For you, have stressors, losses, and responsibilities added up?
Do you want to feel wanted, loved, and disable again in your spouse’s eyes?
Have these been major losses and moments of grief adding up?
What are signs of needing marital counseling in Waterford, Connecticut?
In a new relationship, it is easy to feel happy and outgoing. On your first date, you may have put thought into your outfit. As well, you were feeling excited to continue to get to know each other. But, after ten years and having three young children it can be hard to be playful together. Holistic couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut is a safe place to explore intense emotions and reconnect in intimate ways. Plus, you both may be experiencing a series of losses like parents passing away, miscarriage, moving, losing a job, or siblings passing away from addiction. Marriage counseling in Waterford, Connecticut can be a positive conversation to inspire playfulness and emotional connection.
In addition, if there have been moments where trust has been broken, a therapist can help with repairing security.
Remember, way back, to dating each other and the fun, pleasure, and how your really made each other a priority. You even could not stop kissing before you went in to work and you wanted to stay spending time together as long as possible. Now, do you feel unwanted, not a priority, or unimportant in your spouse’s eyes? It takes effort to make a long-term marriage work. And, at Wisdom Within Counseling, our team of therapists specialize with distant, high conflict couples in counseling.
What happens in a negative fight or argument for couples?
When it comes to sharing intense, challenging emotions, right now you may be feeling hurt. For one, there is a pattern of emotional loneliness. Your spouse may have said mean words. And, you may have as well, but you are feeling rocky. In holistic couples therapy, you can learn skills to express heavy, intense emotions. For example, you can safely have a place to express fear, anxiety, anger, and loss rather than trying to explain why your spouse should take your side.
Do you find defensiveness or resentment floods your mind?
Often, couples become defensive and don’t realize it. So, going to couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut can bring calm communication to tough subjects. And, you can have your therapist pause and stop you when you become defensive. So, the negative defensiveness comes into your conscious mind. Commonly, couples get stuck in a cycle of negative communication that fosters resentment and frustration. But, holistic couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut can help you rebuild closeness and emotional connection. If you both want help building a positive love life and emotional expression, our team of therapists would love to help!
To begin, book a phone consult for marriage counseling to manage stressors, losses, and responsibilities in positive ways, using the pink button below.
What is a secure “couple bubble” in Waterford, Connecticut couples therapy?
Our therapists help couples rebuild their “couple bubble,” which is an invisible boundary of positive regard and magnetic connection that creates unspoken trust. But, when affairs and betrayal happen, the couple needs to do relationship work repair their bubble. Affairs and secrets create betrayal in relationships. So, just like you would get a roof expert to repair your roof on your house if it leaked, if couples with a history of betrayal want to stay connected and stay together, they need a professional marriage therapist on their team.
Going to couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut is just like going to the gym
In couples therapy sessions in Southeastern Connecticut, your marital counselor will help you gain tools to rebuild your couple bubble and trust. Just like you go to the gym and work your muscles, working communication, trust, and relationship muscles take time and especially after an affair, they take time to regrow. But, practice each week with your therapist can make using these skills in life, outside of session more playful and smoother
Through high conflict fights, anger, and yelling, a couple bubble becomes weak.
A strong couple bubble feels like an invisible string keeps you connected when apart in the day. As well, the a sense of security and trust remains reliable even when apart. But, couples with betrayal and trust issues are missing the skills needed to build a strong couple bubble. With a weak couple bubble, the boundary of trust around the you and your spouse is not secure. With this comes an insecure attachment, and doubt, worry, and anxiety prevent the ability to get emotionally closer and more stable. As well, learning to do rituals of connection are part of your holistic counseling experience.
How can couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut help with building a loving, nurturing, strong couple bubble?
