Couples Therapy Toronto
When the same problems keep coming back
You may be good communicators and still find that, when it comes to your relationship, you return to the same arguments. You misread each other. Neither feels heard.
Eventually, the question becomes less: "How do we solve this argument?" and more: "Why do we keep ending up here?"
Distance, resentment, mistrust or disconnection may have developed to the point that you are questioning your compatibility. You see therapy as a place to fight for your future together.
No commitment. Just a conversation to see if this fits.
The relationship is the patient
This is my proposal: the two of you are bringing your relationship to the doctor. It needs help.
I don't see either of you as the person who needs to take the fall. You are asking me to speak for your relationship, to help give voice to its pain and suffering.
I learn about your relationship when you show me what happens when you are hurt. When one pursues and the other avoids. When an attempt at repair is clumsy or rejected. When an interaction begins one way and somehow ends somewhere neither of you intended.
"There is a pattern, a dance, as we say in our business, that the two of you become caught in and cannot seem to exit despite your best efforts."
If you accept me as your coach, I will speak for your relationship and help you learn how to heal it.
First, we understand the pattern
I begin by assessing each of you and the relationship.
I want to understand your strengths, vulnerabilities, emotional habits and histories, and how they interact.
I bring my practical and theoretical knowledge of psychological assessment into this work and share my findings with you. We discuss them in detail. You begin to understand what has been happening.
I want everyone in the room to understand the road ahead and the role each of us has in the process.
This is what I think is happening.
This is the pattern you're caught in.
This is what each of you needs to work on.
This is where I think the therapy needs to go.
We produce a roadmap.
Then we work on changing it
Couples therapy is not just talking about the argument you had last week. It is also much more than acquiring tools.
The work involves live practice. It requires each of you to tolerate some discomfort because meaningful change is difficult.
I may interrupt you, slow something down, ask you to try again, help you hear something differently, or stop the old pattern as it begins happening between you.
Understanding the relationship gives us a map of terrain where you have been travelling in circles. Therapy is where we begin learning to walk differently.
A short video from Dr. Hugo
I am a doctor, and you are bringing me your relationship because it is not doing well.
A different kind of couples therapy
I bring my expertise.
You bring the data.
We go beyond communication tips and tools to understand and change the relational mechanisms underneath conflict, emotional distance, mistrust and disconnection.
If you accept me as your coach, we work directly on changing them.
Couples therapy is available online in Toronto and throughout Ontario.
No commitment. Just a conversation to see if this fits.