Marriage Counseling, Relationship Counseling, Family Counseling and Leadership Consulting
I am a member of PsyPact and can see clients nationwide!!
Helping people to understand how to create healthy relationships of all kinds has been the focus of my work as a psychologist since 1980. Whether I’m working with leaders who want to create healthy organizations or couples working together to create a healthy and loving relationship and family, my approach is to help them see that there are patterns to all interactions and that understanding them can heal even very painful relationships. I have developed the Interpersonal Flexibility Circle (IFC) to map any situation and recognize how to transform rigid and difficult relationships into flexible and open and loving engagement.
We fall in love for many reasons, and the paradox is that those reasons often become the core of a couple’s problems. For example, at least 95% of the people I have worked with are married to their opposite on the scale of Introversion/ Extroversion. Those opposites truly attracted them to each other, but once married, those opposites often create havoc. I’ve experienced this personally, and know how hard it is to step back, take a breath and remember how to approach my introverted husband in a way that works.
I use assessments to immediately help couples to see how their individual needs and ways they see and deal with life can create problems if they aren’t aware of their own and their partner’s natural patterns. We use the IFC to map difficult situations and practice being more flexible to find more effective ways to connect with each other.
I work with each person individually to discover how they developed the greatest challenges they have in relationships and life. When we do this “Lifeline”, they realize that they developed these patterns to keep themselves safe when they were young (even at birth!) Those defenses are now creating the problems that plague their marriage, and every other relationship they have. They can love the kid who had to try so hard and recognize that life can truly be different now.
Each partner then shares their lifelines with each other, always an eye-opening experience for both as they see both emotionally and intellectually how their partner developed some of the defenses that keep them at odds. They start to take a breath, and not take everything so personally.
My primary approach is Interpersonal Psychotherapy, this approach has proven to be the most effective in my 30+ years of experience.
An amazing example of sharing lifelines happened with the executive team of a successful retail company. Each member shared their lifeline with the team (at that time all men). As they shared, they wept with one another as they came to understand what was behind the things that drove them nuts.
The transformation on that team, and with every couple I’ve worked with, has created more openness, empathy, transparency and real success. With that company, their revenues increased. With couples, they find that they are closer, more intimate, can drop their defenses and share their feelings (all of them) knowing that they are committed to have the loving relationship that they deeply yearned for when they married.
I enjoy seeing people truly enjoy and love each other once again and not give up on each other. I am thankful for my training and research as a psychologist and the years of experience with people in all kinds of situations, and see that the core dynamics are the same in South Korea as they are in the US and being aware of those dynamics and knowing that everyone is doing their best, or they are crying out for help, can create the lives we want.
Call or email me today to get started on the road to a happier, healthier relationship.
