Relationship therapy and counseling for couples in conflict and crisis
“Relationships don’t cause pain and unhappiness; they bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you.”
— Eckhart Tolle
“Couples choose each other with an unerring instinct for finding the very person who will exactly match their own level of unconscious anxieties and mirror their own dysfunctions, and who will trigger for them all their unresolved emotional pain.”
— Dr Gabor Maté
It’s time for relationship therapy and counseling when you’ve lost that loving feeling: the safe connection, warmth, intimacy and passion that used to be so uplifting. The distance between the two of you is growing; you don’t understand why; you can’t seem to stop it. Mutual criticism and contempt, defensiveness and cold, stony-faced withdrawal are becoming increasingly common, ruining the atmosphere and driving you further apart. Misunderstandings and conflicts, rather than being resolved, escalate uncontrollably. Emotional wounds aren’t healed but fester under the skin.
Maybe there’s a rival or intruder on the radar. Suspicion and deception erode the trust that’s fundamental to safe emotional bonding.
Both partners feel increasingly lonely and desperate. Rather than figuratively and literally making love, you’re making war — seeing each other as enemies and fighting with bitter, toxic words as weapons, or even physical violence. Increasingly, you see your partner closing down and withdrawing, becoming an inaccessible and unresponsive stranger. Often this is a joint process of mutual distancing. Either way, both of you feel increasingly alarmed: anxious, lonely, helpless or powerless to stop the rot.
It’s high time to learn to communicate in a radically different way that effectively repairs, restores and maintains emotionally safe, mutually empathetic connection. To discover how, contact me now.
The relationship therapist/counselor
In a painful crisis, relationship therapy and counseling are essential. You need an impartial and empathetic guide in whom you can freely confide, who doesn’t judge your personality, decisions and behaviours. Someone who understands and respects everything you and your partner say, do, think and feel — a warmly present and caring therapist who takes both partners’ emotions, needs, values and concerns seriously, who invites you to explore yourselves and each other to discover the core of the problem that’s driving you apart.
The joint sessions and the ‘homework’ you do between them enable you to access and safely communicate your deepest emotions and unmet attachment needs and thus transform dysfunctional cycles of reactivity into functional cycles of responding empathetically to each other and meeting each others’ needs.
Based on 14 years’ experience working with hundreds of couples and continual study and learning, the guidance I provide integrates and employs key insights from:
- psychodynamic models of trauma and inner conflict
- inner child work (‘reparenting the inner child’)
- attachment theory
- polyvagal theory
- transactional analysis
- Non-Violent Communication
- The Work of Byron Katie
- cognitive behavioural therapy
- mindfulness, including Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- emotional body and breath work
- Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples
The guidance and the work you do together enables the two of you to commit to taking practical, constructive steps that benefit you as individuals and love partners, as well as your children, if any. If you eventually conclude that the relationship has no future, at least you can separate amicably and minimise the damage and regrets for all concerned.
Choosing to work together in integrative relationship therapy and counseling is a huge, courageous step in the right direction. My clear analytical and empathic feedback and process-oriented guidance enables you to forge a new alliance: a realistic, resilient relationship.
The integrative approach to enhancing your love bond
As an integrative therapist, in working with couples to enhance their mutually empathetic connection, their communication and their emotional, physical and sexual intimacy, I integrate a wide variety of insights, models and interventions, some of which are listed above.
Those derived from Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples are crucial and often effective. Therefore, in most cases, EFT forms the backbone of the sessions and homework in my practice. I often recommend that couples work together through Dr Sue Johnson’s pioneering book Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, which explains and lays out the core work of EFT (the approach that she and her fellow psychologists developed and tested in therapeutic practice). A recent extension and deepening of EFT is Julie Menanno’s Secure Love: Create a Relationship that Lasts a Lifetime — a must-read for all couples who wish to improve their relationship.
If both partners are committed to each other and their relationship and are motivated to work in this way, they will gain many valuable insights and see new opportunities for creating or repairing mutual empathic connection, which is the glue of adult love relationships. The greatest opportunity is to feel – in your body – underlying negative emotions that get ‘triggered’ when misattunement occurs: a rupturing of the connection. By directly sensing their triggered core emotions at such moments, the partners also learn to identify their unmet attachment needs and to express them to each other safely: as polite requests and warm invitations to connect empathically.
EFT is not the only approach that I integrate in working with couples. That would be far too narrow a focus.
Another important resource is the insights and findings of The Gottman Institute, which over the past five decades has conducted more scientific research into the dynamics of adult love relationships than any other psychologists. I therefore recommend that couples read together Dr John Gottman’s excellent book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (whether they are married or not).
Another essential resource for couples is Non-Violent Communication, as elaborated in the books and videos of its late, great founder, Dr Marshall B. Rosenberg (1934-2015), one of my greatest sources of personal and professional inspiration.
Summary:
There is no ‘standard treatment protocol’ or one-size-fits-all approach to the many and varying challenges of adult love relationships. Therefore, integrative therapist/counselors do not subscribe to or practice a single approach or methodology. In couples work, they incorporate the most effective key aspects of various ‘schools’ and modalities of psychotherapy. From this overarching vision, while continually sensing and assessing what is most appropriate to each unique couple, the integrative relationship therapist/counselor tailors each therapy, each session and indeed each process step to the specific core problems and needs of both partners – as individuals and as a love-bonded pair – as they occur in the here and now. This is necessarily an experiential approach, because all human change (i.e. learning, healing and growing) happens here and now!
Discover how integrative relationship therapy and counseling can work for you. Don’t wait for a miracle: contact me now.