What is couples therapy like?
Marriage counseling and relationship therapy supports distance, frustration, loneliness, betrayal, and sadness. You might feel hurt that there is something coming between you and your significant other. Perhaps, your partner has been lying or has been keeping a secret from you. Couples therapy is not about blaming one another. Rather, marriage counseling is a process of learning to share intense emotions like anger and jealousy calmly.
A lot of couples fall into a pattern where they don’t speak to each other anymore. Distant couples stop sharing emotions and even little parts of their day with each other. Additionally, distant couples also may develop a high conflict fight cycle of negative communication. One person begins yelling and raising their voice and even name-calling. The other person stop speaking, shuts down, and starts to walk on eggshells in the relationship. Couples counseling can help you turn towards one another and communicate in a way that is safe.
To begin, use the pink button below to book your free phone consultation for Waterford, Connecticut, couples therapy for closeness and emotional togetherness.
As well, it is really common to have two people in a relationship who don’t know how to self regulate and this creates a more intense fight cycle. You can feel your heart rate increasing as you think about how angry you are. All of these intense, huge emotions can be brought to your marriage counseling session at Wisdom Within. Irinel Fishlock, a holistic couples therapist at Wisdom Within, teaches couples how to mindfully self-regulate when conflict arises. One benefit of couples therapy in Southeastern Connecticut learning how to slow down, use emotional vocabulary words, and nonviolent language. And, fighting couples can truly start to build emotional intimacy.
So, couples therapy is a safe place to practice inner peace, and develop a sense of emotional connection together.
Can couples therapy help a toxic relationship?
Waterford, CT couples therapy can help you if your relationship is toxic. Signs of a toxic relationship include name-calling, yelling, stonewalling, criticism, and defensiveness. Let’s talk about each of these.
Name-calling is very common when a person is filled with hurt and anger.
You and your partner might swear at each other when you are not in a very good place emotionally. Despite wanting to feel heard or trying to explain your point of you, your partner shuts down when you yell. There’s a part of you that acknowledges and knows this, but you keep on yelling to try to get heard. The tone of your voice becomes more stern. And, it feels to your partner as if you are demanding some thing of them. Couples therapy in Waterford, Connecticut can help analyze your specific fight cycle in this pattern.
By understanding the pattern of every single fight, you and your partner can better look at yourselves, and build the healthiest relationship possible.
According to Irinel Fishlock, holistic couples therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling, couples may get into fights and high conflict arguments because of childhood trauma. If you had parents who were alcoholics and who called you names or made you take care of them emotionally, you may not have gotten the nurturing you deserved in your childhood. If you were physically neglected or emotionally abused as a child, this same pattern can show up in your romantic relationships as well.
Therefore, couples therapy is a process of re-learning how to be kind, use warm communication, and speak gently with each other.
Yes, topics like money, infertility, abuse, parenting, family, in-law’s, and childcare can be very heated.
However, Waterford, CT couples therapy teaches you how to artfully share intense emotions like anger or betrayal in calm and relaxed ways. Your therapist will help create a safe space for you to explore stressful topics with your partner.
To begin, use the pink button below to book your free phone consultation for Waterford, Connecticut, couples therapy for closeness and emotional togetherness.
Can Waterford, CT couples therapy save a marriage after cheating or infidelity?
Furthermore, finding out your partner is cheating on you can be heartbreaking. You may have put all of your love, attention, and focus into this relationship. It might feel like the carpet is being pulled out from underneath you. You want to try to work it out in Waterford, CT couples therapy. If you want to get into holistic couples counseling after there has been an affair, infidelity, or cheating, it is important that you do so with a specialist. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we are a team of specialists when it comes to affair and infidelity recovery. The person who was cheating will always want to get over it as soon as possible, so therapy is essential.
Waterford, CT couples therapy can help you start to develop skills to have the most meaningful and trustworthy relationship possible moving forward.
There’s a lot of shame, guilt, and dysfunction that goes with cheating and infidelity healing. Sometimes, cheating and lying can even be behaviors from childhood or from family generations. Also, the person who was cheated on feels betrayed, which is a deep pain, and then this partner may develop traumatic symptoms as a result. Often times, the person who is cheated on develops post traumatic stress disorder, trauma symptoms, nightmares, flashbacks, and a high level of anxiety. An infidelity specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling can help understand how the affair took place and the things that were missing from the relationship. We can also help you and your partner rebuild a solid foundation of trust to move forward in your relationship in a healthy, effective way.