Maintaining a strong, secure couple bubble is possible to rebuild for any one in a relationship who identify as being 100% committed. All partners need to express a sense of valuing the marriage and their spouse despite past trauma and betrayal in marriage therapy. Marriage counseling can also help if one spouse is partly doubtful and promote relationship clarity. To note, a couple bubble is not possible to build when one person is actively pursing an affair outside a marriage and betraying a consent boundary.
Let’s begin in couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut with a phone consult using the pink button today!
How can resentment lead to affair and betrayals in a relationship?
In a long-term marriage, for ten years, the shine and novelty has worn off. And, the daily stressors, owning home, raising children, working, and in-law’s can be overwhelming and feel like a lot. As well, for parents, it can feel emotionally exhausting dealing with children. It can feel like you don’t have time or energy to give to each other romantically. At the end of the day, you feel drained and tired. Plus, when resentment has developed, one spouse often develops a part of them that doesn’t even want to give anymore even if they had some extra time. Resentment means that the couples has lost touch entirely and they don’t know each other anymore. Sometimes, spouses are in this stage say they feel like business partners or like room mates. Marriage therapy can help you bring the spice and brightness back.
To begin in couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut, book a phone consult using the pink button below.
Essentially, resentment, jealousy, and anger can be a snowball effect with couples who are in conflict.
In a marital stage of distance and resentment, couples feel like something has been missing for a long time like touch, affection. As well, couples often say that the roles and responsibilities are not balanced, where one person feels like they do much more in one area. Essentially, one person falls into a caretaker role and the other a receiving role.
In couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut, we help distant couples learn to speak up and communicate right away when something feels off.
Often, traumatic or abusive childhood experiences with parents taught you that you should not speak up. So, marriage counseling teach you clear, calm, positive communication skills. This way, couples learn to share emotions calmly. And, you and your spouse can process them right away without letting resentment and anger build up over time.
How do the Wisdom Within Counseling Waterford, Connecticut marriage therapists specialize in affair and betrayal counseling?
In Waterford, Connecticut, there are not many affair and betrayal specialists. When in comes to couples with trust goals, we help them understand what may have begun the affair in the first place. For many couples, there are multiple stages to processing and healing after an emotional and/or physical affair. For instance, you and your spouse may realize something was missing, talk about the affair, and want to stay together.
Essentially, couples therapy can help you identify emotional coping skills for self-care that were not there before.
From self-care, then, we can focus on caring for the couple bubble and relationship itself. But, making yourself and nurturing yourself a priority is most important. After an affair in a marriage, our therapists like to say you are building a whole new relationship with new, better versions of yourselves.
Do you stay silent or fear that if you do speak up to your spouse, you will say the wrong thing or make your partner unhappy, and don’t end up talking about your feelings at all as a result?
First, anxiety and fears around communicating intense emotions in an effort to keep the peace leads to emotional disconnection. Manytimes, couples get stuck in a cycle or a dance of angry silence when mad. In marriage therapy for affair and betrayal healing, you can gain communication tools to speak up and vocalize. These are essential for preventing a future affair and building trust. Over time, your partnership will improve as you both share your heartfelt emotions as they arise with one another. Withholding emotions and love is a recipe for betrayals and secrets.
Often, partners stay silent or fear that if they speak up, they will create unhappiness.
So, marriage counseling in Southeastern Connecticut teaches positive ways to speak up. As well, you can learn to communicate anger, sadness, and loss calmly and peacefully. Marriage therapy is a holistic process of opening up, building playfulness, and showing affection. IN counseling, your therapist can help you see where the blocks are to showing affection, which can be challenging in and of itself after an affair. As well, your holistic, creative marriage counselor in Waterford, Connecticut support you finding ways to bond and recreate a healthy love life.
So, a holistic couples therapist who specializes with couples in Waterford, Connecticut can give you perspective to see where to go next in a difficult conversation.
Overall, your marriage therapist can guide you in conversations to feel emotionally closer and leave session feeling positive.
How does emotional intimacy build a foundation for physical intimacy?
