Couples Counseling
Has your relationship lost its way?
Couples counseling can help.
Our love relationships can bring us immense joy and satisfaction, deep connection and healing, and bring up our deepest fears and insecurities; intense sadness and fiery anger. Relationship counseling can help to explore this miraculous and mysterious process and uncover ways to make the most of the positive and healing aspects of your relationship and learn how to effectively cope with and accept the negative aspects.
I take a pragmatic approach to working with couples. Depending on your needs we may work with:
New ways of communicating ~ consciously with awareness.
Learn skills to be assertive about your needs and ask for them before an argument or crisis occurs.
Going beyond communication skills and learn to re-attach or create a healthy, safe, and passionate connection with your partner.
Exploring your family of origin and how anger, sadness, affection, love, and conflict were expressed or acted out in your individual families and how that is affecting your relationship now.
Creating a vision of how your would like your relationship to be, and work on ways of getting there.
Exploring re-occurring emotional issues and conflict patterns and how different choices and behaviors can be made to support your relationship, rather than undermining it.
We all have certain hot triggers or buttons that are pushed in love relationships; these may be left over wounds from your family or past relationships – we will work on raising awareness of these and develop collaborative ways you can support each other in healing from these wounds rather than making them deeper through misunderstanding and conflict.
For couples about to perform a formal commitment ceremony or marriage I offer pre-commitment or pre-marital counseling to look at any fears, insecurities or challenges you may be facing in taking that step.
My therapeutic style with couples is influenced by my training and study of John Welwood’s (author of Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships) work on mindfulness in relationship, David Schnarch’s (author of Passionate Marriage) work on genuine contact in relationship, and Harville Hendrix’s (author of Getting the Love You Want) Imago Therapy. I work gently and compassionately with couples, emphasizing emotional expression (learning how to put your feelings into words), deep listening (to each other without judgment), promoting and teaching skills to increase empathy (feeling felt by each other) and building stronger bonds, deeper intimacy and contact through awareness and conscious communication.
David S. Robbins, MA, LPC
3393 Iris Ave., Suite 206
Boulder, CO 80301
303.225.2700
email me