Gottman Method Couple Counseling
Daniel Brake, LMFT-S
with Dr John Gottman & Dr Julie Schwarz Gottman (background)
The feelings of love may come and go over the course of your lifetime together.
The choice to act with love, admiration and respect is one you can make every day.
Grounded in 45 years of research with more than 3000 couples, Gottman Method Couples Therapy is a structured, goal-oriented, and scientifically-based approach for creating positive change in your relationship. It is the health of a couple’s friendship that determines whether they will continue to grow together, or drift apart. I can help you identify unsuccessful strategies and damaging habits in your interactions and teach you better tools for getting the relationship you want.
Communication & Conflict Management
All relationships have conflict. How you manage those moments of disagreement determines whether they are opportunities to grow closer, or injuries that drive you further apart. Cycles of conflict characterized by criticism, defensiveness, stone-walling, and contempt will eat away at your love and respect for one another. Repeated instances where you feel misunderstood, undervalued, disregarded, or where underlying needs and hurts remain unattended will undermine the foundation of trust between you.
Has your relationship become hostile?
- You just can’t talk about certain topics without it turning into a fight.
- A simple disagreement can escalate out-of-scale to the actual stakes of the conversation. (I bought the wrong mop, why are we talking about divorce?)
- It feels like your friend goes away in a fight and is replaced by a mean or unloving stranger.
- When things are going well, they are amazing. When they don’t, it’s awful.
- Things are feeling good means: We haven’t had an argument in two weeks!
- Compromise means keeping your mouth shut and pretending like you’re fine with your partner’s decision, because it’s just not worth the fight.
If you agreed with three or more of those statements, your relationship is at significant risk of disintegration, and getting stuck in a pattern that feels impossible to change on your own.
Here’s an article on why it can be so hard to change without help.
The Zero-Sum Game: the surprising math behind intractable relationship conflict
Whether this is a new pattern following an unfortunate event, or something that’s followed you from relationship to relationship, effective conflict management is a skill you can learn. Changing how you communicate can nurture a culture of admiration, appreciation, and compassion. Accepting influence and approaching disagreements as opportunities to build trust and connection can turn distress into harmony. This may require you, or your partner, to learn some anger management skills, or address an underlying condition such as depression.
Rebuilding Connection
Couples routinely describe the best times in their marriage as ones in which they felt the most joy and connection. Whether those were times of freedom and adventure, or of struggle and hardship, their bond was rich.
Conversely, when partners feel burned out and distant in their relationship, the financial security and freedom they’ve gained over the years does little to comfort them.
There are many reasons couples grow apart. Sometimes, it’s conflict undermining their trust and commitment to each other. For others, it’s the daily grind of work, and kids, and family obligations. The connection feels extinguished.
You might be perfect roommates, excellent parents and considerate business partners, but still something is missing.
Luckily, love is not the unpredictable force of nature Hollywood has taught us to expect. When nurtured, joy and connection can grow anew. With work and attention, partners can remember why they fell in love in the first place.
How to Nurture Your Love to Last a Lifetime (coming soon!)
Intake & Assessment
An integral part of Gottman Method relationship therapy is the assessment. Based on decades of empirical research, the assessment process will give your therapist an in-depth understanding of the hidden dynamics in your relationship.
Are you hesitant to invest your time and effort in such an intensive process? Don’t be! The assessment is the best tool for efficiently collecting the information we need to design your course of treatment.
With less structured approaches, the counselor explores your relationship and history piecemeal, over the course of multiple sessions. You will start interventions sooner, but with a less complete understanding. In the long run, the assessment process can save you time and money.
Intake and Assessment:
- Initial interview and goal setting (50-minute session)
- Gottman Institute Online Assessment Tool
- Individual Interview with each partner (100-minutes total)
- Gottman Assessment Report, treatment planning, and initial interventions (50-minutes)
The Gottman Method in Action
Gottman Method Couples Therapy is a directive, and goal-oriented approach. This means that, based on your assessment, I will have a plan of action for every session. These plans are flexible, and incorporate what is happening in your relationship day to day, but always intending to move you forward. You will work through every session, and you will regularly have practices for home.
This process is more than simply teaching you effective communication skills. To see real change, you and your partner will be challenged to think of old patterns in new ways, and to get personal with thoughts and feelings you might have avoided in the past.
That isn’t easy, I know. I respect how difficult it is to take the time and dedicate the resources to this process. I want to make sure that the investment you’re making in your relationship pays out the dividends you want.
Couples Therapy Doesn’t Always Work
Even with the most motivated clients, there are two situations that don’t respond well to traditional couples therapy. In these special cases, we need a modified approach to get results. If there’s been an affair, or if you (or your partner) are unsure that you want to continue the relationship, consider the options below.
Infidelity Recovery
When trust is broken, it has to be repaired before we address anything else. This requires an asymmetrical approach counter to traditional couples therapy’s neutral balance between partners.
Based on decades of research, and my own clinical experience, I’ve developed a protocol that works quickly to rebuild trust and safety. With a new foundation, you can build a stronger, more vibrant relationship to carry you into the future.
Discernment Counseling
Research has shown that when there is significant ambivalence about the relationship’s future, couples counseling is ineffective.
Marriage therapy is uncomfortable. If you’re not sure you even want to save the marriage, it’s hard to motivate yourself to complete difficult tasks. Discernment counseling first answers the question: Do I want to be here? Do I want this to work?
With that answer in hand, figuring out how to make it work gets much easier.
We Can Help You!
At Wise Mind Counseling, we rely on Evidence-Based Protocols backed by decades of research to help you change your relationship with the struggles in your life. We can help you identify where you’re getting stuck, or employing strategies that are not good for your long-term happiness and wellbeing. With that insight, we’ll help you develop better strategies, and build the practices and habits that will get you where you want to go.
Daniel Brake, LMFT-S
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist Clinical Supervisor
T/F: 9am - 3pm | W/Th: 10am - 6pm
Keeley Arnecke, LMFT Associate
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist Associate
Monday - Wednesday: 10am - 7pm