First, in couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut, your therapist will make an assessment of areas of strengths and areas of growth. You and your spouse will be asked to take a Gottman marriage therapy questionnaire. This way, your marital therapist can learn more about your individual needs and goals. And, each couple has a unique history, so we want to get to know yours. So, your questionnaire will help with understanding where each of you are coming from, want you are wanting, and needing.
Overall, counseling for couples can include processing childhood trauma and how you were raised differently.
Frequently, couples find each other because some parts of their childhoods were simular and some were very different. And, your therapist may even want to know how conflict was managed in your family growing up. For you, you remember your parents dealing with conflict one a weekly basis, sometimes daily. Where as, your partner came from a family who didn’t have conflict and was pretty calm overall. Often, when in conflict with your spouse, you may not realize that you are having a trauma response from childhood.
We help high conflict couples who re-trigger each other in fights and push each other’s buttons. We help high conflict couples find positive communication tools and calm confidence to navigate moments of disagreement.
In childhood, different needs may have been unmet by your parents.
In couples therapy, your therapist will prompt you to have positive conversations about your upbringing and differences. Often, couples get into continual conflicts due to lack of awareness of each other’s triggers related to childhood wounds. Maybe, your spouse gets super angry when you compare him to his mom, who he describes as challenging to deal with. Using a trauma-sensitive approach, we help couples in counseling gain awareness. As well, your therapist will help you share your trauma responses with your spouse, showing emotional vulnerability, while taking accountability.
Was there childhood trauma in your past or your spouse’s childhood that you feel can be resolved?
Maybe, your parents had mental health issues, or were alcoholics that left you having to grow up faster than others. And, if you identify as an adult child of alcoholic parents, your holistic marital therapist can help you create healthy coping skills. As well, you can learn to create a different, more positive family pattern for your children. Or, your parents were highly religious and there is lingering anger or trauma there. Maybe, your parents want you to be in a certain profession and you feel inadequate for not meeting their expectations of you. Overall, these feelings and fears of being inadequate play a role in your marriage conflicts and relationship repairs now.
Does a fear of failure hold you back?
Perhaps, there is a hidden fear of failure. The fear of not being good enough in your parents’ eyes was so hard to deal with and face as a child. Now, when you feel inadequate in your spouses eyes, or that you did something wrong, that is a trigger for you. Holistic couples therapy can help you build positive, emotional intimacy, security, and a foundation for meaningful, playful and secure physical connection.
How do love languages play a role in couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut?
For one, you may know a little about love languages. In general, there are five love languages, which include, gifts, touch, service, affirmations, and quality time. But, if you and your spouse have different love languages, that can be a beautiful part of couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut. For instance, your spouse’s love language may be touch. However, your love language is positive affirmations and compliments. Naturally, you spouse will try to give you love in their love language, which is touch. But, sometimes you don’t want to be touched, and touch just doesn’t primarily help you feel loved.
What happens with a person who craves positive affirmations?
Essentially, you may be a person who craves affirmations and when you partner says, “You are doing a great job. I am proud of you,” then you feel love. So, when you spouse touches you, in their love language, they are trying to love you. Often, partners may feel a cycle of sad, upset, hurt, angry, lonely, and distant when they are not aware of their partner’s love languages. And, alone when they keep missing each other. As well, with your love language being positive affirmations, you therapist can encourage you to teach your spouse what you need. Lastly, couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut can be a positive place to create the relationship you desire.
Verbalizing these emotional needs without a professional marriage therapist is very difficult.
Also, your couples therapist can help identify when and why this is not happening at home. Lastly, your marital therapist can guide both of you to express love in the ways each of you can actually receive best. Love languages are a huge part of understanding and specializing with high conflict couples as well.
What does it mean to be a high conflict couple seeking therapy?
