Custom Therapy For Couples

Restoring Minds Counseling in Vancouver, WA offers a unique approach to couples counseling, blending individual and joint sessions to foster deeper understanding and improve relationship dynamics.

Therapy hybrid approach

Individual Sessions: These sessions provide a safe space for each partner to delve into their individual contributions to relationship patterns, work on family of origin issues, address past relationship struggles, and develop healthier coping mechanisms.
Couples Sessions: These sessions focus on applying the skills learned individually, setting shared goals and dreams, and practicing expressing desires and concerns effectively within the relationship.

Therapeutic techniques and approaches

While a hybrid approach is emphasized, Restoring Minds Counseling may also integrate other couples therapy approaches such as:

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT): A technique focusing on understanding and restructuring negative emotional patterns to create more secure and trusting bonds.
The Gottman Method: Based on research identifying key components of healthy relationships (like building love maps, managing conflict constructively, and nurturing fondness and admiration), this method provides practical tools to strengthen the relationship foundation.

Benefits of Liesl’s approach

By combining individual and joint sessions, Restoring Minds Counseling aims to help couples:

Gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their partners.
Break negative communication patterns.
Develop healthier ways to express emotions and needs.
Increase intimacy, respect, and affection.
Resolve conflicts constructively.

How individual sessions address family of origin issues

Addressing family of origin issues in individual therapy is a crucial component of couples counseling, particularly in approaches like the hybrid model offered by Restoring Minds Counseling.

Here’s how individual sessions delve into and address family of origin issues:

Understanding the roots of YOUR patterns

Exploring early dynamics and relationships: Individual therapy helps you examine the family you grew up in (your family of origin), including relationships with parents and siblings. You explore how these early experiences, including family structure, communication styles, and roles, influenced your beliefs and behaviors.
Mapping family patterns with genograms: Therapists often use tools like genograms (visual family tree representations) to map out family relationships, patterns, and dynamics across generations. This helps you identify recurring themes like emotional neglect, enmeshment, or unhealthy conflict styles that might be impacting your current relationships, says dralanjacobson.com.
Recognizing the influence of family narratives: You explore the stories and beliefs passed down through generations, examining how these narratives shaped your identity and self-concept.

Processing and healing past wounds

Addressing unresolved childhood trauma: This includes exploring emotional neglect, abuse, or trauma experienced in childhood, providing a safe space to process these feelings and begin healing.
Identifying and challenging old roles: You can pinpoint family roles you may have adopted (e.g., caretaker, scapegoat) and work towards breaking free from their constraints, according to Live Oak Psychology.
Reparenting techniques: Therapy may involve learning to provide yourself with the care and nurturing you might not have received as a child.
Processing grief and forgiveness: If applicable, therapy can help navigate feelings of loss related to family experiences and explore forgiveness, whether for yourself or others.

Developing healthier patterns

Setting boundaries: Individual sessions help you understand and establish healthy boundaries with family members and in your current relationships.
Improving communication skills: You learn and practice effective communication, developing skills like active listening and assertive communication.
Changing negative patterns: By understanding how your past influences your present, you can work on modifying unhelpful behaviors and responses, building a stronger sense of self and fostering more fulfilling relationships.

Connecting individual work to couple dynamics

Bringing insights into joint sessions: The self-awareness and skills gained in individual sessions can then be brought into couples therapy, enriching the overall therapeutic process and improving the couple’s ability to navigate issues together.
Understanding each other’s origins: As both partners explore their individual family histories, they gain a deeper understanding and empathy for each other’s perspectives and behaviors within the relationship.

Family Origin meets Family Roles

By addressing family of origin issues in a safe and supportive individual setting, Restoring Minds Counseling and similar approaches equip individuals with the understanding and skills to break negative cycles, heal past wounds, and build a stronger, healthier foundation for their relationships. Understanding the family roles we played in our families of origin is a significant component of individual therapy at Restoring Minds Counseling, and it can dramatically improve current relationships in several ways.

1. Increased self-awareness and understanding

Understanding behavioral patterns: Family roles, both positive and negative, can become ingrained patterns that we carry into adulthood. Understanding your childhood role, whether you were the people-pleasing mediator, the rebellious scapegoat, or the responsible hero, helps you recognize why you might act in certain ways in your current relationships.
Recognizing unmet needs: Often, our family roles were an attempt to meet underlying needs, even if unhealthy. For example, a “caretaker” might be fulfilling a need for connection and belonging, but doing so at the expense of their own well-being. By recognizing these unmet needs, you can work on fulfilling them in healthier ways within your current relationships.

2. Improved communication

Breaking free from communication barriers: Family roles can hinder open communication. Understanding these dynamics helps identify and overcome communication barriers in relationships.
Learning healthier communication styles: Therapy provides a safe space to practice new communication techniques like active listening and using “I” statements, allowing for more open, honest, and respectful dialogue.

3. Breaking unhealthy cycles

Identifying negative patterns: Dysfunctional family roles can contribute to repetitive and unhealthy relationship patterns. Understanding these patterns is the first step toward breaking these cycles.
Developing healthier coping mechanisms: Therapy provides tools and strategies to manage emotions and conflicts constructively, replacing old, unhelpful patterns with new, healthier ones.

4. Increased empathy and understanding for your partner

Recognizing the roots of their behavior: Understanding a partner’s family of origin and the roles they played can foster greater empathy and understanding for their actions and reactions within the relationship.
Navigating differences in family background: Marriage brings together individuals from different family systems, with potentially different expectations and approaches to relationships. Understanding how these backgrounds influence individual behaviors can help couples appreciate their differences and find healthy ways to navigate them.

5. Building stronger, more fulfilling relationships

Creating a new narrative: Therapy can empower individuals to break free from the past and create a new narrative for their relationships, one that is built on healthier communication, mutual respect, and emotional intimacy.
Developing a stronger sense of self: By understanding and healing from the impact of family roles, individuals develop a stronger sense of self and personal identity, which translates into healthier and more fulfilling relationships.

In essence, individual therapy focused on family of origin issues helps individuals understand the roots of their relational behaviors, develop healthier coping mechanisms, improve communication, and ultimately build stronger and more fulfilling relationships with their partners.

Note: It’s always best to contact Restoring Minds Counseling if only to discuss the specific approach suitable for you and determine if RMC services align with your unique needs. We are here to help.

Liesl is LMFT skilled in successful A.R.T. trauma therapist, Relationship tools, Individual solutions, Functional Mental Health therapist, Health and Wellness Coach for fruitful living.

LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist) programs are specialized training programs designed to equip students with the skills and knowledge to work with couples, families, and individuals in a therapeutic setting.

These programs require a master’s degree and include coursework and supervised clinical experience.

The Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE) is the primary accrediting body for LMFT programs.