Relationships can bring up all kinds of unexpected obstacles, and therapy can be a helpful tool to navigate them. But what if there's no significant conflict at play? I get asked this very question pretty frequently as a therapist who works with many young couples who are just starting their journey together. My answer to them is that you don't have to go to couples therapy just because you're in an argument. You can go to couples therapy to make your relationship with partner better—which is actually a pretty sufficient and healthy enough reason to begin in the first place.

It doesn't matter  if you've been together for one week or five years, you learn new aspects of your partner's personality all the time.  It's not like you enter a relationship and have your partner fill out a personality questionnaire (or do you?) so you know as much as possible about them right off the bat. No, you figure it out along the way.

There are ways to understand your partner better that don't entail a personality quiz (although sitting down together to learn your Myers Briggs or Enneagram types could be a fun date, but I'm a dork so what do I know?). Couples therapy is one way to do that. I can hear you now: "We never fight. Why would we go to therapy together?" Well, couples therapy isn't just for couples who are on the brink of breaking up. It can actually be a beneficial tool to know your partner better in many aspects of your relationship. Couples therapy can help you learn about those little quirks a little bit faster, and in a setting that allows you both the space to air your thoughts in a safe manner.

By attending therapy when you're not in a fight or experiencing a crisis you can improve the quality of your relationship and deepen your empathy and understanding, and to communicate in a clearer and healthier way.

When you come to therapy before your ship starts to sink, we can more quickly work to gain  heightened sensitivity to each person's feelings and needs, boundaries and vulnerabilities. Couples therapy increases knowledge and understanding of yourself and your partner, which helps both of you be kinder to themselves and each other. And that helps each person know and express their needs, communicate more skillfully, and be more attuned to the feelings and needs of their partner.
And guess what? All of these practices are useful for any couple at any stage in their relationship.
You and your partner don't need to be at each other's throats to reap the benefits of couples therapy. And in fact, getting comfortable with communicating honestly now might save you from an emergency session with a couples' therapist down the road.

We've all experienced being hurt by someone we love. It's inevitable. Even when two people have a connected, secure and healthy relationship, they will end up hurting one another at some point. We're human. That's just the way it is. When couples come to see me for therapy, it's often due to an experience or pattern of experiences that caused one or both of the partners to feel hurt. The couple decides to come to therapy because they are having a difficult time resolving this hurt. They need some help in order to feel safe with each other again.
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When working with couples, I want to understand the nature and significance of the hurt before moving toward resolution. How bad is it? How deep is the impact? First, we must understand the two levels of hurt: relational hurts and attachment injuries.

Relational Hurts (Hurt Feelings)
Couples who are secure in their relationship can usually navigate relational hurts on their own. Some examples of relational hurts might be forgotten anniversaries, reactive insults, or blow-up fights that sneak into relationships. For couples who feel they can depend and rely on each other in times of need, relational hurts are pretty simple to navigate. Attuned couples do this by sharing their hurt feelings with each other, hearing and empathizing with the hurt of their partner, and they provide comfort and reassurance. Partners can then move forward in the relationship with trust, security, and safety despite the hurtful experience. This is a natural and expected experience for healthy relationships.

I can often tell when a hurt falls into the category of a relational hurt. In our sessions, couples may share feelings of sadness, anger, hurt, and pain in response to an experience. But when I ask them if they feel their partner loves and cares for them, they can quickly answer “yes.” For them, even though the hurt happened, it hasn’t significantly changed the way they view each other or the relationship.

Attachment Injuries
Attachment injuries are trickier. These injuries require a lot more care, consideration, and guidance, sometimes from a couples counselor.

When couples are trying to respond to attachment injuries as if they are merely a relational hurt, they can stay stuck. Without recognizing the significance and impact of the injury, they can go down a long road of frustration and more hurt. An injured partner can feel even more hurt that the other person is not responding in ways that provide healing. The hurt deepens, becomes more complex, and can create great distress in the relationship.

