Let’s be honest: before you come to therapy, part of you may worry that your therapist will side with your partner. At Couples Counselling Centre, we do not take sides or try to “find the bad guy.” Instead, we use what we know about the science of love to help couples build a safe and secure relationship. Even if one of you did something to break the trust in the relationship, couples therapy can help to repair the bond.
The foundation of our practice is attachment science, which teaches us to look at the unique ways that people have learned to show up in their relationships. Exploring your unique attachment style can help you become aware of the triggers, defenses, and negative communication patterns that keep you stuck in a frustrating cycle of conflict. It can help you and your partner better understand yourselves and figure out safer, more intimate ways of asking for your needs and connecting with each other.
What To Expect In Couples Therapy Sessions
In the beginning, your therapist will meet with you and your partner together for 90 minutes to get a feel for your relationship. We’ll talk about the strengths of your relationship as well as the challenges and conflicts. The next session will be an individual session with each of you to learn about the life experiences that have made you who you are, since this information is valuable for your therapist. From there, your therapist will resume meeting with you as a couple to explore the cycles that keep you stuck.
Once you have developed an awareness of these cycles, we will begin to slow them down. The therapist will orchestrate “corrective emotional experiences” between you and your partner. This is what helps heal relationships from the inside out. We don’t give homework and we don’t give worksheets for you to do. This is what we call experiential therapy.
The goal is first to help you become aware of the cycle you find yourselves stuck in. We do so by drawing from an approach called Emotionally-Focussed Therapy (EFT), a reliable, science-backed model that is considered the gold standard of couples therapy. The goal of EFT is to dig below the surface and understand the unmet emotional needs at the root of your disconnection. We’ll examine and diffuse the emotion that is fuelling the negative behaviour or negative cycle. In this way, many have called our approach “therapy from the inside out.”
The Issue Is Not The Dirty Dishes…
As a small example we can all relate to, let’s say you get upset when your partner doesn’t do the dishes. You might tell your partner “You never do the dishes” and then your partner might respond with “that’s not true, I just did the dishes a few nights ago.”
Therapy can help you learn about why doing the dishes means so much to you. It’s probably because: When my partner leaves the dishes in the sink, it seems like they are expecting me to do it. I feel like I’m a servant in this house. I don’t feel valued. I’m telling you, no marriage ever broke up over dirty dishes —it is about the feelings that those dirty dishes elicit and the resentment underneath. No matter what your issue is, helping you get to what is underneath the surface is our specialty.
Our mission is to give you the tools to help you build security and intimacy in your relationship. These are basic human needs! If you don’t have them, it’s no wonder why you may be feeling ungrounded, irritable, depressed or like you’re always snapping. There is nothing wrong with you—these are needs we all have!