Great Couples Counseling in Buena Park, CA. Therapy to heal relationships.

Whether you are married, engaged, dating and/or living together, Couple's therapy can help you learn to communicate in a more loving and healthy way. Sometimes couples get lost the cycle of their continued arguments, and forget how to reach out to the other. If you as an individual or you and your partner would like to learn how to communicate more effectively, couple's therapy can help greatly. My office is located at 4405 Riverside Drive, 105 Burbank I work evenings until 9.

I have worked with hundred's of couples over the last 20 years. Each couple is unique in their own right which means there is no one way to "fix" a problem. Our deepest longings and hopes emerge in a couples relationship. Oftentimes we are working out unmet needs and hopes carried forward from our early family relationships to our present couple relationship. Problems become increasingly complex and difficult to overcome when we don't know what these issues are all about. Couples remain stuck in conflict not because of what they know, but what they don't know or can't recognize. The work in therapy is to help couples recognize unhealthy patterns of relating and introduce novelty.

Let me guess. One partner feels alone and like they don't matter and the other feels they are always being criticized and can't get anything right. The more one asks for the other to show up, the more the partner disappears physically and emotionally. You both bicker and fight and the idea of sitting and just hanging out seems elusive, if not impossible. Something like this? Often we crave connection but are blocked by the pain and the history that gets in the way. Small fights about little things become battles that highlight our struggle to have our basic relational needs met. I can help you get under the bickering to the parts crying out for connection- to an enriching relationship.

When two individuals desire to be together due to the mutual love they feel for one another and encounter difficulties within the relationship seeking therapy is vital. Each couple has specific relationship need and goals. Learning the partners love language, relationship goals and assisting them with communication skills can be crucial in providing longevity to the relationship.

Relationships are the stuff of life and wise persons will attend carefully to their intimate, committed relationship. Most couples are not aware of the sources of conflict and how these sources impact their relationships. Most couples do not understand how their coping habits, learned the child and teen years, will actually interfere with success in their love relationship. Couples all need to learn new and better ways to cope with relationships pain as their old coping habits will not work -- they will end up unintentionally hurting their partner.

I believe that good relationships are built on secure attachments, ones that are engaged and emotionally responsive to one another. In my experience working with couples, and research supports this idea as well, a combination of strategies that teach them to be more accepting of each other while at the same time working to change some of their assumptions and automatic behaviors are at the root of change. I see this in my private practice with partners attacking, often forgetting what brought them together in the first place; I guide them back into each other's arms, and back into a safety zone with a combination of attachment and communication techniques that have shown to be effective.

I have been assisting couples in their relationships as a professional, objective marriage counselor for 30 years. Couples counseling calls for specific techniques and abilities and I pride myself on being able to get to the core issues in a relationship and begin working to change those immediately. I incorporate many strategies to accomplish your goals which may include: new communiction tools, breaking old patterns, homework assignments--reading or exercises to practice, and role playing. Every couple is different, but many of the problems have similar root causes. We set goals together initially, and then effectively work together to reach those goals in simple and effective sessions

There are countless models of healthy romantic relationships, from monogamous to polyamorous, and unique variations between partners. The scripts for dating and longterm relationships of our parents’ generations may not be applicable to your relationship, and there is no formal education in how to be a good partner or how to identify unhealthy relationships. But there is psychological research that shows that effective communication, emotional openness, intimacy, and other factors contribute to healthy relationships. Creating these conditions are skills that can be learned. I practice brief humanistic and emotion-focused therapy (EFT) to help my LGBTQ and hetero clients learn these skills.

My work with couples is developmental and focuses on self-confrontation, differentiation, and collaboration. Individuals in the partnerships that I work with take responsibility for their own mental health and happiness and learn to grow themselves up in a way that brings goodness and intimacy to their relationship. I can help them overcome gridlock and sexual challenges to strengthen the relationship and reignite desire.