Couples Therapy
Do you and your partner feel like you’re just not synced up?
Does every attempt to solve conflict lead to more blaming and defensiveness?
Has a sense of roommate syndrome come over your relationship, as if you’re just ships passing in the night?
Is Your Relationship Or Marriage Not The Safe Haven it Used To Be?
Maybe the two of you can’t seem to communicate effectively or find a resolution. Perhaps every conversation turns into a fight and you feel like you’re walking on eggshells with each other. Whenever you try to make things better, your efforts fall flat and your partner just becomes more hostile.
On the other hand, maybe a sense of distance has crept into your relationship. Life changes like retirement or children moving out may have made you realize you’re not as connected as you once thought. As a result, you might be considering couples therapy.
You might find yourself asking questions like:
How did we get here?
Can we ever get our connection back?
What if I made a mistake and this isn’t my person?
Find Each Other Again
For The First Time, Perhaps You Just Don’t Feel Secure In Your Relationship
Deep down, you probably want nothing more than to feel loved even in your toughest moments together. You want to know that your partner has your back even when you can’t see eye to eye. All the fighting could make you worried that you’re not really compatible.
If this is how you feel, we encourage you to take heart. With the right support, it’s absolutely possible to restore your love and make your relationship a safe haven again. At Sacred Ground Psychotherapy, our counselors specialize in helping couples understand each other on a deeper level and communicate from a softer and more authentic place.
Every Couple Fights—Even The Marriage Masters
Just as nature goes through cycles of birth, death, and rebirth, all relationships go through cycles of connection, disconnection, and repair. Fighting is a natural part of every relationship. It’s a sign that it’s time to go deeper and try to grow as a couple. Think of it like building a muscle—a muscle must be broken down in order to grow, since the repair process allows the body to get stronger.
At the same time, knowing how to find growth in the midst of conflict isn’t easy. All too often, couples end up focusing on surface issues like finances, politics, or parenting disagreements.
But in order to solve relationship disconnection, you have to stop focusing on what you’re fighting about and pay more attention to how you fight. You need to look at the patterns that crop up in every argument—regardless of what the subject is.
Everyone Has Different Ways Of Signaling Love And Care To Their Partner
So much conflict in a relationship happens because our “signals” clash. One of us thinks, “Because I love you so much, we need to have this tough conversation,” while the other thinks, “Because I want to protect our relationship, we need to avoid this conversation.” In this way, we have different ways of signaling our love and protecting what matters most. We either push with the hope that talking will strengthen our bond, or retreat to protect us from further tension.
Both strategies are adaptive and make sense. Yet if we’ve never had someone point out how our sense of protection impacts the signals we want to send, it’s only natural that we keep experiencing blocked communication. Think of it like indicator lights on a dashboard. If no one ever told you what the lights mean, then of course you wouldn’t know if your car needs oil.
Relationships are the same way. Sometimes we simply need a wise and compassionate professional to help us make sense of all the funky signals that get scrambled in times of tension.
Therapy Can Help Couples Create A Roadmap For Repair
Many couples come to us with the goal of reducing conflict. We take it a step further, focusing on deescalating tension while building a closer, deeper, and more secure romantic bond so you experience results that last. When your bond is secure, everything else falls into place. You can communicate better and find solutions to problems regarding money, sex, parenting, etc.
At Sacred Ground Psychotherapy, our mission is to help you and your partner make sense of what’s gotten you stuck and provide a roadmap for repairing your connection. Our approach is very experiential—we’re not here to teach you, but to help you tune into your hearts, get in touch with your needs, and practice communicating more authentically. This way, the healing process can be felt instead of just learned.
As a Catholic Christian practice, we specialize in helping couples improve their emotional, physical, and spiritual intimacy, but are committed to creating a climate where all couples can feel safe and cared for, regardless of faith!
What To Expect In Couples Counseling Sessions
In the first session, we’ll meet with you and your partner together to get to know your story and goals before collaborating on a treatment plan. Next, we’ll have one-on-one sessions with each of you so we can make sure both partners feel heard, understood, and confident going forward. After that, if we feel like our services and approach are a good fit for your goals, we’ll resume meeting together for the remainder of sessions.
We use Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), which is considered a gold standard approach for couples counseling by the American Psychological Association. EFT seeks to help couples look beyond communication issues and get to the heart of what they really need in a relationship: to be seen, heard, understood, and loved. Rather than focus on what couples argue about, it focuses on how they disagree.
EFT can help you connect with the wisdom of your body when it's reacting to the pain of disconnection. We want to honor the reasons that your body goes into “fight, flight, or freeze” mode with your partner, and help you take responsibility for how that impacts your relationship.
As we get clarity on the reasons for your disconnection, we'll go deeper and focus on what has fueled the pain between the two of you. This way, your old wounds can heal at the deepest level, and both of you can experience meaningful change by communicating from a softer, more authentic place.
By drawing on the evidence-based wisdom of EFT, we’re confident that we can help you and your significant other approach each other in a spirit of gentleness and understanding. Counseling can empower you to become the most potent source of healing with one another, giving you the tools to tackle relationship problems without outside support.
You May Have Some Questions About Marriage And Couples Counseling…
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We do! It’s inherently traumatizing to feel the foundation of your relationship crack, but we use a proven process of injury repair to help couples get stronger in broken places. Like a broken bone, we believe relationships can heal and get stronger in the broken places.
We help couples work vulnerably and effectively to create meaningful change even in the wake of infidelity.
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At Sacred Ground Psychotherapy, we believe no one is the “bad guy” in couples therapy. The bad guy is the negative cycle that happens between you, and that’s something we can work on together. We want both of you to feel seen, heard, and appreciated.
You’re allowed to be human here and you’re allowed to be messy—we will accept you unconditionally and meet you exactly as you are.
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Every couple is different and not all wounds heal at the same rate. For those who simply want a relationship tune-up, therapy may conclude after a few months. But for those looking for deeper work, the healing process may take longer.
We are committed to working as efficiently as possible, and we will collaborate with you regarding the duration of treatment and our best recommendations for care.
You Can Fall In Love All Over Again
If you and your significant other want to solve communication issues and renew your loving bond, we encourage you to pursue couples counseling and book a session with us. We look forward to hearing from you!
The Couples Intensive Retreat
3-Months of Therapy in 3-Days.
Can’t afford to start slow? Ready to start feeling better in your marriage? Let us help you make big gains in a short amount of time.
