Couples Therapy and Relationship Therapy
Embarking on therapy for personal growth, relationship enhancement, or family well-being is a significant step. At our Golden, Colorado, and San Diego, California in-person locations, you will find a nurturing environment for couples therapy, pre-marital, relationship, and marriage counseling with experienced therapists who are warm, grounding, and ready to meet you at your current stage. We work with parent-child/parent-teen relationships, siblings, and families. We believe that therapy can be a highly productive space to solve problems. As well as improve communication, and increase connection for relationships of all shapes and sizes. We specialize in helping relationships who want to become more focused on building trust, improving communication, and fostering emotional connections.
You are tired of being misunderstood, frustrated, and without a secure connection
Being in a healthy relationship with your teen, partner, siblings, parent, or significant other is a lot of work. There are times that you may feel like it is not even possible. The stress a dysfunctional relationship has on us can be devastating. Difficult relationship dynamics create anxiety, insecurity, feelings of betrayal, shutdown, stuckness in how to move forward, or a lack of love, respect, and fulfillment. You may struggle to communicate or feel like the communication goes in circles. Wherever you and your loved one are, we are trained relational therapists looking to help you get your relationships back.
Our approach is customized to address your unique challenges and goals. Ensuring that every session contributes to your journey towards healing and a stronger relationship or marriage. We understand the demands of your schedule, offering various session lengths: 55 minutes, 1.5 hours, or 2-3-6 hour intensives. These options allow us to tailor our services to your specific needs and objectives. Our intensive sessions are ideal for in-depth exploration and meaningful progress. Committed to your personal and relational growth, we provide the tools and support necessary for enduring positive change. Helping you cultivate resilience and deeper connections in your relationship.
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Relationship + Couples Therapy Can Help Build The Relationship You Long For
Having the relationships with the people in our lives that matter the most to us takes work. In our approach, relational and couples therapy is one path you can take to be guided toward the richness of communication required for your relationship to move from unhealthy to thriving.
We offer relational and couples therapy both in person in Golden, Colorado, and San Diego, California, or statewide through telehealth in Colorado and California.
Our relationship and couples therapists are here to guide your relationship. Whether what you want is more intimacy, clarity, understanding, sexual desire, pre-marital, healing relationship wounding, parent-child communication, navigating a separation or betrayal, navigating learning and social difficulties with your child, wanting to explore sexual and desire issues, or you want to better communicate with your sibling, parent, child, family member, partner, or significant others, let us be your guides.
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Symptoms in Your Relationship We Can Help With
While everyone experiences relationships a little bit differently, here are some of the common symptoms of relationship dysfunction that would benefit from counseling:
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mental chatter, rumination, and/or racing thoughts about the relationship or partner(s)
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a need to constantly move, plan, work, be busy, and/or difficulty checking in with each other
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Lack of feeling all emotions or can't feel specific emotions that should be part of the relationship
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You feel annoyed by partner(s) feelings and communication style
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Feeling disconnected from one another
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Lack of passion and lack of prioritization of eroticism
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hyper-vigilance (constant scanning and bracing) while in your relationship
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Under-aware (missing important details, clumsy, easily distractible) in your relationship
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Frequent complaining, blaming, defensiveness, inability to tolerate conflict resolution
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Feeling unheard, unseen, unappreciated, undervalued
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Communication issues
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Avoidance and distraction of certain activities like engaging in sex or talking about sex, talking about finances, planning for life, work, kids.
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Sexual dysfunction in one, both or all parties involved
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Feeling powerless, unloved, stuck, hopeless, chronically fearful
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When you communicate you go in circles, end up feeling worse, emotionally hurt one another
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Emotional, Sexual, and/or Relational breaches of trust
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Betrayals
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Prioritizing other people, jobs, family, or substances over the primacy of your significant other(s).
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Lack of empathy, validation, apology, ownership, and repair cycles.
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Sexual issues like hypo-desire, erectile dysfunction, sexual trauma or ancestral sexual trauma
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Feeling shutdown, frozen, works like “what’s the point” are easy to relate to. You feel like you can’t win, like nothing you try works, and there are no other options but to withdraw.
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Criticism, Frustration, and/or Agitation. Despite your attempts to communicate or calm down, you easily tap into these feelings and thoughts when around your significant other.
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Rumination. You find yourself thinking about your significant relationship more than you’d like, but going over what you should’ve said, what you hoped they would say, or what was done, or not done, and you can’t let it go.
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Sexual, Sensual, and Eroticism Issues:. You feel unsure about how to move ahead, how to provide good sex education, how to talk about sex, low desire, sexual dysfunction, or exploring relationship boundaries and structures, or there is historical or current sexual trauma
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Communication Issues. Feeling unheard, misunderstood, lack of follow-through, not getting anywhere, lack of communication from one person, scared to speak your truth, talking over one another, cycles of hurtful words and no repair.
