Couples Counseling
Are you experiencing conflict in your relationship? Do you find yourself struggling to communicate with your partner? Or do you feel that your partner does not hear or understand you? Does it feel like you and your partner are stuck in a pattern that you can’t get out of?
You could benefit from couples therapy.
All couples go through ups and downs in their relationship. And it’s common for partners to fall into specific patterns. Some of those patterns are not a problem, or are neutral. But some patterns can cause distress in the relationship. Change is already hard, and change in relationships is even harder!
How Couples Therapy is Different from Individual Therapy
At HEART Counseling, we understand couples as a system. We believe that the individuals in the couple are intensely emotionally connected to each other in such a way that they influence each other’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Each person in the relationship wants the other’s attention, approval, and support; they each react to the other’s needs, expectations, and disappointments. This connectedness and reactivity between each person in the couple makes them interdependent. Therefore, when one person in the relationship changes – either on purpose or because of something out of their control (mental health, physical health, etc.), there will be reciprocal changes in the other partner.
In couples therapy we focus on the interactions between the people in the relationship. Our focus is not on one individual’s functioning and we believe each individual’s behavior is influenced by the other partner’s behavior.
Couples therapy is never about forcing individual members of the couple to change. When you work with a couples therapist, you should expect that they will not take sides. Your therapist will remain neutral and non-judgemental while they work to help you understand your underlying patterns that inform your communication, interactions, and feelings towards each other.
Maybe couples therapy is too hard for us…
Couples therapy is not always an easy process. In fact, it can feel really uncomfortable sometimes. Your couples therapist will work with you as the couple to support your relationship goals, not your individual agendas. This might look like using different therapeutic strategies to help us identify what the underlying patterns are in your relationship and some of the reasons why those patterns developed.
You can also expect to learn how to communicate your deeper emotions and desires to your partner, but also to understand and interpret both your own, and your partner’s deeper needs that might not be being met.
Believe it or not, all behavior is communication.
And couples therapy can help each partner begin to understand what is being communicated, while also developing skills to communicate their own needs in a healthier way.
“The average couple waits 6 years before seeking help for marital problems.”
~ John Gottman
Don’t wait 6 years! Get help with your partner today.
“The goals of Gottman Method Couples Therapy are to disarm conflicting verbal communication; increase intimacy, respect, and affection; remove barriers that create a feeling of stagnancy; and create a heightened sense of empathy and understanding within the context of the relationship.”
The Gottman Method
HEART Counseling therapists use different evidence-based treatments in their practice. For couples one of the most researched methods is The Gottman Method.
Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman have spent almost five decades researching marriage and relationships. The Gottmans have studied more than 3,000 couples – and followed some of the couples for 20 years! Their research has allowed them to predict with about 90% accuracy which couples will divorce, and which couples will stay together. That’s a lot of data and a pretty great accuracy rate!
With their research, the Gottmans developed an approach to couples therapy that not only supports and repairs troubled marriages and relationships, but also strengthens happy ones.
Therapists who use this approach will thoroughly assess the relationship and offer the couple research-based interventions to strengthen and improve their relationship.
Let us help you get out of your patterns of conflict and feel happier and more satisfied in your relationship.
Amberly Stevens and Sam Egelhoff are trained in the Gottman Method of couples therapy.
Policies About Couples Counseling at HEART Counseling
Here are a few other policies and things you should know when starting couples therapy at HEART Counseling.
“No Secrets” Policy
Sometimes individual sessions will be part of couple counseling. It’s important to know that what you and your partner each say in those individual sessions will be considered a part of the couples therapy. That means that what you say in those individual sessions can, and probably will, be discussed in joint sessions. Therefore, you should not disclose anything that you wish to be kept secret from your partner.
Release of Information Policy
When seen as a couple, the couple as a unit is the client, and both individuals would have to sign a release of information to disclose information to any third party.
We Do Not Accept Insurance for Couples Counseling
Most insurance companies DO NOT cover couples therapy. Some therapists get around this by identifying one person in the couple as the individual client and billing insurance as if they are seeing that individual client with another person present. We don’t believe in doing this for many reasons. One of those reasons is that we treat the couple coming to marriage/couples counseling as a unit, or system. We work with the couple on the goals that the couple jointly agrees on and shares. We are not working with an individual on their goals and just including their partner.
The cost for couples counseling ranges from $150 – $180 per session and depends on the license and amount of experience and training the therapist has. Please see individual therapist pages or email us at info@heartcounselingllc.com.
Which HEART Counseling therapists provide couples counseling?
Hollie McCrea Olson, Sam Egelhoff, Julie Jensen, and Amberly Stevens
