My approach to couples therapy is to create a safe, intelligent, and nurturing laboratory for learning and practicing how to be relational. Any presenting issue a couple is facing becomes an opportunity to discover how to better express thoughts and feelings and hear those of their partner. With increased communication, that is non-blaming and non-reactive, clarity emerges and conflicts become less scary. Feelings of closeness are restored as a deeper understanding is created.

By looking at a couple’s pattern of interactions with them, light is shed on what is often experienced as complex and overwhelming.  When faced with this complexity with insufficient relational skills a couple often feels as though they’re at a painful impasse. Often the couple is looking for someone to assist them in breaking the cycle of fear, hurt, and anger that has them at an impasse. 

My job is to give a couple a basis for hope and to assist them in finding a way out of their dilemma. I do this by viewing them freshly and with a “heart-felt seeing” that begins to turn things around for them. I spend a good deal of time reframing what is being said so that they can grasp that they are actually reaching out to each other.

Fortunately, I have seen many couples who have taken their perceived impasse and used it as a springboard for both individual and mutual growth. If the couple decides to separate, I continue supporting them through this painful transition by counseling them on matters both practical and emotional. Typically, this includes their changing relationship with their children.

My appreciation for my client’s growing self-awareness is unshakeable and profound. It often helps couples to find the courage and honesty needed to change the underlying and self-limiting patterns inherent in relationships. Outdated self-protective responses become clear in the process of self-investigation. As the couple finds their relational creativity, they move from gridlock to authentic interaction, or even being best friends again.

I am privileged to be the witness and the facilitator!

Here are some examples of how I assist couples like yourself.