Available Services
Psychotherapy
At our initial meeting, we will discuss the current demands that you are facing at home and at work. After sharing your ability to work on these issues outside of the session, I will suggest a solution-focused plan that will bring about the changes you and your partner would like to see in your life.
Pre-Marital Counseling
Pre-marital counseling offers you and your partner an opportunity to talk through sensitive issues, set
realistic goals, develop conflict resolution skills and improve your relationship before you get married.
Many people enter into marriage believing that all of their emotional, social, intellectual, and intimacy
needs will automatically be met through their marriage.
Pre-marital counseling is offered over 12 weeks and covers such topics as:
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Beliefs and values*
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Roles in marriage
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Communication
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Decision-making
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Dealing with anger
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Family relationships
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Finances
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Affection and sex
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Children and Parenting
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Social life and time spent together
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Managing online involvement
* Beliefs and values can include deeper or more extensive discussions of faith based practices for couples and families, if this is desired.
Relationship Counseling
Whether you are in a new relationship or a long-established one, attempts at intimacy and closeness can become stuck in failed communication and behavioral patterns. Individuals will tell me that it feels like the "same argument over and over again." Schema Therapy will help you identify what is causing the block and then help you resolve it. We can lose our ability to value others or lose the feeling that others are truly valuing us.
We may even be drawn to establishing emotional or physical intimacy outside of our primary relationship. When infidelity has been part of your past (either your own or your partner's), finding your way emotionally and physically back into the relationship can be painful, but not impossible. We can get caught in a style of responding to one another that may be hurtful, and our relationships can lose their meaning and luster. Maintaining a position of defensiveness, sensitivity, needing to be right, or assigning blame will not help the relationship.
Learning new ways of communication, resolving problems, and caring for our partner is not always easy. With new tools we can learn how to more effectively care for ourselves, as well as our partner, as we work out needs, desires, and differences in opinion. One way to move to that place of caring is to learn how to really pay attention to shifts in how we think and feel while we are with our partner, and, more importantly, to pay attention to how our partner is responding to us.
It can be challenging to get started in relationship counseling. It is difficult and sometimes awkward to identify or talk openly about what has led to your experience of increased distance and avoidance. There are a number of theoretical approaches that have been helpful in guiding individuals to a place that is warm, nurturing, supportive, and intimate. I have found that Schema Therapy has been the best fit for me and my clients.