For 26 years I have been helping couples improve their relationship. In the last two years, I have niched down to work with three types of couples:
1) Committed couples willing to work to reconnect and become a stronger team after they acknowledge they feel disconnected.
Disconnection can look like:
- Feeling distant or avoiding each other
- Feeling like roommates who share bills and children but not much more
- Fighting about little things and unable to hear each other and reach compromise
- Having the same fight over and over and they are getting meaner
- You love each other but feel like you don’t like each other
- Feel like you can’t do anything right and only focus on what your spouse does wrong
2) Couples struggling with infertility who want to learn how to protect their relationship from infertility stresses.
Infertility is an overwhelming roller coaster of stress, trauma, and grief. Many couples struggling with infertility feel alone and misunderstood by their family and friends. Over time it feels like the infertility process takes over your life. In the process, many couples stop nurturing their relationship outside of the infertility process. The disconnect or being unable to share your thoughts and feelings with one another makes everything harder. I have been there and now I want to help others protect their relationship while they focus on becoming parents. The goal is for you to have a strong foundation when your infertility journey is over.
3) Engaged couples who want to learn communication, conflict, and relational skills to have a strong foundation for their marriage.
Being engaged is such an exciting time of life. Couples who complete premarital counseling are better prepared to cope with the stresses of learning to be married while also maintaining their individual identity. The first two years of marriage are a challenge as you learn to become united and deal with outside stresses as a team.
Sometimes couples grow apart or stop tuning into their partner. After a while, it becomes the way it is but feels lonely and distant. Sometimes outside stresses are overwhelming and take a toll on our relationship and change the type of spouse we are in the marriage. Couples’ counseling provides a safe environment to talk about the hard things, learn how to fight better, communicate better, and become a stronger team. The goal is to improve friendship, conflict resolution skills and create shared meaning and dreams for the future. Through this process, a couple can make thoughtful decisions about rebuilding their relationship.
My approach to couples counseling is the relationship is my client, and the patterns of interaction are a dance. We need to understand the dance so we can change the steps each spouse is doing that is getting in the way of what they want.
Part of my 9-step process involves completing a Couples Assessment Check-Up to improve our understanding of the relationship. It is a validated and highly reliable assessment that identifies the strengths of the relationship as well as areas that need improvement to prevent a breakup. Through exercises and interventions, this proven method helps couples break through barriers to gain understanding, connection, and intimacy in their relationship. Once we process your results, we work together to set goals for therapy. Let me help you break the negative cycle, find common ground, and renew your connection. Together we will help you understand each other’s perspectives, identify negative behavior patterns, and learn healthy relationship skills. My mission is to help couples understand one another better, increase fondness and admiration, and restore trust and stability. Once you improve your relationship, it will positively affect all areas of your life.