Relationship Counseling
People often need help navigating relationships in their life, whether a parent/child relationship, or a relationship with one’s significant other, friend, roommate, co-worker, or boss. In therapy, I ask a series of background questions to help us both understand your main concerns within a particular relationship, and then I determine your individual course of therapy to help you achieve your specific relationship goals.
Sometimes people need help being more assertive, drawing clear boundaries, developing empathy, becoming more vulnerable, managing conflict effectively or understanding their needs/wants within a relationship (and then knowing how to ask for what they need/want).
Many people I meet with say, “I am unhappy with my relationship,” but they can’t identify the root cause of their unhappiness. Through counseling, we will work together to clarify and understand what you want to change in the relationship, and then I will give you the tools you need to create those changes.
In some cases, I may recommend couples or family counseling in addition to individual counseling. For example, if I want to help my client talk to their spouse about a particular issue, I may invite that spouse to join us for one to two sessions. I also provide the same service for family members, typically with parent/child relationships.
These situations differ from traditional couples counseling and family therapy because one person is my client and my focus is to help that person rather than treating the couple or the family as a whole. If someone needs continued couples or family therapy, I will refer them to another psychologist.
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