Great Couples Counseling in Palos Verdes Estates, CA. Therapy to heal relationships.

I specialize in couples and marriage counseling. My approach is based on recent research in marriage science showing what habits successful couples have that other do not. My approach is skills based and practical, teaching both of you how to communicate more effectively, how to understand each other, how to decide what is changeable and what is not in your relationship, how to deal with perpetual issues,on which you may be deadlocked, and different ways to view issues and problems in your relationship to reduce conflict. I also help you identify what is working in your relationship, (or what used to work) so that we can build on the positive.

Couples counseling will provide the opportunity for couples to focus on their marriage by doing deeper work in a safe and confidential setting. Couples will explore and understand effective communication, love styles and form a deeper connection and intimacy. Couples counseling is available for any two people in a committed relationship. It is a great investment in any meaningful relationship!

What do you hope for with your partner? In couples therapy, we improve communication, bridge differences, and promote change. People come to couples therapy at many stages of relationship: pre-marital counseling; navigating differences in time management; blending households and families; birth of a child; infidelity; divorce -- any time a couple is seeking to change behaviors that are causing pain. When a life stressor has begun to affect your partnership in an unwanted way, or if you are seeking to be heard differently by your partner, the skills you learn in couples therapy will create a more mutually satisfying relationship.

My initial work was with sexless/touchless couples, where I developed a speciality in supporting them in bringing the passion back to their relationship. This included sex of course, but also a deeper passion, a passion for life, a joie de vivre, a deep, loving connection. This is how I became known as the "Passion Doctor". My approach is to get the couple back into connection: verbally, emotionally and physically through psycho-education and exercises specifically tailored for them. My approach is not cookie-cutter or generic and combines the many disciplines I have studied and practiced including psychotherapy, somatic work, breath work and Tantric practices.

Each couple has their own unique dance. When in sync, there is a rhythmic flow between and within each partner. When there is a shift in the bond due to chaos and trauma, the movement between the two becomes disrupted and derailed; there is a dis-connect and a fight to re-connect and be understood by the other. I work with the understanding that the relationship between two people who love each other is not so much a behavioral negotiation, but rather a deep relational bond, where each partner longs for safety and trust. I help couples bring a deeper understanding of the bond between them and foster a safe haven for each partner to build a secure connection with each other.

“Unlatch” from Negative Emotions and Behaviors Some couples make the assumption that serious and persistent conflicts and differences will get resolved on their own. Time can heal, but it also helps if you are willing to work on improving your relationship. Relationship issues can be quite complex and it is not just a matter of learning how to “communicate” nice thoughts to one another. My role as a counselor is to identify and track the emotional experience of each person and to support the couple as they learn to engage in a more productive way so that each feels more heard, considered, respected and acknowledged.

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.

As a couple certified in couples therapy, we understand betrayal, abandonment, feeling unappreciated, ignored, misunderstood, and having the same repeated fight. We know that troubles with family, finances, and substance use can strain even the healthiest of relationships. Our work as co-therapists in the room together brings balance and fairness so you can move through the rupture and into repair. We offer unique insight into how you can manage each other and life's challenges. Can you imagine feeling connected, making mutual agreements, experiencing intimacy and getting what you need from your partner without arguing over who is right? We can help.

Why do we seem to have the same arguments over and over again? How do I know if we are really supposed to be together? Are there things we could be doing to better support each other, to help each other grow and be our best selves? If we really love each other, why do we so often hurt each other? How do I know if this is real love, anyway? Relationships are hard. Even more than desire, they require effort and understanding to make them work. Often, even if two people really love each other, one or both may need help to maintain the right effort or understanding to keep the balance necessary for long-term success. Having outside, objective support can make all the difference.

Relationships are hard. This is a fact that many people deny and others become aware of when it is too late. By creating an environment where couples can communicate in an honest manner, I work with them to establish clear lines of communication. In addition to working with couples, I am currently working toward a certification as a sex therapist.

What brought you together? What drew you to each other? What are your shared hopes, dreams and values? These are just some of the questions that I ask couples in order to help re-connect them with what they hold dear to their hearts; with what they give meaning because I believe that what we give meaning to helps us face the difficult times in relationships.

The two most important keys to a healthy relationship is communication & understanding how your partner wants to be loved. Clear and authentic communication is essential for a healthy relationship. A mindful partnership involves a place of understanding from where an individual is coming from. Clear boundaries and a respective responsibility of each other, as being unique is central for growth and belongingness. If a connection is fragmented, individuals cannot exist as one, than the relationship cannot be whole. Partners develop a dance around one another’s problems and develop dysfunctional patterns that are projected on the partner and world.

