Courageous Couples

Relationship therapy that focuses on attachment, self-awareness and sharing your deeper emotional needs and longings.

Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy is all about attachment. Oftentimes, couples become caught in repeated cycles of interaction, triggering each other’s attachment panic and causing rigid, self-defensive reactions. 

When one partner’s best attempts to have their emotional needs met triggers a defensive reaction from the other, a relationship can quickly become one of distance and pain, rather than closeness and emotional safety. We call this a negative pattern, or a dance, because the steps are so well-known, and occur when each partner affects the other intimately. It is when these steps become instinctive that couples begin to feel helpless to change the steps—which is where Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy comes in.

Rather than simply working on communication skills, Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy aims to empower couples to see and understand their negative interaction patterns, and to then exit those patterns by sending clear messages about their emotional needs in ways that do not trigger the defences or fears of their partner. 

We at Courageous Being will work with you to dive into the essence of your relationship and uncover the deeper needs and fears that so often go unheard, empowering you to communicate with each other better than ever before, creating a new dance of connection, safety and security.

Courageous Being can support you with:

• Conflict, distress and poor communication

• Feeling alone in the relationship

• Loss of trust from betrayal

• Repair from infidelity

• Issues around sexual desire, identity, arousal and orientation

• Issues with establishing blended families

• Navigating decisions around separation and divorce and developing strong co-parenting relationships

• Exploring or managing different relationship structures (such as consensual/ethical non-monogamy (ENM/CNM), polyamory, kink)

• Parenting and other life transition issues

• Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy can also benefit distressed couples where one or both partners has depression, anxiety, chronic illness or post-traumatic stress.