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My Approach
Approach to Marriage Counseling
Few things in life test us and force us to grow like relationships do. Intimate relationships have a way of triggering some of our deepest pain, frustration, disappointment, and shame; often provoking the need to control, withdraw, prove, protect, or assert, which inevitably leads to conflict. I don’t consider conflict in a relationship a problem, per se. In fact, I expect it. Your partner is a different person from you and has different preferences, needs, and emotional triggers. The important key is in learning how to deal with conflict in a healthy way to ensure a successful and satisfying union.
My approach is to help you understand each other at a much deeper level and apply new tools that will help you communicate in ways that make conflict much easier to navigate when it arises. I don’t rely on a single therapeutic intervention to do this (couples are too complex!). Instead, I draw conceptually from the four different therapies described below, with a strong emphasis on Emotion Focused Therapy.
EFT was first developed as an individual therapy by Les Greenberg, and was later expanded for couple work by Les and his student, Sue Johnson. EFT differs from other therapies that are offered, in that it uses emotions as a healing source. EFT for couples encourages you and your partner to examine how your communication styles and attachment experiences present themselves in your interactions, and helps you to transform your relationship into one that is safe and secure so that both you and your partner can can get your needs met, while often expanding your sense of self identity.
Change is accomplished by identifying the persistent negative patterns that are plaguing your relationship, and then encouraging each of you to access and express your underlying primary emotions and attachment needs. For example, many people may experience anger or withdrawal but have difficulty getting in touch with and sharing their underlying feelings of vulnerability, sadness, fear, abandonment, and/or sense of overwhelm. These underlying emotions drive our old negative patterns, and bringing them to the surface helps us to understand ourselves and our partners in a new way that engenders closeness and a healthier way of interacting.
EFT is backed by a substantial body of empirical research of its effectiveness: 70-75% of the couples move from distress to recovery, and approximately 90% show significant, long-term improvements.
The Gottman Method was developed in the 1980s by John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman. It is a form of couple therapy that strives to assist you and your partner in achieving a deeper sense of empathy, awareness, connectedness, and understanding within your relationship, which ultimately leads to greater intimacy and interpersonal growth.
The method uses techniques that increase affection, closeness, and respect, and teaches you and your partner to discuss problems calmly. This is a method of couple therapy that allows you to state your needs, and it stresses conflict management rather than conflict resolution. You and your partner learn to speak honestly about your dreams and beliefs, and trust and commitment to a lifelong relationship are reinforced.
IFS was developed by Richard Schwartz originally as a form of individual psychotherapy and was later applied to work with couples and families. In this work, you learn to heal trauma and find balance by identifying your emotional triggers and then getting to know the different parts of yourself that respond to those triggers. The parts that jump in and take over in response to emotionally threatening stimuli are all considered ‘good’ parts, in that they are only trying to protect you from emotional distress. These parts may include, for example, a people-pleasing part that protects you from feeling rejected, a perfectionistic part that protects you from your fear that you may not have value, an addicted part that rescues you from dealing with emotional pain, etc. However, sometimes these parts take up too much space in your life – they become too reactive and too protective and keep you from living your true, authentic life.
In doing IFS therapy, you begin to acknowledge that there are some parts of yourself that are over-actively protecting you and causing you to behave in ways that are pulling you away from your real self and desires. This therapy is a non-pathologizing approach to helping you develop understanding and compassion for yourself so that you can take responsibility for your reactions and emotions. Applied to couple work, it allows you and your partner to better understand each another and to see the negative patterns that play out in your relationship in a new light. Overall, it allows you to be able to transform your inner relationship with extreme parts of yourself and transform your outer relationships with people around you.
Imago was developed by Harville Hendrix and Helen Lakelly Hunt. It capitalizes on the fascinating phenomena wherein we unconsciously choose partners who reflect back the very things that we must work on ourselves. As we grow up, the significant people in our lives imprint upon us an image of what it is to love and be loved (both the positive and the negative). From this image of familiar love, we learn very quickly how we need to act and be in order to get love or approval and to feel safe. We develop what are called survival patterns of love. For example, if you had a critical parent, your survival pattern might include becoming a perfectionist to escape criticism from your partner, or to become controlling yourself about how things need to be done and how people need to act. Furthermore, we tend to be attracted to people who are a combination of the good and the bad of our caregivers (from the critical parent example, you are likely to find yourself in a relationship with someone who is also somewhat critical). Why would we do this? Because it feels familiar – there is a comfort in it, even at the unconscious level.
No matter how good or bad our caregivers were, all of us have some needs that were unmet. Like a moth to the flame, we are drawn to repeat past experiences again and again in search of a different outcome. Unconsciously we search for a partner who can give us what our caretakers failed to provide in the past so that we can heal old wounds. You are likely to find a partner who will eventually seem incapable of giving you what you most need (and vice versa), who had a trait that you were once attracted to and now you can’t stand, and who seems unreasonable in that they seem to want to change you or because they get upset about things that you think are insignificant. Imago Relationship Therapy helps to expose unconscious needs and motives so that you can better understand why both you and your partner are so emotionally triggered by certain things, and so that you can learn how to heal and appreciate one another.
When one partner is unwilling to go to therapy, or requires more one-on-one attention, Individual counseling is recommended. If you have an individual counselor already, it is usually not a good idea to also use him/her as your couples counselor (developed biases may interfere with progress). I offer individual counseling for adults with a focus in the following areas: anxiety (including social anxiety), depression, lack of motivation, insecure attachment style, loneliness, trauma/PTSD (including cPTSD), low self esteem, life transitions, grief/loss, chronic illness, family of origin issues, ADD, and relationship crisis (for when one partner is disengaged from the relationship). To learn more about me and my services, please click to my more comprehensive websites: https://www.portlandcounselingandtherapy.com/ and https://www.couplescounselorportland.com/