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Couples Therapy
Do You Feel Like There’s A Disconnect In Your Relationship?
Are you in a relationship or marriage that’s beginning to feel stale?
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Does every conversation with your partner seem to turn into an argument or shouting match?
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Maybe you find yourself going into defensive mode whenever they’re around, as if you’re always bracing yourself for a blowout.
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Or perhaps you simply don’t feel heard and have no space to be yourself in the relationship.
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When your relationship or marriage is struggling,
it’s hard to find peace in any area of life.
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Perhaps you’re dealing with fatigue, lack of appetite, insomnia, or difficulty focusing.
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You may feel like you’re in a constant state of extreme reactivity, prone to angry outbursts or excessive weeping.
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Or maybe the issue is more subtle—you feel like there’s some basic misunderstanding at the core of your relationship, but you can’t pinpoint what it is.
If you want help identifying the problems in your marriage or relationship, we encourage you to contact us.
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By talking to a couples therapist, you can learn to view your troubles through a different lens and open up new avenues for growth.
Our Relationship Troubles Often Mirror The Early Relationships We Grew Up With
All couples argue.
No relationship can grow without conflict, since it forces people to work together and confront their own vulnerabilities.
When the arguing becomes hostile and demeaning, however, it’s a sign that there are deeper problems in a relationship.
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Oftentimes, the problems that develop in a relationship or marriage are rooted in the individual attachments you grew up with.
In other words, the relationships you experienced as healthy when you were young may determine what you view as healthy now.
If you had a parent who was obsessively concerned for your safety, for instance, you may find yourself mirroring those qualities with your partner today. But if your partner was raised differently, they may not understand where such behavior comes from. Naturally, this creates friction between your expectations for a relationship.
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Because these issues are so deep-rooted and hard to see for what they are, most couples aren’t able to resolve them by themselves.
It’s tempting for couples to see their problems as a “one-time speed bump,” a short-lived hurdle they can figure out on their own. In reality, however, what appears to be a one-time speed-bump often becomes patterned behavior. It often leads couples down the same old roads of misunderstanding they’ve gotten stuck on before.
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In order to find long-term healing for a relationship,
it’s essential to seek help from an impartial observer.
By adding a fresh perspective to your struggles, you can improve your communication, eliminate defensiveness, and restore empathy in your relationship.
What’s more, you can find a space to feel heard, seen, and validated for what you’re going through.
Couples Therapy
Can Help You Breathe New Life Into Your Relationship
Let’s be honest: the idea of going to therapy with the very person you’re constantly arguing with can seem scary.
You may feel that counseling will only cause unnecessary drama and exacerbate the struggles already present in your relationship.
Here at Wilcox Wellness, our biggest priority is creating a space for you and your loved one to speak safely with each other.
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We will guide communication, mediate discussions, and bounce ideas off of both of you to keep the conversations fresh and nurturing.
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You’ll have a chance to vent, process your emotions, and obtain feedback from an unbiased third party.
As a practice, we like to pride ourselves on being authentic, approachable, and down-to-earth.
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We often bring humor into sessions and believe in laughter as an antidote to stress.
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Most importantly, we want to ensure you feel safe, trusted, and accepted for who you are.
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This is a space where you are free to be yourself without judgment.
In sessions together, we will examine both you and your partner’s childhood relationships and family history to understand the different attachment styles you each bring to the table.
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We’ll also help you identify the unconscious expectations that have shaped your view of romance.
To that end, we usually have clients fill out a love language assessment.
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This will help us determine how you experience love, how your partner may experience it differently, and how to resolve these differences between you.
The central focus of couples therapy is often on solving communication issues. You and your loved one will learn to challenge the core assumptions that have led you to misunderstand each other. Oftentimes, this is done by having you strategically reenact a past interaction with adjustments in tone, language, and behavior.
We may also conduct letter-writing activities where you both write letters and then read them back to each other. The goal is to help you express your emotions as clearly and articulately as possible, so that tone, body language, and other factors don’t cause misinterpretation.
There are a wide array of approaches we draw from in couples counseling.
In general, we like to utilize Structural Therapy, which explores the connection between present communication patterns and familial behavior that stretches back to previous generations. We’re also very inspired by the Gottman Method of couples counseling, which is more practical and focused on building closeness, intimacy, and respect in a relationship.
Finally, our practice draws heavily from Emotionally-Focused Therapy.
The goal of this approach is to understand the function of each emotion in your life so that you can recognize their purpose in each interaction you have.
Most importantly, we encourage you to be kind to yourself.
No one has all the answers and all of us are in a lifelong process of change.
Within couples therapy, the most important thing is being open to change.
As long as you’re willing to learn, grow, and be honest about your vulnerabilities,
you can reignite the spark that’s been missing from your relationship.
You may have some questions and concerns about marriage and couples counseling…
I’m worried that therapy will cost too much money.
While it’s important to prioritize finances, going to therapy is often just as vital as going to the doctor. Mental health is still an integral part of your well-being, and relationships don’t repair themselves or flourish in isolation. What’s more, the patterns you develop in one relationship may carry into others, even affecting your friendships. Couples therapy is a time to wrest control of these patterns so that they don’t become a vicious cycle in your life. It’s an investment, yes, but it’s one that can change your life.
What if my partner and I want to come to therapy for different reasons?
Couples therapy is a space where you can explore the root of your disagreements, so it’s the perfect place to find commonality even if you have different concerns for the relationship. In sessions together, we’ll make room for a diversity of perspectives. We won’t side with either person in the relationship—we’ll simply try to understand why you feel differently and what can be done to reconcile your differences.
Isn’t coming to therapy a sign that we’re failing?
No relationship succeeds in a vacuum. The surest way to breathe fresh air into a stale relationship is to open yourself to new perspectives. In couples therapy, you have a chance to broaden your horizons. We’ll teach you new communication strategies, help you explore a wider range of love languages, and give you skills for deescalating conflict.
Learn To See Your Relationship Through A Different Lens
If you feel like your relationship is a lost cause, we encourage you to take heart.
Working together, we can equip you with the skills to navigate conflict and the knowledge to understand your partner better.
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