01/23/2020
How Can Couples Counseling Help Me?
- Dealing with emotional disconnection and/or recurring unresolved conflict?
Anger, aggression, withdrawing, numbing, or staying busy can hide the pain driving your conflict. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), can identify where misunderstandings are happening and bring to the surface relational fears and longings that fuel your escalating or even stonewalling reactivity to each other. As a systems-trained therapist, I will not take sides, but will protect your sessions by focusing on the internal and relational processes that get triggered between you.
- Working through an affair?
When the discovery of an affair brings a couple to counseling, initial sessions may focus on damage control and stabilization. Therapy can then provide the structure and safe space needed to find the meaning in what happened and move you toward making sound decisions about your future.
- Contemplating divorce or separation?
Before making a significant life-impacting decision, take some time to understand and consider your options. If partners have mixed agendas about whether to end their relationship or try to save it, Discernment Counseling provides an intentional “pause” (1-5 sessions) to
clarify how you both arrived at your current state and determine with clarity whether to 1) maintain the status quo, 2) proceed with separation or divorce, or 3) engage in intentional therapeutic work and re-examine in 6 months.
- What if one partner doesn’t want to come to therapy?
In many circumstances, only one partner desires therapy. That is ok! Don’t underestimate the power you have to change your relationship(s) for the better. Like any “dance,” if you get healthier and begin to change your “footwork,” others around you may likely change theirs as well.
The following contexts often surround relationship distress. Thorough assessment and appropriate intervention can support a healthier outcome.
• Life transitions, stage of life issues, grief and loss
• Blending stepfamilies
• Parenting challenges
• Living with an addicted partner
• Living with mental illness/chronic illness
Hello, my name is Laura. I am a marriage and family therapist with experience in helping individuals and couples walk through challenging stages of life. As a wife of 23+ years and mother of four children, I understand the ups and downs of relationships; as a therapist I can help support you through...