In time, most couples will go through phases of high conflict. However, some couples primarily get stuck in a high conflict cycle. Frequently, it can feel like you are walking on eggshells. Sometimes, you can spend all day together, have a great sense of friendship and companionship, and when life is good, it is good. However, when an argument breaks out, it all goes down hill very quickly. As well, when a high conflict couples fights, they will take it to the most negative place.
For many high conflict couples, partners say hurtful things intentionally because they don’t know how to truly express their feelings. Wisdom Within Counseling can help!
Additionally, high conflict couples often have a history of childhood trauma, abuse, and neglect. Often, they goto such a high conflict place because they lack self-regulation and self-soothing skills, and feelings of abandonment are flooding them. As a result, high conflict couples may end up scaring their children if they overhear arguments.
In a high conflict fight, partners get stuck both trying to be “right” and both head butt one another.
High conflict couples both think that taking a high status, directive position is the way to win. Often, feelings of needing to explain their side get high conflict partners stuck in this vicious, negative cycle. Even more, couples who are high conflict need a marital counselor to provide concrete weekly techniques, couples therapy homework, and tools. As well, high conflict couples are told to split up when seeking marriage counseling because not may therapists understand this speciality. Unfortunately, there are not many therapists who specialize with high conflict couples because they can be overwhelming to navigate when a therapist doesn’t have the expertise.
At Wisdom Within Counseling in Waterford, Connecticut, working with high conflict couples who have a history of sexual, physical, and emotional trauma from childhood and helping them build trauma awareness, self-care, and deeply nurture each other is one of our specialities.
What is marriage counseling in Waterford, Connecticut like?
Laying upon a structural approach and experiential approach, we offer Gottman coupled therapy. From Gottman method marriage counseling tools, you can learn how to be compassionate and gentle. For instance, during one martial counseling session, you can spend an hour talking about tone of voice. Sometimes, when there is anger or tension, it can be hard to know how to be gentle with tone of voice. Frequently, couples make the mistake of being too aggressive with how they initiate or start a conversation. In counseling for a healthy marriage, you can role play tone of voice.
As well, your marital therapist in Waterford, Connecticut can help you check your tone of voice if it is not ideal in session.
If your tone is aggressive, your couples therapist can pause you and provide examples of a more welcoming, loving tone of voice. In another session, you can talk about love languages, love needs, and desires for touch. For instance, you may be missing affection, touch, and wanting to know why this is missing. In couples counseling, your therapist can help you both gain empathy and share true feelings with one another.
Holistic couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut helps you and your spouse build a lifelong positive bond no matter what you went through so far.
From there, you can talk talking about touch in childhood, marital touch, meaning of contain touch, giving and receiving, foreplay, times of day for touch, ideal pressure of touch, and ideal area of body for touch. In general, touch is a topic that our couples therapists find to be an important part of building a strong, resilient, and healthy couple bubble. Essentially, you can bring all types goals from finances, in law’s, family planning, moving, careers, gender roles, sex, LGBTQIA+, gender expression, sexuality, and parenting.
You can come to marital counseling and your therapist can help you safely, calmly discuss fears around these topics.
In a vicious cycle of conflict, what are signs of needing professional help and clearer communication skills?
First, all couples will experience a vicious cycle of conflict. At times, each happy couple experiences sadness, hurt feelings, and discontentment. But, your marriage doesn’t have to be this way. And, it never should feel abusive. So, when those times when disagreements occur, holistic marital therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling provides you with an opportunity to learn positive communication techniques. And, these can help your next generation and child communicate better too. Secondly, if you watched your parents fight and yell growing up, that may have been traumatic.
Having observed or endured physical, sexual or emotional abuse as a child can make resolving conflict as an adult much more challenging.
It is okay to have not learned these skills in childhood, and you can learn them at any age through therapy. At times, couples have highly professional careers and professional skills. But, they simply missed out on relationship building and emotional skills from parents. Sometimes, all couples, no matter how old, need a professional marital therapist with extensive training to help teach positive communication skills. For instance, one of those communication skills is is helpful for high conflict couples is taking turns when speaking. It is common to hear couples in conflict interrupt each other. Commonly, interrupting happens from wanting to be heard or prove a point.
