Our Work
Being in a long term committed relationship is challenging for most of us. Two people are really two completely different worlds. And when these two world repeatedly collide, it can seem like the differences become “irreconcilable”. This is a very common experience for couples and it’s entirely workable. The differences are not the problem; it’s the habitual reactions & hijacking.
We are all wired from birth for connection. We thrive in relationship when our needs for connection, safety and nurturance are met. This is as true for infants as it is for adults. Our brains and our nervous systems are exquisitely designed for interpersonal connection and attunement.
However, our nervous systems are also wired to protect each individual. We are wired, like all mammals, to monitor and respond to facial cues, tone of voice, physical proximity & touch. When our nervous systems perceive danger, we tend to respond in the ways that our socialization and relational templates dictate. Some of us go into battle mode and others flee.
Couples typically seek us out when one or both people realize that they experience the other as the one who most wounds them rather than as a safe haven. Successful couples work always involves helping couples learn how to turn down the fear signals and turn up the bonding cues. As guides, we show up with our enthusiasm, our passion, our aliveness and our creativity to help you learn how to cooperate with this very big adventure.
Our work involves helping you to slow down and notice that no matter the content of your conversations there is always deep yearning for safety and connection under the reactivity. Our role is not problem solving or mediating a dispute or compromise. It’s about teaching you to have difficult and vulnerable conversations in a way that honors each other’s vulnerable parts.
There is always some sort of logical story from the past behind your partners bewildering behaviors. You can actually learn to cultivate the special kind of emotional presence that allows for that emotional logic to emerge. And when it does, you will have soul level encounters that literally change your brains and lead to a deepening commitment to grow you relational maturity together, as a team. This is what we teach couples to do.
For all of us as couples, discussing “content” or “issues” will always be impossible when we are in our survival dance. Our work is help you viscerally understand how your survival dance literally hijacks you neurologically from creating the climate of connection and ease that you both yearn for. Then the work is about learning to do what it takes to live in connection and aliveness, every day.
Services Offered by Healing Relationships:
