Individual Therapy
Individual therapy is a process of developing insight and awareness into one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Therapy provides a safe and compassionate environment where we can explore your internal and life experiences and address any issues that are causing distress. At the beginning of the therapeutic relationship, we will establish goals for what you want to accomplish in therapy and start to develop a plan on how to achieve those goals. We will validate and support your life experience and work to over-come barriers that interfere with a sense of balance and well-being. Therapy can also be a process that increases self-actualization and fosters meaning in your life
Couples Therapy
Couples therapy differs from individual therapy in the sense that the relationship is the actual “client.” Work is done to improve communication patterns by helping each partner learn to listen and attentively respond to their partner.We will help open up lines of communication that have been closed by past wounds or emotional distance in the relationship. If arguments are frequent or explosive, we will work to decrease the intensity of conflict to promote healthy communication. Work may also focus on increasing emotional and physical warmth in the relationship. Couples therapy is also useful as a preventative measure to increase the loving bond between partners and to resolve minor issues before they become more problematic. We offer pre-marital counseling for couples looking to start their marriage on the right track.
Family Therapy
Family relationships are so important in our lives, yet can also be our most complicated relationships. If your family is experiencing conflict, this can lead to emotional distress in all the family members. In order to alleviate the distress, family therapy that assists in changing the family dynamics is key. By providing a compassionate, nonjudgmental environment, communication patterns are improved, healthy boundaries are established, and the family members are able to strengthen feelings of closeness and connection.
Private Marriage Intensive
Intensives are one of the most effective ways to repair brokenness and restore connection in marriage. Many couples coming into a Marriage Intensive are hurting, discouraged and have lost hope. Marriage Intensives are specifically designed for couples in crisis to rebuild trust and restore their love for one another. We provide a safe, accepting and nurturing space to begin the work of identifying the root causes of your marital distress. We assess the dynamics and issues and develop a comprehensive, customized treatment plan for each of you as individuals and as a couple. You will learn how to deepen your connection, increase communication through empathy and listening, and understand and value your differences. You will also learn to resolve conflicts, restore trust, change dynamics and patterns, reduce blame, and move through impasses and gridlocks. Private marriage intensives are for you and your spouse only. During an intensive, couples are usually able to resolve 85% to 90% of their hurts and learn how to handle similar situations in the future. By the end of the intensive couples are equipped to return home with valuable insight, powerful tools and researched proven techniques and principles to apply in their daily lives. The Marriage Intensives are 5 hours, for 3 days.
Intensive Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy® (PACT)
PACT draws on exciting, cutting-edge research in three areas. The first is neuroscience, the study of the human brain. Understanding how the brain works provides a physiological basis for understanding how people act and react within relationships. In a nutshell, some areas of your brain are wired to reduce threat and danger and seek security, while others are geared to establish mutuality and loving connection. The third area is the biology of human arousal—meaning the moment-to-moment ability to manage your energy, alertness, and readiness to engage.
Your experience during a PACT session may differ somewhat from what you might expect in other forms of couple therapy. For example
• Your therapist will focus on moment-to-moment shifts in your face, body, and voice, and ask you to pay close attention to these in your partner.
• Your therapist will create experiences similar to those troubling your relationship and help you work through them in real time during the session.
PACT tends to require fewer sessions than other forms of couple therapy. PACT sessions often exceed the typical 50-minute hour and may last 3 hours or more
HOW DOES PACT HELP?
It isn’t necessary to understand the scientific basis of PACT to realize its benefits. Your therapist has extensive training in PACT principles and techniques, and will guide you to overcome challenges you face as a couple.
Through working with a PACT therapist, you and your partner will discover how to
• stay connected
• help each other feel safe and secure
• manage each other’s emotional highs and lows
• fight well
• rekindle your love at any time
• minimize each other’s stress and optimize each other’s health
EMDR:
EMDR is an evidence-based psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In addition, successful outcomes are well-documented in the literature for EMDR treatment of other psychiatric disorders, mental health problems, and somatic symptoms. The model on which EMDR is based, Adaptive Information Processing (AIP), posits that much of psychopathology is due to the maladaptive encoding of and/or incomplete processing of traumatic or disturbing adverse life experiences. This impairs the client’s ability to integrate these experiences in an adaptive manner. The eight-phase, three-pronged process of EMDR facilitates the resumption of normal information processing and integration.
