Relationship & Couples Therapy

Relationship Therapy

Relationships can be beautiful, fulfilling, joyful, passionate, healing, and validating, but they can also be painful and confusing. Often, partners have difficulty figuring out how to identify the underlying problems and patterns that are leading them to feel distant or have conflict. Instead, they get caught in what feel like the same repetitive fights, never addressing the root causes tearing them apart.

The therapists at Riverbed Psychology provide relationship counseling that can help you begin to work together with your partner and create loving changes in your dynamic. We help establish a safe environment where partners can learn to communicate effectively. Once you are able to really hear each other, you’ll be able to build deeper intimacy, closeness, and trust. Our practice works from an attachment based, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) lens, which is an evidence-based model for building and healing relationships.

Seeking Help Can Feel Scary

In Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide, Stevie Nicks sings, “I’ve been afraid of changing because I built my life around you.” It can feel scary to take risks to be honest with yourself and your partner about your feelings and experience. People are often scared that if their partner knew their truest self, they wouldn’t love them anymore. Sometimes people are worried that they will be identified as “the problem” in the relationship. It can be very upsetting and confusing to have valid hurt feelings and then be told by your partner that you are doing something wrong. These fears can lead to more distance, defensiveness, and anger because people fear that their experience will go unheard or they will be rejected.

What does EFT Therapy Look Like?

Individuals and relationships are all unique. It is important to understand the pattern of disconnection that continues to show up in conversations and arguments over time. This includes exploring feelings, meaning, past hurt, personal history, deeper fears, and how each person responds to their partner and behaves in the relationship. We analyze the ways in which each person attempts to reach for connection, and the ways in which each person protects themselves, which can often block connection. This often involves conversation about cultural expectations and lessons that people learn much earlier in life.

We help each partner explore and resolve their emotions rather than let anger and mistrust dictate how a problem is handled. We operate under the assumption that the pattern between them is the problem, and that both partners’ experiences are real and valid. In facilitating emotional safety and deeper understanding where each partner feels heard, there are more opportunities for building deeper intimacy, connection and a more felt sense of love and tenderness. This can sometimes involve repairing hurt or relational injuries that have occurred in the relationship. Often, partners are able to build toward more intimacy, closeness, and safety than they have ever felt in a relationship.

Healing the Hurt through Closeness

Overcoming problems makes a relationship stronger through learning to risk and grow closer. Partners can learn to trust in their capacity to work through difficult moments, and ruptures in the relationship can start to feel like opportunities for deeper connection with one another. Connection is the key to sustaining a healthy relationship. When there is closeness, there is opportunity for each partner to be themselves, relax, become more playful, connect more intimately, and express themselves more lovingly. This safety can often lead to healing relational wounds, and can also offer space for individual healing and growth.