What is a Couples Intensive?
Intensive couples, Relationship Therapy, Couples Retreats, Couples Counselling, Couples therapy Weekends
Couples Intensives | Intensive therapy retreats
Focus on the core problems that exist between two people who would like the relationship to work, but feel stuck as to how to make positive changes.
Relationship problems are always about each person individually, as well as what is created between two people.
Many people carry much unresolved wounding which may not always be conducive to resolving and forming healthy relationships. The process focusses on each individuals difficulties and blind spots as well as the relationship symptoms and problems.
couples therapy intensives will help you and your partner identify the issues of conflict within your relationship, and help you decide what changes are needed, in the relationship and in the behaviour of each partner, for both of you to feel satisfied with the relationship.
Many Couples in crisis experience one or several of the following issues :
- Intimacy and connection – emotional closeness and passion
- Insecurity and Jealousy
- Inability to discuss feelings
- Repeating destructive relationship patterns
- Loss of Trust
- Discussions of Divorce
- Adapting to marriage or becoming parents
- Cross Cultural Relationships
- Sexual orientation
- Pre-marital difficulties
- Disclosing Infidelity
- Conflicts
- Sexual difficulties
- Separation
- Work Life Balance
- Infidelity
- Poor communication
- Conflicts and Power dynamics
- Difficulties with Intimacy
- Commitment difficulties
- Coming to terms with an endings
- Feeling unloved
- In laws and family
- Fertility Issues
- Mid-life Crisis
- Sexual Desire Problems
- Poor self esteem
- General breakdown of a couple’s sexual relationship
- Unhappiness
- Addictive Behaviours
- Emotional Abuse
- Affairs and recovery
- Consistent arguments
- Sexuality
- Re romancing and re sexualising relationships
- Pornography and Internet Abuse
- Sexual addiction or compulsions
- Open Relationships or Polyamory
- Trauma Issues and PTSD Recovery
- Addictions and the impact on your relationship
- New Relationship Vision
- Finances and Money
If you have experienced any of these difficulties and wish to work through them please get in touch to discuss Couples Therapy and if a Couples Therapy Intensive is appropriate for you
RESERVE A COUPLES THERAPY INTENSIVE
Take the Next Step – Get in Touch.
Investing in couples therapy intensive offers a deeper, sexier, happier and more resilient connection with your partner.
You can call me now 07855 781 210
As Featured in The Sunday Times
A Transformative approach to Relationship Therapy
Intensive Couples Retreat, couples Therapy, Relationship Therapy
‘Laughter is the closest distance between two people.’ Has your previous experience of couples therapy left you feeling misunderstood? I encourage you to connect through an authentic and genuine sense of fun, laughter and adventure. I help you to transform your relationship, whilst holding the complex difficulties and needs you bring to the therapeutic process. Couples Therapy Intensives deal with couples who want to have a breakthrough session in dealing with life crises, dilemmas, transitions and changes. Couple Therapy Intensives are for couples who wish to nurture and feed their relationships.
Couples value the sense of direction and insight gained over a morning, afternoon or over a couple of days or weekend in a couples therapy intensive. These interventions can last a lifetime.
Couples Intensives
Intensive Couples Retreat, Relationship Therapy
Couples Intensives are created specifically for each couple, they are unique in reflecting the specificity of each couple and individual.
You can create your Intensive and Set your Intentions. Intensives are personalised Living from The Heart sessions for couples who may be travelling and cannot make it to weekly sessions, or want a more in-depth experience.
You explore intensive ways to increase the connection and intimacy in your relationship, resolve conflict, and work through shame, guilt and anger in your partnership. Many couples attend when there are difficulties in the relationship to get tools to resolve deep problems and turn things around.
Couples discover a way through their difficulties together. You are encouraged to hold certain beliefs about relationships imagining that you should be able to establish a rich and satisfying relationship with someone you love even if you have never learned to relate to yourself in a loving and satisfying way.
You may have been encouraged to believe that a successful relationship largely depends on finding the right person and doing the right things. Often not seeing that how you relate to another is an expression of how you relate to yourself, that your outer relationships are a reflection of your inner life, you can only be as open and present with another as you are with yourself.
