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Over 25 years of experience in psychology
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Unfortunately, couples often choose to enter therapy when problems have become severely entrenched or the end of the relationship feels to be in view. This is the challenge of couples therapy...to have the courage to begin the process and not be too certain of the final outcome. Often, people aren't ready to "work" on their relationship; they are too frustrated and feel that they have tried so hard to make it work - they are sick of trying. They simply need a place to express their upset and determine whether anything can be salvaged in the relationship.
When I do couples therapy, my focus is to help people address the ways in which couples get frozen in their view of one another. One blames; the other feels shamed, and the cycle repeats itself. Often, couples begin to feel unsafe in their marriage and can experience the other overly critical and controlling or perhaps distant and self-involved. Sometimes, even without our awareness, we seem to reexperience feelings that we had in our childhood. Bottom line - we stop growing as a couple or as a person - perhaps both.
Couples therapy is an active engagement in how we provide safety and holding for one another. It covers communication skills as well as how our personality/character shapes the impact we have on our partners. I incorporate multiple approaches in doing couples work. Imago Relationship Therapy has been a major addition to the field in its ability to help couples reestablish a safe connection . I also utilize psychoanalytic perspectives, Gottman, and Bowen/Guerin/Fogarty notions around differentiation & fusion.
Often, I like to do longer sessions with couples, perhaps every other week. Sometimes, couples therapy is unsuccessful because just as couples are really getting into it, it is time for the session to end.
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