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Boundary Issues: Struggling to co-parent, deal with in-laws, work demands, lack of keeping agreements, struggling to set healthy limits with your teen, crossing relational or sexual boundaries in and outside of the relationship, not setting boundaries or over-rigid boundaries.
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The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling. According to The Gottman Institute these four communication stances are signals of the decline of a relationship.
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Jittery, numb, spinning, nausea, stagnancy, ungrounded, floaty, disorganized
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Insecure, Avoidant, Ambivalent, and/or Disorganized Attachment experiences
Couples Therapy Can Help You Heal and get Deeply Connected
Disconnect and pain in your relationship can impact all the areas of your life. The impact of not having the safe haven in your relationships you deserve is profound and felt in your heart, mind, body, and spirit. When our nervous system is stuck firing fight, flight, and freezes because of relationship disconnect, betrayals, lack of prioritizing pleasure, and communication issues we experience symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder! Our physiology is designed to be in a safe relationship and when we don't have that, our system will amass the protective threat response that is designed to keep us safe but further erodes emotional safety in relationships.
We believe in the power of rupture and repair. We work with relationships to cultivate safety, and emotional and sexual intelligence, enhance communication skills, and deepen intimacy through solutions-based and highly effective interventions that create change on a systemic level.
Compass Healing Project's Approach to Couples Therapy
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Couples therapy needs to be done by experienced, well-trained, and effective systems therapists. For your healing and growth to be transformative all partners must have the willingness to see how they contribute to the dynamic and the partnerships need to be able to attend regularly or do intensive therapy schedules.
At Compass Healing Project, we approach couples and relational therapy through a systems lens, we don't see one person as the problem, but that all the people in the relationship contribute to the dysfunctional dynamic. There is not one "identified patient", rather the playing field is level in the distribution of responsibility for the issues. We feel you have the power to change the dynamic through intensive intervention from a somatic, attachment, and rupture-repair perspective.
Our primary couples therapy modality is PACT: Psychobiological Approach To Couples Therapy. But we also have training and experience with Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Gottman's Couples Therapy, Imago, and The Crucible Approach.
Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT)
The Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT) is a strategic model of relational work that works with the nervous system, attachment and bonding, stress and trauma physiology, and specific interventions that increase secure functioning, earned secure attachment, and greater emotional clarity and intimacy. This model uses interactional approaches, rupture and repair cycles, and clear strategies to disrupt negative cycles.
Sex Therapy
Sex Therapy. We believe that relational work is more helpful when the therapy is supported by a therapist who looks at the bio-psycho-sexual. Working with a therapist who can explore and use sex therapy techniques means you are able to address sexuality, gender, sexual orientation, pleasure embodiment, desire issues, sexual dysfunction, and eroticism cultivation.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy uses a model of bringing understanding to the negative cycle of relating that looks at core wounds, defensive and protective behaviors, and challenging these cycles of behaviors by increasing emotional resiliency and emotional capacity for more depth.
Internal Family Systems
Internal Family Systems is a model of self-attachment that increases emotional capacity, differentiation, and self-leadership. We use this “parts work” in relationship and couples therapy to support empathetic attunement, authentic relating, and assertive leadership around wants, needs, and interdependency with your significant others.
Gottman’s Method
Gottman’s Method incorporates what John and Julie Gottman have studied thousands of couples in their desire to discover what works with couples and what doesn’t. This method uses the knowledge about the happiest couples and applies those strategies to create change in couples that struggle to connect, communicate, and have lower levels of intimacy, vulnerability, and friendship.
Imago Relationship Therapy
Imago Relationship Therapy helps by uncovering how the childhood imprint of intimacy, connection, and emotional tendencies of the early relationships is projected onto adult relationships. This model looks at how we are attracted to people who challenge us to grow up, show up, and personally develop into a fuller human.
The Crucible Approach
The Crucible Approach is a model that looks at how passion, vulnerability, differentiation, eroticism, and strengths-based potentials function within the crucible of relationships. In the crucible approach, a strong relationship extends beyond emotional safety into sexual, physical, and emotional brilliance.
Begin Couples Therapy in Golden, Colorado, or San Diego, California.
You don’t have to live with dysfunction and dis-ease in your relationships. With couples therapy, we can help build more connections and repair. Our Colorado and California counseling offices at Compass Healing Project have caring couples therapists who specialize in somatic relational therapy.
To start your counseling journey, follow these simple steps:
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Meet with one of our Specialized Couples Therapists for a discovery call
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Start healing your heart, mind, body, and spirit with Couples Therapy
Other Counseling Services at Compass Healing Project
At our foundational level, we specialize in a somatic integrative approach. Along with EMDR, hypnotherapy, ketamine assisted therapy, Clinical Sexology, and embodiment to issues such as anxiety, depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, grief and loss, sexuality, and couples and/or relationship work. Find more info and get to know us on our Blog Counseling can help bring healing and transformation from a holistic perspective here at Compass Healing Project. Our Colorado and California practices have caring therapists who specialize in trauma resolution, emotional healing, and integrative therapy. Fill out this contact form and we'll help get you started.