If you’re tired of fighting or feeling disconnected from your spouse, I’m here to help. Couples counseling might feel intimidating, but I will work hard to make it a positive experience for you so your relationship can become a safe haven rather than a source of stress.
As a Certified Emotionally Focused Therapist, awarded by the International Centre for Excellence in EFT, I use a specific relationship roadmap to help couples restore their bond. EFT is considered by many to be the gold-standard in couple’s therapy, and I use this method to help couples address the core issues that impact their ability to not only stay together but to love their relationship.
When is Couples Counseling Appropriate?
Whether you are dating, newly married, or many years into your marriage, I will work to help you develop a more secure connection with your partner. I work with couples who struggle with high conflict, couples who feel distant and lack intimacy, and couples who generally like their relationship but want it to be even better. I have experience helping couples heal from infidelity, connect despite high-stress careers, and learn how to support one another when there is a history of trauma.
Major life transitions and times of loss are also good times to seek out couples counseling. Even positive events, such as a new baby or a job promotion, can create stress, and if each partner has a different way of coping, the couple can become disconnected. Using a proven approach called Emotionally Focused Therapy, I help couples in these situations learn how to connect so they can face life’s challenges together.
Couples counseling is also appropriate for partners considering divorce but who are genuinely willing to work on the relationship before making this decision.
EFT Couples Therapy is Not
Appropriate When
- there is an untreated (“active”) addiction
- there is an active affair or other form of infidelity
- partners are afraid of one another (imbalance of power)
- the EFT model is not well-matched with the couple’s goals (for example, wanting the therapist to take sides or mediate disagreements)
- partners cannot agree on the goal of therapy
In these situations, individual therapy is likely the better fit until the above issues are resolved.
Most likely, the form of couples counseling I do is different from what you have done before.
Many counselors focus on the symptoms of a weak relationship, not the causes. They attempt to change how the couple talk to one another, suggest the couple spend more quality time together, and try to resolve the couple’s disagreements.
However, couples who are in a lot of distress or feel deeply disconnected are unlikely to succeed in any of these activities, and this lack of success may make the partners feel even more hopeless about their relationship. I am a firm believer that most of us have the communication skills we need to succeed in relationships, but we may not use them because powerful emotional responses take over when we feel at odds with our significant other.
I also believe conflict is not the enemy; it is the way we handle conflict that can harm the relationship. I help couples identify their problem patterns, understand why the patterns continue, and become aware of their emotional responses that trigger and get triggered by these patterns.
I help couples talk about and make sense of what happens for each person in the midst of these problem patterns so they can understand one another’s experience in the relationship and during conflict. Through this, couples are able to choose new ways of responding to each other.
When couples achieve this, their bond and communication naturally improve and they understand what it feels like to be truly loved, accepted, and able to tackle life’s challenges together.
The Role of the Couples Therapist in EFT
It is important for you to understand that my role as your couples therapist will be like process consultant, not judge & jury. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy is not about justice or finding an advocate (the counselor) to help your partner see how he/she is the problem.
Instead, I work like a process consultant, which means helping BOTH of you see (with compassion) the processes that do and don’t work in your relationship, helping shed light on how you get stuck in negative cycles, and I will help open the path for you to change these patterns if you want to.
Free Consultation
I do a free 20 min. video consultation with all prospective clients. This is a time for you to meet me, ask questions, and we can discuss whether EFT is the right treatment approach for what you’re looking to achieve. Both partners must be present for this initial meeting.