Great Couples Counseling in Scotts Valley, CA. Therapy to heal relationships.

In couple’s therapy with me, you will learn about more effective ways of connecting in order to improve intimacy, relational flow, and overall satisfaction. By better understanding your own as well as your partner’s needs and pain, you will relate in ways that are not damaging to the relationship. I will teach you valuable communication, conflict resolution, and intimacy-building techniques so that you can continue nurturing the love, trust, and respect between you even after completing therapy. Call me with any questions or to schedule an initial appointment.

A healthy couple’s relationship emerges from a process of reflection and inquiry. It requires both people to speak from the heart about what really matters to each. If you find yourself in a difficult cycle of hurtful interactions, I can help you get to this heart-full and constructive place. It is very useful to slow things down in a session, discovering the moments in interaction, verbal or non-verbal, that trigger an automatic reaction in the other. I may find a key phrase or a movement that we will re-enact in mindfulness to study the effect on each partner. Bringing awareness to these often unconscious triggers and responses helps you get to what is needed for yourself and the other.

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

Partnership has the potential to be incredibly rewarding, teaching us about ourselves through loving another. Most of us make a large emotional investment in our relationships. Because of this, partnership also has the potential to cause a huge amount of distress when it’s not working. Sometimes a struggling partnership is full of conflict and arguments, and sometimes partners just drift apart until they feel like roommates instead of lovers. Successful partnerships need respect and a core of friendship. If you and your partner are no longer friends, or you never were, I can provide you with tools to work toward a closer connection.

Couples counseling is helpful when two individuals want to deepen their connection (even when things in their relationship are "fine") as well as to help resolve conflicts that have not been addressed or have not been successfully addressed in the past. Top concerns usally involve money, parenting, sex, and in-laws. Improving general communication and one's ability to manage their feelings help to resolve the issues above with love, respect, and efficiency.

Couples often come to counseling when they are on the verge of breaking up. I hope that you will find the way to counseling before you reach this point so that we can find better ways to look at and change old patterns that seem to have you stuck. And even if both agree it is time to separate, counselimf can be helpful to find healthier ways in the process so that we don't have to recreate old, dysfunctional patterns in our next relationships. I invite both partners to utilize the safety of the therapeutic set-up to look at the deeper underlying issues that have brought you to this point in your current 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.

Would you like to create a more loving, fulfilling relationship as a couple? Couple's counseling is a great way to invest in your relationship and get to know yourself and your partner more deeply. I use a strengths-based approach with couples, looking at what drew you together, what is working well in your relationship and how you can leverage your loving feelings to create a strong, lasting relationship.

I provide therapy for couples who are married, who are engaged to be married and for those who are dating or cohabiting. A relationship personality profile is provided to all couples, followed by sessions on communication, intimacy/connectedness, trust. These sessions are always personalized to the couple's issues. I offer a "Tools for the Marriage Toolbox" package for pre-marital couples that can be done in two sessions; a valuable wedding gift to each other!

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.

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!

I specialize in Couples Work and Marriage Counseling. I'm trained by the Couples Institute of Menlo Park, as well as Emotionally Focused Therapy and the Gottmann Method. Having been married myself for 25 years - and worked through my share of challenges in relationship - I have a good understanding for what it takes to heal, trust, and build intimacy with someone. Most of our communication as a couple is in fact asking the question "are you there for me?". In couples counseling we will explore that basic premise and understand how to make our partners feel it, as well as how we can each motivate our partner to WANT to make us feel that way.

The feeling of falling in love can feel so wonderful and our life can seem full of promise. As time goes by, we must face the reality of our lives and the person whom we love. We may believe, "I have fallen out of love." The key to healthy intimate relationships is to calm ourselves internally as individuals and connect with our pleasant feelings; this is healthy emotional regulation. The better that I regulate my emotions as an individual, the stronger I can create a bond with my partner or spouse. A secure bond is the foundation of a relationship that is both satisfying and co-creative. This is the promise of love that we glimpsed when we initially fell in love.

I specialize in working with couples and trauma. I help my clients encounter themselves and reach for growth. Both for themselves and for those they love. I help people searching for peace, connection, and wholeness. And because no single approach is right for everyone, I have training in a range of approaches including Somatic Experiencing (SE), Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for Couples, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Couples often find that their hopes and expectations for finding that special person who will "make them happy" are unrealistic and a burden to an otherwise very successful relationship. I find that when you learn to listen to your partner and appreciate who they are, and risk telling them who you are and how you feel, your love will be on solid ground. I will help you focus on what you need to feel loving and loveable, and to share that with your partner.

Do you think that you are doomed for your relationship to stay the same because your partner refuses to come to therapy? My specialty with couples counseling is to work individually with the partner that is willing to come in to counseling and work to make things better. Change and positive progress can still happen when one person makes changes, sets boundaries and clearly understands and is able to respectfully assert their wants and needs. I assist individuals in my office with a plan they can work on at home with their partner so they can have the relationship they desire.

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.

I view couples therapy as extremely collaborative, and I use a strong team approach to get quick results. I am very involved in the session at all times and will honestly communicate to you what I see, feel and think. I begin by establishing a vision for the relationship, which incorporates the ideals of both members. My office becomes a safe haven, where problems can be discussed without fear of pain, judgment or retribution. Our consultation time is used as a living laboratory, a place where we can explore different styles, interventions and techniques. These can be used to change hurtful and destructive patterns in the relationship and create a stronger, more open connection.

Couples may they be in a dating relationship, living together, engaged to marry, married, in business together, separating, divorcing, fighting over children, property, alimony or visitation, are often confronted with a breakdown in communication and an inability to resolve conflicts. Couple counseling aims to reveal the disconnect within a couple that often once had the ability to connect and function in harmony. Couples can quickly get off track with one another and need skilled guidance to help them learn to resolve conflicts, once again listen and communicate effectively as well as to be able to disagree without forcing the relationship to end.