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Couples Counseling
">COUPLES COUNSELING
Couples therapy is certainly not limited to married couples. Many dyads are treated in our office including , non-married couples, pre-marital couples, and all types of parent-child combinations including fathers and sons as well as mothers and daughters. Couples therapy is often utilized to enhance a relationship. The identified client is "the couple" the role of the therapist is not to take one side against another side. Our job is to facilitate honest and necessary communication. Such communication is needed to resolve issues that may have led to problems, including, but not limited to, verbal abuse, infidelity, violence, and/or separation.
 WHAT HAPPENED?
When you first met each other and fell deeply in love everything was wonderful. Your future together was pictured as being one filled with only wonderful times together. But today life is different... the picture has changed matured and taken on a much different perspective. You argue and fight over little things, or perhaps you don't really talk at all, and you wonder whether it is worth keeping your marriage together. Divorce seems like a very real possibility.
IS THERE HOPE FOR YOUR MARRIAGE?
YES!
- We can help you bring more love and caring into your relationship.
- We can help you learn to forgive and bring a deeper more mature love into your marriage.
- We can help both of you to figure out why at times you feel so close, and yet there is often an angry atmosphere that surrounds you.
- We can help you learn better ways to communicate with each other.
HOW CAN COUNSELING HELP As couple counselors and in committed loving marriages, we have struggled with these same issues personally and professionally.
We know the frustration, fear, anger and pain that intimacy can bring, as well as the joy and excitement.
Our approach is not to judge or analyze you. We will teach you communication skills, conflict resolution skills, and relationship skills which you can use to work together to resolve current and future marriage problems and to proactively work on restoring and increasing intimacy and satisfaction in your relationship.
We see couple counseling as a process of helping you to replace what does not work with what might work better. Our role in this process is to make you aware of alternative ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving. In addition, through couple counseling you will find out how each of you contribute to the problem and how each can contribute to the solution.
WHEN AND WHY DO COUPLES SEEK COUNSELING
One partner or the other often seeks out couple counseling because they feel misunderstood, frustrated or deeply hurt. Others together, begin to recognize a need for counseling when they both feel a profound sense of sadness or anger in their relationship.
Often these feelings are not new, but have been stewing for years. This is why couples that enter couple counseling early stand a better chance of saving their relationship.
NOT SURE IF YOUR YOU CAN BENEFIT FROM COUPLES COUNSELING
TAKE THIS QUESTIONNAIRE
WHAT IF YOUR PARTNER DOESN'T WANT TO GO TO COUPLES COUNSELING?
It might be that one of you wants to seek counseling and the other doesn't. The unwilling partner feels pressured to "try it" or "come along and see what its like." This reluctance to engage in couple counseling is often the result of misperceptions about the process and goals of couples counseling.
So let's clear it up...
WHAT ACTUAL HAPPENS DURING A COUNSELING SESSION?
 The therapist does not take sides, nor do they make rules. Instead, it's our job to understand the needs and desires of both individuals and to help you develop better ways to understand and meet each other's needs. When we work with a couple we always question them about the positive things in their relationship as well as the areas of difficulty.
We find that good things are often forgotten and discarded when a couple is in difficult times. There may be many strong points in your relationship and while you address your problems, these strong points are your mutual base. During a counseling session, it is very important for us to help and encourage each partner to express their feelings. It is even more important that this expression will be communicative and not attacking.
COMMUNICATION STYLES
Learning to negotiate instead of fight is often an important part of the couple counseling process.
Poor communication is often at the core of unresolved problems. The more you try to explain your feelings to each other, the more misunderstood each of you feels. In these situations, the counselor seeks to facilitate communication by working to understand two things. First, what is being said; and second, what the other is actually hearing. Undisclosed expectations are another source of great disappointment and frustration between couples.
When you commit to your partner, you assume, sometimes without realizing it, that your partner will naturally fulfill unspoken expectations of which you yourself are only vaguely aware. Once you recognize these expectations, you can openly discuss and re-evaluate them. Learning to listen to each other and to seek alternative solutions is important for the future growth together.
Couple counseling seeks to help resolve issues of the present and also works to develop negotiating techniques that you can use in the future. We can help you sort out your goals and discover what you would like to do with your marriage. Whatever your motive for counseling, it is the our job to help you decide what to do. It is not the counselor's job to make decisions for you.
You have a right to be happy! We can help you to resolve your relationship problems. The more you invest in your life together, the more valuable it becomes. We all start out with a dream that when there is love, everything runs like a well oiled machine. But the reality is that deep strong relationships require a lot of work, communication, compromise and forgiveness.
The information provided here is general in nature and should not substitute for the care and advice of a licensed health care provider.
WE CAN HELP YOUR RELATIONSHIP PLEASE E-MAIL US TODAY
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