Couples Therapy & Counseling
in the Bay Area

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for Couples

ACT combines mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based commitment to help individuals lead more meaningful and fulfilling lives. When applied to couples therapy, ACT offers a unique framework that empowers partners to build healthier and more resilient relationships.

A fundamental principle of ACT is acceptance, which involves acknowledging and embracing the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of oneself and one’s partner without judgment. In relationships, acceptance means recognizing and validating each other’s emotions, perspectives, and individuality. By practicing acceptance, couples can create a safe space for vulnerability and open communication, cultivating a deeper sense of understanding and connection.

In ACT, commitment refers to actively engaging in behaviors aligned with one’s values. In ACT couples therapy, commitment refers to engaging in values-based actions that are consistent with your values. In couples therapy you will learn how to distinguish between avoidance behaviors and values-based actions and learn tools for working with the thoughts and feelings that try to stop you from taking actions towards your values.

Acceptance and Commitment Couples Interventions for Couples Therapy:

Mindful Listening: Actively listening to your partner is a vital component of healthy communication. Engage in mindful listening by giving your undivided attention, maintaining eye contact, and genuinely focusing on your partner’s words and emotions.

Defusion Techniques: ACT introduces defusion techniques to help couples observe their thoughts without getting entangled in them. Recognizing and distancing from negative thoughts, helps couples to stop reacting impulsively or defensively. This helps create distance from negative stories partners have about each other, resulting in these thoughts having less influence on their behaviors.

Values Clarification: Identifying and discussing personal values, as well as shared values as a couple, is an important step in ACT. Reflecting on what truly matters to both partners can guide decision-making and help prioritize actions that align with those values.

Acceptance: Incorporating acceptance and self-compassion exercises into your daily lives can be transformative for couples. ACT teaches specific skills for developing radical acceptance to internal experiences including core beliefs, feelings and sensations.

Mindfulness Exercises: Mindfulness is an integral part of ACT, and it can greatly benefit couples. By practicing mindfulness together, partners can learn to be fully present with each other, fostering deeper intimacy and connection. Activities like mindful breathing exercises, meditation, or shared mindful moments can help couples stay attuned to each other’s needs and enhance their overall relationship satisfaction.

Schema Therapy for Couples

Relationships are affected by deep-seated patterns of thoughts and beliefs that impact our interactions. Schema Therapy can help couples identify and address these patterns, fostering understanding, healing, and growth. Schema Therapy, developed by Dr. Jeffrey E. Young, integrates elements of cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, and experiential therapies. It focuses on identifying and changing maladaptive patterns or schemas—core beliefs about oneself, others, and the world. When applied to couples therapy, Schema Therapy provides a framework for understanding and healing the underlying dynamics that contribute to relationship difficulties.

Schemas (core beliefs in relationships) often emerge from past experiences and shape our perceptions and interactions with others. In couples therapy, schemas manifest as recurring themes, such as mistrust, abandonment, or inadequacy, which contribute to conflicts and emotional distance. Recognizing these schemas is a crucial step in Schema Therapy for couples, as it allows partners to gain insight about their relationship challenges.

Schema Therapy Interventions for Couples:

Schema Exploration: Through guided discussions and exercises, couples can identify their schemas and explore how they impact their relationship. This process involves examining core beliefs and patterns that contribute to emotional reactions in interpersonal dynamics. Bringing awareness to these schemas, helps couples gain insight into their triggers and vulnerabilities.

Take the relationship schema quiz to find out what your schemas are in relationships. You can bring your schema quiz results to your therapy session to explore, with your therapist, how your schemas and your partners schemas interact and to identify repetitive themes and patterns that these schemas create.

Schema Dialogue: Schema Dialogue provides a structured approach for partners to engage in open and empathetic conversations about their schemas. This intervention involves active listening, validation, and mutual understanding. Partners take turns expressing their thoughts and feelings while focusing on providing support and empathy.

Schema Avoidance Behaviors: Schema avoidance behaviors are unhelpful habits that we have adopted to deal with relationship pain. These can range from seeking excessive reassurance, to lying, screaming, accusing, blaming, clinging, and more. Although these behaviors may provide temporary relief, they end up harming the relationship in the long run. Schema couples therapy can help you learn how to replace these behaviors with more positive coping mechanisms that strengthen your relationships.

Cognitive Restructuring: Schema Therapy incorporates cognitive restructuring techniques to challenge and modify maladaptive beliefs and thought patterns. Couples learn to identify cognitive distortions, reframe negative interpretations, and replace them with more balanced and realistic thoughts. This intervention promotes more accurate perceptions of oneself and the partner, reducing misunderstandings and promoting healthier communication.

Behavioral Pattern Change: Schema Therapy recognizes that change occurs not only through insight but also through action. Couples work together to identify specific behaviors that perpetuate negative patterns and develop alternative actions to create positive change. This may involve practicing new ways of relating, expressing needs and boundaries, and engaging in shared activities that promote connection and intimacy.

Integrative Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Couples

Integrative Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for couples is a powerful approach that combines the best elements of cognitive, behavioral, and emotion-focused therapies. It provides invaluable tools and interventions to help couples build a strong and fulfilling partnership.

This therapeutic approach draws from various evidence-based techniques to address the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects of a person’s life. It offers a comprehensive framework to identify and modify unhelpful thoughts, behaviors, and emotions that may contribute to relationship challenges.

