Great Couples Counseling in Newport Beach, CA. Therapy to heal relationships.

Couples come in all sorts of configurations, from Mommy/baby, to employer/employee, to parent/child/adoles. and of course husbands/partners/wives. Each of these couples are tremendously intimate and are often the very place we act out, feel grave disappointments and experiences some of our highest joys. This can be an optimum place of growth for both participants. It takes courage, honesty and a willingness to look inward and outward.

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.

Couples therapy combines techniques from the Gottman Method and Emotionally Focused Therapy. After gathering a comprehensive history about your relationship, we will specify goals and work to build strong emotional alliances. The goal is to help lead you to a deeper understanding of each other, and then move toward more effective problem solving and accountability for communicating your needs within the relationship.

I specialize in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), a a highly effective method for healing relationships. Research has shown that 70-75% of couples who participate in EFT become closer and more intimate in their relationship, and 90% show significant improvements. As a trained EFT therapist, I am more interested in exploring the patterns and cycles that you get stuck in when facing conflict. How do you handle conflict? Do you become angry and lash out with your words, or do you shut down and tune out (or leave). How does your partner respond to you during these times? It is the dance between you that I am interested in exploring. Once we identify the dance, then we can work at change.

Loving, successful relationships need to be carefully and skillfully nurtured in the following five areas: Emotional, Intellectual, Spiritual, Sexual, Financial. Couples who are ready to do ongoing work on their relationships are richly rewarded with a loving, meaningful and joyful life together. Committed relationships that have the possibility of morphing into long term relationships benefit greatly by being guided by the Gottman research on relationships as well as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). Premarital Counselling prepares a couple for a new stage in their relationship by identifying potential areas of conflict and strength and developing tools to create a strong foundation.

Without conflict, couples do not achieve intimacy. The challenge is helping you and your partner learn how to have healthy conflict that leads to intimacy, rather than destructive conflict that destroys the relationship. I specialize in working with affairs and broken trust, abgtneuro-diverse couples. I usually start with helping you learn ground rules for being able to have safe, constructive, healthy conflict to reduce and eliminate destructive relational patterns. I also use Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) to help you reconnect, learn healthy communication skills, rekindle the flame that you once had, and start talking to each other again. If you are willing to work, I am here for you

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.

What are the most common couples' issues? If you are thinking "communication, conflict, sex, money, child rearing" you are correct. However, most therapists will go after the symptom on each side of the couple fence thinking that the way to effective change is by getting each party to "work" on their respective "issue". Many times the parties don’t agree but comply. Imagine if you could align the unconscious brains of a couple and stop the "working on your issues" part that has become so popular in therapy settings? Contact kevin@kevinflemingphd.com to learn how! Or call 877-606-6161. DR. FLEMING'S NEW RELATIONSHIP/COUPLES INTENSIVES. www.kevinflemingphd.com/marriage-couples-retreats.php