Dr. Sue Johnson defines an attachment injury as “a feeling of betrayal or abandonment during a critical time of need.” When an attachment injury happens, a partner may view their relationship as changed or they may view their partner in a different way. An affair is a good example of an attachment injury. Infidelity often causes a partner to view a previously safe relationship as unsafe. While they used to view their partner as trustworthy, they now wonder, “Can I ever trust this person again?”

There are also more subtle attachment injuries. One example to consider is that of a wife, grieving the loss of her mother, crying in her bedroom. The wife observes her husband walk by on his phone, consumed in a work call. He sees her in tears but, because he was so focused on his work, he never returns to check on her. In that moment, the wife decides she is not important to him and she must go through this pain alone. In that moment, everything changes in how she views the relationship and how she views her husband. She was in need and he wasn’t there.

There are three ways to determine if a hurt is an attachment injury. First, partners report they have apologized, but their hurt partner keeps bringing up the hurtful experience. In addition, the hurt partner may report feeling as though they relive the hurtful experience when they think or talk about it. They can still feel the pain, almost as if it just happened. Finally, couples report a significant, defining shift in the relationship felt by one or both partners that can be traced back to a specific time or incident. If any of these things are happening in your relationship, there may be an attachment injury.

If you believe you are dealing with an attachment injury in your relationship, here are some helpful things to think about:

• Try to understand the significance of the injury for yourself or your partner. How did the experience impact how you see yourself or how you see each other? How did it change how you or your partner view the relationship?
• What happens when you or your partner recall the hurtful experience? What do you feel? What do you think about? What images or memories do you have? What physical sensations do you feel (i.e., knots in the stomach, heart racing, shortness of breath)?
• What do you or your partner need from each other in those moments? Physical comfort such as a hug or embrace? Emotional comfort such as reassurance, understanding, and validation? Or just to be heard?

Couples often benefit from therapy to help them navigate the process of healing after an attachment injury. When a couple learns how to find comfort in each other for the pain and hurt resulting from an attachment injury, healing and true reconnection are possible.

GoodTherapy.com: Relational Hurt or Attachment Injury? How to Tell the Difference.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a metaphor depicting the end of times in the New Testament. They describe conquest, war, hunger, and death respectively. Dr. Gottman uses this metaphor to describe communication styles that can predict the end of a relationship.
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The first horseman of the apocalypse is criticism. Criticizing your partner is different than offering a critique or voicing a complaint. The latter two are about specific issues, whereas the former is an ad hominem attack. Criticism attacks your partner at their core. When you criticize, you're actually working to dismantle his or her whole being.

• Complaint: “I was scared when you were running late and didn’t call me. I thought we had agreed that we would do that for each other.”
• Criticism: “You never think about how your behavior is affecting other people. I don’t believe you are that forgetful, you’re just selfish! You never think of others! You never think of me!”

If you discover that you and your partner are critical of each other, don’t assume your relationship is doomed to fail. The problem with criticism is that, when it becomes pervasive, it paves the way for the other, far deadlier horsemen. Criticism causes the victim feel assaulted, rejected, and hurt, and often causes the perpetrator and victim to fall into an escalating pattern where the first horseman reappears with greater and greater frequency and intensity.

The second horseman is contempt. When we communicate in this state, we are truly mean. W treat others with disrespect, mocking them with sarcasm, ridicule, name-calling, mimicking, and/or body language such as eye-rolling. The target of contempt is made to feel despised and worthless.
“You’re ‘tired?’ Cry me a river. I’ve been with the kids all day, running around like mad to keep this house going and all you do when you come home from work is flop down on that sofa like a child and play those idiotic computer games. I don’t have time to deal with another kid – try to be more pathetic…” 

In his research, Dr. Gottman found that couples that are contemptuous of each other are more likely to suffer from infectious illness (colds, the flu, etc.) than others, as their immune systems weaken! Contempt is fueled by long-simmering negative thoughts about the partner—which come to a head in the perpetrator attacking the accused from a position of relative superiority. Contempt is the single greatest predictor of divorce according to Dr. Gottman’s work. It must be eliminated.

