The ultimate goal of couples counseling is to try to repair and grow a relationship. Most people seek couples counseling in an effort to address communication difficulties, overcome challenges, and learn how to grow together. Through our sessions, we use techniques specifically aimed at addressing these concerns and helping you become a better, stronger, happier overall couple.
Still, it is important to recognize that not all relationships are successful. Not all relationships are even meant to be. Sometimes, there are challenges that cannot be overcome, or there are relationships that – when you go back to how the relationship started – are not necessarily ones that were meant to be.
Even in these situations – situations where it is clear that the relationship has reached its end – there are goals that you need to complete as a couple. One of which is the idea of an amicable and uncontested divorce.
The Lifelong Value of an Amicable Divorce
Relationships, in many ways, never really end. We carry these emotions and memories with us each and every day. We think about that person often – maybe not as often as we did before, but they had an impact on our lives that we are unlikely to forget. If there are children involved, or if the person plays a role in our life that is likely to continue onward (for example, business ownership), then the odds are even greater that the person will always be a part of our lives in some form.
That is why couples counseling can – and often should – be considered even for those that may not necessarily want to keep the relationship together. Holding on to high emotions runs the risk of causing ongoing issues:
Ongoing stress when you have to communicate with your partner.
Ongoing anxiety when you’re dealing with family issues.
Ongoing relationship issues from broken trust or other struggles.
This idea that a divorce is final is not necessarily accurate. A person will continue to be in our lives in some form, either through memories or through interactions. Divorce itself can also be a difficult process, one that people are more likely to navigate in less emotionally healthy ways when they are feeling angry or upset.
It is in a couple’s best interests to try to work on their issues even if continuing the marriage is no longer the end goal. The long term value that it can have to your mental health – and the value that it can have to any kids involved – makes it clear that learning to better communicate and understand each other is always of value.
Even if you have decided not to move forward, it is best to consider still working through these issues so that you can divorce in amicable terms and come up with solutions that are in the best interests of both of you, along with any children or other interested parties. Contact us today to learn more about our couples counseling in NYC.
Love, trust, and mutual understanding are the cornerstones of a healthy relationship. But relationships, like people, are complex and multifaceted. They are built on the unique personalities, experiences, and struggles of each partner. A healthy relationship thrives when both partners can bring their best selves to it. But what if individual struggles are holding you back from being your best self?
At Flourish Psychology, we understand that the key to a thriving relationship often lies in personal growth and healing. That’s why individual therapy can be a vital component in strengthening not just you as a person, but your relationship as a whole.
The Connection Between Self And Relationship
The state of a relationship can often mirror the state of the individuals within it. If personal struggles, stress, anxiety, or depression weigh you down, these feelings can translate into the relationship, manifesting as tension, misunderstandings, or even estrangement.
How Can Individual Therapy Help?
By focusing on yourself and addressing the specific challenges you face, individual therapy can lead to significant growth in various ways:
Understanding Yourself – Therapy helps you uncover your inner thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Recognizing these aspects helps you communicate more effectively with your partner.
Building Resilience – Learning how to cope with individual stresses can reduce their impact on the relationship, making space for empathy and compassion.
Healing Past Traumas – Many relationship challenges stem from unresolved past traumas. Therapy offers a safe space to heal, allowing you to move forward with your partner without the burdens of the past.
Enhancing Communication Skills – Therapists can teach communication strategies tailored to your needs, promoting healthier conversations with your partner.
Therapy teaches you to understand and love yourself better while also helping you overcome distractions and stresses. Those improvements have a way of affecting a relationship for the better as well.
The Journey Toward A Stronger Relationship
Flourish Psychology offers individual therapy that acknowledges the unique context of your life, including your relationships. We believe that a stronger, more fulfilled individual leads to a more loving and supportive partnership.
Personalized Care – Our therapists work with you to understand your specific situation and develop a tailored approach that addresses your unique needs.
A Safe Space – Therapy is a confidential and judgment-free zone where you can openly discuss your fears, struggles, and hopes.
Expert Guidance – With the support of professional therapists, you will explore strategies and tools to enrich both your personal life and your relationship.
As a boutique private practice in NYC, we create an environment designed around helping you thrive as an individual, which in turn helps you thrive as a couple.
It Starts With You
Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship in your life, including the one with your partner. Investing in individual therapy can be a vital step in fostering a better relationship with yourself and, in turn, with the ones you love.
Talk to Flourish Psychology today for individual therapy in NY. We are committed to your growth and the flourishing of your relationships, offering services for anyone in the entire state.
Relationships are made up of two completely different people. It does not matter if you have similar opinions, dealt with similar life traumas, or agree on everything. You are two different people that experience the world two completely different ways.
