Couples therapy in English
Has your relationship been under pressure since moving abroad? Has the dynamic between you changed? Perhaps you experience greater co-dependence or emotional distance between you? Do you find it difficult to manage everyday life as expats? If so, you are just like many other expats.
Build a stronger foundation for your relationship with couples counselling. I offer Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy in English online via Zoom or in person in Odense, Denmark. With couples therapy you will enhance your communication and gain closer emotional connection to yourself and each other.
How can couples
therapy help you?
Couples come to therapy for many reasons. Even couples still in love can experience difficulties with communication, have many conflicts and lose contact with one another - both emotionally and sexually.
The common denominator for many couples in counselling is that they have lost their emotional connection, and what used to seem like a secure attachment now feels like a mutual frustration causing loneliness within the relationship. For expat couples, this can
seem even more challenging as being far away from your usual support network means greater dependence on your partner.
By working therapeutically with the patterns emerging between you, I can help you build greater awareness of yourself and each other, gain a closer emotional bond and become better at managing conflicts between you.
In couples therapy, it's your relationship, and not the two of you as individuals, which is in therapy. My aim is to help you see and understand the pattern which takes you apart and breaks communication between you, to unite you when it happens and teach you how conflicts can bring you closer together. Over time, you will become better at supporting yourself and each other as well as build safer emotional contact in those difficult moments of conflict. As a result of this, you will feel you are facing your challenges together and working towards fulfilling your dreams as a team.
With several international moves under our belt, we came to see Henriette (online) when our marriage started falling apart after the birth of our twin boys. With her extensive knowledge of the pressure nomad life puts on a relationship and her eye for recognizing the dysfunctional patterns we had created between us over the years, she helped us gain more emotional contact to ourselves and each other as well as a greater understanding of how to help each other with the twins. Today, we are grateful for being able to solve our conflicts in a more respectful manner and for having regained our intimacy.
- T.S. & H.C.S., American couple age 32 and 35, based in Germany (online sessions)
In couples therapy we will work with questions such as:
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What brings you to ask for help?
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Which dreams and hopes have you got for your relationship and for therapy?
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How have you tried solving your issues - and how has it worked?
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What is it in your partner that triggers you?
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What kind of pattern can emerge between you when you land in conflicts and lose contact to each other?
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When are you good for each other?
Together, we will establish your struggles, your goals as well as your dreams for your relationship and your life together. Perhaps you already have a clear idea of these, perhaps not. You may also not agree on what you want to work on.
When we have established these, we will start exploring what you both bring to the relationship and how this may affect your problems.
By working on bettering the communication between you, you will have a unique opportunity to better understand each other, enhance your friendship and deepen the romantic and intimate bond between you as well as address your specific concerns and challenges. We will also look at how you can begin to change things between you, in sessions and outside of sessions.
Whilst we are working on creating a greater emotional connection between you, I will ensure a safe and non-judgmental space where you can both express the difficulties you are facing. I will support you both equally, and help you deal with any difficult emotions that may occur.
What to expect in
couples therapy
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Each session is 75 minutes.
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For the first 6-8 sessions, you will come approx. once a week, perhaps once every other week.
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When you begin to feel better in your relationship, we will allow longer between sessions for you to consolidate your relationship.
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Most couples are finished with treatment after 10-15-20 sessions.
Towards the end of treatment, you will...
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Have gained a greater understanding of yourself and each other.
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Have achieved insight into your individual contributions to your relationship, how you affect each other, and how to best support yourself and each other.
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Have learnt to navigate and conduct the difficult and challenging discussions on your own without these necessarily ending in unsolvable conflicts.
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As a result of all this, you will feel emotionally safer and closer with each other, and you will be facing life together as a team.
My method for the therapy
In my work with you, I will use Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). By integrating
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the importance of your attachment
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your emotions, and
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what you each bring to your relationship,
my work with you will enhance your insight and awareness of yourselves as individuals as well of the patterns which you have in your relation to each other. You will also learn how these patterns hinder you from going into the deeper connection you are longing for - and how to deal with them to feel safer and closer with each other.
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In relation to research and clinical work, EFT is well-founded. Extensive research shows that 90% of couples completing an EFT-process experience significant improvements in their relationship, whilst 75% solve their crises.
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I conduct sessions face to face from my practice in Odense, Denmark. If you are unable to come to my practice, I also conduct sessions online which you can read more about here. All couples sessions are 75 minutes in duration.
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Click here to read about fees, cancellation policy and location.