The third horseman is defensiveness. We’ve all been defensive. This horseman is nearly omnipresent when relationships are on shaky ground. When we feel accused unjustly, we search for excuses so that our partner will back off. Unfortunately, this strategy is almost never successful. Our excuses just tell our partner that we don’t take them seriously, trying to get them to buy something that they don’t believe, that we are blowing them off.

• She: “Did you call Betty and Ralph to let them know that we’re not coming tonight as you promised this morning?”
• He: “I was just too darn busy today. As a matter of fact you know just how busy my schedule was. Why didn’t you just do it?”

"He" not only responds defensively, but turns the table and makes it her fault. A non-defensive response would have been: “Oops, I forgot. I should have asked you this morning to do it because I knew my day would be packed. Let me call them right now.” 

Although it is perfectly understandable for the male to defend himself in the example given above, this approach doesn’t have the desired effect. The attacking spouse does not back down or apologize. This is because defensiveness is really a way of blaming your partner.

The fourth horseman is stonewalling. Stonewalling occurs when the listener withdraws from the interaction. In other words, stonewalling is when one person shuts down and closes himself/herself off from the other. It is a lack of responsiveness to your partner and the interaction between the two of you.  Rather than confronting the issues (which tend to accumulate!) with our partner, we make evasive maneuvers such as tuning out, turning away, acting busy, or engaging in obsessive behaviors. It takes time for the negativity created by the first three horsemen to become overwhelming enough that stonewalling becomes an understandable “out,” but when it does, it frequently becomes a habit.

Pay close attention the next time you find yourself engaged in a difficult conversation with your partner, a friend, or even with your children. See if you can spot any of The Four Horsemen, and try to observe their effects on the people involved.

Being able to identify The Four Horsemen in your conflict discussions is a necessary first step to eliminating them, but this knowledge is not enough. To drive away destructive communication patterns, you must replace them with healthy, productive ones. Take the first step to discovering healthy, productive methods of communication and patterns of interaction by starting couples counseling today.

From a recent study comprised of 40,000 "Relationship Checkup" participants, Dr. John Gottman,  a primary figure on the relationship research and couples therapy scene since the mid 80’s, has new data. Here are just a few relationship research nuggets on heterosexual couples from his study. You might find some of the results surprising!

What percentage of couples presently engagee in therapy is  at least one partner considering an exit?  66%

82% of couples are having problems with loneliness in the relationship

What About Problems with Intimacy and Sex?
Romance: 83%
Sex Quality: 55%
Sex Frequency: 49%

How many partners have problems with trust?  66%
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The Top 3 Things Couples Fight About:
86%: Not having fun anymore
76%: Finances
74%: No emotional connection

Speaking of conflict, the biggest obstacle to productively navigating conflict in relationships is flooding. Flooding means that the heart gets to 100 beats per minute, and when that happens it is nearly impossible to communicate from a calm, grounded place. In fact, when flooded, communication can be erratic, irrational and possibly damaging to the relationship. The antidote is self-soothing or helping each other soothe, if possible. Sometimes leaving the situation (in a structured time out) is the best thing a couple can do for a relationship. 96% of couples are flooded during conflict. It is interesting to note that LGBTQ couples seem to do a much better job than heterosexual couples with conflict and communication.

I will leave you with one more nugget and it’s an important one to consider for those who are struggling in married or long term relationships:  The #1 predictor of divorce is contempt. If you are calling your partner names, assassinating their character or hitting below the belt in other ways…and you would like to save your relationship, please seek counseling for help.

When inquiring about my services, many people ask why I don't accept their insurance plans. The answer can be a bit complex, but it really comes down to my ability to offer my clients the best care in the most effective, flexible and efficient manner possible.

