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Couples Counseling
“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.” – Plato
There is nothing more important in a relationship than hope. Once presence of hope becomes more powerful than the presence of the problem nothing is left but love, happiness, and relationship satisfaction.
When I am working with couples, I remember two things that guide me as a therapist. The first is that this couple was once happy, in love, and very close. The couple was once at a blissful place in which more time was spent dreaming about a future that would be spent together in that happiness forever. The next thing I remember is that the couple would like to get back to that place and the couple is made up of the same people that were once very happy.
I see my job as a therapist working with couples as being more than just a mediator. My role is to help the couple to remember that they are still the people that fell in love and the things that originally contributed to them falling in love are still very much present.fe.
Usually, other factors have become more prevalent causing undesired events to occur within the relationship. By rediscovering what the relationship was like when it was at its happiest, clues begin to appear that guide each member of the relationship towards seeing how they could once again experience that level of hope and happiness. I honestly believe that the presence of hope in a relationship has the ability to overcome anything. Hope has the power to invite the happiness back into the future, a future without the problem.
I also believe, when working with couples, that it is important to build what is desired. This is different than most other therapists working from traditional therapeutic approaches who focus on fixing what is wrong.ent.fe
By focusing the conversation on what is desired, hope becomes more quickly introduced into the relationship. I do not find it helpful to fix what is wrong. That conversation would require that we talk about the problem in detail. In that case, all we do is learn more about the problem. Solution-Focused Therapy facilitates a conversation about the details of the solution. This provides more helpful information.
Once the details about the solution become apparent and a description of what the relationship would be like without the problem is discussed, then it becomes clearer how to turn that dream into a reality.
