Great Couples Counseling in Scaggsville, MD. Therapy to heal relationships.

I offer couples therapy for partners who are looking make positive changes in their relationships, whether they are dating, engaged, married, or committed. I blend strategies and interventions from several couple therapy models to fit our conversations to your unique goals. By learning new skills, healing emotional injuries, experiencing each other's vulnerabilities in a safe way, and gaining insights about how each other's past influences their current behaviors, we work together to build a compassionate and joyful relationship.

How incredibly important is it to have and maintain a loving and safe connection with a loved one? But when that connection is disrupted and we are going round and round never getting unstuck from our negative patterns, we can feel lonely, angry and downright devastated. Carol Corcoran, Licensed Clinical Marriage and Family Therapist can help you find new ways of connecting to the one that means so much to you. Let Carol help you move past those negative cycles and old wounds that never get resolved. To learn more go to: http://www.creatinghealthyconnections.com/newsite/couples.html

Like all psychotherapy, couples therapy is a process, but one in which I work to help both members of a partnership to feel heard while also working for measurable change that couples can notice and know when they are making progress. I use attachment models to inform my work with couples–helping couples to develop a safer, more fulfilling and secure partnership. I focus on both present circumstances while also working to understand how problems develop and providing ways to prevent their reoccurrence. Some of the issues that couples often seek treatment for include the following: Communication Managing Difficult Life Transitions Separation/Divorce Loss/Grief Parenting Saving your Marriage Pre-Marital Counseling Managing Conflict

There are two most basic fears of intimacy that we all have: one is fear of abandonment, the other is fear of being taken over, of losing my autonomy. In a relationship, people often become polarized with one clinging and the other seeming distant. With awareness of our fears and how to take care of ourselves and each other, we will bring out the best in each other. Everyone knows how to speak and listen, right? Not so. The most difficult skills to learn are to speak self-responsibly about your own experience and to truly listen and understand the other person's experience even when you don't like it. To learn these skills enables love. I can help.

Relationships are hard! They can bring out the best in us...and also the worst. What's more, its easy to feel confused and unable to see what is happening clearly when things in your relationship are troubled. Relationships can be up & down, and often it is that one familiar pattern or issue that triggers everything. As you and your partner are so 'in it', it is pretty difficult to find your own way out of the same old behavior. I work with couples, providing an unbiased and neutral perspective, helping you gain greater understanding into what is happening and how you want things to change. Yes, relationships are hard, but also contain infinite potential for healing & renewal.

Communication is the key in any coupe's relationship. And communication is usually the reason why many couples fight. Are you having a difficult time communicating with your significant other? Do you feel like you are not being heard? Couples counseling may be of use in your relationship to not only help communication improve but also to ensure there are shared goals to work towards the next step in your relationship.

Many couples have difficulties communicating. There may have been an affair or there may be a loss of intimacy. I can teach you powerful ways to respectfully resolve issues, communicate and connect in a safe, nurturing way to restore caring and love. You can learn effective ways to bring healing and forgiveness back into your relationship. Since each couple is unique, I use a variety of approaches, such as, the 'Couples Dialogue' developed by Dr. Harville Hendrix, Emotionally Focused Therapy of Dr. Susan Johnson, research of Dr. John Gottman, among others. I also help premarital couples to avoid pitfalls in their relationship and prepare for a successful long-term relationship.

One of the most prevaling issues with one or both is to not feel "heard". Much emphasis has to be on the word "feelings". If one or the other has been abused in some way, they are very sensitive to "feelings". The word "being" is a key for stabilization of the relationship. I have done much research on the "Keys to Life" and one of the necessities is to trust. Listening and trusting are probably the glue that holds any relationship together and is foundational. A couple learning their primary function is not about themselves, but the common good of the family unit. After all, what will be your legacy? What will you be known for?

I provide couples counseling (including marriage counseling) to helping you explore current challenges in your relationship. Are you suffering in your relationship due to consistent conflict, an inability to effectively communicate, lack of intimacy, separation, and simply growing apart? Do you want to find more effective ways to relate to one another and acquire a new sense of intimacy and closeness? Consider couple's counseling to acquire a new awareness of how you can become more effective in your relationship. Give counseling a try; you are deserving of this. Give me a call for a free phone consult to discuss your concerns. 240.292.6127. Make it a good day - - be well. Laurieann

Working with couples is a dynamic process that requires the therapist to maintain a safe space where both people can feel heard and understood. I am a certified Imago therapist and use a dialogical process to increase the emotional intimacy between the two people. I have worked with straight, bi, gay and lesbian and transgendered couples, and many different ethnic groups---and find that the challenges are essentially the same---to create a bond of trust that allows for all parts of the two people to show up and be accepted in the relationship. I share helpful handouts that people can use when they are home, to be able to deal with conflict more skillfully.

I work with couples to help them create new and stronger avenues of communication--allowing them to find, once again, the joy each partner had in the other. Whether work has stressed your relationship, or children have created the gap, we can reimagine ways to find closer connections. Perhaps you feel as if you're roommates more than a couple. Or one of you has been tempted to stray--or has strayed--but you want to do the work to come back together. Therapy helps you find the new ways you need to communicate, leading to a stronger bond between you.

Committed and loving connections with a partner are probably the most challenging and potentially healing of all relationships in life. Deep fears of closeness tend to get in the way of realizing such potential, often without being consciously recognized as fears. I help partners in couples to find ways of being gentle and honest with each other and with themselves as they confront and overcome their fears.

Working with couples is my area of expertise and passion. I have seen relationships transform through the power of mutual understanding and increased sensitivity. Often couples become so entrenched in certain communication patterns that they can't even really see when and if their partner is trying to do something different. This is one way working with a good couples therapist can be so powerful - they can act as "translator" for partners, and dig through the years of pain and pattern to what's really in each other's minds and hearts. If both partners are willing, it's amazing what can happen; and even if only one person is willing, change is possible. I hold the hope until they can.