Rebuild, Reconnect, and Heal Together

When relationships face challenges, it can feel overwhelming and isolating. Constant arguments, growing apart, or facing a specific crisis can leave you feeling stuck and unsure of how to fix things on your own. You don’t have to go through this alone. I’m here to help you navigate this difficult time and find a way forward together.

How Couples Therapy Can Help

Through couples therapy, you’ll gain insight into your communication patterns, rediscover emotional intimacy, and develop practical tools to handle future challenges. Whether you’re on the verge of separating or simply need guidance to reconnect, therapy offers a safe and supportive space to address your struggles.

My Approach to Saving Relationships

I specialize in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), a proven approach that helps couples repair and strengthen their bond. Together, we’ll work to uncover and address the deeper emotional needs that often underlie conflict. This process allows couples to move past recurring arguments, rebuild trust, and create a more fulfilling partnership.

Here’s what we’ll focus on in our sessions:

• Understanding your unique relationship dynamics.
• Identifying and breaking negative interaction patterns.
• Rebuilding emotional safety and trust.
• Learning tools to improve communication and conflict resolution.

Take the First Step Today

Don’t wait for things to get worse. Take the first step toward saving your relationship. I offer flexible, confidential online therapy sessions designed to meet your needs.

Click at the top of the page to book your introductory session or call me directly to discuss how I can help.

Securely attached couples have problems the same as everyone else, they just manage them differently. In therapy, I aim to foster secure attachment.

Simplified cycle of insecure interaction

Secure example of interaction

Therapy helps remodel the interaction into a more secure style by stopping the cycle and reshaping the interaction during the session. When the couple enter the emotional connection level they do not blame or criticise. Both people are available, responsive and willing to engage.

Key Points

1. Emotional Responsiveness:
   • Securely attached couples are emotionally available and responsive to each other’s needs. They recognize when their partner is distressed or in need of support and respond with care and empathy (sympathy is not empathy).
2. Effective Communication:
   • They communicate openly and honestly about their feelings, needs, and concerns. They feel safe sharing vulnerability without fear of rejection or criticism.
3. Conflict Resolution:
   • When conflicts arise, securely attached couples approach them with the intention to understand, repair, and grow. They avoid blame and focus on finding solutions, listening to each other, and remaining respectful, even during disagreements.
4. Mutual Trust and Dependence:
   • Trust is a cornerstone of secure attachment. Both partners believe in each other’s reliability and integrity. They feel comfortable depending on one another without fear of being abandoned or let down.
5. Emotional Regulation:
   • Securely attached couples are better at managing their emotions during stressful times. Instead of reacting impulsively or defensively, they take a step back to process emotions and return to the conversation calmly.
6. Sense of Security and Independence:
   • Both partners feel secure in the relationship, allowing them to pursue individual interests and personal growth without feeling threatened or anxious. Their bond remains strong, even when they spend time apart.
7. Balance of Giving and Receiving:
   • Secure attachment fosters a natural reciprocity in the relationship. Both partners feel comfortable giving and receiving love, care, and support. Neither feels like they are giving more than they receive.
8. Affection and Intimacy:
   • Securely attached couples engage in physical and emotional intimacy in ways that strengthen their bond. They express affection regularly, whether through words, actions, or physical touch, and this helps them feel closer to one another.
9. Safety to Express Needs:
   • Each partner feels confident in expressing their needs, knowing that their partner will listen and take their concerns seriously. This creates an atmosphere where both individuals feel valued and respected.
10. Resilience to Life’s Challenges:
    • Securely attached couples are better equipped to face life’s inevitable challenges together. Their mutual support and understanding enable them to navigate difficulties while maintaining their connection.

Originally developed by Professor Eugene Gendlin.

This exercise is to help you find a feeling through the ‘felt sense’ in the body. It is useful for couples in building expression of emotional experience. Avoidance in relationships often creates an emotional vacuum or constantly goes into a ‘cycle’ and finds the secondary emotion of anger.

