Great Couples Counselling in Balgonie, SK. Therapy to heal relationships.

Relationships take work. Counseling is offered to acknowledge and support individuals working toward increased understanding, resolving issues and moving forward to strengthen the relationship. Personal strengths and contributions of each person is considered, while exploring the shared experience in a partnership. This provides an opportunity to support partners working to increase understanding, improve communication and resolve conflicts while strengthening the relationship.

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.

I am passionate about couples engaging, thriving and rediscovering each other. I offer an emotionally focused approach that helps couples to see the underlying reasons that their arguments end in silence, hurt and lonliness. I offer proven solutions helping couples remember what it means to value each other, communicate effectively and connect on a deeper level.

Couples therapy, particularly utilizing Gottman Method principles, offers profound benefits for relationships. Drawing on research-backed strategies, therapy helps couples deepen understanding, strengthen communication, and restore emotional intimacy. Partners learn to identify and address destructive patterns, encouraging healthier interactions and addressing conflicts constructively. Therapy encourages mutual empathy, nurtures friendship, and rebuilds trust, laying a foundation for enduring connection. By integrating practical tools like the Sound Relationship House theory, couples develop skills to navigate challenges and sustain long-term harmony.

Marriage and long term relationships are hard! These relationships require ongoing work, communication and effort. I work with people from all family structures including nuclear, same-sex, poly and open relationship styles. I provide a judgement free environment for clients to explore their relationship patterns in a forward facing model designed to bring about lasting change.

My desire is to help those who have committed to be together to stay together. Do you or your partner have sexual abuse, shame, trauma or addictions in the present or past? We will bring Christian principles, Emotionally Focused Therapy, and Gottman tenets together to help you build respect and love for each other or restore those you started out with. We will work to overcome abuse, personality disorders, poor communication, anger, addiction and family dysfunction, identify how and where the problems started and how to identify triggers and deescalate cycles to avoid them happening again. Coming to therapy is the first step on a new path together.

There are some key pathological processes that lead to couples getting “stuck.” Act therapy encourages cognitive defusion exercises that are designed to help couples get “unstuck”. Therapy is focused on helping them change the relationship they have as individuals and as a couple with the negative thoughts and feelings they have about their dysfunctional relationship. This calls on mindfulness and acceptance techniques to increase awareness of their individual reactions to their negative relationship cycles. Most importantly, couples are encouraged to engage in value-directed actions that will further their relationship, despite their insecurities and pain.

Cristina helps partners improve their communication skills using the mindfulness approach. She will help you express your feelings, frustrations and disappointments in a constructive way, so the partner can understand what you want to communicate. She will introduce you to the “5 Languages of Love”. You will practice how to express love to your partner and how to understand when your partner communicates love to you.

In postmodern life, relationships take on many forms. No matter which form you choose, no matter your gender, no matter the stage of your relationship, the basic principles of relating to some one else stay the same. I am available to accept who you as you are and to work with you on the challenges you experience in your relationship. I will make use of a variety of counselling styles to challenge obstacles and guide you in working on better communication to enable you as a couple to sustain problem solving and togetherness.

Couples counseling proves very effective when working through issues surrounding grief, loss, and trauma. It is sometimes hard to articulate to your partner aspects of your journey, especially if your partner's experience is different from your own. It can feel like the two of you are speaking different languages and that can get pretty frustrating! This does not mean that either of you are "wrong" or "uncaring." It just means your processing and ways of expressing yourselves are unique to you. Allow me to be your unbiased guide as we work through issues close to your hearts. Couples work is so rewarding.

The equilibrium in any couple can be disrupted by various factors, leading to conflict or emotional distress. These challenges hinder the feelings of value and engagement within the relationship. In counselling we focus on reestablishing equilibrium and balance. By investing time and effort, couples can recalibrate their connections. We explore individual viewpoints and shared goals, aiming to regain perspective. In addition we work to identify areas of concern for each partner with the goal of conflict resolution, improving communication and cultivating deeper emotional bonds. Ultimately, couples gain the tools to nurture their relationships and foster lasting well-being.

Couples no matter what gender mix or orientation may need help with communication, understanding differences, desire levels, forgiveness and/or coping with change in the relationship. Counselling can give couples some perspective on relationship dynamics and work on communication skills, sexual issues, and/or coping with change or forgiveness in a relationship.