Couples Therapy

Couples Therapy is an opportunity for couples to come together to work through their difficulties and differences and regain harmony in their lives together. In working with couples, I use the Somatic Experiencing® approach, which asks each person in the couple to be willing to notice and attend to their physiological responses during the session and to deepen their awareness of what they are actually experiencing in the moment and how to communicate this in a way that provides an opening for understanding and empathy. This approach is extremely subtle yet equally as powerful and can produce a level of intimacy and connection that has been lost or never before experienced.

For high-conflict couples, this essentially removes the avenues of accusation, blame and defense and asks each person to simply pay attention to how their body responds in the moment and what can be done to reduce activation and ineffective habitual responses and increase self-regulation, ease, and possibilites. It also deepens each person’s awareness of what they actually want in the relationship and how to communicate this in a clear and non-threatening way to their partner.

We would ordinarily start with each person remembering times when the relationship was working and noticing how their bodies respond to those memories. This provides a baseline and touchstone for what relationship harmony feels like in the nervous system. It also begins to build the resiliency and pathways necessary for tackling the more difficult issues in the relationship and permanently altering patterns of being and communicating. We return to this and other touchstones as needed to regulate the couple’s nervous systems and strengthen those new pathways and resulting resiliency.

If you would like to explore this approach further, please contact me to schedule an appointment, or a free 20-minute video or phone consultation to see if we are a good match to work together.

Peter Carpentieri, LMFT, SEP
510-463-1150
peterc.mft@gmail.com

*I am currently offering both in-person therapy and remote therapy via phone or videoconference.