1. Find a Quiet Space
   • Sit together in a comfortable, quiet place where you won’t be interrupted.
   • Take a few moments to relax, close your eyes, and focus on your breath. This helps calm the mind and body.
2. Pause and Check In
   • Silently ask yourself, “How am I feeling right now?”
   • Don’t rush to answer. Allow a moment for a vague, felt sense to arise—this could be a tension, tightness, warmth, or any subtle sensation in your body.
3. Stay with the Felt Sense
   • Once you notice a feeling or sensation, stay with it for a few moments. Don’t try to label or explain it right away.
   • Just notice where it is in your body and what it feels like. Is it heavy, light, warm, or tight?
4. Gently Ask What It Means
   • When you feel ready, ask yourself, “What is this feeling about?” or “What does this sensation mean?”
   • Be patient with yourself. The answer might come as a word, image, or just a sense of knowing.
5. Share and Reflect
   • Share what you noticed with your partner, describing it as best you can.
   • Your partner listens and reflects back what you said, mirroring your words to let you know they’ve heard you. For example, “You said you feel a tightness in your chest, and it seems connected to feeling overwhelmed.”
6. Listen and Connect
   • While one person shares, the other reflects without adding interpretations or advice. This creates a sense of being heard and understood.
7. Stay Curious
   • If something feels unclear, you can ask gentle questions like, “What more can I sense here?” or “Is there anything else about this feeling?”
   • As you continue, more insights might come up, and you can share them with each other.

Note

During this practice, if you feel stuck you can try giving the ‘felt sense’ a word, to see if it fits. Think of it like having a bunch of keys for a door and you are trying to find the key that fits.

If a feeling word doesn’t sit right after a while, try another word. Sometimes feelings change during this practice, just keep adjusting to the new ‘felt sense’. Give yourself time and be patient.

Attachment styles, affect your relationships with others. Having an understanding of these can help couples see what is occurring below the surface of awareness. This is something that I can explain during early couples sessions. This helps people understand the hidden dynamics in their relationships and why they may feel stuck in repeating negative interactions.

Attachment styles

• Secure attachment – Research suggests that approximately 55% of the British population exhibits a secure attachment pattern. This aligns with global findings, which generally estimate that around 50-60% of individuals across various cultures have a secure attachment style. These people seldom appear in couples therapy.
• Insecure attachment – Research suggests that approximately 20% of the British population exhibits an avoidant attachment pattern, and 15% exhibit an anxious attachment pattern.
• These figures are again broadly in line with global estimates, which typically place the prevalence of avoidant attachment between 15-25% and anxious attachment between 15-20%.
• Disorganised attachment – Research suggests that approximately 15% of the British population exhibit a disorganized attachment pattern. This is generally consistent with global estimates, which place the prevalence of disorganized attachment somewhere between 10-20% across various cultures.
• Some overlaps exist between styles.

Understanding Anxiety and Avoidance

If anxiety is high in a relationship then the attachments are insecure or disorganised. If avoidance is high in a relationship then the attachments are insecure or disorganised. Secure attachment is what I try to help couples establish and in doing so this will break the negative cycle of interaction.

A helpful book that highlights attachment styles is here

Helping Couples

Therapy can help couples see that the negative cycle they are caught in. This is the enemy and not each other! Early in the therapy process, I will ask you both to form an alliance against the cycle of interaction. Book an appointment today.

Couples often leave therapy until the situation is verging on collapse, it becomes a last-ditch attempt at saving the relationship.

I would encourage couples to think about therapy before it reaches this point. When you have a feeling that something isn’t right and it’s only small at the moment. Unfortunately in the main scenario, leaving it too late, couples arrive with a list of problems and look at a therapist as a person who will tell them what to do.

Maybe we could consider this as a regression to a child-like state. The problem is, you are adults and I have no intention of telling you what to do! Let me lay it out in plain terms what a therapist sees and what could be done.

He sees an interaction between two people but at a deeper psychological level. The problem is revealed quite quickly to the therapist and mostly it’s a problem the couple would not see clearly, unconscious attachment styles.

The therapist has just met the couple and the relationship with them takes time to form and that’s expensive and time-consuming. It’s only when the therapist’s relationship with the couple is fully functional and trust is established that a therapist can lay things out and the couple can consider what is being said in a more stable situation.

So you see if a couple arrives as a last-ditch attempt, time is short, and the pressure to create relationships in the room is under as much pressure as the couple’s relationship. This is basically the problem for the therapist when confronted with a last-ditch attempt. Lay the information bare, ‘this is your problem’ and risk the relationship by acting too soon, Or work on the relationship between the couple and the therapist when there is so little time left.

I would suggest not leaving it too late. I see couples online and an initial session with you both could prove beneficial.

Criticism – Sometimes is the ringleader

A slow startup technique can be helpful if you can recognise that criticism has entered into your negative interaction cycle. Stop, pause, and move to the slow start-up technique given below.

Well, a ‘slow startup’ technique can be very helpful. This involves the following three steps, 1. I am feeling ( ‘I‘ statements de-escalate). 2. About what 3. And now this is what I need and or want.

This technique moves away from blame, and criticism. It also is an implicit invitation for you to engage with your partner’s feelings in the present moment without feeling accused.

Youtube ones in a separate window here