Great Couples Counseling in San Gabriel, CA. Therapy to heal relationships.

I believe contemporary clinicians & authors like Esther Perel and John Gottman have made significant, sensible, and accessible contributions to Couples Counseling. I find value in their philosophies and methods and weave them into my work with couples when appropriate. At a very basic level, I think couples frequently suffer from a perception problem. They think they know how their partner is thinking and feeling but in reality that is just a projection of their own imagination. Helping couples recognize this is an important aspect of our early work together. A deeper level of work includes helping couples identify and work through the unconscious motivations that drive their behavior.

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.

I am here to help couples through issues in their relationships to come to mutual understanding and empathy. I am LGBTQ+ allied and support all traditional and non-traditional relationship structures. I also offer non-denominational pre-marital counseling, helping couples prepare for this lifelong commitment by providing a safe space to share and understand each other’s values, needs, and desires for the relationship.

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!

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.

Couples struggling with repeated conflict, emotional injuries, and feelings of loneliness will find solace and rejuvenation in the therapy process. My approach to couples counseling is centered on healing attachment wounds and fostering a deeper connection between partners. By creating a compassionate and non-judgmental space, I guide couples in uncovering the underlying emotions that have led to the disconnection. Together, we will work to develop effective communication skills, rebuild trust, and cultivate empathy. You will experience relief from past hurts and discover new pathways to improved relational functioning, leading to a more satisfying and harmonious partnership.

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.

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.

Most couples come in seeking better communication. I will work with you to communicate effectively and in a manner that is respectful and compassionate in regards to your significant other's own story. Together we will look at your style of connecting or not connecting with one another and work to increase connection. I also work successfully with many couples who experience infidelity and are seeking to re-build their relationship. Pre-marital counseling is available for couples who are thinking of marrying or on their way to the altar.

Our staff of over 25 therapists specializes in helping couples in distress. From pre-marital counseling to couples work and even marriages that have been together for years--we are ready to help. Our staff has received training from Dr. Susan Johnson, the international expert on marriage and couples therapy and can help couples get free from patterns of fighting that you can't get out of on your own. We can teach you how to get free from the gridlock of fruitless fighting, and learn how to thrive in your relationship again.

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.

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.