Great Couples Counseling in Santa Rosa, CA. Therapy to heal relationships.

Choosing to share our lives with someone can be a beautiful but challenging experience. Everyday life can rob you of the joy that you felt at the beginning of the relationship or maybe larger stressors happen and communication can be hard. Let's work together to find solutions to the stressors, increase communication, and find joy in the relationship. If you decide that the relationship is no longer a healthy one for you and instead you and your partner need support in separating, that is something I can also support with. A healthy divorce, separation, or breakup is better than an unhealthy relationship.

Even with well-meant intentions to find one another or to create harmony in your relationship, partners fall into repeating negative patterns which can include angry pleading, accusation, defensiveness or cold withdrawal. This is painful. I help you to understand how you get stuck and then guide you through new emotional experiences which stop the old negative patterns and help you to find safety and feel connected and in love again. I specialize in couples therapy. I have over 27 years working with couples and many hours of training specific to helping couples. I am certified in Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples (EFT), an evidence-based, empirically validated approach.

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.

Couples counseling has been a passion of mine, and has been one of my top two specialties for 13 years now. I blend attachment theory with a few other amazing modalities into a process that I call "Conscious Love." Conscious Love is based on the concept that we tend to come together with a romantic partner who will trigger our core wound and bring to our attention to where we need healing. It's an opportunity for deepening love (and sex gets better too!) as you learn to self nurture and also become a better nurturer to your partner. I teach couples how to become a team to fight the patterns that are eroding their relationship via mindfulness, inner healing/soul work, and nurturing talks.

Relationship problems are one of the most common causes of distress and unhappiness around! We seek comfort, security, companionship, connection, sexual fulfillment in our relationships. When there is a problem, it can feel like our very survival is at stake! I help couples to reconnect in a loving way, so they experience greater joy and happiness with one another. I use a variey of benefical techniques to help you work through your problems. You learn to really listen and tune into one another through a special communication process I developed. You also learn to identify and let go of old baggage that gets in the way of your connecting.

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

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.

I love working with couples who are struggling in their relationship as I find the complexity within the dynamic to be reflected of one of our most core dilemmas as humans: how do we give and receive the love we so deeply want, when the risk for disappointment and pain is so great? I believe there is a solution to be uniquely discovered by each couple facing this question and I utilize clarity, compassion and curiosity to help you both to find it!