Couples Therapy
I offer my skills in Emotion Focused and Gottman Method couple therapy to couples that are experiencing a crisis in their relationship or functioning as a couple, or are wishing to work on chronic couple relationship issues. These therapies can be applied to different kinds of problems and populations, such as families, the parents of chronically ill children, depressed women and couples dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. The therapies are two of the best delineated and empirically validated interventions in the field of couple therapy, and are capable of having an impact on marital adjustment after 10-12 sessions. As the essential nature of marital distress is about being overwhelmed with negative emotion and trapped in constricting interactions - Emotion Focussed Therapy and Gottman Method focuses on reshaping a distressed couples structured, repetitive interaction patterns and fostering the development of a secure bond between the couple. some video links to Emotion Focused Couples Therapy and Gottman Method Couples Therapy are below.
The key assumptions of the EFT are:
The Gottman Method aims to help partners become better friends, learn to manage conflict, and create ways to support each other’s hopes for the future. Drs. John and Julie Gottman have shown how couples can accomplish this by paying attention to what they call the Sound Relationship House, or the nine components of healthy relationships through:
It is best for both members of the couple to attend to allow for the couple relationship to be the focus, as couple relationships are best improved with both members in attendance rather than individual therapy. Assessment will ensure that the therapy is relevant to your unique life experiences and couple relationship.
Many people will feel some anxiety about coming to therapy, as they don’t know what to expect or predict that they will be blamed for difficulties. This is a normal concern and I hope to help you feel comfortable quickly as we work towards understanding, personal responsibility and solutions. While each session will be centered on the couple relationship, individual needs will also be privileged.
It is important that all three of us have the same understanding about what we are doing. My role is to help each of you understand yourself and your partner, to see more clearly what each of you are doing, to help them make an honest evaluation of how well present patterns are working, and to help and encourage the changes that each our figure figure out are necessary.
Couple problems are usually caused by the fact that the needs of one or both partners aren’t being met adequately. Lots of factors can block the meeting of important needs; when they do, problems in relationships develop. I will be assisting each of you to understand your partner’s needs better and to be more aware of your own needs so that you can express them more clearly to your partner. I will also support you to think more systemically so that each of you can understand more fully the reasons behind, and take appropriate responsibility for the creation and continuance of any negative circular interactions.
It is important that I remain balanced so that you experience the therapy as fair. I cannot help if you feel I am assigning blame to either of you. It’s been my experience that most partners in a relationship believe that the other person is causing the difficulties, and many of their struggles involve blaming each other. Usually it isn’t one person or the other who’s at fault. Both partners contribute, often unwittingly, to the difficulties, and my task is to assist each of you in seeing the part you play in them. In order to do this:
· I work hard to understand both of your perspectives – both of you are key to making effective change
· I aim to be very balanced in my approach, meaning that I will assume that both of you have some responsibility for the problems and solutions, and that each of your contributions to the problems will be addressed.
· I refrain from taking sides or agreeing with one perspective over another.
· I rely upon you to let me know if you feel unfairly sided against or judged by me, as that is not my intent and I want to talk about it right away when you feel it happening, otherwise you are likely to resent me and I might not be aware of it.
The link below takes you to a YouTube video by Susan Johnson, author of Love Sense and developer of Emotion Focused Couples Therapy describes Emotion Focused Couples Therapy.
Regardless of what we discuss in our time together, how you use the information gained from that time is significant. You can accelerate your progress by working between sessions. That means carrying out tasks you’ve agreed to, applying what we talk about in your daily life, making mental notes or actually writing down your thoughts, feelings and responses that related to your problems, taking time out to reflect on events, your experience of them and patterns surrounding them.
"To know where the other person makes a mistake is if little value. It only becomes interesting when you know where you make the mistake, for then you can do something about it" Carl Yung
The key assumptions of the EFT are:
- Emotion is primary - guiding and giving meaning to perception, motivates and cues behaviour, and when expressed, communicates to thers. it is a powerful link between intrapsychic and social realities.
