Couples therapy, Marriage Counseling, Pre-Marital Counseling
Help for couples in all ages and stages of their relationship
Its not just you. Every couple struggles. A couples counselor can help.
Are you experiencing anxiety or despair about your relationship. You are not alone. The demands of career, children, and aging parents can leave one or both partners feeling neglected. Past hurts, infidelity, abuse, or trauma, including events predating the relationship, can leave us feeling emotionally unavailable, fearful of intimacy, jealous, and preoccupied. There may be active and recurring conflict or strained and distant connection with a lack of vitality and joy. One or both you may be experiencing a deep and painful feeling of emotional aloneness in the relationship.
Couples counseling with a different approach focusing on the felt experience of love
My approach as a couples therapist is distinct in that rather than focusing on what is wrong in the relationship, we uncover the felt experience of love that has become buried over time. What did you fall in love with? What have you accomplished together that you are proud of? This explicit attention on the experience of love between you and your partner from the get-go creates a safe container for the work to follow.
Another unique feature of my approach is that you and your partner will speak directly to one another from the first session: what you each fell in love with, long to have, give to, and be received by the other. As your couples therapist, I serve as a bridge and translator, actively supporting, catalyzing, and scaffolding the conversation. In time, you and your partner will feel increasingly capable of doing this on your own.
An invitation for your relationship
Couples therapy is an invitation for your relationship, first in session and then at home, to become the vehicle for a natural and adaptive process that generates “earned security” in both of you. Every day I am inspired by the transformations I witness and, when there are children, by the profound benefits they will receive from the secure base of their parents' relationship.
If I could be helpful to you and your relationship, consider giving me a call at 202-256-4357.
This drive to emotionally attach is wired into our genes and our bodies. It is as basic to life, health, and happiness as the drives for food, shelter, or sex.. Sue Johnson, Psychologist, Founder of EFT-C
