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

I specialize in Couples Therapy at the Narrative Couples Center. I help partners to achieve new stories for the future. My approach is strength-based. It explores what couples hold most precious in their lives and relationships and brings people closer to their hopes and preferences. My counseling offers tools and collaboration to help each member of a relationship to move towards shared understanding.

Married or not, romantic relationships are hard work! Whether you’ve been working on yourselves individually and are looking to now come together and work-or you’re here for the couples and individual work in a combined session, I’m here to support your needs as a couple to find out what it’s like to like each other again. I work to support you in navigating both the typical and unexpected life events as a couple, helping you heal from past wounds and develop new habits towards each other. Are you ready to stop the crazy cycle? Let’s get started.

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.

When you are looking for a couples therapist, you need someone who is trained in couples therapy specifically. Often therapists say they know how to help a couple, but one's training in couples therapy is typically limited to one class in their entire education! The focus of therapy is traditionally on the individual! Here at LA Therapy Network, several of our therapists have specific couples therapy training! We require all our therapists to be educated specifically in couples therapy. We are all trained in helping cuoples from a developmental perspective as well as providing practical strategies for communication and conflict resolution. GLBT families encouraged and welcome!

Many couples present in distress with a strong desire to enhance their relationships. I like to work with communication styles as well as explore some old patterns of relating that may have their history in early childhood experiences with their own families. Being able to identify these old patterns of relating to a significant other can help couples to understand why they bring these old patterns into their current relationship. After these patterns are identified, new ways of relating and communicating are explored and practiced. Listening skills and acceptance are important areas of exploration throughout therapy as well. Couples find new & satisfying ways of relating with each other.

Therapy offers a supportive environment where you can communicate in a safe way... learn to calm down, listen and validate the other person... become more aware of each other's over-reactions and vulnerabilities... understand each other's needs... clarify commonalities and differences in your relationship goals... negotiate, accept and move on to a better emotional state. By understanding and empathizing with both of you, I can provide you with insights, exercises and concrete skills to help you transform your relationship into a lasting source of love and companionship... or find the courage to end what cannot be repaired.

The goal of couples therapy is to bring out the best in you and your partner, strengthening the quality of your relationship, as a point of balance, allowing you to deal with issues in ways that support you to grow as individuals and a couple. To increase your understanding of yourself, your partner, and the patterns of interactions that have become detrimental to the relationship.

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.

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.

Practice communication skills to powerfully begin resolving those angry and blaming arguments. Write brief notes about what was said and have expert training to show your partner the love you feel and need. Learn how to express disagreements as well as affection that can transform your relationship. Find how to identify and manage the emotional baggage you are bringing to each other.

Our work with couples focuses on rebuilding communication and understanding in the relationship. Our clinical focus is on three entities; you, your partner, and the relationship. We consider the relationship our client, and because of that, we start by getting a history of the relationship, how it developed, and what’s happened to build it up, and what’s happened to weigh it down. Couples counseling works best when both you and your partner show up in a compassionate, honest, and with the intent to reflect and improve yourself in the relationship.

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.

Relationships are an area where young adults can struggle. Wanting to create lasting bonds, they don't always think about who is a good match for them, given their family values, and plans for their life. Past failed relationships can also leave sensitive young adults hesitant to open their hearts and try to find love again. I help sensitive young adults discover what it takes to create the loving relationship they've always dreamed of.

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.

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 counseling can be helpful to any relationship looking to grow and improve skills to make your relationship thrive. If you are just starting out and it's premarital therapy you are looking for, or you are on the brink of the relationship ending, couples counseling can help. It will provide an outside perspective and increase your ability to interact in ways that are more productive and enjoyable. Even if your relationship is going great, there is always something to learn about your partner in couples counseling.

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.

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.

Working with couples is a joy for me! I have a high success rate: approximately 90%. I help men and women make the transition from being single to being a unit, helping them learn to work together as a team. My primary aim is to make my clients feel at ease. I truly care about them and help them explore the underlying concerns and move forward to achieve the best possible results.

How do you rate your partner? Do you just KNOW your relationship could be better? With Kevin Bergen, you'll find a specialist who can get you over your hurdles to relationship bliss. Are you tired of arguing? Is trust a problem now? Has one of you checked out of the relationship? Feeling alone or more like roommates? Kevin understands what you're feeling. He understands each of you equally, he'll affirm you when your partner is off track, and kick your butt when it's you who's out of line. If you want understanding and honesty, call Kevin for your couple's needs.

When couples wish to work through their relationship difficulties, or do premarital couples therapy, they will find my office to be a safe, nonjudmental, and encouraging space. You will colaborate with your spouse, and prioritize issues you'd like to discuss. You will explore your own ability for acceptance and tolerance of your spouse's behavior. We will work together on communication skills, and styles, we'll try to soften the dialogue. We'll learn about problem solving skills with which husband and wife are heard. If there are sexual problems, I have experience in treating sex addiction, internet pornography addiction, and the affect of extended families on your relationship.

Are you struggling with your relationship? It is important to understand that is is more than just having good communication skills. That can help, but the real part of making a relationship work is understanding how your partner connects. A great relationship thrives when couples know how to respond to each other in the way the each need based on their attachment styles. I can help your relationship grow by helping you respond both physically and emotionally to your partner in they way they need it and in the way you need it to feel understood, safe, and connected.

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.

When two individuals desire to be together due to the mutual love they feel for one another and encounter difficulties within the relationship seeking therapy is vital. Each couple has specific relationship need and goals. Learning the partners love language, relationship goals and assisting them with communication skills can be crucial in providing longevity to the relationship.

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!