Great Couples Counselling in Port Coquitlam, BC. Therapy to heal relationships.

My aim during couples counselling is to create an impartial and comfortable environment for both partners to equally share their experiences, thoughts and emotions. Through cultivating a better understanding of one another, couples I have worked with have shared that they experience more connection, patience, intimacy and appreciation for each other after our sessions. My aim is to improve communication by offering practical techniques, to explore the deeper rooted cycles of conflict and dissatisfaction and to help couples understand their own and their partner's past traumas and childhood experiences that may impact the relationship. I draw on approaches such as EFT or the Gottman method.

If you're looking to improve your relationship, we'd work together to create a supportive environment for discussion, allowing each of you to share your perspective and experience. With important conversations and empathetic questions, there's opportunity to truly see each other and to collaborate to resolve the issues rather than engaging in blame. Together, we'd uncover experiences that promote mutual understanding, empathy and appreciation. Through this process you'll gain insights, develop new ways of communicating, strengthen your connection and establish a more fulfilling and harmonious relationship.

Loving, successful relationships need to be carefully and skillfully nurtured in the following five areas: Emotional, Intellectual, Spiritual, Sexual, Financial. Couples who are ready to do ongoing work on their relationships are richly rewarded with a loving, meaningful and joyful life together. Committed relationships that have the possibility of morphing into long term relationships benefit greatly by being guided by the Gottman research on relationships as well as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). Premarital Counselling prepares a couple for a new stage in their relationship by identifying potential areas of conflict and strength and developing tools to create a strong foundation.

Our passion is supporting relationships! We are skilled and passionate in supporting marriages / relationships by understanding the context of the relationship and what the concerns/issues are. We also understand couples often need support in identifying the deeper meaning or deeper assessment of the concerns. We offer an individualized approach to each couple and family. We utilize Gottman, Systemic Family Therapy and other dignity informed approaches.

Are you and your partner stuck in unsolvable arguments? Does one of you tend to ‘demand’ more while the other shuts down and withdraws? Are you feeling less connected and actually adding stress to each other’s lives instead of reducing it? While frustrating, these are perfectly normal patterns of partnership and there is hope. I would be glad to help you untangle the knots, learning to team up together instead of entering battles over who is right. In doing so, we will unpack past traumas and patterns of behaviour, learning to better communicate and to be safely vulnerable in a way that stands your relationship on solid ground.

The first step with my approach to couples therapy is for us to establish rapport as you inform me of the problem that has brought you to therapy. I use a Choice Theory approach which includes defining more closely what each of you want for yourselves as individuals and the relationship as a whole. From there, we get to work on rebuilding trust in the relationship by enhancing communication skills so each of you feel listened to, heard, and respected. Then we can build on trust to establish the changes needed to restore the happiness that brought you together in the first place.

Couples could face many different issues in their relationships. These issues could include communication problems, conflict, sexual and intimate issues, different cultural backgrounds, and a lack of understanding about where each other's feelings. To provide counselling to couples, we use a variety of techniques depending on each couple's unique struggles and challenges. We help you develop better communication skills, work toward better conflict resolution, understand each other's needs and feelings, recognize your own triggers and your partner's triggers, and identify unhealthy coping mechanisms and replace them with healthy ones.