Couples & Family Therapy
When you and your family and/or partner are wanting to work through important skills like communication, validation, and empathy Couples & Family therapy is a good route to take.
Whatever your family/relationship dynamic may be, we are confident we can work with you and those you care about to help bring about safety and understanding.
Couples work
We like to use a number of resources when working with our Couples and Families. Some of those resources include the ones we highlight below.
We are aware there is no "one size fits all" tactic for therapy, so we pull from a number depending on the needs of the client.
EFT
Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) was pioneered by Sue Johnson (author of Hold Me Tight which we reviewed in the newsletter in September 2023) and Les Greenburg. Both developed a similar, yet unique approach to individual and couple's therapy around the importance of recognizing, regulating, and respecting others' emotions. Some basic steps of EFT are learning coping skills so you aren't overwhelmed or hijacked by emotions. Learning to recognize emotions and what they mean. Some emotions are "primary emotions," meaning they happen as a result of things we experience while "secondary emotions" are what you feel about your feelings. EFT helps people learn to distinguish between the two.
For example, you might feel angry that you're hurt, or guilty because you're sad. Understanding the difference between primary and secondary emotions helps you understand yourself and your relationships better. Once you can identity your own emotions and cope with them you'll be better able to identify others' emotions and empathize effectively which will help you overcome alfmost any obstacle in your relationship!
Gottman Therapy
The Gottman's are the world's foremost expert in relationship research and counseling. The picture shown is the result of their research about what makes relationships last. First there must be trust and commitment. If trust or commitment are absent because of infidelity, addiction, or abuse, couple's therapy will make the relationship worse.
If the couple is ready for couple's therapy, we work on expanding how well they know each other, the warm fuzzy feelings they have for one another, and then listening to, and understanding one another. This usually seems very counterintuitive to most people starting couple's therapy but jumping into conflict is usually too soon and unhelpful.
Pay attention to the Book of the Month part of the newsletter because we'll be going through some of Gottman's books that cover this in more detail!
To learn more we suggest reading:
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by Dr. John Gottman
and https://www.gottman.com/blog/what-is-the-sound-relationship-house/