On some level, we know this. We recognize that our partners are different from us. But what we often fail to realize is that they are not just different. They have a completely different reality. Understanding this can go a long way toward helping you communicate with each other.
You Are The Protagonist of Your Own Reality – and So Are They
No one exists in this world except for you. If you think about consciousness as a concept, the way our minds see the world is the way only *our* minds see the world. As far as our consciousness is concerned, the universe only exists as long as we can perceive it. Our brains are what create reality.
But while our brains create our reality, our partner’s brains create their reality. They process emotions differently when they do. They experience events differently when they do. Their mind works differently than ours.
There is a word for this in the field of philosophy: Qualia. It is the idea that many or all of our experiences in life are subjective, and so two people – even if they are looking at the same color or seeing the same event – are actually seeing it the exact same way.
A more modern example might be to consider it like a multiverse. Our partner exists in our universe, and we exist in theirs, but we are not in the same universe, because we are not perceiving the world the same way our partner is, and vice versa.
Communicating Through Our Different Experiences
Once we understand that our partners are experiencing a different reality, we can then understand why it is often so hard for us to understand their point of view and see why they feel the way they do.
Most of us do not spend nearly enough time trying to see things from our partners’ perspective. But even when we do, most of us try to understand our partner by picturing our partner in the world as *we* see it. We do not take the time to imagine their reality. We only imagine our reality and try to figure out how our partner feels based on the way we see them.
Couples Counseling Improves Perspective and Communication
Part of the couples counseling process is to address exactly this: to know our partner’s feelings, beliefs, and perspective so intimately, that we can actually rethink how our partner sees the world and truly live in their shoes. We try to understand each partner’s emotions, traumas, needs, and experiences so well that we can actually see our own world and reality differently.
We may never really be able to see the world the exact way our partner does, but if we can at least understand that they have their own reality and take steps to learn more about what that reality is like, we can start communicating with our partners in ways that are more emotionally healthy and with greater love and care.
The Gottman Method of couples counseling has many interesting concepts that address some of the ways that our behaviors play a role in relationship satisfaction. One of those concepts is called “bids.” Multiple times throughout the day, a partner uses these “bids” with the other partner, and how the other partner responds to these bids plays a key role in how happy both partners feel about each other.
What Are Bids?
“Bids” is shorthand for the need for some type of positive interaction with a partner. When a person makes a “bid,” they are typically asking for something like attention, love, support, affection, or intimacy. Examples might include reaching for a partner’s hand or asking the partner to cook with them. Sometimes, the bids are not necessarily a request, but the beginning of something, like asking a question to them when they walk into a room like “how was work?”
Bids occur many, many times during the day, often by both partners.
What Are “Bid Responses?”
When one partner makes a “Bid,” the other partner is tasked with responding. According to the Gottman Method, bids may receive the following three response types:
Turning Towards – Turning towards the bid is the act of responding to the bid at all. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the person engages with each bid, but it does mean that there is a positive acknowledgment, gesture, or some type of interaction that indicates that the bid has been received.
Turning Away – Turning “away” in this case means ignoring the bid or not responding positively. For example, not moving when someone reaches to hold hands or staring at their phone instead of responding to a question. Turning “away” is not necessarily a hostile gesture, but showing disinterest or not prioritizing the response to a bid.
Turning Against – Turning “against” is actively rejecting the bid. These have a bit of a hostile component, such as purposefully moving a hand away, negatively responding to a question, or pushing someone away when they move in for a kiss.
Turning away or turning against are both potentially damaging to the relationship. But it should be noted that these actions are not always conscious or designed to be hostile. Sometimes, it is an action taken because they do not have an awareness that their partner is making a “Bid.”
How Responding to Bids Can Improve Relationships
When a couple is having problems, the therapist may look at examples of these bids and work with the couple to teach a higher frequency of positive bid responses. The goal is to teach the idea of “turning toward” more often. Couples that “Turn Toward” and respond more positively to bids are more likely to feel positive and more connected in their relationship. By improving this intimacy, the couple is more likely to feel happy and satisfied with their partner.
There are many different couples therapy techniques that we use here at Flourish Psychology. One approach, called the “Gottman Method,” is a popular and well researched couples counseling system that is designed around improving communication, building trust, and identifying ways to change together.
There are many components to the Gottman Method, but today, let’s talk about something called the “Harsh Start Up.” It is a conversational technique that some couples implement that the Gottman Method identifies as essentially “guaranteed to end in negativity.”
Harsh Start Ups and Negative Conversation Outcomes
Harsh startups occur when, within only a few moments of conversation, a partner uses harsh criticism, sarcasm, contempt, or other negative conversational tactics. Some examples of this include:
Always/Never Complaints – “You never ask me how my day is.”
Sarcasm – “Oh yeah, I’m **sure** you were going to get to it.”
