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If you and your partner are having the same arguments over and over again, or you feel stuck, disconnected, and alone in your relationship, then couples therapy may be just what you need.
At the Bay Area CBT Center, we help you overcome the obstacles that prevent you from having the relationship you desire. Our approach to couples therapy is active and directive, offering practical skills to enhance intimacy and foster a deeper connection.
Ready to reignite your relationship? Book a free consult to assess your needs today!
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We are all wired to seek meaningful, loving connections. Yet, every relationship, no matter who you are or who you’re with, will experience pitfalls and conflicts from time to time. Whether unkind words are said in the heat of the moment or you’ve let your problems build up and fester over time, it can be easy to let your difficult emotions get the best of you and lose sight of how you treat one another.
This is why it is important to understand that it’s not always about the problem at hand but how you choose to react to the problem that can either benefit or hinder the overall quality of your relationship. Without having the tools or knowledge on how to share your needs and desires in a healthy way, it can be a challenge for you and your partner to stay on the same page.
You might feel like your relationship is doomed, but it’s never too late to heal with couples counseling. Sometimes, it’s difficult to be vulnerable and confide in one another because you feel like your bond has been so deeply tarnished. You might lack trust in each other due to jealousy, insecurities, past instances of hurt, or even infidelity. If this is the case, you may be at the point in your relationship where you both feel so overwhelmed that you believe your problems are impossible to manage or repair.
Luckily, no matter what challenges you face, couples therapy at Bay Area CBT Center will provide you with a safe space to reestablish the warmth and love that you long for in your relationship. Our marriage counseling services offer couples insight and practical skills based on mindfulness, NVC, and conflict resolution so that you can focus on building each other up.
Couples therapy is essential because relationships are central to our lives, bringing immense joy and profound pain. Our connections with others can trigger our deepest fears and greatest joys. Unfortunately, society often doesn’t equip us with the skills needed to navigate these complexities.
When relationships struggle, the negative effects can permeate every aspect of our lives, overshadowing our well-being. However, when relationships flourish, the impact is nothing short of transformative and spectacular.
To support your journey, we offer a range of specialized services. Premarital counseling helps address potential issues before marriage, sex therapy enhances intimacy, and discernment counseling aids couples in making informed decisions about their future. Our goal is to create a respectful and affirming environment for growth, ensuring you and your partner thrive together.
At the Bay Area CBT Center, we understand that the wrong approach to couples therapy can worsen your issues rather than resolve them. That’s why we exclusively use scientifically proven methods. Our couples therapists don’t just sit back; we actively intervene to disrupt those moments that reinforce destructive patterns, making real-time interventions that are crucial for meaningful change.
Our couples therapy sessions are dynamic. Our couples counselors do more than listen; we act. We’re expertly trained to spot and address negative dynamics as they occur, equipping you and your partner with new, healthier behaviors right in those critical moments. This immediate action is vital because real change stems from practicing new skills not just during calm times but under the real pressures and triggers of everyday life.
To provide a comprehensive treatment, we integrate somatic interventions for the body, cognitive interventions for the mind, and behavioral interventions to break negative patterns. This holistic approach ensures that every aspect of your relationship is addressed. By aligning mind, body, spirit, and actions, we focus on thoughts, feelings, sensations, urges, and behaviors, fostering overall relationship health.
We have authored books on our specialized approach to couples therapy, which integrates techniques from schema therapy, ACT, and somatic therapy. This method helps you and your partner build deeper connections and intimacy by addressing the root causes of conflicts and the underlying emotions shaping your interactions.
Every relationship is unique, and our customized approach ensures tailored interventions. Our couples therapists understand your dynamics, history, and goals to create a personalized therapy plan. Whether facing communication issues, trust concerns, or intimacy problems, our strategies foster understanding, connection, and healing. Our goal is to help you build a stronger, healthier relationship, supporting your journey toward greater intimacy.
Relationship challenges affect all types of couples—same-sex, heterosexual, nonbinary, and nontraditional couples, including those where one or both partners are transgender. Research shows that evidence-based couples therapy improves relationships for couples of all sexual orientations, identities, and relationship structures.
We understand that every relationship is unique and deserves specialized care. Committed to inclusivity, we offer couples counseling that caters to a wide spectrum of relationships, including those in the LGBTQ+ community, polyamorous relationships, and open relationships. Our licensed couples therapists have ample experience working with diverse couples, we are dedicated to helping you rebuild and maintain fulfilling relationships.
