Sometimes when you can’t feel securely connected to your partner, you may end up feeling distressed, sad, angry and alone, or you end up becoming critical and demanding, poking at your partner to get a reaction because you feel isolated or misunderstood. Some may feel like no matter what you do, you can’t seem to get it right with your partner, nothing is ever good enough, so you end up shutting down and pulling away. Maybe you avoid difficult topics because it always seems to escalate, or you seem to fight over things that seem trivial and petty. You end up feeling bewildered, how does it end up going so wrong? We love each other, why can’t we get along with each other? Why can’t I get across to my partner? How did we get here?  We are here to help. We have researched based methods through the use of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy to understanding this distress, and we have a map of how to guide you back into secure, intimate connection. We have researched based methods of helping you pull out of this negative pattern.

As counselors for your intimate relationship, we do more than just listen. We provide skills and tools through the use of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy to help you solve these and other problems in your relationship. We help you pull out of negative patterns, understand what underlies yours and your partners reactions in these patterns, and help heal the resulting wounds, restore friendship, deepen intimacy and connection, and strengthen your relationship.

Your intimate relationship should be your safe haven. When your relationship is secure, you both have a sense that the other has your back, that you matter most, that you can count on one another no matter what. Study after study shows that when we have this kind of secure connection, we are physically, mentally, and emotionally stronger. But what happens when your relationship is not secure?

Couples’ distress occurs when one or both partners starts to feel uncertain about the answer to the question, Do I matter to you? Do you accept me as I am? Partners lose a sense of trust that we can count on one another to be there in the ways we need. When couples get reactive, they start to impact each other in ways that create distance and hurt. It’s hard to imagine that the problem is actually happening because you mean so much to each other. But that is often the case. When we can’t feel close and special to our important other, we react in ways that can actually make the situation worse in our effort to deal with the pain we are experiencing.

When your relationship starts to feel emotionally unsafe, whether through having the same fights over and over again, broken trust, or feelings of disconnection, it can create an environment of fear, anger, doubt, grief, frustration and longing. This distress impacts all areas of your life and health. 

In order for a relationship to be healthy, there must be a sense of emotional safety for both partners to be able to reach for one another and know that the other will be accessible and responsive. To be open enough with each other to feel connected and create a sense of deeper intimacy. Emotional safety requires compassion for one another, respect and emotional responsiveness to one another’s feelings and needs. When couples get stuck in negative patterns, it can be very difficult to understand what is happening and why, and it can feel impossible to find a way out of those entrenched patterns and out of the pain of loneliness and rejection. This is where marriage counseling can help. We use Emotionally Focused Couples therapy, a scientifically, research based form of therapy that has consistently shown to help couples achieve long term healing and bonding in their relationship.

We will walk you through the process of understanding the negative dance you and your partner are caught in and help you to understand the emotions that underlie your reactions to each other. We will create a safe and non-judgmental environment in the counseling office so that you can begin to turn to each other and communicate in ways that bring clarity, understanding and closeness. Therapy will help bring clarity to where you are, how you got here and how to move forward from here.

Knoxville Marriage Counselor

In counseling couples, we help to create that safe haven in the counseling office so that the two of you can re-create it in your relationship. We allow each of you to be heard and guide you toward really hearing each other. You will be guided toward sharing and nurturing one another’s needs, comforting and soothing each others hurts and building a deeper bond and sense of connection with each other.

The relationship counseling process can not only help you overcome the challenges you are facing right now, but it will also give you the skills and understanding to manage any future challenge that may emerge.

Couples counseling is for couples in various stages of their relationship. There is no wrong time for a couple to enter into counseling. It can be for dating couples trying to figure out if this is the right relationship for them. It can be for premarital couples preparing for marriage. It is for young couples experiencing difficulties adjusting to the issues of marital life or the birth of children. Couples counseling can help those struggling in the aftermath of extramarital affairs, or for couples who just want to stop fighting all the time. It can even be for couples who simply want to strengthen their relationship and deepen their intimacy with one another.

Couples counseling can help you work through these issues and come out on the other side with a deeper understanding of yourself and one another, and the tools necessary to overcome obstacles in your life and relationship.

We provide a safe, non-judgemental, and confidential environment for individuals, couples and families. A place where you can talk about difficult or painful issues in order to dissolve them. A place to help improve these most important relationships.

Our therapeutic practice is based on the theoretical approach of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. You can learn more about EFT through www.iceeft.com