Passive Aggressive Complaining – “This house is always a mess when I’m not here.”
Blame – “You are the reason his homework is never completed.”
One Sided – “You are why I am like this.”
Timing also plays a role in a harsh start up. For example, if a person comes home from work happy to see their partner, and the partner responds with saying “as usual, you forgot to take the trash out” in a way that sounds like they have contempt, the conversation immediately goes somewhere negative.
Gottman found that harsh start ups create almost immediate problems:
They lead to defensiveness, shutting down, and frustration.
They escalate, often leading to further fighting and arguments.
They are very unlikely to lead to change or a solution.
Harsh start ups are not always due to some partner’s flaws, or a sign of some ill purpose. Sometimes, harsh start ups are a response to frustration, or because someone feels unheard. Nevertheless, research shows that starting a conversation in this way is essentially doomed to failure, and new ways of conversing are necessary in order to have more productive conversations.
What Are Gentle Start Ups?
Gentle startups are an approach that is far more likely to lead to a successful conversation. Gentle startups tend to utilize “I” statements, avoid contempt, sarcasm, or blame, and are brought on at times that make sense for a conversation. Examples of gentle startups include:
“I’ve been feeling really lonely recently and I would like us to have a date night.”
“I like cooking for the family, but I would really like it if you were able to take on a few nights of cooking, as I’ve been a bit overwhelmed.”
“I saw we were late on the rent this month. Is everything okay?”
“Do you think we could schedule time next weekend to clean the house? I’m feeling like the clutter is starting to get to me.”
Gentle startups are less aggressive and reduce defensiveness. They allow for a more natural conversational flow. That is not to say that every gentle startup will be a successful conversation, but learning to speak to each other in this way can reduce arguments and help promote better and more productive talks in order to work out the problems the couples face.
See a Gottman Therapist Today – Flourish Psychology
Flourish Psychology offers several couples counseling techniques, including Gottman therapy. If you feel like your relationship could improve, give us a call and let’s start a conversation about the best way to help you both thrive as a couple.
Flourish Psychology is a private practice in Brooklyn that offers couples therapy services, available for couples in any stage in their relationship. Part of identifying the best way to heal and grow your relationship is to determine what approach is most likely to provide you with the greatest benefit.
We believe that every couple is unique, and – rather than adhere to one strict and rigid approach – we try to find out what solution makes the most sense for you both in your marriage or partnership.
The Gottman Method
One of the techniques that we may deploy is known as the Gottman Method. It is a popular, extensively researched couples therapy approach that integrates many different techniques to rebuild a relationship.
There are many tenants the Gottman Method, but the simplest way to understand this approach is that it identifies signs of a struggling relationship through specific behaviors (criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt) that are often identified within therapy, and then tries to address those through a series of techniques designed around rebuilding love, affection, trust, and communication – known as the “Sound Relationship House Theory.”
The Gottman Method is also a conflict resolution technique, and designed to help reduce issues with perpetual conflict.
What Are Some Gottman Method Therapy Techniques?
Like most forms of both therapy and couples counseling, the Gottman Method is not one single technique but a series of different strategies that the couple will do together. The Gottman Method is also actionable – meaning, there are specific tasks that the couples are expected to complete. Some forms of couples counseling are more about thoughts, feelings, and understandings, but the Gottman Method has specific tasks for each couple.
Examples of these techniques include:
Creating Love Maps – Love Maps involve creating connections and mental space in your mind for all the details of your partner, like who they are, their life history, their experiences, their traumas, their goals, and even specific things like their opinions and quirks. The goal is to know your partner intimately enough that they are almost like a part of you.
Learning to “Turn Towards” – Within relationships, partners often seek out love and affection from their partner. It’s not uncommon in struggling relationships for the other partner to ignore this need or not realize what is being asked of them. This technique helps the couple respond in a healthier way when their partner needs them.
Share Fondness and Admiration – One unhealthy habit that couples can fall into is forgetting to emphasize and share their positive views of their partner, especially if the relationship has created more toxic communication habits. This technique makes it easier to share positive traits within a setting where the counselor can guide healthy interactions.
The Gottman Method is extensive, and there are far more techniques that may be used, such as conflict resolution strategies, self-soothing, creating shared meaning, and more. What is ultimately used depends on where you are as a couple and what we see is the best way to help you achieve a long lasting relationship.
Gottman Therapists in NYC with Flourish Psychology
The Gottman Method is an outstanding approach to couples therapy, and we have helped many couples find greater strength in their relationship through this methodology. But it is also only one approach of many, and sometimes, it helps to know you as a couple to determine what therapy is best. Please schedule a time to speak about your relationship, and let’s help determine what will be the best way to provide you with a stronger, longer lasting partnership.
Location: 300 Cadman Plaza West Floor 12 - Brooklyn, NY 11201
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