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

I've been a licensed Psychologist for 30 years, been married for 30 years, and know both professionally and personally what it really takes to make a relationship succeed. I've worked with hundreds of couples to help them have happier, more satisfying relationships, turning tug-of-wars into teams that pull together. I'm practical, straight-forward and results-oriented. It may not be easy to be happy as a couple, but it's definitely possible. Let's work on it together, so your tomorrow will be happier than today..

New, evolving, and long term couples benefit from our use of Gottman Method, Narrative therapy, emotionally focused couples therapy, positive psychology or Imago Relationship Therapy. Our licensed therapist are skilled and trained to use one or a multiple therapy methods and approaches to help couples. Our desire is to help couples communicate, interact, make decisions, and live daily in harmony.

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.

In my Couples Counseling work I help partners build on the strengths of their relationship while we work together to create new skills for communicating and solving problems. My approach is collaborative and I teach each partner to learn how to listen and hear what the other is expressing and needing as well as ways to be heard and understood better. I provide a safe place where difficult problems can be discussed and solutions explored and practiced so that couples can better resolve ongoing problems.

My approach to couples and marital therapy includes several components which are: relationship enhancement skills, communication and conflict resolution strategies, increased awareness of relationship needs and empathy development. It has been my expericence that when couples are committed to improving their relationship and apply the tools taught in therapy, they find that communication improves significantly and appear more motivated to meet the needs of their partner. As each person committs to meeting the needs of their partner it tends to generate good feelings and respectful behavior bewteen the partners, which can result in greater relatinship satisfaction.

Using a combination of Gottman Method Couples Therapy as well as Sue Johnson's Emotionally Focused Couples therapy, I will help you and your partner identify your problem areas and negative cycles that keep you stuck and support your relationship moving back into a pattern of ease and intimacy. We will support increased core emotion expression, identification of each individual's needs, breaking down old negative habits, and reconstructing new habits that will keep your connection strong for the long term. Let's discuss your needs today in a free consultation.

Effective couples therapy can be done with only one person of the couple in the therapy room. Many individuals in relationships have issues they are not ready to discuss in front of their partner for various reasons. They want to work with a therapist to truly understand their thoughts, feelings and dilemmas with regard to their relationship in a private, supportive setting. I have helped many couples in this treatment format in my Carlsbad private practice over the past 22 years. You might be asking how does this work. In a couple, if one member shifts perspective, shifts behavior and gains new tools, the relationship dynamic will change. Call today for a free 20 min. phone consultation.

Our committed relationship or marriage is often the greatest trigger of stress and anxiety. This is because our very identities (our experience of ourselves) is threatened. This may be caused by a) unresolved issues from our family of origin, b) unresolved disagreements in lifestyle or child rearing, c) conflicts over sex, romance, and intimacy, or d) sometimes just the management of everyday stressors. The sad result is a "disconnect" between partners, and resulting loneliness. Working in collaboration, we will finding the cause, and build a strategy to reconnect you and your partner. Yes, you can recapture the love, attraction, and joy you deserve together. Let's get to work!

Humans experience the world through relationships with others. We are made to connect! When connections with our significant others are fractured, it can impact our mood, our health, our work and family relationships. We fear being abandoned, alone, and a disappointment to those important to us. Emotionally Focused Therapy can help us to reconnect, feel cared for, and to feel loved and valued again by our partners. You do not need to remain stuck in repetitive cycles of isolation and pain. Whatever your partnership arrangement, you are welcome. Things can change for the better! Maybe you are a couple on the brink of divorce. Discernment counseling can help get clarity on the path to take.

Most partners in relationships wish their mate would hurt them less and help them more. My role is to coach couples to do just that. Whether recovering from an affair, overcoming domestic violence or just learning to stop squabbling and get along there is a short but essential list of attitudes and skills necessary to build and maintain a healthy and enjoyable relationship. There is very little in life that prepares us for being in a marriage but we can learn what it takes with some work and guidance.

Couples therapy involves working with partners who are in a committed relationship. Individuals attend couples therapy to learn how to work through their differences, communicate better, problem-solve challenges in the relationship, work through parenting differences, improve their intimacy or their overall satisfaction with the relationship. Couples therapy involves assessing the strengths and weaknesses in the relationship, formulating goals and working diligently toward attaining those goals to establish and maintain healthy, loving and exciting romantic relationships.

I am an Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist (EFT) which is the most empirically validated and proven couples therapy to date - helping couples go from distress to a more secure, lasting love, which after a 2 year follow-up, couples report a happier and more fulfilling relationship. I help couples understand their painful disconnection that creates distance and frustration, learn to be more clear in their communication and needs, helping couples begin to heal and repair rifts to bring about a deeper felt sense of security within their relationship. I desire couples to experience with one another that they matter, that they are cared for, they are unconditionally loved by their partner.

Among human relationships, marriage can be a source of great joy and connection. Often over time, negative cycles and patterns of interaction can develop that create pain and disconnection in the relationship. Adult love relationships are about creating secure attachment and a connection that allows each partner to feel emotionally safe. Through the counseling process, I assist couples in identifying and overcoming negative cycles, healing from past hurts, and reconnecting emotionally. I also work with couples looking for healing from infidelity. Even very distressed couples can reconnect and restore trust and emotional security. I also provide pre-marital and enrichment counseling.

What attracts us to an individual can become the seed for problems later in a relationship. Therapy can assist in identifying the emotional , thinking, and behavioral patterns that diminish the possibility of satisfaction and love in relationships. Therapy can help you to find new ways of relating that bring joy and happiness in sharing your life with another person. Skills can be learned and approaches to challenging situations modified that harmonize and balance conflicting points of contact with a loved one. Learning to relate in a way that increases your contentment in your relationships is only a few steps away. By opening your heart to the possibilities of love, you can heal injury.

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

FRUSTRATED ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIPS? Stressed out about what to do next? Are you considering breakup or divorce but really want to give it a last chance? Would you like to take one more look before making any permanent decision? I can help you gain clarity, confidence in your decision making in regards to a very important matter in your life through a brief and focused counseling process.

If you are feeling like you’ve lost hope for your relationship, part of my job is to hold the hope for you. I passionately believe that there are very few problems that can’t be resolved when both partners are willing to work on the relationship. Even when you feel there is no way that you could regain what you once had, couples counseling can help you find something new and maybe even better. I practice Gottman Method Couples Therapy, and I welcome the opportunity to help you both build a stronger relationship. In addition to regular weekly sessions, I offer special 3-hour sessions to help “jump-start” the healing.

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!

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.

Couples counseling is an area I specialize in and have helped couples repair and rebuild their relationships. I start with what are the goals that the couple wants to accomplish during therapy (usually repairing or strengthening their relationship). Next we look at each persons areas of strengths and weaknesses as well as their reasons for the difficulties in the relationship. I then help the couple through a "atonement, attunement and attachment" process that repairs and strengthens the relationship along with achieving the established goals of the couple.

We do have therapists that provide couples and marriage counseling throughout the week. Therapists have been trained in techniques that will assist you in making progress and improving your relationship. Throughout the course of a relationship we can have struggles and stressors that impact us and we can overcome them through therapy and arrive at a healthier state in the relationship.