Couples and Marital Counseling
Various issues-communication, conflict resolution, betrayal, intimacy challenges, can affect your significant relationships in ways that you may never have predicted.
Sometimes you may find effective communication with your spouse to be elusive, though you are making your best effort. You may find yourselves in response acting in a manner you do not desire, such as more arguing, infidelity, or pursuing termination of a marriage. Other times you may not know how to adjust to things such as being newly married, one spouse leaving or entering the workplace, having children or becoming empty-nesters.
In marital counseling, you will encounter an interactive environment which encourages new patterns of relating, seeking and granting forgiveness for past wrongs, enhancing intimacy and communication, and instruction on effective skills to adjust to situations that appear to cause conflict or have you and your spouse feeling stuck. Relationship counseling through Scout combines some of the most proven methods of effective marriage counseling, including the work of Dr. John and Julie Gottman and the Gottman Method, Dr. Sue Johnson and Emotion-Focused Therapy, and Dr. Brent Atkinson in Pragmatic-Experential Therapy for Couples (PET-C), all while integrating Christian faith principles as the couple wishes. Each counselor has extensive training in couple’s work, and our relationship practitioners have completed Gottman Level 1 trainings.
Couples can expect to begin with a conjoint session designed to discuss the presenting problem and relationship history. If you desire to continue beyond the initial session, each partner will then complete a thorough relationship assessment and each partner will participate in an individual session to gather more information. After the individual sessions, we move forward working with the three key components of a lasting relationship- friendship and intimacy, conflict resolution, and shared meaning and vision. You can expect a safe, unbiased, ethical, and non-judgemental space to help heal and grow your relationship.
Also, couples that have challenges with schedules or intend to travel longer distances to come to counseling may schedule intensives.