Integrative CBT recognizes the interconnectedness of thoughts, feelings, sensations, urges, and behaviors. Understanding the patterns and dynamics that contribute to relationship distress, couples can gain insight into their own and their partner’s perspectives, resulting in increased empathy and understanding.

Integrative Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Interventions for Couples:

Communication Skills Training: Effective communication is at the core of a healthy relationship. Learning Nonviolent Communication helps couples develop essential communication skills, such as active listening, assertiveness, and empathy. Couples learn to express their needs, concerns, and emotions in a more constructive way. Practicing NVC is one of the best ways to improve communication and mental health.

Behavioral Activation: Couples work together to identify specific behaviors that contribute to relationship difficulties, such as avoidance or negative patterns of interaction. Through behavioral activation, partners engage in new behaviors that promote positive interactions, intimacy, and shared activities.

Emotion Regulation: Emotional regulation skills are crucial for maintaining a healthy and balanced relationship. Integrative CBT equips couples with techniques to manage and express their emotions effectively. By understanding and regulating their emotions, partners can navigate conflicts with greater emotional intelligence, fostering empathy and reducing emotional reactivity.

Problem-Solving Strategies: Integrative CBT emphasizes problem-solving as a collaborative process. Couples learn effective problem-solving strategies to address issues and conflicts effectively. CBT relationship counseling involves identifying the problem, generating potential solutions, evaluating the pros and cons, and implementing the best course of action. By developing problem-solving skills, couples can resolve conflicts more efficiently and create win-win solutions.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (MBCT) for Couples

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (MBCT) offers an evidence-based integrative approach that helps couples develop awareness, compassion, and effective communication.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy integrates the principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with the practice of mindfulness. It combines the tools of cognitive restructuring and behavior modification with the present-moment awareness cultivated through mindfulness practice. By incorporating mindfulness into the therapeutic process, couples can develop a deeper understanding of themselves, their partners, and their relationship dynamics.

Mindfulness involves intentionally directing one’s attention to the present moment with an attitude of openness, curiosity, and non-judgment. When couples engage in mindfulness practices together, they create a space for connection, presence, and deepening their emotional bond. By practicing mindfulness as a couple, partners can develop the capacity to respond to each other with intention, compassion, and empathy.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy offers couples a transformative treatment to deepen their connection, enhance communication, and navigate challenges with mindful compassion. By integrating mindfulness practices with cognitive-behavioral techniques, couples can cultivate awareness, emotional regulation, and effective communication skills.

Somatic Therapy for Couples

Somatic Therapy focuses on the body’s wisdom and the integration of mind, body, and spirit. Somatic Therapy for Couples can help partners enhance their relationship by bringing awareness to bodily sensations, releasing tension, and  deep healing.

Somatic Therapy recognizes that the body holds valuable information about our emotions, experiences, and relational patterns. It emphasizes the connection between the mind and the body, highlighting the importance of somatic awareness, embodiment, and the release of stored tension and trauma. Somatic Therapy Couples Therapy offers a holistic framework to heal emotional wounds, build trust, and create a more embodied and fulfilling partnership.

Somatic Therapy Interventions for Couples:

Body Sensations and Emotional Awareness: Somatic Couples Therapy encourages couples to bring attention to their bodily sensations and notice how these sensations are connected to their emotions. By tuning into the body’s wisdom, couples can develop a deeper understanding of their emotional experiences and gain insights into their relationship dynamics. This awareness helps partners attune to each other’s needs and respond with more curiosity.

Breathwork and Grounding Techniques: Somatic Couples Therapy incorporates breathwork and grounding techniques to help couples regulate their nervous systems and establish a sense of safety and presence. Through specific breathing exercises and grounding practices, partners learn to connect with their bodies, release tension, and access a be present. These techniques promote a calm and centered state, allowing for more authentic and vulnerable communication.

Movement and Expressive Arts: Somatic Couples Therapy integrates movement and expressive arts as a way to access and release emotions stored in the body. Through movement, partners can express themselves, access deeper layers of their emotions, and create new patterns of connection. These practices enhance body awareness, self-expression, and facilitate nonverbal communication within the relationship.

Touch and Intimacy: Through safe and consensual touch exercises, couples can rebuild trust, deepen their emotional bond, and explore their physical connection. Through conscious touch and attunement, partners can create a sense of safety, comfort, and pleasure within their relationship.

Trauma Resolution: Somatic Couples Therapy provides effective tools for healing and resolving trauma within the context of a couple’s relationship. Somatic interventions, such as Somatic Experiencing or Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, help partners gently process and release trauma stored in the body.

Is Therapy Right For Us? Integrative and Holistic Couples Therapy

Even if you struggle individually with post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, or other mental health concerns, taking an integrative behavioral approach to relationship counseling is essential for long term behavioral change. Insight is not enough to help couples. Partners must practice and engage in new behaviors and foster emotional health for a healthier relationship. Relationship counseling sessions with an integrative CBT approach can help you recognize patterns and habits that may be causing conflict or distance in your relationship.

Not sure whether you should seek a licensed therapist? Take this relationship satisfaction questionnaire to find out whether your relationship distress could benefit from therapy.

Not sure whether you need individual therapy, marriage counseling, or marriage and family therapy? Take this relationship schemas quiz to find out your core beliefs in relationships and this interpersonal problems quiz to assess your relational patterns across relationships.

Our licensed marriage and family therapists will provide you with practical strategies and techniques to implement in your everyday life that result in real changes outside of therapy. Our holistic approach will empower you and your partner to develop healthier coping skills, improve communication, address mental health issues and foster a more authentic and fulfilling relationship.