Dignity-based counseling to help you reach your goals. ABOUT Find out more about our founder Sam Bryant, LPC and his philosophy about therapy, relationships and couples. ABOUT Find out more about Marian Dunaway LMFT, LPC and her counseling philosophy and background in Emotionally Focused Therapy and more. About Find out more about Stephanie Galeziewski, LPC. View her specialties and background in working with adolescents utilizing play-therapy. ABout Find out more about Aryn Sylvester, LAC. View her specialties and background in trauma work utilizing Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART). About Find out more about Marietta Harris, LAMFT and her utilization of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Narrative therapy. Schedule an Appointment Ready to take the next step? You can schedule an appointment to fit your needs and fill out intake forms right from home. With the support of mentors, Witness to Love continues the indispensable role of providing early intervention and support during both the engagement and the marriage. For most situations, early action by a couple experiencing the challenges of sharing a life together creates the best possible outcome. It is for this reason that the Witness to Love program insists on the value of incorporating the nourishing bond of trust between the engaged and their own chosen mentors. Mentors can serve as a basic source of sound reasoning and guidance and can help to support the use of professional counseling when necessary. Mentors can help encourage additional forms of mentoring to help navigate through the challenges of conflict and poor communication as well as other issues such as mental health and substance abuse.
Witness to Love and Therapy - TheoryOur experience has shown that roughly one in ten engaged couples may benefit from some type of premarital counseling. A more focused effort on specific problems including assertive communication (versus passive, passive-aggressive, or aggressive communication styles), significant struggles with vulnerable self-disclosure and authenticity, or challenges with effective problem solving may need more focused, professional treatment than clergy or marriage prep personnel have the time or training to adequately address. On the Prepare-Enrich these would be “Conflicted Couple Types” or couples with low levels of conflict resolution. Based on the insights gained through reviewing the required premarital inventory (e.g. Prepare-Enrich or FOCCUS) clergy and supporting marriage prep personnel often identify couples who have varying degrees of issues that should be resolved or discussed prior to marriage. Family of origin issues as well as personal and relational wounds can run deep, making the ongoing effort of mutual self-gift in marriage exceedingly difficult. Oftentimes these issues are covered in a few counseling sessions which provide an usually insufficient short term solution. What is really needed by these couples is an experience of long term support to ensure that these issues do not escalate and that they seek help as needed. Specifically, a Witness to Love counselor is able to coach a mentor couple to be a secure anchor for the engaged couple. Our experience with over 500 couples has shown that the “chosen” mentor’s life experiences coupled with positive counseling techniques provide the best foundation for engaged couples who need premarital counseling. This mentor couple is chosen by the engaged couple as someone whose marriage they admire and that they are both comfortable discussing any problems that arise. An additional value develops as mentors learn to identify not only behavioral issues, but the cognitive elements that lead to this behavior. In turn the counselor continues to serve as a guide and coach for these mentors (and by extension the engaged and hopefully newly married) to be a secure anchor and maximize the benefit of the counseling sessions. Our goal would be to prevent occasions where couples only go through the motions of the required counseling sessions. On the other hand, when the marriage preparation process includes a mentor to assist with getting through these challenges, a course of action can be developed providing both immediate positive reinforcement as well as basic strategies for long term conditioning. This could possibly incorporate the mentors into the counseling process. Once key issues are identified and clarified in session, mentors can provide some of the necessary emotional and practical support to deepen self- and spousal-awareness subsequent to counseling. In therapy, the couple may uncover additional issues that need to be addressed or that indicate a need for further counseling. If, for example, there are three meetings with a counselor suggested by the couple’s church then we would advise the first meeting take place between only the counselor and engaged couple. Then during the second and third meeting the engaged couple would bring their mentor couple who will be coached in being a secure attachment and resource to the engaged couple over time. VideosWitness to Love Therapy - ApplicationCouples will encounter a number of obstacles living out their marriage vocation, a lifelong commitment until “death do us part.” The marital therapist commonly confronts issues of couple conflict like Gottman’s “4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, contempt), which clouds the view spouses can have of each other. Similar to an eye care specialist who assesses and treats conditions that compromise vision, the mental health professional assesses and treats individual and couples’ issues that compromise a person’s authentic vision of self and their partner, leading to greater insecurity in the relationship. Every day, both counselors and parish communities see relationships struggling and failing. Both groups can find themselves wondering if marriage can truly be a lifelong committed relationship with one other person. Even though there seems to be a great amount of evidence to the contrary, we believe that a marriage for life is possible and that this provides a great service to building up healthy faith communities as well as society in general! Our goal is to have parishes recognize not only the value offered to the engaged and newly married by the experiences of the “chosen” mentors, but in addition the indispensable resource provided by partnering with a mental health professional to develop “affective or emotional maturity” techniques as a foundation for long-lasting relationships. In the long run, the proper balance and interplay between mentors and counselors will directly impact not only the engaged and newly married but the parish community as a whole. To be connected to a counselor who understands the benefits of Witness to Love in working with couples please contact us.
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Witness to love family counseling services
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