Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (New York State License: 001435)
Ketamine and Psychedelic Assisted Therapist certified by The Integrative Psychiatry Institute
Practitioner of Eye Movement, Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Use Nonverbal Sensorimotor Techniques to deepen Emotionally Focused Therapy
Free 15 Minute Telephone Consultation | Call: 212 673 4618
I use creative metaphors from film, music and literature to embolden couples to bring Five Compassions, described by Gabor Mate in The Myth of Normal to their everyday lives:
My job was to sense and then show them the raw spots they were triggering in each other.
I first focused on their non-verbal tells and how their feelings got played out in their bodies. There’ve been countless times when I meet with a couple that the sadness in their eyes, the pain and stress in their faces tell me a deeper, more agonizing story than the words coming out of their mouths.
I was curious and gentle. I encouraged them to slow down and feel what’s going on in their bodies. I reminded them that words are the least important way we have of expressing our deepest, most painful feelings. I also encouraged – even challenged them – to imagine what the other must be feeling and going through, without necessarily agreeing with it.
I took every opportunity to apply Gabor Mate’s Five Compassions in relating and responding to them with my openness and curiosity, my respectful tone of my voice, the softness in my eyes.
I tried to model with my own behavior how they might be more tender and compassionate with each other.
Building Therapeutic Alliances with Individuals and Couples in Psychotherapy
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (New York State License: 001435)
Ketamine and Psychedelic Assisted Therapist certified by The Integrative Psychiatry Institute
Practitioner of Eye Movement, Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Use Nonverbal Sensorimotor Techniques to deepen Emotionally Focused Therapy
At Marriage & Couples Counseling NYC, I also use Emotionally Focused Therapy to deepen seven important conversations for lovers. These conversations are described by Sue Johnson in Hold Me Tight and are absolutely crucial for an emotionally intimate, long term relationship with your lover.
I will teach you to appreciate how rapidly arguments can escalate as a consequence of criticizing each other’s character, denying responsibility, insulting each other, and emotionally withdrawing. These negative ways of relating, described by social psychologist J. M. Gottman as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, increase the odds of getting a divorce to 85%.
I teach you to revisit past mistakes and take charge of how you each contributed to mis-attunements and emotional disconnections. Here you get the chance to apply what you learned in conversations 1 and 2.
Here, I facilitate a healing dialog to encourage mutual exoneration. I encourage you to speak your pain as openly as possible, acknowledge your lover’s pain, revise your script by moving from behind your protective walls, take responsibility for how you hurt each other, identify with what your lover needs from you, and create a new and better story of your lives together.
In this last conversation, I encourage you to understand love as a language that has to be spoken again and again, to have what Sue Johnson calls ARE conversations based on Accessibility, Responsiveness and Engagement. The more you speak this language, the more easily it flows and the stronger your love will be.
I teach you to get more in touch with your hypersensitivities resulting from past experiences that get triggered in the present when your lover neglects, ignores or dismisses you. These are the deeper hurts that fuel the Demon Dialogs and leave you feeling emotionally deprived or deserted by your lover.
In this conversation I encourage and facilitate a greater feeling of emotional safety in which you step away from your past ways of protecting yourselves and build a bridge between you to find a safe haven in each other.
Here I teach you how to move from emotionally disconnected or just partially connected sex to rich, synchronous moments in which emotional openness, responsiveness, tender touch and erotic exploration all come together.
The therapist’s role in any kind of psychotherapy is to reflect back to you like a good enough parent who you really are as you delve into and discover the unfathomable, hidden parts of yourself and your lover. By committing to always be there with you, the therapist – in the words of Leonard Cohen – helps you discover: The Beauty Lost to You Yourself.
Our marriage, couples, relationship counselors and therapists will inspire you to open your hearts to each other in ways you never thought possible. We’ll give you relationship tools such as The Couples Dialog, Creative Role Playing, The Five Love Languages, Turning Bad Fights into Good Fights and Poems to Love Smarter to help you cope more creatively with every day burdens, frustrations, anxiety and depression.
We’ve learned from years of experience that encouraging lovers to reveal who they really are: their simple joys, deeper fears, lingering hurts and sadness in a safe emotional setting is the only true path to greater happiness, contentment and sexual fulfillment.
Finally, for those of you who believe you’ll find the one true, perfect love in your life, please look at Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person; a delightfully humorous, engaging video. The truth is there is no such thing as finding the one true, love in life. What there really is out there are a few perfectly imperfect potential lovers who really get you and with whom you can create a rich, meaningful, satisfying life.
Our staff of creative, caring counselors and therapists (including a consulting psychiatrist – see About Us page), have over 80 years collective experience and knowledge in marriage, couples, relationship counseling and therapy, premarital counseling and relationship problem advice. We’ve helped dozens of lovers strengthen their emotional bonds and achieve happier, more fulfilling lives based on a deeper appreciation and celebration of differences.
Our services are designed exclusively for serious couples who value the importance of greater emotional intimacy and are motivated to attain it. We work with insurance companies like Harvard Pilgrim, Cigna, Aetna, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, U.S. Health Care, Guardian, Mental Health Net, etc. and obtain 50 % reimbursement of what you pay us out of pocket, often more, depending on your plan. We don’t accept GHI, HMO’s, Medicaid, Oxford or Medicare.
Marriage and Couples Counseling in New York City is in Greenwich Village
(South of Washington Square Park between Sullivan and Thompson Streets, two blocks from the campus of NYU)
160 Bleecker Street, 9C East
New York, NY 10012
©2024 Marriage Couples Counseling & Life Coaching.