Couples counseling is an amazing experience. Your relationship is my client and I will work closely with both of you to identify the relational dance you participate in, and how we can interrupt the negative patterns you engage in, and instead promote healthier ways of connecting and attaching. Couples therapy can be a really fun and pleasurable experience where you get to know more about your partner and also about your self. Couples therapy works in a stage process. I will be there along each step of the way helping to make sure that you guys are connecting. I will help to empower you both so that you may enhance and strengthen your most important relationship!

Communication and Commitment-- two vital words for Couples. I've heard it said we choose to love someone and we choose to stay in love with that person. Are you going to hightail it out of there after the first sign of conflict or stay and face the music? That music can be beautiful when seasoned with the right tools and mindset. Couple relationships are not always Romance and Caviar. There are dry spells. I'd like to show you how to weather the dry spells and increase the joy and romance in your relationship. I will show you how to prevent the conflicts and trials of life from robbing that first love you felt in the beginning. I can help you restore that sweetness and passion.

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.

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. While I work with all couples, I specialize in working with neuro-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!

What are the most common couples' issues? If you are thinking "communication, conflict, sex, money, child rearing" you are correct. However, most therapists will go after the symptom on each side of the couple fence thinking that the way to effective change is by getting each party to "work" on their respective "issue". Many times the parties don’t agree but comply. Imagine if you could align the unconscious brains of a couple and stop the "working on your issues" part that has become so popular in therapy settings? Contact kevin@kevinflemingphd.com to learn how! Or call 877-606-6161. DR. FLEMING'S NEW RELATIONSHIP/COUPLES INTENSIVES. www.kevinflemingphd.com/marriage-couples-retreats.php

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.

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.

Every relationship experiences arguments and conflict. That is an inevitable part of being in an intimate relationship. These differences do not have to undermine a relationship so long as the underlying patterns of interaction which keep these conflicts active can be understood and resolved. As a specialist in couples counseling, I seek to help a couple identify these patterns and learn how to listen with understanding while promoting the authenticity of each individual. I use an emotionally focused treatment which allows a couple to work through their conflicts while enhancing their feelings of attachment and closeness. With 32 years of experience, I have helped many couples do this.

Is this you? All we do is fight! It seems like we never hear each other and neither of us listens anymore! It is so frustrating I do not want to come home and try. I have been successfully helping couples to develop the tools necessary to communicate effectively for more than 20 years. Having disagreements is not unusual. Learning how to resolve disagreements is a key element to healthy relationships. Conflict resolution is about learning to fight fairly by listening in an atmosphere of Respect, Trust, Safety and love and not placing my desire to be right over the relationship.

As an ICEEFT-certified EFT couples therapist, I can help you and your partner to reconnect, escape from the repetitive cycles that keep you distant from each other, make sense of your emotions, improve the way you handle stress and conflict, and restore trust and safety with each other. There is no bad guy in your relationship. I'll help you see how your feelings and behaviors make perfect sense - and work with you both to create new, positive cycles that draw you closer together. EFT is very well supported by research showing that it significantly improves over 86% of distressed relationships, and importantly, that those benefits are still present two or three years after therapy is over.

There are countless models of healthy romantic relationships, from monogamous to polyamorous, and unique variations between partners. The scripts for dating and longterm relationships of our parents’ generations may not be applicable to your relationship, and there is no formal education in how to be a good partner or how to identify unhealthy relationships. But there is psychological research that shows that effective communication, emotional openness, intimacy, and other factors contribute to healthy relationships. Creating these conditions are skills that can be learned. I practice brief humanistic and emotion-focused therapy (EFT) to help my LGBTQ and hetero clients learn these skills.

All couples face challenges in a relationship. What makes some relationships last and others that don't is a combination of communication skills and commitment to making the marriage work. Many marriages test people to their limit, but that doesn't mean it's a bad marriage. If you are able to hang in there and work with a trusted professional, you can expand and grow into a more loving and nurturing person.

I enjoy working with couples to improve their communication. Often when we run into challenges in our relationship there is a lot of activation around these disagreements, arguments, or frustrations. We may feel a sense of betrayal or disconnection from our partners. By helping individuals to ground themselves and calm the nervous system activation around these charged topics, the couple is able to listen and communicate much more effectively. Sometimes learning and practicing the skill is not enough, we need help getting into a place both emotionally and physically that we can implement what we learn even when it's during our most difficult conversations.