- the needs and desires of partners are essentially healthy and adaptive. it is the way such needs are enacted in a context of perceived insecurity that creates problems.
- problems are maintained by the way interactions are organised and by the dominant emotional experience of each partner in the relationship. Emotion and interaction form a reciprocally determining feedback loop.
- change occurs not through insight, catharsis, or negotiation but through new emotional experience in the context of reparative interactions - compelling emotional experiences that disconfirm past fears and biases.
- In couple therapy the client is the relationship between partners.
The Gottman Method aims to help partners become better friends, learn to manage conflict, and create ways to support each other’s hopes for the future. Drs. John and Julie Gottman have shown how couples can accomplish this by paying attention to what they call the Sound Relationship House, or the nine components of healthy relationships through:
- Increasing respect, affection, and closeness
- Breaking through and resolving conflict when they feel stuck
- Generating greater understanding between partners
- Keeping conflict discussions calm
It is best for both members of the couple to attend to allow for the couple relationship to be the focus, as couple relationships are best improved with both members in attendance rather than individual therapy. Assessment will ensure that the therapy is relevant to your unique life experiences and couple relationship.
Many people will feel some anxiety about coming to therapy, as they don’t know what to expect or predict that they will be blamed for difficulties. This is a normal concern and I hope to help you feel comfortable quickly as we work towards understanding, personal responsibility and solutions. While each session will be centered on the couple relationship, individual needs will also be privileged.
It is important that all three of us have the same understanding about what we are doing. My role is to help each of you understand yourself and your partner, to see more clearly what each of you are doing, to help them make an honest evaluation of how well present patterns are working, and to help and encourage the changes that each our figure figure out are necessary.
Couple problems are usually caused by the fact that the needs of one or both partners aren’t being met adequately. Lots of factors can block the meeting of important needs; when they do, problems in relationships develop. I will be assisting each of you to understand your partner’s needs better and to be more aware of your own needs so that you can express them more clearly to your partner. I will also support you to think more systemically so that each of you can understand more fully the reasons behind, and take appropriate responsibility for the creation and continuance of any negative circular interactions.
It is important that I remain balanced so that you experience the therapy as fair. I cannot help if you feel I am assigning blame to either of you. It’s been my experience that most partners in a relationship believe that the other person is causing the difficulties, and many of their struggles involve blaming each other. Usually it isn’t one person or the other who’s at fault. Both partners contribute, often unwittingly, to the difficulties, and my task is to assist each of you in seeing the part you play in them. In order to do this:
· I work hard to understand both of your perspectives – both of you are key to making effective change
· I aim to be very balanced in my approach, meaning that I will assume that both of you have some responsibility for the problems and solutions, and that each of your contributions to the problems will be addressed.
· I refrain from taking sides or agreeing with one perspective over another.
· I rely upon you to let me know if you feel unfairly sided against or judged by me, as that is not my intent and I want to talk about it right away when you feel it happening, otherwise you are likely to resent me and I might not be aware of it.
The link below takes you to a YouTube video by Susan Johnson, author of Love Sense and developer of Emotion Focused Couples Therapy describes Emotion Focused Couples Therapy.
Regardless of what we discuss in our time together, how you use the information gained from that time is significant. You can accelerate your progress by working between sessions. That means carrying out tasks you’ve agreed to, applying what we talk about in your daily life, making mental notes or actually writing down your thoughts, feelings and responses that related to your problems, taking time out to reflect on events, your experience of them and patterns surrounding them.
"To know where the other person makes a mistake is if little value. It only becomes interesting when you know where you make the mistake, for then you can do something about it" Carl Yung
| when_does_emotion_go_wrong.pdf |
| new_emotions.pdf |
| what_is_emotion.pdf |
| emotions_in_therapy.pdf |
