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Couples Therapy

Couples Therapy

Couples therapy can help you create a strong foundation that can go the distance. We love working with couples in all different stages of marriage/relationship.  Every couple struggles and seeking therapy sooner than later is the best gift and investment you can give your marriage/relationship. Learning early on how to handle the bumps, twist, and turns that come with marriage/relationships in healthy ways avoids the distance and coldness that create a roommate climate or possibly even divorce.

 

So, if any of these early warning signs apply to your situation. Let's schedule an appointment right away.

  • Inability to resolve conflict in a healthy way.

  • Depression.

  • Lack of communication.

  • Lack of sex drive.

  • The needs of the other not being met (sex, communication, connection).

  • Inability to compromise.

  • Breakdown in communication.

  • Confusion about the roles of each spouse in the marriage.

  • Pornography.

  • Deceit.

  • Disagreement about parenting styles.

  • Addictions.

  • Dramatic change in interactional patterns.

 

Your marriage/relationship doesn’t have to end. There is hope!  So in your time together with the counselor you will unpack, explore and create an intimate partnership for the journey of life that is more than just great sex, but makes you feel known, connecting to your own heart and that of your partner.  

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Couples Counseling is for BOTH individuals motivated to work on their marriage. If one or both of you is not sure about the marriage and whether couples therapy can help, click here.

"Couples wait an average of six years of being unhappy with their relationship before getting help." ~John Gottman
It's time to make some changes!
Let's pick the counselor that will best meet your needs and goals for couples counseling. 

Getting Help: Steps toward Couples Therapy

We love being invited unto your journey.  Helping you unpack, offload and find insight in order to level up, create or repair your relationship in order that it can go the distance of time with a love that grows stronger and stronger each passing year.  

Image by Leighann Blackwood

GOOD RELATIONSHIPS DON'T JUST HAPPEN.  THEY TAKE TIME, PATIENCE AND TWO PEOPLE WHO TRULY WANT TO BE TOGETHER

Which Season Of
Marriage/Relationship Are You In?

Neurodiverse Couples:
Hello ADHD

Neurodiversity in a relationship can take its toll.  Especially, when you're ill equipped to navigate the twists and turns that come with your partner having ADHD or both of you guys having ADHD.  Together we will unpack how ADHD effects your relationship and apply creative techniques to improve communication, completing tasks, loving each other well and creating a rock solid team to go the distance.

Healing from Trauma and Affairs:
Marriage 201

Specialized treatment using the research-based Gottman Method approach for treating couples impacted by affairs and trauma.  

 

An unbiased roadmap to compassionately serving you and providing hope to you guys as you struggle to rebuild a collapsed Sound Relationship House. 

 

Treating Trauma

Using a therapeutic approach that interweaves individual PTSD treatment with Gottman Method Couples Therapy. 

 

Treating Affairs

Learn and use tools that create trust and commitment within your relationship.

 

Using the “Atone, Attune, and Attach” model for treating affairs. This model provides an unbiased approach that compassionately serves both partners as you struggle to rebuild a collapsed marriage. As a couple you will be empowered to not only rebuild your relationship, but also create immunity from future betrayals. 

Inattentive Couples: It's Time to Reconnect

Perhaps your marriage is far past the honeymoon stage and you guys are just on auto-polit moving through the day to day routine without any thought to the distance that is growing between you guys slowly.  You are not entertaining divorce in the slightest bit, but you have decided that it's time to reinvest in the marriage, in your relationship and each other. You deserve a soft reset in order to get everything back on track.

Proactive Couples: Laying a Strong Foundation

 It's shortly after the fun of the ceremony and honeymoon when you start to sit a little deeper in your marriage.  Or perhaps you have a couple of years under your belt and you feel the love diminishing between the two of you just a bit.  It's nothing serious but you don't want to lose your best friend.  You don't want to be like your parents, or neighbors or friends that are getting a divorce.  You want to have a strong marriage that goes the distance but you realize at the same time you need some foundational skills in order to make it through.  

