Couples Therapy in New York, NY & California

Every relationship is drastically different and should be treated as such in couple’s therapy. Understanding how a partnership is its namesake, but how it also consists of individuals with their own viewpoints and conflicts, is vital for healing the unit. The information below dives into the complexity of each couple and our approach towards your couples therapy journey in New York, NY and California.

  • Shanti: inner peace

  • Bhāvanā: mental insight

  • Karuṇā: guided healing

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Loving Couple

What Is Couples Therapy?

Conflict within a relationship can be sourced from and surface for a variety of reasons, life events, actions, communication issues, family discrepancies, parenting conflicts, and so on. It can erupt after one harmful event, such as infidelity, or slowly progress over years of ineffective conflict management and unmet needs, to the point where you may need to think more about divorce counseling. Just as with individual therapy, every couple is approached differently because your reasoning for seeking help cannot be narrowed within a pre-defined treatment path. Every couple, whether married, engaged, dating and everything in between, communicates differently and brings their own history to the table.

A couple is purely the act of individuals coming together, and oftentimes that notion is thrown to the wayside in the pursuit of greater harmony. Although the end goal of couples therapy is to find peace within your relationship, whatever that means to you, there needs to be a deep understanding of the individual and the self within this wider unit. Individuals bring forth varying attachment styles, previous relationship scars, unhealthy communication tools, and ineffective patterns of behavior that can cause harm to the relationship. There can be no growth or healthy changes in behavior, through therapy and counseling services or otherwise, unless the responsibility is taken by both parties, not necessarily as to their faults, but simply as to their roles.

Divorce Mediation

“Your task is not to seek for Love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it” (Rumi)

Online Couples Counseling for California Residents

It addition to our in person counseling services we offer online therapy for our California residents. Many couples and individuals may struggle to find in-person relationship or marriage counselors due to couples counseling cost, distance, or scheduling barriers when working with a therapist’s office. Online couples therapy can provide the same therapeutic benefits that you would get in-person, which include learning the ability to better understand both your and your partner’s needs and emotional experience, and improving emotional awareness and communication in your relationship. With online couples therapy, traffic, finding parking, and all the other factors that typically make appointments difficult in our busy lives becomes less of an obstacle. Instead of being limited by the options like time and the drive time to your therapist, you can start working on your relationship from the comfort of your own home! We are fully licensed in California and New York, and our online therapy allows us to see anyone, anywhere in California and New York!

Remember, these are mere possibilities and can be interconnected or not involved at all.

  • Life stressors
  • Communication issues
  • Personality discrepancies
  • Intimacy issues
  • Financial issues

This list is not the end all be all and couple conflict can take many forms.

  • Arguments and conflict
  • Relationship and marriage crisis
  • Infidelity
  • Emotional distance/unmet needs
  • Lack of healthy communication strategies
  • Power struggles/Parenting conflicts

Healing is a complicated journey, not an impossible one. Opening your heart and mind to your own well-being will enlighten your path and reveal your destination.

Our clinic addresses relationship conflict as a means of managing the conflict that is arising, instead of resolving it immediately. The issue that is causing tension is viewed as outside yourselves as a couple unit. In taking this perspective, the problem can be reimagined and hopefully reinterpreted as a manageable thing to tackle together. Throughout this process, our underlying intention is to develop a sense of empathy and understanding, which can be used as a tool in future conflicts. We want you to grow together, but also as healthy individuals as well.

Our small steps approach allows you to find each other again, utilizing whatever tools and structure seem to align effectively with your relationship struggles. Just like our individual therapy, our treatment approach is malleable and adaptable to your needs.

Our Therapeutic Approaches

Holistic & Transpersonal

To delve into your relationship conflicts effectively, a holistic and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is helpful. EFT looks at the whole person, their attachment styles in relationships (romantic and otherwise) and uses that transpersonal information to address unhealthy patterns of behavior, defense, and bonding.

The term holistic also applies to you as part of a unit, a family system. Your actions and behavioral decisions directly affect those of your partner and vice versa. By recognizing you and your partner’s established roles in this integrative behavioral therapy, it becomes easier to determine if they are healthy, empathetic, and productive in the functioning of your familial system.

‘You’-centric & Relational

Our insight-oriented approach allows your own interactions to guide your treatment path. Your therapist will use the information they’re given from your communicative style, past issues, and current raising of issues, to determine the most productive course of action.

Every approach is different, but sometimes a more structured and tangible therapy is required. Utilizing the Gottman Method, in which the core aspects of affection and mutual respect are promoted, helps guide you and your partner through small steps and goals, and towards a healthier existence. Love maps, dream sharing, and various other emotionally driven and spiritually directed techniques remain at the forefront of our therapeutic methods.

Mindfulness

By remaining in the present moment and acknowledging the current conflict at hand as existing outside of yourselves, a narrative can be brought forth. By separating the issue, this narrative allows you to recognize each other’s strengths that were previously drowned within the conflict itself.

This is not to say that the influence the past has on current conflict is not vital towards understanding the path towards healing. Empathizing with your partner’s problematic sources, and providing you with tools to see yours as well, will only serve to make your relationship stronger, especially when new conflict arises.

Your Counseling Experience

Each therapeutic experience is different, and each session can unlock helpful and new paths to explore in the healing process. The below are just to give you a general idea of what to expect when you contact us, hopefully instilling a bit of confidence and easing of any worry associated with seeking treatment.

  • 60-minute sessions generally, once a week
  • Short-term work can last between 3-6 months or whenever you feel you’ve reached the version of relationship you were seeking
  • Long-term work also lasts as long as you both need

How We Choose Your Therapist

  • What you need to reach mental well-being
  • Your personality and energy
  • Your communication style
  • Our therapist’s specialties, training, interests, and own lived experiences
  • Our therapist’s approach and communication style

In the Meantime

Extensive research has found that these simplistic and mindful lifestyle changes have a drastic effect on daily life. Give them a shot if you need some immediate peace.

  • Meditation
  • Yoga
  • Reiki
  • Experiencing nature
  • Conscious, deep breathing
  • Maintain an active lifestyle
  • Healthy diet

FAQs About Couples Therapy

There’s always hope, even when issues are deep-seated and seem unconquerable. Generally, long-term fights remain as such because the same conversation is had every time. If you keep trying to use a hammer to screw something in and don’t ever break out the screwdriver, it seems likely the project will never get done.

Couples therapy can be whatever you need it to be. Oftentimes, however, communication is a major part of reestablishing healthy connections and strategies for conflict management. Maybe that is your mental roadblock that could end up being the starting point of your journey.

It depends on how you feel that one thing is managed. If it is a repeat offender in causing conflict in your relationship, there seems to be a barrier towards resolving it. There may even be other issues that you don’t realize cause distress, but stem from that one issue. That’s not always the case, but it seems important to delve into that issue if it’s causing havoc on an otherwise healthy communication style.

Couples counseling can provide you with future tools and strategies to tackle something unknown in the future. Seeking treatment, however, is a choice made between you and your partner about what’s best for the future of your relationship. It would never hurt to have an outside perspective on whether or not you are healthily addressing conflict for you both, and get some guidance for any potential, larger roadblocks.

Absolutely. There is no one size fits all, especially within our clinic where more naturalistic and holistic methods towards treatment are emphasized. We use our own insight gathered as therapists to address the issues you raise and the issues we can see from speaking with you both. Seeking treatment is nothing to be ashamed of and should be commended as an example of how much you care about each other and your relationship as a whole.