What is another positive communication skill that can help high conflict couples?
Another skill the Waterford, Connecticut marriage therapists teach couples is to know when flooding happens. Frequently, high conflict couples continue to argue when flooded emotionally. When flooding occurs, it is best to take a pause and return to the conversation when cool. Essentially, when emotional flooding occurs, it is not possible to continue a constructive conversation. Often, intense, challenging emotional conflicts can be triggers for all parties. Abandonment, feeling inadequate, feeling inferior, feeling disrespected, and feeling lonely can all be triggers for flooding.
So, when emotional flooding occurs, martial counseling helps couples practice self-soothing coping tools and self-care.
To add, our martial therapists teach couples self-awareness and to share they are becoming flooded from their past trauma. For instance, “From what you just said, I feel disrespected right now. My inner child feels flooded and like you are my belligerently drunk, abusive step dad and I am eight years old. I need to take a shower to cool off and get present.”
In couples counseling in Waterford, Connecticut, we walk couples through talking calmly verbally about their past trauma and how it influences their flooding.
In the past, you may remember times when you felt like you could not talk in a fight, like you were frozen back to childhood. For instance, that was a moment of emotional flooding.
How does Wisdom Within Counseling in Waterford, Connecticut specialize with high conflict couples?
In moments of flooding, you heart rate increases and blood pressure increases. Everything becomes tense. And, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. As well, you feel like you have to protect and defend yourself when flooded. Then, your fight, flight freeze response kicks in. In a marital conflict, your body turns on the sympathetic nervous system and a trauma response. In that moment of distress and conflict, relaxation and emotional safety are far from possible. Essentially, in your marital frustration, your brain signals that “danger is here.”
In the verbal disagreement, in a session, your marital therapist can help you both take a moment to pause, gain perspective, and reflect.
Then, you can decide to navigate using kind, genuine feeling words. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we specialize in helping high conflict couples thrive. In marriage counseling, we train you on flooding and retrain your brain using polyvagal theory.
You can have holistic bonding skills to calm yourself through meditation and mindfulness and building a positive relationship for your children too.
What happens in holistic marriage counseling in Waterford, Connecticut?
To begin, we do a Gottman marriage counseling intake. An intake is a history-gathering session to learn more about how you met, where you met, and how long you have been together. In your intake, you and your marriage counselor can discuss what is bringing you to therapy and your goals. After the first session, your therapist will meet with you each individually. Then, you will come back for couples therapy together after that.
Over time, marriage counseling sessions are times that are scheduled and set aside to build desire, playfulness, and meaningful connection.
So, take time to get a babysitter. And, dedicate this special time to separate from other roles you have at work and home.
Overall, Waterford, Connecticut marriage counseling is a safe time to talk about big topics from sex, building trust, intimacy, to parenting values.
As well, by doing the process of couples therapy, you are working of prioritizing your marriage again. Remember, way back, to dating each other. At that time, you made each other a priority. Maybe, you even went in to work at the very last minute because you wanted to say over as long as possible. At that time, you were feeling so in love and ecstatic about getting one more minute together. Now, it might feel like you are unwanted or unimportant in your spouse’s eyes. We help you get back to that place in a holistic, creative way.
What does it mean to specialize in LGBTQIA+ and same sex couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut?
LGBTQIA+ includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and androgynous people. At Wisdom Within Counseling in Waterford, Connecticut, we specialize with LGBTQIA+ couples and families. For example, couples seek counseling together when one spouse comes out as bisexual, pansexual, or gay. Sometimes, couples want to open their marriage and involve another people emotionally and/or sexually. Anytime a couple wants to open their marriage, professional poly affirming therapy is a recommendation. When opening a relationship or marriage, there are always feelings of jealousy, trauma, anxiety, worry, and excitement that both people may experience. As well, couples seek counseling because one spouse in transgender, non binary, or gender questioning. In this case, couples therapy can help provide clarity on the coming out process to family and friends.
