Articles on Couple Counseling

What It Takes To Heal

Healing can happen only in a climate of openness and truth.

This is the tragedy of Mina. Mina was caught in adultery, one which traumatized her husband. Her need to deny or "stonewall" her wrongdoing prevented her personal, marital, and family healing. What's her primary wound? I believe it's not so much the affair as it is her insistence on her own innocence with the resulting cover-up. Hers is a poignant illustration of the life-damaging consequences of being unable to say, "I was wrong."

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Date Posted: April 22, 2013

Categories: Addictions, Attachment Issues, Couple Counseling

Helping you reconnect when your relationship is floundering

With the stress of everyday life, it's not unusual for a couple to lose their emotional connection. Our relationship therapists cite a number of reasons why a couple loses connection and ends up hardy talking to each other. Whether it's a new baby, a stressful job, financial woes or difficult life events, the emotional connection in a relationship can break down when the communication channels are down. Disconnection can lead to a relationship breakdown unless both parties make changes.

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Date Posted: April 4, 2013

Categories: Couple Counseling, Empathy, Marital Counseling, Men's Issues, Relationships & Marriage, Women's Issues

Attachment: The Importance of First Relationships

If you are interested in relationships, you will be interested in learning about attachment theory. This theory highlights the importance of the relationship between infants and their caregivers. Our relationships in adult life are affected by the quality of this first emotional bond. Indeed, much of what couple counselling concerns itself with is uncovering the effect of these early bonds.

From a psychological and emotional standpoint, the infant’s motivations for attachment are comparable to those of an adult. John Bowlby introduced attachment theory to modern psychology. He started developing the theory to help him to understand the relationship between infants and their mothers. Families are often structured differently these days, with stay-at-home fathers assuming the caregiver role. Bowlby’s study focused on why infants experience such distress, when they are temporarily separated from their mothers.

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Date Posted: February 15, 2013

Categories: Adult psychological development, Attachment Issues, Child Development, Control Issues, Couple Counseling, Ending a relationship issues, Family of Origin Issues / Codependency, Marital Counseling, Relationships & Marriage

Coping with stress: What does love have to do with it?

When life tries to slap us down, we instinctively turn to others for support particularly our intimate partners. Although this tendency to seek emotional support from loved ones to heal our wounds has long been recognized, it is only in the past couple of decades that substantial scientific evidence has been obtained of its effectiveness.

Probably the most lucid summary of the importance of intimate relationships in recovering from stress, even traumatic stress, has been recently provided by Dr. Susan Johnson (2012). She did so as part of a series of online interviews with some of the world’s greatest experts on trauma and its treatment (National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM), 2012). Before discussing her presentation and the specific scientific evidence for the power of a loving relationship to reduce stress, the different types of stressors and some examples will be detailed briefly.

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Date Posted: August 13, 2012

Categories: Codependency / Dependency, Couple Counseling, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) / Trauma / Complex PTSD