Learn How Couples Therapy Can Help You And Your Relationship

Are you and your partner facing struggles in your relationship? Conflict is inevitable for any long-term partnership. As separate people, we disagree on both mundane and fundamental issues; about intimacy and partnership, household plans, values, how to spend time and money—conflict will happen! Over time, as emotions remain unexpressed (“What’s the use, I’ll just get shot down again,” or “I don’t want to rock the boat when things are going well” or “My partner just doesn’t understand me!”) arguments can become much hotter, erupting over ever-smaller stakes, more frequently and with more intensity. Alternatively, partners might give up attempts at connection and retreat into what can feel more like a roommate relationship than an erotic, creative, connected partnership.

With counseling help, this dynamic can change. I have completed training, and continue to receive Supervision, in Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy (EFT-C), an evidence-based approach that recognizes the primacy of improving emotional communication between partners. From a base of restored emotional communication, couples can enjoy more ease in daily problem-solving, a more satisfying erotic life, more enjoyment of each other and time spent together, and increased spontaneity and feelings of being emotionally safe with their partner.

Understanding Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy (EFT-C)

With EFT-C, most of the focus is on helping each partner recognize how emotional vulnerabilities contribute to escalating conflict and deepen the divide between partners. As your couples therapist, I will encourage you and your partner to explore each other’s emotional responses and learn how they can become revealing, healing, and supportive rather than divisive, protective, and hurtful. Using this method, couples learn to “speak the truth” about their underlying emotions rather than defending a position in each separate argument, and this leads to more closeness, understanding, collaboration, and trust in daily life.

In practicing EFT-C, I help couples who:

• Are caught in a stew of daily resentment
• Feel distant and disconnected
• Find themselves struggling with more and more intense conflict
• Live “like roommates not a couple”
• Are living with mental illness, such as depression or PTSD
• Want more easy communication
• Need help in navigating a big transition
• Are coping in the aftermath of an affair

Whatever stage you’re at in your relationship, whether you’ve been married for decades or haven’t yet tied the knot, couples therapy can provide you with invaluable tools to improve communication with your partner and set you up for future success.

Strengthen Your Relationship With Therapy for Couples in Hood River

There’s no better place to experience the transformative power of therapy for couples than Sarah Oaks Counseling. As an experienced couples therapist, I understand the complexities of intimate relationships and come equipped with the resources to make a difference. Reach out today to learn more about my services for couples in Hood River and book your first session! I look forward to guiding you and your partner in your quest for a healthy, supportive, and loving relationship.