Distressed Couples: Both or One of You are Ready to Give Up

 You're not positive when it happened but all of a sudden you don’t recognize the person sleeping next to you or perhaps you don’t remember the last time your spouse even slept next to you.  It’s frustrating and heartbreaking to think that this is what your marriage has become. You ask yourself is this what it’s supposed to be now, living in a loveless marriage? What happened to the fun, the happiness we experienced in the beginning of our marriage or for that matter when we were dating?  This can’t be my marriage. This must be a bad dream that I’m going to wake up from at any moment.

Newly Engaged

It's time to start the planning!  

 

How exciting it is to find the one in which you want to invest the rest of your life with.  The one in which memories, dreams and adventures will be created with.  I remember my dreaming phase of the future as it relates to marriage and I could barely hold back the excitement of being able to begin a new chapter of my life with my best friend.  In all of my excitement however the thinking part of me knew and understood that the reality of marriage was far more than planning for a beautiful and memory filled ceremony.  The reality of marriage required that I.........

Which season
3

Live Your Best Life:​

Experience an increase in skills, improved relationships, decrease in adverse symptoms, reduction in strong emotions, supported emotional exploration, clarity and perspective and improved quality of life. 

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Type of counseling

Discernment Counseling

 It’s a chance to slowdown, take a breath, and look at your options for your marriage.  The counselor will help you decide whether to try to restore your marriage to health, move toward divorce, or take a time out and decide later.  The goal is for you to gain clarity and confidence about a direction, based on a deeper understanding of your relationship and its possibilities for the future.

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy

Is based on attachment science, formulated in the 1980’s. Interventions in EFCT integrate a humanistic, experiential approach to restructuring emotional experience and a systemic structural approach to restructuring interactions. 

Goals:

  • To expand and re-organize key emotional responses and, in the process, the organization of self.

  • To create a positive shift in partners interactional positions and patterns.

  • To foster the creation of a secure bond between partners.

Gottman Method Couples Therapy

The Gottman Method of Couples Therapy is based on Dr. John Gottman’s research that began in the 1970’s and continues to this day. The research has focused on what makes relationships succeed or fail. From this research, Drs. John and Julie Gottman have created a method of therapy that emphasizes “nuts-and-bolts” approach to improving clients’ relationships.

Personalized Relationship Workshop

Not every couples needs the intensity of couples therapy instead you need to learn relationship skills, gain perspective, attain knowledge and acquire tools.  I’ve also seen others that if they had done a workshop way back when they first started seeing signs of distress or even for that matter dating they wouldn’t have gotten to the point of needing couples therapy.  Gottman's research shows that on average, couples wait six years of being unhappy with their relationship before getting help. That's like waiting six years with cancer before seeking medical care. Please don't wait until your relationship is falling apart to get help.   Start early and for my singles start before entertaining a mate.

Variations

For those desiring Christian Couples Counseling we will add the disciplines of faith that pull from biblical teaching.  Including elements such as:

  • Prayer

  • Use of scripture be it either read or referenced

  • Assigned Bible Studies, reading and retreats 

  • Explanation on how to integrate Christian truths and values into the marital relationship

 

For those that are in a Blended Marriage/Remarriage everything will be filtered through the complexities and uniquenesses that come from that situation covering topics such as:

  • Creating a remarriage that will last

  • Exploring the key qualities of happy remarriages

  • Exploring issues of communication, sexuality, and spiritually (if your coming for Christian Counseling) as it pertains to a remarriage

  • Children and parenting: Step Children, The ‘Us’ child

  • Successfully navigating thru the co-parenting relationship

  • Remarriage finances: Yours, Mine, Ours

Additional Resources for your Journey 

Relationship Quizzes

The Relationship Quizzes blog column offers quizzes to help you assess the strengths in your relationship and identify areas that may need attention.

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Note: These quizzes are intended to be psychoeducational. If you would like a full evaluation of your relationship, you can ask your therapist to invite you to complete the Gottman Relationship Checkup.

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