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

Married, dating, heterosexual, gay, or bisexual? I specialize in emotional intimacy, sex, addiction, and trauma, any of which can derail a relationship. You can heal your relationship or end it. I can help either way. Improve communication and handle conflicts better. Get your emotional baggage out of the way so it doesn’t hurt your relationship. Better for the couple and especially better when there are kids. Have kids and you’re divorcing? You’re still tied together. We can make that less damaging for everyone. Kids do better when their divorced parents work together for the kids’ best interest – dealing with emotions and communication better and not putting kids in the middle.

We recognize the complex issues and dynamics that exist in working with couples. We work to validate each individual and their emotions, pain, while challenging both to increase their understanding of their partner. Improving communication and equipping clients with effective coping skills are also significant areas of focus. We highlight each individual's control over their behavior and facilitate the process of moving toward mutual positive goals.

Conflict and discord often are a factor of poor communication and feelings that both partners must agree in order to be compatible. This kind of thinking can result in angry standoffs that lead to a feeling that in order for one to win the their must lose. I teach couples how to communicate and understand that difference in needs does not mean incompatibility. Working towards win-win solutions can enhance your marital satisfaction and increase intimacy. I enjoy working with couples and have a good success rate. Let me help you find happiness in your marriage.

Relationships can be hard and wonderful and overwhelming and exciting. Building a relationship involves really knowing all parts of your partner as well as expressing affection and appreciation for your partner. Fights happen. It's normal. If the fights are ugly and mean and out of control, let me help you learn a better, kinder way to fight that won't hurt the friendship of your relationship. Call me today at 714-432-9856.

Couples initiate their relationship to satisfy each member's desire to be loved, connected, respected and enjoyed. In all relationships, life's demands impede on that fun. Rekindling those good feelings, mutual enjoyment, and respect becomes our therapy work. Sometimes, communication is more hurtful than constructive. Other times, you have become strangers instead of best friends. Sexual pleasures become disappointments. Parenting becomes distracting instead of successful teamwork. Money becomes a dispute, crippling a couples pleasures and goals. With so few couples succeeding in love and compatibility, couples counseling becomes a tool to re-ignite what's missing. DrCarolFrancis.com

I will work with you to help you overcome whatever challenge you're facing, whether it's fighting, distance, a betrayal, or lack of trust, among other challenges. I will also help you to better communicate, including changing harmful or frustrating patterns of relating to each other. The ultimate goal that I keep in mind is to help the two of you become a more loving, cooperative, trusting, and intimate couple.

Do you feel like something is wrong or missing from your relationship? Most of us were not taught the skills necessary to have a healthy and satisfying relationship, which is why I believe almost everyone can benefit from couple's therapy. Working with couples who want to improve their communication, their sexual experiences and their quality of life is the focus of my practice...relationship and sex therapy is what I specialize in. I have helped hundreds of couples and I can help you too!

Couples are frequently referred to me by current and former clients, colleagues, and other healthcare professionals including physicians from several disciplines. More often than not, couples self-refer for help because one or both are feeling stuck and in pain. Sometimes there is an accumulation of hurts that have piled up. You need to talk about it. There are many benefits to couples counseling: enhanced communication, learning how to resolve conflict, creating more trust, growing intimacy, identifying triggers that can cause upsets, learning how to deal with the inevitable challenges that even the very best of relationships experience, and learning how to love at deeper levels.

Couples can build and maintain positive close relationships. Take an objective look at your relationship, to get help to reduce dysfunctional behaviors, feel that you can share your emotions, communicate effectively, and emphasize what's working. Most importantly, by remembering that each relationship has its unique challenges and strengths, you'll be giving yours the best chances for survival.

Challenges in our relationship with our partner can greatly affect well-being and day-to-day life. If you are facing a specific challenge in your relationship or feel there are areas you would like to improve, therapy can help. I work with individuals and couples of all orientations on relational issues such as communication, conflict, finances, intimacy, trust/mistrust, parenting, and pre-marital counseling.

The general goal is to reduce conflict and increase intimacy. In the safety of therapy, and with a trained professional as a third party, you each will have the opportunity to learn about yourself in depth, in addition to gaining insights into the complex dynamics of your relationship. The increasing of knowledge, communication skills, and relational tools can combine to create the intimacy and connection that is so necessary in marriage.

Are you and your partner having difficulties? When you try to bring up issues, does it feel like they are counteracted by your partner bringing up their own issues and complaints? Not being heard out can feel so alienating, so unsupported, so lonely. I help couples to listen to each other with less defensiveness. I help them to be more supportive toward each other. I encourage each person in a couple to make small changes in themselves for the sake of more harmony in the relationship. Each person has to contribute, so it is not about either one of them being "the bad guy." I strive to support the relationship without taking sides, as I am "on the side of" the relationship.

Couples can find themselves in difficult dynamics. They get stuck in cycles and feel there is no way out. Therapy is a wonderful solution to helping couples become "unstuck." My hope is that you will find help for your struggling marriage or relationship - that you can experience freedom from constant conflict and begin to relate to each other in ways that are supportive and life giving.