Consultations for Couples and Families:
The first thing we do is sit down together and provide some background information for each other. We will encourage you to help us flush out the patterns of your particular relationship, so that we may begin together on the same page.
Next, we would typically help you to clarify and define each of your goals for your relationship(s). For couples, we will ask each of you to tell us whether you are "In", "Out of", or "Exploring" the relationship. This helps us to set realistic goals for you, in and out of our sessions. Initially, these intensives can be as often as 4x per month for 2 hours, or once a month for 6 hours. Between sessions, we will give you personal homework. After some time, 3 hour quarterly meetings are a way to check in and support the development of your relationship. We will work with you to determine how often is best for you. After this, our work is to help you gain clarity by asking you questions and listening closely for the undercurrents that we sense on different levels.
As your coaching team, we will often consult each other while in the room with you, about what each of us might be 'picking up'. This in itself can be a powerful intervention for you as a couple or a family. Over 40 years of research has proved that giving truthful feedback to clients about the impressions they leave can be very powerful and life changing.
A more didactic approach will be appropriate at times, so we might share a useful tool from our many years as Marriage and Family Therapists, or from Yoga, Meditation, or our extensive knowledge of the Chakra system, the Hara and various levels of the energy field. We learn important information by meeting in your environment. People are most like themselves when at home. As a part of our package, we can offer suggestions for clearing, containing, and grounding the energy in your home.
As a couple, we’ll relate to the important issues that you bring, and we’ll make connections to how we might deal with similar ones. Occasionally, we’ll have two different opinions about what is occurring between you. At these times, we will often model how to disagree!
This can provide comic relief - laughter being essential to the movement of the relationship towards freedom and vibrancy. There are no hard and fast rules to our approach. We work honestly, intuitively, with generosity of spirit and with equal doses of support and challenge.
We strongly believe that it is important to hold a safe container for the hard work you must do. Change cannot take place without honest feedback given with respect and kindness. We will nudge you regularly, but will also allow you to proceed at your own pace, according to your own values and needs. If your relationship is going to thrive, you will both need to learn to listen to your own, deeper needs in order to bring them to light. We will hold a space for you for as long as it takes you to be able to hold a stronger container for yourselves.
Sometimes healing means endings. Acceptance brings peace, and ultimately, this is what emotional health and maturity are about. When necessary, we will help you to bring closure to your relationship. We can facilitate an ending that will be the least damaging, indeed the most healing possible for you and your family.
What is the difference between a Counselor and a Consultant?
In Seattle, Washington, we practiced as Psychotherapists. We were both trained in Family Systems Counseling, which is a more holistic lens than traditional individual counseling, rather like the difference between conventional medicine and Naturopathic medicine, which seeks to restore health by tapping into existing resources, rather than treating symptoms and labeling clients with derogatory labels. The difference we found was that it is far more helpful to focus on what is right, than what is wrong with our clients. We have seen many families and couples over the years since the late eighties and early nineties. Our own lives have led us to learn and grow in new directions, so that in our work with clients, we naturally began to expand our tools and to incorporate what we knew had worked for us. We have both learned so much on our personal and professional journeys in the last 20 years. Like other holistic practitioners, we gradually began to feel too constrained within the narrow system of psychotherapy. We were beginning to use more frameworks that included the energy field. Because we do not wish to mislead anyone, we no longer call ourselves "Counselors" or "Psychotherapists", but "Consultants". The work we do still retains many of the tools we have always used, such as Family of Origin Work or Group process Work, frameworks from our training and practice in Couples Therapy, and of course, Family Dynamics.
We both have a multi-disciplinary approach. Our perspective includes Human Systems, the Human Energy Field, Transformational bodywork, and Spiritual inquiry. A significant influence on our work is the 4-year diplomas in Advanced Energy Medicine and personal transformation that we both worked hard to obtain.
