Couples Counseling

• Are you fighting all the time?
• Do you feel lonely in your relationship?
  
• Do you feel betrayed by something your partner has done?
  
• Do you feel you need to stay together for the kids?

Having a good relationship with a partner can be difficult and takes work.  It seemed so easy in the beginning of the relationship.  The special moments of passion,  easy communication, and genuine interest in the other can give way over time to disillusionment and despair.  The disappointment turns into a never ending power struggle over what's true and a cycle of blame begins over what's wrong in the relationship.  Feeling devalued, unappreciated, abandoned, alone, disconnected, disliked, and a sense of losing ourselves...all these feelings and perceptions make us want to fight to regain connection or flee to protect ourselves from attack and misunderstanding.  What couples counseling aims to accomplish is a process of healing through increased consciousness, compassion,  and behavior change.    When we are injured in our current relationship,  healing requires a repair process and not just a place to dump our anger...we need for our partner to "get us", and we also need to be able to "get" the pain of our partner.  Couples therapy allows you to communicate your experience of upset without replaying the "blame-shame" cycle. We relive the past in the present, but hopefully we transform wounding into growth with our partner. 

Some features of couples therapy:

• Assess the Problem including family of origin, nuclear family, relationship, and individual issues

• Identify Individual defenses and how they fit/impact one's partner - some people have an easier time connecting while others have an easier time with separating

• Help couples increase their  ability to contain and hold emotional states in oneself and one's partner so that couples learn to develop a sense of safety in the relationship and restore a feeling of closeness

• Develop communication skills so that people can effectively express and receive upset in the relationship

• Foster risk taking to have the couple try on new behaviors so that a couple moves from a fused relationship where one reacts (often with anger) and the other adapts (just going along or withdrawing) to one where the couple can move between separate to connected positions

YOU CAN HAVE THE RELATIONSHIP YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED.

CONTACT ME FOR A FREE CONSULTATION AT 609-400-2888 OR [email protected].

CONTACT JILL

For anyone who wants to work on themselves and their relationship, I recommend one of the following books Getting the Love That You Want by Harville Hendrix or The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman. You can get them here: