Great Couples Counselling in White Rock, BC. Therapy to heal relationships.

Do you feel alone in your relationship? Are you tired of nagging? Do you freeze, shut down, or walk on eggshells? I help each partner feel secure in the relationship, and able to express their deepest longings, and hear each other. Together, I help couples shift away from negative interactions, and become fully engaged in a positive connection. I clarify what is going on beneath the surface in your relationship, and assist you in recognizing the problem interactions, and deeper emotional needs, so that we can team up to deal with it together. I mentor you to understand each other's experience, so you can take over managing your relationship yourselves in a caring, fulfilling way.

I work with couples using Gottman Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy and Attachment Therapy. I will help you identify your maladaptive patterns of behaviour and improve your communication skills. There is no shame in getting some coaching in how we connect with each other and how we can better meet each others needs. I use a strengths based approach to help you see the positives and remember why you fell in love.

Anyone who is in a relationship knows that they're difficult! I practiced couples therapy and taught couples therapy for several years before I learned Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). Now I know what I was missing! I've discovered that it's only through being in the emotion and understanding the attachment significance of what we experience that we can make the fundamental changes that transform our lives and our relationships. You will likely find that showing up in couples therapy means a lot to your partner. I will help you make sense of the rest. You only need to be willing to participate in the process and be honest about how you feel as we go. It's work but here are big rewards!

Relationships are a crucial component of human health and happiness, and my passion involves helping people develop better connections with others as well as with themselves. By offering a setting that is based on trust, empathy, and collaboration, counselling can provide you with a safe and supportive space to explore your thoughts and emotions while creating a deeper, more authentic understanding of who you are, what you need, and the dynamics that you are navigating. Whether you attend alone or with a partner, I believe that there can be great value in processing relationships from the past or present as well as exploring the relationship that you're maintaining with yourself.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is a model of couples counselling that has proven to repair broken relationships. Through EFT, couples gain the skills necessary to understand themselves and communicate their emotional needs which enhances intimacy and the relational bond. With EFT, I focus on creating a safe and secure environment for couples to explore their emotions and the underlying patterns that contribute to their relationship challenges. and fulfilling relationship, and my goal is to help my clients build the foundation necessary to achieve that.

Are you and your partner stuck in unsolvable arguments? Does one of you tend to ‘demand’ more while the other shuts down and withdraws? Are you feeling less connected and actually adding stress to each other’s lives instead of reducing it? While frustrating, these are perfectly normal patterns of partnership and there is hope. I would be glad to help you untangle the knots, learning to team up together instead of entering battles over who is right. In doing so, we will unpack past traumas and patterns of behaviour, learning to better communicate and to be safely vulnerable in a way that stands your relationship on solid ground.

We are proud to offer couples/relationship counselling as we all know that relationships can be both incredibly rewarding and tremendously difficult all at the same time. We believe that trust and safety create a solid foundation from which a relationship can grow. Through both the Gottman method and Emotionally-Focused Couples Therapy we are confident that we can support the growth of healthy, secure attachments characterized by healthy attunement and respect.

In an environment of safety and respect, it is my hope that each person will develop a greater self-awareness and a sincere willingness to change. Couples will learn to listen to and understand the feelings and needs of their partner, as well as to communicate their own more effectively. Couples will identify the repetitive negative patterns in their relationship that create distress and alienate one from the other. Each person also will explore negative thought and behaviour patterns within themselves, and relevant past issues that may be contributing to their difficulties. It is my hope that couples will discover that they do have the capability to build a healthy relationship.

I am passionate about this work and will invest deeply in helping both of you succeed based on your engagement in the process. My approach: -Focus on the positives as well as the negatives - Hear from each individual about the positives and the negatives in the relationship -Teaching new skills that can help the couple based on the problems that are coming up in the relationship - Going over what's resolvable and not resolvable in the relationship - Have exercises the couple can work on each week

Couples counseling provides a supportive space to strengthen your relationship, enhance communication, and resolve conflicts. My approach focuses on understanding each partner’s perspective, identifying patterns that may be causing tension, and fostering deeper emotional connection. Together, we work on building trust, improving intimacy, and developing tools to navigate challenges constructively. Clients benefit from a renewed sense of partnership, greater empathy for one another, and the skills to create a more harmonious and fulfilling relationship.

In couples counselling, I would use a combination of an EFT approach as well as the Gottman Method which validated extensively couples, and has been shown to be two of the most successful approaches to help manage couples problems. Using these evidence-based techniques, we would explore the attachment style of each partner, determine the patterns of behaviour between the two individuals and the negative cycle that they are in. We would evaluate cultural factors if there are any, and of course focus on the core issues that the couple presents with. As a marriage counsellor, I would also use EFT and Gottman techniques to identify keys interactions and cycles in the relationship.

It can be extremely difficult when we are experiencing issues in our closest relationships. Thankfully, a lot of these issues come down to communication skills that can be learned. When using active listening skills, you can begin to create a fuller understanding of your partner(s). We can also work on skills to express your own needs and desires in an effective way, using Non-Violent Communication tools. More often than not, we become frustrated when we don’t feel understood, but the reality is that we are not communicating properly, and our partners are not mind-readers, as much as we would like them to be (sometimes). Together we can create a more stable, loving foundation to grow from.