How Marriage Counseling Wake Forest NC And Couples Therapy Raleigh Can Strengthen Your Relationships (With Yourself AND Your Loved Ones)

As a marriage counselor in Wake Forest, North Carolina, I work with couples and individuals to help them feel more connected, secure, and loved.

Marriage counseling Wake Forest NC provides a secure environment for couples who don't know how to express love anymore without fighting to work on exploring their emotions and rekindling their connection.

Couples therapy Raleigh can help you get to a place in your relationship where you love and feel loved again.

See other posts about:

Relationship Myth # 1: Fighting a lot means we are in trouble

Relationship Myth # 2: We fell out of love and probably (?) need a divorce

Relationship Myth # 3: Relationship should feel easy and natural!

Relationship Myth # 4: Couples therapy provides amazing results in a short period of time

What to Expect During Your First (Individual) Therapy Session

As a marriage therapist providing marriage counseling Raleigh NC, I love working with couples and individuals who seek to achieve their most fulfilling and loving way of being with themselves and their partners.

I practice an excellent exercise with my clients during our initial four to six marriage counseling sessions.

The first couple of sessions involves the assessment phase, where the couple and I are still getting to know each other. During this stage of marriage counseling Raleigh NC, you can expect me to ask a lot of questions to learn about your attachment style, family history, relationship patterns, and so on.

This exercise lets you understand what is happening underneath for yourself and your partner. For example, when your partner gets angry and looks “big,” what is really happening to them on the inside?

We know that anger is just a cover emotion, a secondary feeling that we use to cover up other disturbing emotions, such as fear, sorrow, or shame, that we don’t want or don’t know how to deal with. So, we react with anger to protect ourselves and cope with distress.

The First Exercise: Identifying Your Cycle

In our relationships, we typically get stuck in the same communication cycle, or, as we call it, “dance,” in emotionally focused therapy (EFT). We have to understand the moves of this dance in order to get to a better place in our relationship.

In our first exercise, called “Identifying your cycle,” we will go through several possible answers (“dance moves”) to the statement: “When things are really difficult between us, I tend to…”

• complain

• become critical

• blame or point out your mistakes

• yell

• tell you how to improve

• analyze you

• intellectualize

• blow up or snap at you

• insist on making my point even if I get angry

• express frustration in an angry way

• defend my self

• ask a lot of questions

• express frustration in an angry way etc

There are usually two types of people – pursuers and withdrawers. Pursuers are the ones who are uncomfortable with disconnection, so they tend to reach more, ask questions, get angry, etc. They protest against the disconnection through these moves described above.

The withdrawer, on the other hand, would choose the following answers to the statement “When things are really difficult between us, I tend to:”

·       Zone out

·       Use reason and logic to explain things

·       Shut you out

·       Go into the problem-solving mode

·       Change the subject

·       Stay in my head

·       Refuse the talk

·       Leave the room

·       Minimize your concerns, etc.

Withdrawers are people who feel uncomfortable with confrontation and conflict, so they tend to deflate, withdraw, and move away from the conflict.

So, the first step is to understand what you do when you feel uncomfortable and activated and how your partner reacts when they feel triggered. When you raise awareness about this and notice the pattern, that can be a powerful step in shifting the whole dance eventually.

Summary

Understanding your cycle can help you figure out what is in your behavior that is not working and stands in the way of your fulfilling relationships, so you can start changing that. I hope this is helpful and that you apply it not only to your relationship with your spouse but also to your relationships with your children, friends, and other significant people in your life.

If you need more help than this blog can give you or want to schedule your free 15-minute phone consultation with me, click here. I offer the best marriage counseling I can! You can also check out the FAQs to learn more.

This is not your typical weekly kind of therapy. I am here to help couples and individuals in relationships do what is proven to work to help them heal their relationships. Through marriage counseling Raleigh NC, marriage retreat in North Carolina, online therapy North Carolina, and individual counseling, there is something for every couple who wants to heal their relationship.

Stop wasting years of your precious life trying to feel happy. Schedule your free 15-minute consultation with me today by clicking here. During the call, you will discover how having a place to heal your relationship with a guide can take you from the hurt to a healthier relationship than the one you grew up with.

Hi, I'm Irina Baechle LCSW, in Raleigh, NC.

I believe in the power of healthy relationships and write on that topic. Whether you and a partner are co-creating a healthy marriage, or you are single navigating how to have healthy relationships, my content is for you.

Let's make healthy, trustworthy marriages the norm instead of the exception!

Topics I write about include marriage, infidelity, roommate marriages, healthy second marriages, healing after toxic or unfaithful marriages.