For me, couples therapy is offering patience, understanding, insight, acceptance, compassion, relationship, and a secure base to partners suffering from burdens too heavy to carry alone. I compare myself to a container into which my patients pour their unbearable feelings. My task is to detoxify these feelings and make them easier to understand and tolerate. I help my patients to use the healthy aspects of their relationship to meet their emotional needs and the emotional needs of their partner. To establish and maintain a healthy relationship, we work in session on understanding our own and the partner's mental states (wishes, feelings, intentions) and how these are connected to how we behave toward the partner. Intimate relationships tend to work better when we are able to understand our own and our partner's minds and how our minds influence how we behave toward each other.