Locations for Couples Intensives
West Sussex is packed with interesting places to visit, pretty villages and beautiful small towns. Discover the South Downs way with its stunning landscapes. Delight in wine tasting at some of the South Downs’ finest vineyards. Explore the stunning National Trust garden at Woolbeding. Stroll amongst historic Tudor buildings along the Midhurst Town. Savour gourmet food at venues from award winning cafés to fine dining restaurants. Thrill at the drama of polo matches at Cowdray Park.
WHAT HAPPENS ON A COUPLES THERAPY INTENSIVE
Through a guided process you will learn tools to discover what a working relationship is and how it is sustained.
These verbal, nonverbal and physical exercises are designed to open the heart and increase intimacy, compassion and understanding. When practiced over time, these exercises cultivate a profound sense of connectedness.
The Couples Therapy Intensive will give you the chance to spend a concentrated block of time working on your relationship. During and after your sessions with me, you will have ample time to practice and reflect on what you’ve learned, and enjoy time together.
Couples Intensives include follow up sessions to help support you in making changes and managing any difficulties you encounter
All couples intensives are tailored to your needs as a couple the below is an illustration
Arrive Friday afternoon for your Couples Intensive Retreat. Schedule an early session with dinner to follow. Be sure to make dinner your reservations in many of the fine local eateries or London’s West End is famous for its fantastic range of theatres. I can provide you with a list of excellent places to stay and to dine locally. The Friday afternoon session gives both of you a chance to warm up for the weekend Intensive.
Saturday 10am start we work on communication styles both nonverbal and verbal. 11.15 – 11.30 Short Break
11.30 – 1.00pm You will explore what’s problematic in the way you are relating; why it is problematic. I will use techniques to help you resolve conflict when you feel like you are at an impasse. You and your partner can learn to understand one another and to discuss problems calmly. Acknowledgement that each partner communicates differently helps resolves problems. Partners learn that disagreements are not signs of love loss but are normal occurrences in relationships that can be resolved through communication. Exploring Unconscious Roots of Problems
1.00 – 1.30 Lunch You have opportunity to explore the locale there is a café called Quarters with an adjoining a shop crammed with Scandinavian antiques. Or venture into Highgate village which boosts many cafes and the village pantry. What a delightful way to spend a lunch together. I will also have a lunch break and process the mornings work.
1.30 – 2.30 Explore your desire for a healthy relationship and your story so far as a couple allowing you to explore the past to bring to light negativities that otherwise remain hidden. By exploring conceptions and behaviours, you will gain insight into issues that have been troubling you and your partner. This intention here is find new ways to deal with your problems, effectively rewriting the love story of your relationship.
2.30 – 2.45 Break
2.45 – 4pm we will explore the Emotional discord in your relationship which is often expressed as dissatisfaction, criticism, or anger. This may force you to seek comfort from people outside your relationship. We will examine the root of negative emotions and behaviours to find the cause of severed communication between you and your partner. Close for the day.
On Sunday we will work 10 – 4pm. Your second day is structured based upon the therapeutic goals and treatment plan that arises out of the work so far. I will tailor your day based on interventions that best suit the issues you present.
After attending a Couples Intensive people often report on their return home, a sense of renewed energy and balance, a willingness to implement and sustain change. Their relationships and connection to themselves and others has increased in tangible ways.
Take The Next Step
RESERVE A COUPLES’ INTENSIVE
Take the Next Step – Get in Touch.
Investing in couples therapy offers a deeper, sexier, happier and more resilient connection with your partner.
You can call me now 07855 781 210
What happens after an Intensive
After attending a retreat with Living from The Heart people often report on their return home a sense of renewed energy and balance, a willingness to implement and sustain change. Their relationships and connection to themselves and others has increased in tangible ways. When you Live from the Heart you can transform your life.
Two sessions are provided, to allow you time to process and consolidate your learning. The first is usually scheduled two to four weeks after your intensive.
Or you can apply this follow up to Intensive Couples Art of Intimacy Therapy Retreat. Your follow up sessions can be held either In Person Video conferencing Skype or Face time Mini Morning or Afternoon intensive Couples Art of Intimacy Therapy Retreat These can be scheduled at the end of the retreat, or at a later date.
When sexuality is a presenting issue, many couples devote an entire week-end to enhancing and creating a healthy sexual and intimate relationship in a follow-up retreat. An Intensive couples retreat is a prerequisite to the Art of Intimacy retreat weekend.
