Great Couples Counselling in Toronto, ON. Therapy to heal relationships.

Being part of a couple comes with its challenges. The stress of everyday life can result in conflict that seems unsolvable. Couples counselling can help partners interact better, work through problems together and move past them. Collaboratively we will work on your therapy goals as a couple. Using emotionally focused therapy (EFT), we will look at skills and techniques of changing patterns of communication, interaction, and emotional connection.

There’s perhaps no human endeavor that’s more challenging that marriage or it’s equivalent. Every piece of unfinished business from our first family comes in, often to be focused on our partner. Still blaming them? When a couple can learn to take responsibility for their own stuff and be partners in each other’s healing there is no more powerful bonding that I’ve ever seen. No greater flowering of ourselves and perhaps no greater happiness in human relationships. Come and explore together.

You can have an even better relationship! I work with you to identify what your issues are. We learn what your communication issues are, what is working and what is not in your relationship and implement practical action plans to improve this. Further, we identify your negative patterns of relating to each other and how this is a habit that hurts the relationship, and we learn how to get out of that pattern, shift behaviors, and relate in the most respectful, loving, kind manner which ultimately often improves your sex life, your happiness, and your fulfillment.

Loving, successful relationships need to be carefully and skillfully nurtured in the following five areas: Emotional, Intellectual, Spiritual, Sexual, Financial. Couples who are ready to do ongoing work on their relationships are richly rewarded with a loving, meaningful and joyful life together. Committed relationships that have the possibility of morphing into long term relationships benefit greatly by being guided by the Gottman research on relationships as well as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT).

Healthy relationships take commitment & work. I help couples increase emotional intimacy & connection. I help them stop unhelpful ways of interacting, achieve resolution to their unresolved conflicts, & take responsibility for their negative contributions to patterns. Couple relationships require re-committing ourselves to each other repeatedly throughout the length of our relationship. I will help you to learn to "turn towards" one another. I will also help you to eliminate the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a phrase coined by couple researches John and Julie Gottman. Lastly, all couple relationships include pursuer-distancer patterns. I will help you identify these and work to stop them.

I use 9 steps of Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) to help couples identify their negative interaction cycle and each partner's role in that cycle. Steps 1-4 entails empowering the couples to access unacknowledged emotions underlying the interactional positions and to reframe the challenges in terms of underlying feelings and attachment needs. Steps 5-7 entails supporting and mediating couples to change interactional positions and creating new bonding experiences. Steps 8-9 entails encouraging the couples to integrate new solutions to old relational problems.

Are you unhappy in your relationship? Would you like to learn how to treasure each other again? There are many ways to improve things between you and restore caring, IF you are both committed to the outcome. I believe in the work of Harville Hendrix and also in the value of agreeing to disagree sometimes, and to work around it. Forgiveness is a gift to ourselves as well as to our loved ones. Let's get started -- the sooner the better for the health of your relationship.

Couples counselling focusses on enhancing your relationship with your partner. You may do this type of therapy with, or without, your partner. Benefits to your relationship still can come from attending couples sessions on your own, such as, improving communication skills, developing assertiveness, overcoming resentments, improving intimacy, learning new ways to deal with your partner. When attending with your partner: * Learning how each of you are in relationships (early influences, patterns, self-defeating styles) * Increasing self-expression * Learning constructive ways to argue and fight * Better understanding of the each other (who you are really dealing with)

In the downtown Toronto area, people come to see me for help with marital and couples-related conflicts. I am very comfortable helping couples who are in straight, gay, or lesbian relationships. Conflicts often come up between partners in relation to difficulties with intimacy, conflicts surrounding extended family members, and disagreements around family goals and priorities.

