Great Couples Counseling in Arcadia, CA. Therapy to heal relationships.

Couples counseling is a wonderful opportunity to truly connect. Learning new ways of bonding with our partners is much easier than you may think and I believe it is truly a must in any relationship. I don't want to force partners in but rather encourage them to see the potential that exists within your relationship. My reality over the years is that you are going to get stuck at some point. That's ok. We just need to help you through it. Individual needs cannot be sacrificed and truly do not have to be. Let's see what we can do together.

In couples counseling we will explore the strengths each of you brings to your relationship and how these contribute to the overall health of your relationship together. We will work to understand your contributions and barriers to making your relationship work. The focus will remain on your goals for the relationship with the understanding that these may change as we learn more about each parties level of contribution. I encourage honesty between both parties. You will be encouraged to speak directly with one another to work toward strengthening your communication skills by clarifying the meaning and quality of the words you choose when speaking with your partner.

I provide couples counseling, marriage counseling, pre-marital and blended family couples counseling. I use Gottman principals and emotional focused therapy approaches in helping you build stronger connections, foster effective communication, and overall create lives built and aligned together. For those that would like Christian couples counseling we will integrate biblical principals alongside therapeutic interventions.

Is your relationship in need of healing and strengthening for increased connection? Are you not even sure you want to be in the relationship and need a safe space to explore it? I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a certified Prepare-Enrich Couples Counselor and offer professional couples counseling, premarital counseling, and marital couples counseling. I utilize effective communication skills, Attachment Theory, Family Systems, and Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy to help restore your emotional bond and intimacy. Take the first step towards a fulfilling and lasting relationship and I look forward to working together with you!

I believe couples naturally select partners who will eventually restimulate old hurts. If couples can recognize this, then conflict becomes an opportunity for healing and growth. My job in working with couples is to help them identify these old hurts and work together with one another to understand and provide compassion for one another as they do this work. Emotional intimacy is the natural outcome of this powerful work.

Couples therapy should not be about hashing over old wounds. Getting what you want from a relationship involves good communication and active listening, tolerance and forgiveness, emotional intelligence, having common goals and working cooperatively and, like all the bets things in life, presents us with a challenge. Relationships can be hard work but the work is rewarding and life-enhancing. I love to work with couples who are committed to improving their future rather than reliving their past.

If your marriage is in serious trouble, or if you just want to make it better ... don't wait. I offer a unique marriage counseling program designed to get to know your partner on a deeper level and get beyond old hurts. Homework is given weekly. A professional working with couples will help first to clarify the main issue brought to the first session. Usually there is much more going on between two people, and a therapist will help the two dig alittle deeper. Maybe old anger is a roadblock....or resentments. Unforgiveness is a big stummbling block. You will decide what you want to change, improve upon, and goals you wish to obtain for your relationship.

Let me guess. One partner feels alone and like they don't matter and the other feels they are always being criticized and can't get anything right. The more one asks for the other to show up, the more the partner disappears physically and emotionally. You both bicker and fight and the idea of sitting and just hanging out seems elusive, if not impossible. Something like this? Often we crave connection but are blocked by the pain and the history that gets in the way. Small fights about little things become battles that highlight our struggle to have our basic relational needs met. I can help you get under the bickering to the parts crying out for connection- to an enriching relationship.

Without conflict, couples do not achieve intimacy. The challenge is helping you and your partner learn how to have healthy conflict that leads to intimacy, rather than destructive conflict that destroys the relationship. I specialize in working with affairs and broken trust, abgtneuro-diverse couples. I usually start with helping you learn ground rules for being able to have safe, constructive, healthy conflict to reduce and eliminate destructive relational patterns. I also use Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) to help you reconnect, learn healthy communication skills, rekindle the flame that you once had, and start talking to each other again. If you are willing to work, I am here for you

My goal is to help the couple learn how to love each other well. We work on learning how to express their needs and desires and also how to give to the other in the way that they need. I require homework assignments to develop intimacy and passion on a daily basis. We work on sexuality and physical closeness. Communication, anger management, roles and responsibiliteis are all addressed as needed. I am a nationally touring group counselor for New Life Ministries couple conventions. I have a hugs bag of tools and techniques as well as experience in leading couple retreats. Couples are my specialty.

I have worked with hundred's of couples over the last 20 years. Each couple is unique in their own right which means there is no one way to "fix" a problem. Our deepest longings and hopes emerge in a couples relationship. Oftentimes we are working out unmet needs and hopes carried forward from our early family relationships to our present couple relationship. Problems become increasingly complex and difficult to overcome when we don't know what these issues are all about. Couples remain stuck in conflict not because of what they know, but what they don't know or can't recognize. The work in therapy is to help couples recognize unhealthy patterns of relating and introduce novelty.

Couples come into counseling for various problems. Couples therapy can be very helpful to identify negative patterns of behavior which cause unhappiness, it also can point our strengths in the relationship which are causing a great deal of satisfaction in the relationship. I work from a Christian based Gottman model to help couples to quickly determine what is going wrong for them and help them to solve these issues and have the happy relationship they desire.

The main thing I notice couples coming in for is to work on trust issues, communication problems, and lack of intimacy within the relationship. This can manifest into anger, affairs, shutting down, and a number of other behaviors. I work with couples FIRST on what does work, so that they can build upon skills they already possess within their relationship. 2: Teaching basic listening skills so that partners feel heard. 3: Teaching the couples how to communicate without attacking. 4: implementing those skills at home. Therapy is much more complex than this, and there are many more aspects of communication, but building strengths is very important to relationship success.