Many couples and individuals I work with wish to create a feeling of equality and reciprocity in all aspects of their relationship, including sexually.
The weekend is for couples who wish to deepen and renew their sexual connection to one another to build an enduring and deeply satisfying relationship
The weekend will explore sexuality, sexual energy, desire, and pleasure and your right to feel and express emotions. Embrace your sexuality as a special, and sacred, part of your life.
To liberate the free attention necessary for developing an enduring and satisfying sex life, you must first banish anxiety, shame, guilt, and inhibitions about sexual expression. This means opening your mind to new ways of thinking about sexuality and experiencing sexuality as a powerful resource for full self-expression, health, happiness, and harmony.
Everyone wants and deserves to love and be loved and your capacity to love others is greatly related to your ability to love yourself. Many people’s experiences of love, intimacy and sexuality are linked unconsciously to feelings of shame; guilt or fear. Your thoughts about this can prevent you from fully expressing and receiving love. You will be guided to discover the root causes that block you from deeper experiences. You will develop and find new ways of communicating deeply from your heart and your authentic self, bringing conscious love and into your relationship.
This weekend will help you to develop a healthy sense of sexuality and desire. You will;
• Explore the possibilities for experiencing depth and nourishment from
your loving and intimate connections.
• Enliven your erotic self and explore sexuality and desire as an integral
• part of yourself
• Learn to live in and love the body you have
• Renew the passion and pleasure in your relationship
• Learn to have more deeply intimate sexual experiences
• Develop a healthy sense of sexuality and desire
• Create loving, endearing kindness in your sexuality
• Explore sexual fear and avoidance and other blocks to healthy sexuality
• Learn and practice how to talk about sex
• Work with destructive patterns of sexual and affectionate initiation/refusal
• Explore early messages about your body, eroticism, and relationships that dampen sexual excitement
• Understand your emotional reactions to sex and how these impact your partner.
• Learn to curb Criticism, Defensiveness, and Contempt & Stonewalling when they arise in sex
• Developing rituals of sexual connection
• Understanding what causes “mechanical” feelings during sex.
• Learn techniques to treat on-going sexual issues related to pain, arousal, erections, or orgasm difficulties.
• Healing problematic issues that exacerbate loss of sexual desire
• Learn to continue intimate sharing when sexual issue arise during lovemaking;
• Develop more compassionate ways to understand your partner sexually, and respond to their needs effectively.
• Resolve difficulties when you and your partner have different sexual styles, and learning ways to make it work, while embracing these differences.
• Work with creating and environment which is conducive to a healthy relationship.
“For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof. The work for which all other work is but a preparation”.
Rainer Maria Rilke.
Love is a powerful force that inevitably brings to the surface the parts of ourselves that we desperately try to keep hidden. Everyone has a shadow, and the less it is recognised and embodied in our conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. It is the thing which trips us up over and over again, thwarting our most well-meant intentions. Many people blame relationship problems on a lack of love and the other person not ‘being enough’. In truth it is the challenge of being close and loving in a relationship that uncovers the difficulty. A close relationship is a powerful light, and like any strong light it casts a large shadow.
Being in relationship can create a rich tapestry in our life, bringing with its intricate design joy and challenges. When you stand in the light of a close relationship, you will encounter the shadow. ‘There is a psychological law that says when we don’t own and consciously recognise a significant inner conflict the situation has to be played out through external circumstances. This is sometimes known as “fate” On our journey towards greater self-awareness spiritual expansion, we encounter the Shadow Self. This is hidden from our conscious self-image. The Shadow represents the rejected, repressed, undeveloped and denied. These are dark disowned aspects of our being. When the full extent of the shadow is revealed, it can be quite a shock. Yet there is positive undeveloped potential in the Shadow because it is always with us and holds so much of our life energy. The key is to recognise it and transform it in useful and positive ways.
During the weekend you will:
• Move towards authenticity and personal power
• Notice your self-sabotaging behaviours
• Understand repetitive patterns in relationship that hinder you
• Move towards self-acceptance and knowledge of who you are
• Understand the negative emotions that erupt unexpectedly in daily life
• Transform guilt and shame associated with negative feelings and behaviour
• Recognise your projections that influence your relationships with others Explore authentic and direct communication