San Jose Couples Counseling

I offer an 8-session format of couples therapy designed for experiential change by integrating common factors. You will acquire new tools to communicate and then practice them in session using very structured exercises.* Each session builds on the previous to form a solid foundation and framework to get your relationship back on track or to continue sessions and deepen the work. Here is what you can expect:

Objectives for each session

1. Outline initial goals as a couple and as an individual. Communicate the most important challenges in the relationship facing each partner in order to increase personal motivation and confidence for change.
2. Connect old behaviors, beliefs and attitudes to current strong reactions. Gain an understanding for your attachment style in relation to how you learned to regulate your emotions.
3. Increase trust and empathy for your partner as you learn how to co-regulate in times of stress.
4. Gain a greater understanding of your partner's experience of an event and why they feel or react so strongly about it. Find personal responsibility in each interaction. Express genuine empathy and validation for each other's perception.
5. Identify your pattern of conflict and recognize how it develops according to attachment style and arousal regulation.
6. Be more authentic, increase self-disclosure and decrease your emotional reactivity in order to honor and respect each other's differences and needs.
7. Be more attuned by being more present with your partner and being able to listen to or express anger and sadness with more comfort and flexibility.
8. Identify your internal obstacles to change in order to create more constructive conversations and deepen your intimacy moving forward.

After every session, you will receive short reading material to strengthen your understanding of the concepts being applied.

Reading will cover:

• How to help your partner feel understood and how to have more compassion for them.
• How to become a better listener by asking the right questions.
• How to make a break effective when one partner gets overwhelmed in an argument.
• Specific tools on how to have an effective repair conversation after an argument or fight.
• How to gain a greater awareness of the impact of your family of origin and how it may influence current relationships.
• Learn simple methods to reduce stress and regulate your emotions.
• Why differentiation in relationships matter so much what you can do to achieve it.

Overarching Principle

All significant growth comes from disagreements, dissatisfaction with the current status, or a striving to make things better. Paradoxically, accepting that conflict produces growth and learning to manage inevitable disagreements is the key to more harmonious relationships.

*Exercises are derived from the following models of couples therapy: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), The Gottman Method, Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT), The Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, and Imago Relationship Therapy.