Miriam Smolover LMFT, REAT Oakland Holistic Therapy
Relationship Therapy
Do you…
- get in repeated arguments with your partner?
- wonder where the joy in your relationship went?
- have differences that seem irresolvable?
- get confused about how to balance individuality and
togetherness? - want to communicate but somehow things just get
snarled up?
- Relationship therapy — for couples, friends, roommates, parents and adult children, co-workers — can help reestablish the basics of trust and safety that comprise the fertile soil in which healthy relationships can take root.
- Everyone in a relationship wants their experience to be heard and understood. Frustration, anger, and hurt escalate when someone thinks they are not being listened to. The dynamics can quickly resemble two combatants engaging in a struggle.
- The key component of a satisfying relationship is when both people are able to listen deeply to the other person and empathize with their experience, even if it is radically different from the way they experience the same thing.
- I can help you learn how to communicate effectively. When both people can relax into the security of knowing they will be understood and are willing to offer that to the other person, the two teams become one and cooperative solutions to problems appear.
- Sometimes, unresolved traumas from the past, and patterns of communication learned while growing up are what get in the way of establishing trust and safety. I can help both of you identify what you’re bringing with you from the past into your current relationship and how to resolve those dynamics so you can be fully present with your partner.
- Sometimes, people in a relationship have been struggling so long that they’ve retreated from expressions of intimacy. In couples counseling, I can help you learn to recreate your intimate connection.
- Emotionally Focused Therapy is a well-researched approach to couples counseling that I use to help relationships flourish. To learn more about this method, a great book is Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, by Dr. Sue Johnson, the originator of this approach. (Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2008.)
- You can take the step now to create a more joyful relationship, by calling for an appointment.
Outside ideas of right doing
and wrong doing,
There is a field.
I’ll meet you there.– Rumi
13th century Sufi mystic
Miriam Smolover, LMFT, REAT, offers therapy and consultation to people in Oakland, CA, as well as Berkeley, San Francisco, and Alameda and Contra Costa counties. Specialties include resolving anxiety, stress, trauma, and creative blocks. She enjoys helping couples create greater intimacy. Her holistic approach integrates somatics, mindfulness, and cognitive and emotionally centered attention for desired changes.