My specialized practice is exclusive to couples. I use Emotionally Focused Therapy, the gold-standard of evidence based treatment for couples. When you invest in couples therapy, my guess is that you want to know your therapist is experienced and can fully focus on your journey together. All of my energy, time, and continued training is focused on supporting people in their relationships. I not only believe in this approach to therapy, but I also live it in my daily life and relationships. EFT truly gets the heart of our adult attachment needs, and helps us to chart a path forward for a preferred future.

I offer couples the opportunity to explore the root causes of their relationship concerns within a safe, supportive environment. As an objective third party, I am able to facilitate enhanced communication between the couple to help them develop greater objectivity, learn to hear and meet one another’s needs more effectively, and overcome automatic defenses that may be hindering their connection to strengthen and restore their partnership.

Satisfying relationships require effective communication, respect, mutuality, and consideration. Couples need to be responsive to the needs of the relationship and responsive to the needs of each individual within the relationship. Skills are not taugh in life and often need to be learned as we go. These relational skills need to be learned and are learned best in relationships. Some people are fortunate enough to learn some of these skills in their families of origin, the rest of us learn as we go, so to speak. A relationship therapist can be a real asset in helping to acquire these important skills. In addition to relationship skills we may also need help understanding our behaviours.

When a couple is in trouble, the act of seeking out a counsellor has to be motivated by the desire to stay together through hard work. Therapy is not for those who need it but for those who want it. This is even more true when it comes to working with couples. The journey is one of finding once more what brought them together in the first place. We work with forgiveness and building trust. We find ways for the couple to once again feel a sense of warmth and compassion as we break down the walls of resentment. We look at what is triggering the couple to fight. We go through the anatomy of a common and repetitive fight. i also teach the couple some body centered techniques.

All relationships hit rough patches from time to time. However couples who have the skills to identify and talk in a mature and calm manner are able to manage these rough patches before they become mighty marriage mountains to scale. When couples struggle to communicate, be active and present participants in their relationship, take responsibility for their part of the problem and the solution we end up with a breakdown of the relationship. It is possible to learn the skills that will improve your relationship. Working on improving communication skills, conflict resolutions and negotiating skills, stress and self management skills and much more will help grow your relationship.

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

I help clients understand the negative interactional cycles that they find themselves in. After and during this movement towards understanding, we get at the underlying emotions and attachment needs that are so critical to having a safe-haven relationship with one's partner. The goal is to be safe, secure, understood and compassionately held in a love relationship.

I help couples obtain what they want out of their relationship. If a relationship was ever good, it can be good again. Experience the power of couples counselling and its ability to repair relationships. Couples Counseling does not require years in therapy in order to be effective. About 80% of the couples find counselling to be successful. Try couples counselling before quitting on your relationship, it makes a big difference.

In working with couples, I use Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. This approach looks at the cycle or emotional dance that occurs within a couple relationship and it seeks to understand how one partner's emotions fuel their behaviors or coping mechanisms, which impact the other partners emotions and so on. Often couples get stuck in an emotional dance of disconnection which becomes polarizing as they each continue to push the other away. Couples often end up in my office once the disconnection has resulted in an affair which has been caught or some other attachment injury. Hope is found once the dance is understood. This initial deescalation can happen in as little as 1-2 sessions.

One of the biggest decisions we make in life is choosing our partner. And then the real work begins. Divorce rates speak to how difficult sustaining a healthy marriage can be. Evidence-based studies have shown essential elements to a healthy and nourishing relationship. Couples counselling focuses on a variety of these areas including, communication, conflict management/resolution, and connection. Presenting issues include communication, conflict, infidelity, parenting issues, separation and divorce.

Are you yearning for deeper connection and intimacy in your romantic relationship? Has your relationship or sexual intimacy become a minefield of tension and disconnection? Life is stressful, busy and tied to the non-stop online world. I can help you untangle from all the stress, distraction and indifference. I will help you get back on track. I offer a safe place to reflect on your unmet needs and dreams for your relationship. I will help you express yourself in a way that your partner can hear and build a deep connection based on mutual understanding and respect.