Do you want to enhance your relationship?
Are you struggling to feel understood in your relationship?
Do you want to create a deeper emotional connection with your partner?
Are you finding your relationship repeating the same conflict cycles?
Does it feel hard or “scary” to be vulnerable with your partner?
Do you want to break free from insecurities and fears and truly trust your partner?
LGBTQIA+ Affirming
As a couple, you can reach a point at any stage in your relationship where you are feeling disconnected from each other, dissastified in relationship, or “stuck”. Sometimes, you are able to work through this on your own in order to get back to a place of connection, and other times, the sense of divide widens, despite your best efforts.
“When you feel a connection, a gut connection, a heart connection, it is a very special thing.”
-Alfred Woodard-
You might notice that when you feel more dissatisfaction in relationship, your interactions can become more negative. It might be hard to perceive your partner in a more positive way. You might now experience more withdrawal in your relationship, anger or frustration with your partner, or anxiety about your relationship security. You might feel stuck and helpless to change this cycle.
Through couples counseling, we explore the communication breakdown in your relationship that prevents you from feeling more connected as a couple.
We talk about vulnerable subjects and explore what has come between you as a couple while trying to keep blame from taking over the conversation.
We explore times where you have felt more connected as a couple and explore what was happening differently at that time.
Then, we work to start to “catch” this negative pattern of interaction that creates the disconnection. We work to deepen your understanding and awareness of your experiences in this pattern as well as your partner’s experiences in this pattern.
As you begin to better understand your responses in moments of distress as well as your partner’s responses, you might start to notice that you are able to "soften" with eachother.
You might start to find it easier to have the “hard conversations” with each other and feel more willing to be vulnerable with each other-able to talk more about needs, desires and emotions.
As you continue through couples therapy, we will continue to work to build connection and shift perspective so that you and your partner feel more important to the other and more secure in your relationship, healing attachment injuires that have occurred in the relationship. What couples can find through couples therapy is that when connection and relationship security are present, working through conflict or challenging times can feel easier.
I work with couples from an Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) approach to begin to understand the "dance" they are engaging in that has created disconnection, learn to understand themselves and their partner's experience in a new way, and be able to respond differently to create new ways of communicating and connecting.
I work with same-sex and heterosexual couples who are dating and/or comitted to long-term partnership or marriage and want to strengthen the foundation of their relationship and want to gain awareness and skills to maintain a connected relationship over time.
Areas I can help with:
- Affair or infidelity recovery/Betrayal
- Sobriety and relationship recovery from addiction
- Sexual Intimacy/Desire discrepancies
- Anxiety in Relationship
- Emotional Intimacy and Connection
- Trust Issues in Relationship
- Trauma and Attachment Insecurities
- Eating Disorder Recovery and Relationship Support
- Breaking “escalation and withdrawal” conflict cycles
- Growing and strengthening understanding of relationship needs and dynamic
- Pre-marital couples counseling
- Marriage counseling
- Family Planning