Great Couples Counseling in Franklin, TN. Therapy to heal relationships.

I use a combination of Gottman's work, Dr. Sue Johnson's Emotional Focused Therapy as well as Attachment Theory to guide my work with couples. Every couple is different and each individual within the couple-ship may gravitate more towards one type of technique over another. While working together I try to learn your "language" as a couple, and then I help you start speaking to each other in a new "love language" that you each can understand better. I work to help couples find their strengths, weaknesses, listen in a new way, understand each other's history and viewpoints, and come to a place of new respect, care, concern and communication for and with the other.

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- The opening line of Leo Tolstoy's classic novel "Anna Karenina" There are consistent guiding principles found in healthy & happy couples. How they communicate; how they negotiate differences; how they handle stress; how they seek to get their emotional needs met AND how they respond to unmet needs. Every couple must engage those issues. Couples counseling that is practical & solution-focused can equip couples to resolve impasses and restore closeness. When you get right down to it, being close and enjoying closeness is what we all want. The good news is that it's within reach and not too much to ask for.

Brian approaches hurting relationships with a hope that is based on a knowledge of the ways to intervene with couples that have been found to be most effective. Beyond mere behavioral training and communication techniques, he uses the principles of Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples to go deeper into the core of clients' hurts, fears, desires, and hopes. Famed marriage researcher, Dr. John Gottman, has found that most couples start to struggle in significant ways 6 years prior to seeing a professional for help. Unfortunately, much division can happen in those years. Don't wait until it's too late to reach out for a helping hand.

Fact - Most problems in a relationship are never solved. What we find is that what happy couples do is focus on the problems they can solve together! Fact - There is nothing in the research that suggests couples who fight are doomed. What we do find is that happy couples have learned how to argue properly and make up quickly! I work with all kinds of couples. Some are considering marriage. Some are completely happy and just want to improve on a few things. Others are afraid their relationships are doomed to fail and don't know what else to do. Whatever your situation, I can give you the tools you need for a happy, healthy relationship.

Couples are together in hope of enriching their lives by having a primary loving relationship. My years of experience working with couples have taught me that happiness in a relationship is less about "finding the right person", and more about developing the art of love through each partner becoming more attentive to the needs of the other, more accepting of who the other is, more appreciative of what they do, more affectionate in the way the other longs for, and more allowing of the other's personal growth and freedom within the context of a committed relationship. These are the Five "A's" of relationships. (thanks, David Richo!)