Check Out Our Books for Couples
We Have Authored Books On Our Groundbreaking Approach To Couples Therapy
At Bay Area CBT Center, we take an integrative and holistic approach to couples therapy. Just like us as individuals, no two relationships are the same. Therefore, we incorporate a variety of therapeutic modalities and tailor our interventions to address the specific challenges and dynamics present within each couple’s relationship. Some of the modalities that we offer at Bay Area CBT Center include:
ACT Therapy offers a unique framework that empowers partners to build healthier and more resilient relationships.
Schema Therapy helps couples identify and address negative relational patterns, fostering healing and growth.
Somatic Therapy integrates mind, body, and spirit to help partners enhance connection and heal emotional wounds.
Integrative CBT is a powerful approach that combines the best elements of cognitive, behavioral, somatic, and emotion-focused therapies.
MBCT offers an evidence-based integrative approach that helps couples develop awareness, compassion, and emotional connection.
NVC offers a practical, empathetic framework that helps couples build healthy boundaries, understanding, interdependence, and effective communication.
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.
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.
In essence, ACT for couples is a pathway to addressing relationship issues and enhancing relationship satisfaction through the principles of mindfulness, acceptance, and commitment to values. It’s an approach that empowers couples to understand each other better, communicate effectively, and grow together, making it a valuable tool in couple therapy. By engaging in couples counseling with a marriage and family therapist, partners can explore the positive aspects of their relationship, understand the impact of childhood experiences, and work through issues related to their dynamic. Therapy can help change behavior, resolve issues, and ultimately improve your relationship satisfaction. Starting from the first session, the therapist will provide support and guidance, helping couples to improve their mental health and navigate the journey of couples counseling work together.
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.
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 Couples Therapy 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 Couples 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.
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 a relationship. Somatic interventions, such as Somatic Experiencing or Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, help partners gently process and release trauma stored in the body.
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 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.
Relationships are influenced by our deep-rooted attachment styles, which govern how we connect and interact with our partners. Attachment Therapy for couples aims to identify and address these attachment styles, fostering understanding, healing, and growth. This therapeutic approach, drawing on the principles of attachment theory, integrates elements of emotional, experiential, and relational therapies. It focuses on identifying and modifying attachment patterns—innate ways of connecting and protecting oneself in relationships. In couples therapy, Attachment Therapy provides a framework for understanding and healing the underlying dynamics that contribute to relationship difficulties.
Attachment styles in relationships often stem from early life experiences and influence our perceptions and interactions with partners. In couples therapy, these styles manifest as recurring themes, such as anxiety, avoidance, or disorganization, which contribute to conflicts and emotional distance. Recognizing these attachment styles is a crucial step in Attachment Therapy for couples, as it enables partners to gain insight into their relationship challenges.
Attachment Exploration: Through guided discussions and exercises, couples can identify their attachment styles and explore how they impact their relationship. This process involves examining attachment histories and patterns that contribute to emotional reactions in interpersonal dynamics. Bringing awareness to these styles helps couples gain insight into their triggers and vulnerabilities.
Take the relationship attachment quiz to find out your attachment styles in relationships. You can bring your attachment quiz results to your therapy session to explore, with your therapist, how your attachment styles and your partner’s styles interact and to identify repetitive themes and patterns that these styles create.
Attachment Dialogue: Attachment Dialogue provides a structured approach for partners to engage in open and empathetic conversations about their attachment styles. This intervention involves active listening, validation, and mutual understanding. Partners take turns expressing their thoughts and feelings while focusing on providing support and empathy.
Attachment Avoidance Behaviors: Attachment avoidance behaviors are unhelpful habits that we adopt to cope with relationship distress. These can range from withdrawal, to defensiveness, stonewalling, or over-reliance on self. While these behaviors may offer temporary relief, they ultimately harm the relationship. Attachment couples therapy can help you learn to replace these behaviors with more positive coping mechanisms that strengthen your relationships.
Cognitive and Emotional Restructuring: Attachment Therapy incorporates techniques to challenge and modify maladaptive beliefs, emotions, and thought patterns related to attachment. Couples learn to identify distortions, reframe negative interpretations, and replace them with more balanced and realistic thoughts and emotions. This intervention promotes more accurate perceptions of oneself and the partner, reducing misunderstandings and promoting healthier communication.
Behavioral Pattern Change: Behavioral Therapy recognizes that change occurs not only through insight but also through action. Couples work together to identify specific behaviors that perpetuate negative attachment patterns and develop alternative actions to create positive change. This includes helping couples develop secure behaviors, which involve open communication, responsiveness to each other’s needs, and constructive conflict resolution. By practicing new ways of connecting, expressing needs and boundaries, and engaging in shared activities that promote connection and intimacy, couples can foster a more secure and fulfilling relationship.
