COUPLES THERAPY
Love is the glue that holds relationships together and, when it's flowing, brings out the best in you. Good relationships provide a secure base for both of you to grow and flourish, and to parent if there are children. This is what I seek to restore when I work with couples in distress.
When you get pulled into a repetitive cycle of blame and shame the love and trust get lost and you can't find your way back to each other. My job as a couple's therapist is to help you climb out of the ravine of conflict and get back on the path of love. Often it's old unresolved trauma that tripped things up in the first place and then through oft repeated re-enactments dug the hole deeper and wider. No matter what has happened between you, these wounds can be healed and repairs made when there is the desire and motivation to change. New ways of relating safely can be forged and love and intimacy restored, strengthened, and deepened.
We all want to love and be loved. It's probably the deepest longing of our hearts. It was this longing that brought you together, and brings you to therapy now. It is possible to build a bridge of trust again that you can cross to rediscover each other. To learn to truly love and let love in is a blessing and a calling, and to help you do that with one another is mine.
How do we know we need help?
If you're asking the question and here looking for help, you already know. Don't wait too long to get the help you need. The longer you let these patterns go on, the harder they become to change. Jon Gottman, well-known psychologist and relationship researcher, has found that unhappy couples fall into what he calls “nasty-nasty interactions” more easily and more often than happy couples, and have a more difficult time getting out of them (Gottman, 2011). He also found that these couples wait six years from the first sign of trouble to seek help. During those six years they are digging the ruts that make it so difficult for them later to find their love again.
Just as you wouldn't wait until your car fell apart on the freeway to get it fixed, but at the first sign of trouble take it to your mechanic, don't you owe the same kind of care to your relationship? And to your children if you have any? They are learning about intimate relationships by watching the two of you. Give them the best start you can by getting help for you and your partner/spouse as soon as possible. Don't let little misunderstandings and moments of emotional mis-attunements accumulate and build into deep resentments, abandonments, and betrayals. Nip the bud of relationship distress before it grows into a prickly thistle weed patch that keeps you both hurt and angry, distant and apart.
What if we're already in that prickly thistle patch?
Good for you for recognizing it. Now get help and don't let it grow any thicker. Where there's a will there's a way. Your motivation and desire for change can carry you through the difficult process of reclaiming the love that brought you together.
How will you help us reclaim the love that brought us together?
I work experientially. You can read about this on my psychotherapy page. What's different about couple's therapy than individual therapy is that I am looking for ways to help you experience each other and your relationship differently. Your relationship becomes the source of healing for each other's early wounding and trauma rather than the reenactment of it. My job is to help you create the safety together so that can happen.
Call (505-577-4607) or email for an appointment.