Great Couples Counseling in North Haledon, NJ. Therapy to heal relationships.

The quality of relationships is central to your well-being; however, relational stress is often difficult to manage. Your ability to develop meaningful and healthy connections can greatly improve when you learn strategies to improve your communication. With my therapeutic support, we will examine your interactions to determine what is causing or maintaining your interpersonal conflicts. I look forward to help you improve your relationship style and connections with others. My therapeutic strategies aim at gaining confidence, effectively communicate your needs in a warm and non-threading manner, and experience greater joy in your personal connections.

You fell in love with your partner, enjoyed the heady first days of the relationship, but staying in love is difficult. Your relationship isn't what it was or you want, you "can't seem to get it right", or even start. The "happily ever after" fairy tale has soured. You can reauthor your story - you know life is not a fairy tale, but the real tale is far more interesting. Therapy is not about being broken, sick or wrong. It's about growth, courage & moving forward. You can learn practical skills to create an authentic loving relationship which includes passion & intimacy as well as caring & communication. It is exciting & joyful to rediscover your feelings for each other.

Careers and children each place enormous stress on a couple’s ability to be together in an intimate and satisfying way. Every couple has different ways of dealing with the challenges, and counseling can provide the perspective and encouragement to re-create a shared vision for the future. For something as important as this, it is surprising how little training and preparation is provided; family therapy fills in the blanks, and resolves the confusion.

Relationships can be a most demanding part of life, especially when the best of intentions seem to deteriorate into bickering and useless arguments. I help couples understand and change the patterns and dynamics that keep them stuck. Areas addressed can be communication, conflict resolution, roles played, family interactions, and many other relevant stress-areas.

It can take us a lifetime to learn to accept the person we have chosen to live with, but it could also take us the same time to try to change that person and not be successful. Couples Therapy can help us understand that even though we all have the potential to change, we cannot change the other. We can learn how to accept the other person, live together or decide not to, and explore what are our own contributions to the dilemmas that we present.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples focuses on strengthening the emotional bond between partners. Through structured sessions, we explore underlying patterns and attachment needs driving relationship dynamics. Using interventions aimed at fostering empathy and understanding, we facilitate open communication and emotional expression. Couples learn to recognize and address negative interaction cycles, replacing them with healthier patterns of connection and responsiveness. EFT emphasizes creating a secure attachment bond, fostering feelings of safety and trust within the relationship. By deepening emotional intimacy and building a stronger connection, couples experience wellness.

I work with many couples in my practice. I illustrate the negative cycles they get into, which is very important in calming volatile interactions, and understanding how each person triggers the other, which keeps their negative cycles in motion. We explore family histories and the messages, and coping skills they learned. I help couples to understand the emotions under their anger and frustration, and to begin to speak to their partner from this softer place. It is a process which can shift negative patterns, and create closeness. Whether there has been an affair, communication issues, a breach of trust, sexual intimacy issues, or something else, there can be a path back to each other.

It's important that you know that I don't take sides or engage in blaming either partner. I understand that you are in my office because you want help. I get to know the couple as individuals and as a couple. So in addition to meeting together, I would meet individually with both partners. We would come up with a treatment plan, including frequency of meeting and schedule, treatment goals, and what each person wants from the therapy. We might focus on identifying feelings, changing toxic communication patterns, and opening up communication.

Audrey believes strongly that good couple's therapy does not aim to fix the relationship, but rather uses the relationship as a opportunity to develop individual insight and personal growth for both members of the relationship. Through this insight, you will develop behavioral changes that help to optimize your joint relationship experience. I use communication exercises, insight through inherited family wounds, and light challenging techniques to help couples work better together.

Sometimes members of a couple get stuck in their old relational patterns, the ways they have always related to others. As years pass by, and romance or sexual experiences diminish or other life events happen, the old patterns become more evident leading to gaps in communication, dissatisfaction, and lack of excitement. As a therapist, I will help you to communicate more effectively with your partner, in ways that acknowledge your personal needs and the needs of the other. I will help you find balance between conflicting needs: the needs of the individual and the needs of a couple. I work with straight couples and GLBT couples.

In session, our couples learn to build a strong marriage and healthy relationship through improved communication, conflict resolution, managing expectation, reconnect and more. We work with couples living together or long distance. We guide them along the way implementing various methods to help them develop new attitudes towards life’s most complex matters. 

As a certified Imago Relationship Therapist, I help partners feel more connected. I teach couples how to communicate so that partners understand each other, feel safe and don't take their partner's behavior personally. Once partner realize they are on the same team they can start to resolve their conflicts, rebuild trust, strengthen their relationship and bring back the passion.

It can be so easy to fall into patterns and, over time, find that you keep having the same issues or arguments within your relationship or marriage. That's where couples counseling can help. Talking out issues and problems in a judgement-free space with a neutral third party invested in your progress and growth can help you and your relationship move forward. My goal as couples therapist is to listen to you and give you the tools and techniques to help get your relationship back on track. When you're ready to stop having the same conversations and to move forward in your relationship or marriage, let's talk.

The word couples suggests a sense of togetherness, meaning two people, who want to be together, get together for the purpose of experiencing something good, something meaningful, or something positive. However, coming together can be a source of pain if couples loose sight of their main reason for coming together and not resolving their conflicts. Quite often, one of the most difficult things for couples to do is to learn to communicate effectively with each other. Couples usually feel stuck and unable to express their needs. If you truly care about your relationship with each other, my intent is to help you make your connection with each other stronger.