Counselling
COUPLE COUNSELING
Despite the above concerns and doubts, do you wish to give the relationship another chance and feel the connection that brought you together? If yes, the couple counseling is the road you would want to take on with Thrive beyond trauma counseling.
Couple counseling primarily focuses on individual differences in cultural and cognitive styles, which often serve as the root cause of conflicts and misunderstandings between partners. Moreover, therapy helps clients understand mismatches in communication, interpersonal relationships, motivation, learning/problem-solving, teaching, parenting, supervisory, and counseling styles, fostering better mutual understanding.
Each partner learns to match the other’s preferred styles and to help one another develop the flexibility in values and cognitive styles that can improve their level of satisfaction within the relationship.
The institution of marriage and companionship has evolved. In the past, marriages primarily served survival and basic needs, whereas today, individuals seek genuine partnership, love, mutual respect, and emotional connection.
Instead of merely fulfilling practical roles, modern couples prioritize emotional engagement, mutual support, and shared decision-making.
This evolution reflects a desire for deeper connections and a mature approach to addressing life’s challenges. Consequently, it highlights the shift towards more emotionally fulfilling and mutually supportive relationships over traditional roles or dependencies.
Couples today aspire to be with someone who is not just a life partner but also an emotional one, someone they can confide in, discuss matters with, and tackle life’s challenges maturely and collaboratively. This reflects a desire for deeper emotional connections beyond the practicalities of earlier times. As society progresses, so do our expectations and desires within relationships, emphasizing the importance of emotional fulfillment and mutual growth.
- Partners become aware of match and mismatch domains in their relationship.
- Partners learn to analyze conflicts associated with mismatch.
- Both partners learn to match each other’s preferred styles and develop the flexibility they need to negotiate effectively.
- The partners learn to identify and negotiate concerning the disruptive forces affecting the relationship and causing disharmony.
- Emotionally – Focused Therapy (EFT)
- The Gottman Method.
The Gottman Method is a form of couples therapy that derives from the relationship research of psychologist John Gottman for more than 40 years. Gottman and his wife, psychologist Julie Schwartz Gottman, created the clinical treatment framework known as The Gottman Method.
One of the major tenets of the Gottman Method is that couples require five times more positive interactions than negative ones, as negative emotions, like defensiveness and contempt, hurt a relationship more than positive ones heal. As a result, the therapy focuses on developing the skills and understanding necessary for partners to maintain fondness and admiration, turn toward each other to get their needs met, and manage conflict. It also focuses on how couples can react and repair relations when they do hurt each other.
The method can be applied to many relationship problems but may be particularly useful for couples who are:
- Stuck in chronic conflict
- Coping with infidelity
- Struggling with communication
- In a stagnant relationship or emotionally distanced
- Facing difficulties over specific issues, such as money, parenting, or sex
Gottman Method therapy is based on a couple’s patterns of interaction. Partners learn and implement relationship-building and problem-solving skills together.
The Gottman Method is built on, and the results of the treatment focus on the nine components of a healthy relationship, what Gottman calls “The Sound Relationship House.” It includes the following:
Build Love Maps:
Assess how well partners know each other’s inner world, including their hopes, stressors, worries, and desires.
Share Fondness and Admiration:
Focus on the level of respect and tenderness that exists between the couple. Gottman calls this level “the antidote for contempt.”
Turn Towards Instead of Away:
Being aware of your partner and responding when one can sense they need something emotionally.
The Positive Perspective:
Approaching problems and repairing relationship failures with a positive attitude.
Manage Conflict:
While conflict in a relationship is inevitable, Gottman says, managing it is different from resolving it. Some problems can be fixed, but many relationship conflicts must be managed.
Make Life Dreams Come True:
Creating an atmosphere that encourages people to talk honestly about their hopes, values, convictions, and aspirations.
Create Shared Meaning:
Understanding important narratives, myths, and metaphors about the relationship.
Trust and commitment:
Gottman defines trust as partners knowing that each will think and act in the best interest of the other and knowing that your partner will stick with you through the rough patches and work to get through them. It involves a focus on gratitude for who your partner is and what they do in the relationship.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
The Sound Relationship House is what makes a happy, healthy relationship. On the other hand, “The Four Horsemen” illustrates communication styles that could lead to a relationship’s demise. This metaphor depicts the end of times and symbolizes conquest, war, hunger, and death. It is purposely dramatic and dark. Gottman believes the following negative behaviors can predict a relationship’s end, and there is research to back that up:
- Criticism
- Contempt
- Defensiveness
- Stonewalling
- It is focused and has intentional tools to help; the focus of therapy is not on communication loops but on giving you tangible do’s and don’ts.
- It naturally creates emotional connection and closeness without forcing it; a natural connection with your partner is an expected outcome from it.
- It helps couples bring the best parts of their relationship to focus while intentionally strengthening the weaker points for long-term stability; you don’t need to be in therapy to experience the benefits of therapy.