As part of couples counseling, we offer a variety of self-awareness and skill-building opportunities. Depending on your needs, any one or combination of these can be incorporated into your therapy:
INNOVATIVE COUPLES THERAPY
No relationship is immune to challenges and conflict. This is why—no matter your gender, background, or sexual orientation—our couples therapists at Bay Area CBT Center provide engaging, comprehensive counseling services aimed to help you improve communication, intimacy, and your overall emotional well-being.
Oftentimes, your conflicts grow out of your limiting beliefs, which we call “relationship schemas.” While you and your partner may be unaware of your schemas, they usually shape not only the theme of your relationships but also your individual thoughts, actions, and major life decisions.
Once we identify your schemas, your relationship issues will feel less overwhelming. Understanding your schemas helps you recognize what to look for during disagreements. By realizing the recurring themes in your relationship that are holding you back, we can teach you new skills to stay proactive and address potential issues before they escalate.
Cultivate adaptive coping strategies that empower your relationship to thrive in the face of adversity.
Enhance your understanding of the mind-body connection to reignite the chemistry in your relationship and deepen your emotional and physical bond.
Develop practical tools for resolving conflicts and managing emotional intensity in your relationship.
Uncover body-centered interventions, such as somatic experiencing, vagal toning, mindfulness, and empathy-building, to regulate each other’s nervous systems.
Learn behavioral techniques for reshaping interpersonal schemas to heal attachment wounds and relational trauma.
Discover strategies to address issues related to trust, jealousy, and insecurity, fostering a more secure relationship.
HOLISTIC MENTAL HEALTH IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
We have a unique matching process, and our matching specialist will help you determine the best type of therapy and therapist for your specific needs. You can also take our therapy matching quiz to find out more information about which type of therapy is best for you.
Finding a therapist who resonates with both partners is pivotal to successful couples therapy. At the Bay Area CBT Center, we ensure a suitable match between couples and therapists through our perfect fit matching process.
We offer a unique guarantee: if the therapist we match you with doesn’t perfectly suit your needs, we’ll find you a new one free of charge. This ensures our center provides the most effective and suitable therapy experience for every couple.
If you have an insurance plan that is a PPO plan, it will cover our services. You can call your insurance company using the number on the back of your insurance card and ask if you have a PPO plan, whether they take out-of-network providers, and what percentage they cover for out-of-network therapy. Coverage is usually between 50% to 80%. We will provide you with a bill to submit to your insurance company for reimbursement.
Whether you’re a heterosexual, same-sex, or transgender couple, we want to provide a safe, non-judgmental space for both you and your partner to effectively communicate. We are here to validate your experiences and teach you how to become the best you can be—both for yourselves and for one another. So you can rest assured that there will be no taking sides—our therapists want your relationship to thrive, and that means helping both of you do your part to make things better.
In therapy, our counselors aim to meet the distinct needs of each and every couple, guiding you to a place where you can foster healthy communication, understanding, and growth.
Whether you’re trying to solve rifts in your marriage or being proactive to prevent issues down the road, at Bay Area CBT Center, we have a passionate group of counselors who offer unique insight and perspective for a wide range of couples. Our approach is tailored, transformative, and focused on empowering both of you. So, no matter who you are, we want to help you and your partner make the positive, lasting changes needed to move forward together.
If you feel alone in your relationship struggles, it can be easy to think that your problems are too unique for anyone to understand. This is why our team at Bay Area CBT Center consists of a diverse, skilled, and experienced group of marriage and family therapists that offer mindfulness-based approaches that will help you address a myriad of relationship issues and feel long-lasting relief.
Of course, there is never a rush on the healing process, and everyone grows at their own pace. But couples tell us all the time that they begin to notice the benefits of therapy soon after their very first session because they’re given the tools and knowledge needed to healthily address the issues that are holding them back.
Whether you’re married, in a long-term relationship, or in the beginning stages of forming your bond with your partner, our couples therapists can provide both of you with a safe space to learn about one another, grow together, and love each other to the fullest.
If you’re interested and want to know more about the therapy services that we offer for couples at Bay Area CBT Center, please visit our contact page. We look forward to hearing from you!
Do not hesitate to reach out. Just fill in the contact form here and we’ll be sure to reply as fast as possible.
2211 Post Street, Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94115
Info@BayAreaCBTcenter.com
415-941-5373
Video and phone consultations offer a convenient alternative for individuals who may not have access to a specialist nearby or prefer to avoid commuting for appointments. Studies have shown that virtual and in-person sessions are equally effective.