For a spouse who is gay, transgender, or even bigender, going to an LGBTQIA+ therapist can provide a safe place to emotionally express.
As well, being transgender is not something that always occurs before marriage. For some, gender questioning feelings may arise after having your first child or becoming a parent. At times, transitioning genders is a long term process that begins in adulthood. To add, having a spouse who wants to dress in gender non conforming clothing can be a good reason to reach out for LGBTQIA+ affirming couples therapy.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, our therapists are queer affirming and same sex affirming in Waterford, Connecticut.
Frequently, same sex couples seek counseling to gain support in the process of finding a surrogate parent, adopting, or having a child. Specializing in LGBTQIA+ affirming marriage counseling means that if your spouse is sharing things that seems confusing or scary, our therapists are specialists. We can help understand what is going on. And, we can even give you recommendations of LGBTQIA+ affirming books and queer affirming resources. Essentially, our marriage counseling offer education if you want to bring in other members of your family too.
In Waterford, Connecticut, how is holistic counseling unique and different?
To continue, you may choose from traditional talk therapy, or yoga for couples, or creative, expressive art therapies. At Wisdom Within Counseling, marriage therapy is a positive process of gaining emotional closeness. As well, you may elect to pick from creative art therapies, yoga therapies, music therapies, and outdoor therapies.
Additionally, offering skills and tools to take home is part of Gottman method marriage counseling and is an area of expertise.
Furthermore, in part with talking, our therapists find that using clay, painting, and offering mindfulness meditation supports self-care and emotional intimacy. A times, words can be difficult, so we specialize in creative, holistic offer ways to communicating emotions beyond words. For instance, say you and your spouse have released intense emotions in a couples therapy session, your therapist may close session by guiding a mindfulness meditation to offer grounding. Then, during your next conflict, you can remember the inner peace you felt in the mindfulness mediation at the end of your couples therapy and apply that self-calming skill.
How can creative therapies offer couples a language for building emotional closeness and better communication tools?
In couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut, art therapies and yoga therapies teach couples how to feel safe around each other again after a fight. Frequently, couples get into a cycle where they don’t know how to be playful or decompress together. Therefore, in holistic couples therapy, your therapist may give you both modeling clay and ask you to make something symbolic of your marriage. As well, your therapist may invite you to do some physical poses, breathing skills for inner peace, and guided visualizations to bring hope and gratitude. We would love to help you build a loving, nurturing relationship long-term using art, yoga, music, and outdoor therapies as alternatives for connection.
What is Gottman method marriage counseling?
Now, Gottman method marriage counseling is an evidence-based style of couples therapy. Overall, our marriage therapists use Gottman couples therapy to teach skills. First, your therapist will help you build trust and commitment. From those two, a sense of getting to know each other again is available. Sometimes, couples focus so much on their careers, work, childcare, anxieties about the future, and worries about the past, that they forget how to get lost in each other. Through mindfulness, self-awareness skills, and holistic techniques to foster playfulness, couples can learn to fall in love again.
As marriage therapists, we specialize in helping distant LGBTQIA+ couples who desire playful connection, build positive skills to create and grow their love life long-term.
Building, what we call, “love maps,” can help couples know each other better. For example, some questions to prompt “love maps,” may include, “What is your partner’s favorite magazine, author, or tv show? How does your spouse like to relax after work? What does your spouse order to drink at a restaurant? What is your spouse’s favorite childhood place?” Essentially, having a therapist bring these topics to light can help distant couples learn more about one another and feel like it is new relationship energy again. To add, your holistic Waterford, Connecticut marital counselor can help you show admiration and positive affection, thus enhancing the strength of your couple bubble.