Fee-for-Service counseling is a great option when you find a therapist that you'd like to work with. You may assume that it means a greater financial commitment from you, and sometimes it does, but often a clinician like myself is willing to work with you on a sliding scale so that you're are able to afford care without being burdened financially.

The benefits of fee-for-service counseling are many; the first of which is the fact that you're putting yourself in control of your treatment by being able to choose the therapist you want to see instead of being put on a waitlist.

Another big benefit of working with a fee-for-service therapist, is the ability to remain in counseling for as long as you and your therapist believe it is beneficial to your change and growth. Insurance companies often put a limit (6, 8 or 12 sessions) on what they will pay for, not taking into consideration whether or not the client is "better" or ready to leave counseling.

Further, insurance providers require a mental health diagnosis to be assigned to each patient in order for payment. Many people do not want a mental health diagnosis associated with themselves for a variety of reasons. Choosing to remain separate from their insurances for their mental health care, allows them this peace of mind.

These are just a few reasons why I choose to remain separate from insurance companies. I'm happy to discuss further with you the benefits of working with a fee-for-service therapist or answer questions specifically pertaining to my rates and sliding scale if you're interested in setting up an appointment with me.​

Couples who share rituals are able to  create shared meaning together. Daily rituals help shape our lives in positive ways and habits are super important to our success in all areas of life. Generally speaking, habits and rituals make us more productive and healthier. In a relationship, world-renowned marriage and relationship expert, Dr. John Gottman, calls these habits rituals of connection. Here are 5 rituals that you can build into your relationship right now to begin creating new or renewed connection in your relationship.

1. Eat meals together without screens, your texts and emails can wait. So can the Instagram photo of your plate of food.

2. Have a stress-reducing conversation. Take a few minutes each day to ask how your partner is doing. The purpose of this conversation is to process external stress, not to bring up problems in your relationship. Couples who engage in "active listening" by taking turns sharing how they feel and to sho compassion to one another, will grow immensely in their emotional connection.

3. Take a vacation without the kids once a year. If your budget doesn't allow a big trip, try camping or a weekend get away.

4. Exercise together. Studies show that sharing an exciting experience can bring couples closer together. Experiment with new and different ways to get moving.

5. Share a kiss. A daily six-second kiss will increase your emotional and physical intimacy. Physical contact releases oxytocin (the bonding hormone), can improve our mood (for days) and can help you stay calm. Holding hands, hugging, touching, and making out can reduce your stress hormones (cortisol) and increase your sense of relationship satisfaction.

Dr. John Gottman suggests that couples commit to a magic six hours a week together, which includes rituals for saying goodbye in the morning and reuniting at the end of the day. Sticking to these rituals will help you grow stronger in your relationship.

What are some of the reasons that you become stuck in your ability to create? Many reasons and excuses exist for stopping ourselves from being creative. If we are able to become aware of when and how we block ourselves, we can make a conscious effort to change our habits. We can let go of the excuses and give ourselves the opportunity to enjoy the creative energy that we all possess.

Are you aware of the inner critic that seems to sit on the shoulder of each of us? It's hard for me to think of a time when I've created a picture or written an article that I didn't, at some point along the way, judge myself: "Is this good enough? Is it worth it? It's terrible, isn't it?" I know I'm not alone. I've met enough people throughout my life and work to know that most of us seem to go through this same thought process, constantly. It's funny, though, that as young children we were able to be creative without any worry about our creation's "rightness," "beauty," or "good" or "bad" qualities. We were absorbed by exploration and experimentation. But as we've grown we began to incorporate the critic for many reasons - to help us discriminate aesthetically, to help us improve the way we approach a project, or even to be useful to others in society. However, just like many tools that we develop over time, the critic becomes unhelpful when it puts shame, embarrassment, and fear into our lives. These things prevent us from being creative.