Could Waterford, CT couples therapy help high conflict fighting stop?
Yes, couples therapy can help reduce conflict in couples. High conflict couples have a very unique and intense cycle of relating to one another when a conflict arises. During the times when there are no conflicts, you feel very peaceful and happy together. However, when in conflict, there are times of intense conflict, name-calling, yelling, belittling, criticism, and stonewalling are very apparent. Stonewalling is when one of you becomes like a stone. There are no words, and this is often a protective or trauma response because the intensity of the conversation is just too much. When someone stonewalls, a couple therapist can help figure out what coping tools might work well in the future. Sometimes, when one person stonewalls and doesn’t speak, the other person continues to yell at an even higher volume. Slowing down is a very huge part of couples counseling.
Marriage therapy is also about getting people on the same page to break a toxic cycle and help couples empathize with each other.
During a fight, both people want to see that they are viewpoint is valid and right. High conflict couples will fight and yell until they have beaten partner down with criticism and name calling. Name calling is not effective and does more damage in the long term than good.
It is so easy for couples to get stuck fighting about who is more right and trying to one up each other. Also, couples make errors trying to have the last word or slamming doors, to try to prove a point.
Instead, Southeastern Connecticut marriage counseling helps couples to drop deeper into the emotional world and talk about emotions.
Each person can have a different emotional experience of the same conflict. Let’s say your partner feels confused, insecure, and nervous. You might feel hurt, betrayed, and uncomfortable. Even though these feelings may seem similar, they are each very different and have a different story related to them.
To begin, use the pink button below to book your free phone consultation for Waterford, Connecticut, couples therapy for closeness and emotional togetherness.
Talking about being a child and childhood experiences are parts of marriage and couples therapy
Your couples therapist will want you to talk about the beginning of your life, your childhood, and what it was like growing up. Growing up in the stories we have around our childhood play a huge role in how we really and handle conflict in adulthood. So, don’t be afraid to talk about your early years, being a youngster, and the things that you may have wished you had in your childhood during the process of marriage counseling.
Marriage counseling helps to deepen emotional communication that you and your partner have and make all the motions easy to talk about.
Next time you have anger, or hurt, you will have tools to help your partner hear you more deeply. From the process of marriage counseling, You can learn to love each other more deeply than you ever have before.
Would Waterford, CT couples therapy help after trauma and loss?
As well, couples therapy can help you heal after trauma and loss. Losing a grandparent or losing a parent can be a major life stressor. Couples who cry together and show emotional vulnerability together stay together longer. Likewise, learning how to comfort your partner and be there for them during a time of sadness is part of couples counseling. Usually, couples will become distant and aloof, during times of loss and even stoic.
Couples counseling in Southeastern Connecticut is a safe place where you can tell the story of your loved one and work through different losses together.
As well, infertility is a major loss that many couples struggle with. There can be blame, sadness, and anger with infertility. Miscarriage is another loss that couples may need support around. There are so many losses and traumas that we face. And, one of the best resources you have is the romantic relationship you’re in. Waterford, CT couples counseling helps create security and helps you get through the tough time together.
Online and in person in Niantic, we help couples, children and teenagers in neighboring towns.
We help children, teens, and couples in Connecticut in Bozrah, Waterford, Old Lyme, Ivoryton, Griswold, Centerbrook, Westbrook, Essex, East Lyme, Newington, Shelton, South Windsor, Granby, Franklin, Branford, Griswold, Groton, Ledyard, Suffield, Lisbon, Montville, Bristol, Stratford, Hartland, Glastonbury, Colchester, East Haddam, Hadlyme, Hamburg, Enfield, Old Saybrook, Westport, Ridgefield, and Madison, Connecticut.
In other Connecticut towns, we offer video counseling in Connecticut to families in Portland, Berlin, Bethany, Bethel, Bethlehem, Milford, Kent, Bloomfield, East Hampton, Southington, Haddam, Litchfield, Simsbury, Fairfield, Cobalt, Marlborough, Cromwell, Canton, Avon, Rocky Hill, West Hartford, Clinton, Wethersfield, Middlebury, Cheshire, Waterbury, Guilford, Chester, Deep River, Moodus, Durham, and Middletown, Connecticut.
Our team at Wisdom Within Counseling would love to help you build playfulness, meaningful connection, and laughter back in to your romantic relationship.
