COUPLE THERAPY
TRANSFORMING CONFLICT INTO CONNECTION
“Conflict is a natural part of all relationships. We just aren’t equipped to deal with it.
When we know how to respond, conflict becomes an opportunity for greater connection and intimacy!”
Tanisha
ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS ARE SO FUNDAMENTAL TO A HEALTHY SENSE OF EXISTENCE THAT WE STRIVE HARD TO MAKE THEM WORK!
However, we all carry experiences that shape our contact and perception of the world. The same holds true at an intimate level.
Numerous institutions dictate aspects of our intimate, loving, and sexual lives: religion, government, medicine, education, media, pornography… All work extensively to define and regulate the parameters of our well-being in relation.
Society culturally and actively informs the construction of our erotic identity, our understanding of pleasure, intimate conduct between couples, and the bonds of love… but the foremost of these institutions, the one that most profoundly affects us, is undoubtedly the family.
The emotional biography we carry from childhood ends up influencing how we experience adult love.
It is common for challenging patterns from past relationships (whether systemic or romantic) and unresolved emotional suffering to be carried into current adult relationships.
Consequently, the psycho-emotional system, when feeling wounded and cornered without choice, typically reacts by attacking or collapsing as a defense response.
In both cases, conflict arises.
When we find ourselves in the red zone of conflict, what the mind (reptilian brain) dictates is: survive! Escape the painful situation.
Our ability to reason and bring discernment to the situation becomes compromised and blocked.
We activate the “fight” defense response (parts of me that want to control the other, becoming critical, suspicious, entering into demands without the ability to create a loving bond) or the “flight” response (parts of me that feel uncomfortable in their own skin and need to escape the situation, leaving the other alone, without the ability to connect and in total isolation).
Collapse occurs when we can no longer access either the fight or flight nervous responses.
At this point, we completely shut down our system and feel only powerlessness, an inability to escape the situation, exhaustion, hopelessness, and often, panic.
In all these responses, what they have in common is the loss of the ability to self-regulate the nervous system, an increase in tension levels, an inability to sustain felt emotions, and difficulty accessing vulnerability. There is an absence of internal resilience to find a space for compassion and understanding in the couple.
The somatic patterns from before the relationship are repeated, constructing new internal conflicts within the current relationship, often resulting in intimate and erotic disconnection, as well as a romantic and loving disengagement.
In couples therapy, I focus on transforming confrontation into comfortable intimacy, separation into belonging, and conflict into co-regulation.
I view conflict not as a crisis but as an opportunity for more creative solutions involving collaboration, respect, and, above all, romance. Learning to develop tools for conscious relationships from a place of security and trust, embracing challenges as gateways to joint growth and inner transformation.
Recognizing the difference between when we had no choice and the choices available now, expanding the range of options for a renewed, more passionate, and erotic-romantic intimate connection.
In therapeutic work, I include addressing initial traumatic impressions related to bonding issues, sexual offense, or less healthy past relationships, communication difficulties, disinvestment in the marital relationship, disinvestment or lack of satisfaction in the sexual relationship, non-consensual extramarital relationships, open or polyamorous relationships, among others.
In an intimate space, in the consulting room, we will work together to empower erotic-conjugal identity, reconstruct a healthy bond, employ authentic communication techniques, reclaim intimate sensitivity, and awaken sexual energy, among other methods tailored to each case.
The couples’ therapy I develop is a form of biointegrative somatic psychotherapy, incorporating unconventional intersections associated with ancient tantric wisdom.
Typically, both members of the couple participate in therapy sessions, but separate sessions will be conducted whenever necessary.