Couples Counseling
If you are concerned that you and your spouse or partner have been arguing and you feel that you need support and better skills, couples counseling and marriage counseling can help. Know that you are not alone. Every couple has disagreements. All of us view life situations through different lenses and all couples have seasons where life stressors can feel overwhelming. . In couples therapy, you can learn to work through your issues together and discover that problems can indeed be resolved when you approach life more directly and effectively.
"All couples have seasons where life stressors can feel overwhelming"
Marriage Counseling & Couples Counseling
Marriage and family counselors report that fights for many couples happen monthly or even weekly. But if your fights are ongoing and end without resolution and resentment is starting to build, it may be beneficial to seek out couples counseling near you. Working with a caring and experienced couples’ therapist may help you understand the patterns that are causing harm to your relationship and teach you proven skills and strategies to strengthen your relationship.
Couples or marriage therapy was once thought of as a treatment of last resort. But it is now becoming a preferred method of treatment for relationship distress and even the prevention of problems when addressed at the first signs of strain. In fact, the best predictor of couples therapy success is the level of distress when the couple enters therapy. The earlier they begin therapy, the better. And finding an Orange County based couples therapist near you assists with therapy consistency.
Some couples believe that fighting is an indicator of a lack of commitment to the relationship. But fighting can indicate that each member of the couple is still engaged and invested emotionally in a positive outcome. After entering couples therapy, both partners begin to feel better heard and understood, making it easier for each to accept that the other may be affected quite differently by the problem(s) in the relationship.
Instead of focusing on fighting less, couples in therapy with the best couples counseling therapists or best marriage counseling therapists will focus on learning communication skills such as active listening, understanding, expressing emotions and needs, and how to validate the other. By learning the skill of emotional validation (showing empathy for a partner’s feelings without necessarily agreeing), couples can hold quite different perceptions of a problem and still be mutually supportive of each other.
Communication skills learned in couples counseling can be helpful to everyone no matter where they are and who they interact with. Expressing your thoughts clearly, listening, being aware of your tone and body language can help you build life-long skills that help you to be the best communicator possible to enhance all relationships.
What to Expect in Couples Therapy
A skilled and caring Christian therapist will ensure that both partners feel equally comfortable in therapy; both feel understood; and that the therapy is focused on mutual goals set by the couple.
Mutual Goals
Sometimes marriages can go along without intentional planning and setting goals. Couples therapy gives you the opportunity to look at your goals and priorities and make choices to align your aims and work together to build the life you want. Misaligned goals and differences in priorities can cause conflict, taking time and energy away from building the marriage or relationship that you desire. When you set and accomplish mutual goals, you can experience the joy and connection of building something together, a widely reported benefit of marital therapy.
Safety and Trust
After determining your goals as a couple, time will be spent building safety and trust so that each person can bring their concerns, thoughts, and emotions into the session. Each will learn to know what is important to their partner, gain a deeper understanding of where the other person is coming from, and build and practice communication skills. Those completing marriage counseling report that trust was built over time and change was incremental. Most finish counseling with a better understanding of themselves and their partner.
Healing and Forgiveness
Sometimes it can be hard to move forward in the relationship because wounds caused to one another have not been healed. Through grief and loss processing, sincere apology, and forgiveness, owning our part, and making true and lasting behavior change, couples can get past their anger and hurt to move forward to a healthier, happier and healed marriage.
Behavior Change
In couples therapy, you will learn techniques and new strategies for lasting behavior change. Using the model of integrated behavior, you will gain awareness, learn new skills, and practice them until detrimental behaviors that are damaging your relationship are turned into new, integrated behaviors that are more in line with who you want to be as a partner.
In addition, you will learn to work through conflict. Conflict management is both a science and art. Marriage counseling therapists are skilled at helping you to not just collaborate, but truly cooperate toward your desired outcome.
Life Change Management
Managing life transition and change is also often an outcome of couples counseling. Life brings many seasons and changes, and learning how to navigate a new marriage, having children, relocation, changes in employment, entering the empty-nest phase of marriage, facing physical limitations and illnesses, can be challenging. A couple’s counselor can facilitate constructive conversation and help you to see the options you have as a team.
Individual Benefits
Couples therapy is designed to help both, of course, but participants also report benefiting individually as well. During the process of therapy, you will come to understand yourself better and gain awareness of what you bring to both the problem patterns and solutions for change. Insight and skills learned can carry over to life outside of marriage and improve the quality of life.
Affordable Couples Counseling Near Me
Orange County is an expensive area for counseling centers to do business in. This fact influences therapy rates. At Best Life Therapists we strive to make therapy costs affordable so that cost is not the barrier. But an investment in your relationship will be necessary and typically is well worth it. Our therapy office is centrally located in San Juan Capistrano, which is near San Clemente, Dana Point, Monarch Beach, Laguna Beach, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Niguel, Ladera Ranch, Rancho Mission Viejo, Laguna Hills, Mission Viejo, Coto de Caza and Rancho Santa Margarita. Our strategy in being centrally located with easy freeway access was to help make you therapy visits convenient and consistent.
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