist must be actively involved in helping you make the changes you want, and you must feel respected and liked by your therapist.
Think of your couples’ therapist as a coach, and you and your partner as the team. The coach is part encourager, part teacher, part comforter, and part confronter. You want a therapist who can evaluate your strengths and challenges and knows how to help you build on the strengths and transform the challenges.
That depends on the time and energy you have to devote to making changes. It also depends on the number and complexity of your challenges and areas for improvement.
One of the first tasks of therapy is to evaluate your relationship and to give you an idea as to how long it will take you to get the results you want. We tend to tackle issues in a pretty methodical way while, of course, making allowances for things that might come up during the counseling process.
You will be amazed at how good it feels to transform your relationship for the better!
Call us at 503-342-2510 or email us