Do you desire change in your relationship? Are you worried your relationship is on its last legs due to unsolved problems? Maybe you’re still in the pre-marital stages and are worried about your ability to progress down the aisle. Or perhaps you wish to explore the possibility of splitting amicably. Have no fear—Reflections Creative Therapies group is here to help. With a team of highly qualified therapists and convenient locations in Boynton Beach and Wellington, Florida, we make it easy for couples to receive the support and guidance they need to overcome communication issues and build a strong foundation moving forward. Read on to discover what couples therapy at our practice can do for you.

Common Relationship Issues for Romantic Couples

Believe it or not, you’re not alone—romantic couples are often bringing different versions of the same argument to couples therapy. Chances are certain behaviors are preventing you and your partner from achieving your goals of a harmonic partnership, such as:

• Criticism
• Contempt
• Defensiveness
• Stonewalling

These negative actions often present themselves in the form of bickering, nagging, or a lack of communication. It is not uncommon for issues like these to cause ongoing difficulties in a partnership and lead to looking for physical or emotional consolation outside of the relationship—either in an affair or another form of betrayal. This then leads to the final nail in the coffin. That’s why therapy is so essential. With couples counseling, you and your partner can work toward identifying the root cause of a conflict and finding a resolution.

Everyone wants to be seen, heard, accepted, and supported unconditionally by their significant other. When there are underlying issues that aren’t being addressed, you or your spouse may often feel alone, even in a committed relationship. These feelings could cause either of you to experience anxiety, depression, or regret over not making different choices. Couples therapy can help you get to true emotional integrity and realize that you and your partner can achieve a healthy, fulfilling relationship.

When to Bring in a Couples Therapist

Every relationship can benefit from the guidance of a couples therapist, but most often couples look into therapy because of a new physical or mental diagnosis for one partner or bumps in the relationship caused by infidelity, different communication styles, traumatic life events, and conflicting views about money or child-rearing.

Couples often have difficulty overcoming struggles on their own due to a mindset of win or lose rather than win-win. They may believe their differences are insurmountable because they cannot imagine a compromise, or they don’t have the communication skills to explain their core concerns to their partners. Sometimes, someone may feel that they are an oddity and be embarrassed to share a concern when the other partner may easily understand. This is where Reflections Creative Therapies Group comes in. Our couples counselors in Boynton Beach and Wellington are uniquely equipped to help couples learn to tackle these issues constructively.

Couples Therapy Can Help You See Things From a Different Perspective

Each of us is born and raised in different families. Depending on the family, some negative behaviors can be learned, such as not being open about feelings, overindulging feelings, not addressing opinions about money/sex/politics, or having robust (and sometimes hurtful) debates about any topic. What’s more, many of us come from different religious backgrounds, and we all experience hardships and difficult times or go through traumatic events that shape our thoughts, opinions, and behaviors. Each characteristic we carry, experience we have, and trauma we go through impacts how we interact in relationships with a significant other or spouse. Working through these differences and determining common ground to build on is one of the most important topics of couples therapy.

What to Expect in Couples Counseling Sessions

At Reflections Creative Therapies Group, our couples therapists can hold a mirror up for clients to see their issues in. This can help you see your challenges from a different perspective and allow you to reach different conclusions. During your sessions, you will receive psycho-education, guidance, mediation, and skilled assistance tailored to help you and your reach your specific relationship goals.

Couples in therapy typically have three main questions to consider:

1. Has there been a conflict we want to heal and resume our relationship as before?
2. Has there been such a significant conflict that we want to heal from this and build a new relationship moving forward?
3. Do we want to end this relationship in a healthy way for everyone concerned?

Therapy is a way to answer any of those questions successfully.

Once these questions have been answered, it becomes much easier to figure out which direction counseling should head in. Oftentimes, for couples that want to stay together and heal their relationship, our sessions will focus on resolving conflict and increasing healthy communication. For many couples, the solution may be finding a way to agree to disagree in a recurring argument. Instead of shying away from conflict, you and your partner can learn to compromise and work through your disagreements in a way that deepens your understanding of each other. Additionally, we’ll help you find common ground so that you can experience a more profound connection across a broad spectrum of issues.

The Methods and Modalities We Use in Couples Counseling

Couples can learn to create shared meaning for their lives by building important rituals for connection. These rituals can include setting shared goals, learning how to compromise, recognizing when one partner or the other is experiencing emotional flooding (which may prevent sound judgment), and creating a shared purpose for their lives.

To build these habits, our couples counselors use techniques such as:

• Psycho-Education: Holding up a mirror to show if a partner is projecting issues onto the other. Psychoeducation allows couples to dig deeper into individual issues.
• Mediation: A couples therapist will be there to make sure topics don’t escalate in a negative direction and will be able to get things back on track.
• Skills Assistance: The therapist will help couples achieve essential skills such as communication, compromise, avoidance of projection, etc.
• Attachment Work: How we learn to bond very early with our parents or caregivers in childhood (Are they safe? Can we count on them? Do they encourage us?). These early attachments are the basis for future relationships.

No matter which of these approaches works best for you, we would be honored to help you and your significant other create a strong emotional bond, overcome defensive behaviors, and deepen your love for each other.

Interested in Couples Therapy But Have Some Questions?

Hopefully, these FAQs about couples therapy can help!

Q: What if my partner doesn’t want to go to couples therapy?

A: Couples therapy is only successful if both partners participate to an equal degree. However, individual therapy is often vital in resolving issues within a partnership. If you benefit from therapy and your partner sees the results, they may be motivated to try it out themselves.

Q: How do I know that what I share in therapy will remain private?

Counseling ethics require that all client information remain confidential unless someone’s safety is at risk. We will honor your privacy so that you and your partner feel comfortable freely speaking your minds in sessions.

Q: What if the therapist takes my partner’s side?

The role of a couples therapist is not to choose sides but to help you and your partner hear each other and understand where the other person is coming from. The therapist is a mediator, educator, and encourager who can help both of you reach your agreed-upon goals together. We don’t allow any biases to get in the way of our work with couples.

At Reflections Creative Therapies Group, we are committed to creating a place for safe, non-judgmental communication with both partners in order to assist you in moving towards a healthier relationship.

Are You Ready to Get on the Road to Relationship Recovery?

Whether you’re preparing to tie the knot, simply looking to strengthen your marriage, or planning to go your separate ways, we at Reflections Creative Therapies Group are confident that we can assist you. If you want a healthier relationship, we encourage you to pursue couples therapy with us. Call us today for a free 15-minute consultation at (561) 810-6631 or visit our contact page. We have locations in Boynton Beach and Wellington.