How Relationship Therapy Works

How it Works

You change your relationship by changing your brain. 

Your brain is programmed to respond a certain way to your partner’s behavior. In therapy, we will look at how you currently respond to your partner, and how you want to change that response pattern. Then we will work on updating the way you think, feel, and behave. Your relationship will improve as your brain gets better at handling the difficult situations that tear couples apart. 

You will need more strength and courage to have a better relationship. 

Most relationship problems stem from emotional and behavioral patterns that are left over from childhood. As an adult, you have more power to have a positive impact on people you care about, and you have more options in intimate relationships. Your brain is still operating based on assumptions that were true in childhood, but are not true in adulthood. In therapy we will work on helping you have a more powerful impact on the people matter to you most. 

You will experience more power, freedom, and safety.

In a healthy relationship, both partners feel free to choose their own way of participating in the relationship. In a less-healthy relationship, you controlled, manipulated, and coerced into doing things you don’t want to do. When you were learning about human relationships, you were young and relatively powerless. It’s time to re-assess how much power you actually have to make things better. 

Most of your brain’s relationship programming comes from childhood

You started learning about human relationships when you were young, vulderable, and dependent on others for care, protection, and love. As an adult, you are more powerful and less dependent than you were as a child, but your brain still tends to perceive human relationships from that vulnerable, dependent perspective. As you update your brain’s relatioship programming to reflect who you are now, you become more capable of having a healthy adult relationship. 

Relationships change is both proactive and reactive

When you change the energy you put into your relationship, your partner usually respond to you in a new way. You made a proactive change, and your partner responded with a reactive change. Both kinds of change can contribute to relationship growht. You don’t have much influence over your partner’s proactive behavior, but you do have influence on their reactive behavior. When you make proactive changes, your partner’s reactive behavior will usually change. 

Relationship growth heals families

As your relationship heals, your entire family will experience more peace and less anxiety. You will feel more calm, and everyone around you will benefit.