Even when one partner change, the dynamic of the relationship change, which leads to a valuable growth and healing for both partners.

Imago Couples Therapy

spiral2grow Marriage Family Therapy, a leading provider of Imago relationship therapy in NYC, has professionals that include imago therapists or imago couples therapists as well as marriage counselors, who are expert in imago relationship therapy. spiral2grow Marriage Therapy, located in midtown Manhattan at 260 Madison #8023, New York, NY 10016, offers imago relationship treatment through marriage counseling, couples therapy and relationship coaching.

Imago couples therapy – Overview

While there are several marital enrichment programs and courses currently available, most are psycho-educational and approach relationship challenges primarily on a cognitive level. Imago Couples Therapy, even in a short time treatment or workshop for couples, works on an affective/emotional level to establish a healthy and positive therapeutic climate that allows work with previously unconscious material.

Imago Relationship Therapy has assisted many couples worldwide. Emotional disconnection and disharmony in intimate relationship may be expressed as criticism, dissatisfaction, disappointment,  anger or resentment. Imago Relationship Therapy explores the root of the unpleasant emotions and destructive behaviors which is manifested in unhealthy communication dynamics between partners. As such, it enables individuals in intimate relationships move from unconscious and automatic to conscious and mindful relationship. It empowers individuals to see their role in the relationship while healing childhood wounds within a supportive and safe environment. Imago therapy lays the foundation of thriving relationship and provides the tools to enhance deeper connection, experience joy, harmony and fulfillment.

Imago counseling approaches challenges and problems on multiple levels (emotional, rational and behavioral). The fundamental premise of Imago is that deep understanding of each other’s feelings, needs and experiences is crucial to being able to empathize, understand and connect with each other. In addition, change must be on the behavioral level, rather than being a change in the mind to increase the chances to get closer to what we want. Also, an important element of the Imago therapy is the emphasis that even when one partner change, the dynamic of the relationship change. The process of therapy leads to a valuable growth and healing for both partners. Couples at any stage of their relationship, in crisis or in love, married or unmarried can enjoy the benefit of such transformative therapeutic technique.

Imago Relationship Therapy

    • Imago Relationship Therapy is a relationship counseling modality for marriage and couples therapy which integrates leading western psychological methodologies, behavioral sciences, and spirituality into a theory of love and intimate relationship. Imago Therapy is effective and easy as it helps individuals understand and recognize the unconscious factors (The Imago) in the choice of their intimate partner. It reveals the emotional dynamics that are being replayed from early age and it instructs couples how to relate to each other and themselves, in a more nurturing, loving and healthy way.
    • Imago couples counseling equipped couples with concepts and tools to achieve safety and deep intimacy as well experience fulfillment and aliveness. It improve communication, moving toward positive dynamics while expressing care and love to transform the relationship into healing personal and spiritual growth. Imago Relationship Therapy helped many couples heals childhood wounds while moving it from an unconscious to a conscious level creating the foundation for empowerment and love.
    • Imago teaches you how to engage with one another by using a effective communication skills (“Imago Dialogue”), which helps you learn more about each other need and perspective. It also makes couples understand what lies underneath their relationship conflict, while adapting healthy and constructive ways to resolve it.
    • Imago addresses challenges on the emotional, rational, and behavioral levels. A clear understanding of each other’s feelings and experiences is a key factor to being able to understand, empathize and relate to each other. In addition, we emphasize the need to change our behaviors to give and get what we really want. Even when only one partner change, the change leads to valuable growth and healing for both parties. We find that our partner’s requests for change often challenge us to grow into untapped part of our Self.

The basic premises of Imago Therapy

    • We were wounded during the early childhood and socializing stages of development by our primary caretakers (usually not purposely).
    • Our unconscious mind contains the positive and negative traits of our primary care takers. This is called the IMAGO. It is like a blue print of the partner we need to “complete” us in an intimate relationship.
    • We look for someone who matches up with the composite image of our primary caretakers (called IMAGO Match). This is important for us as we look to heal and finish the “unfinished business” of our childhood. Our parents are the ones who wounded us and through our Imago Match we reenact our childhood situation to heal ourselves.
    • Romantic Love (“being in love’) is the initial attraction or the door opening that lead us to committed relationship and is a natural way of connecting us with the “perfect partner” toward the ultimate healing.
    • Following the romantic stage, once we become more committed, we move into a power struggle. The power struggle is a necessary stage in the healing and growth process as it lies in the internal struggle to heal ourselves. It is the struggle to change our partner (“to fix him/her”) and to change ourselves. The above two stages (“romantic love” and the “power struggle,”) are engaged in at an unconscious level for the purpose of healing our childhood wounds.
    • Inevitably our love partner is incompatible with us and least able to meet our needs and most able to wound us all over again. As such, the goal of Imago Relationship Therapy is to integrate our conscious mind with the agenda of the unconscious mind to assist clients in developing conscious, intimate, committed relationships.

The practice of Imago Couples Therapy

    • Imago gives you insight into the dynamics of your own relationship and empowers you to do your own work together in a safe, supportive and positive environment.
    • Imago Relationship Therapy helps align our conscious mind with the agenda (needs) of the unconscious mind with the goal of enabling the clients to develop conscious, intimate, and committed relationships.
    • Imago provides structured communication skills (Couple’s Dialogue) in a safe environment to help couples to engage in a constructive conversation. The dialogue consists of Mirroring (repeating) each statement, Summarization, Validation (“That makes sense because…”) and Empathy (“I imagine that makes you feel …”). This enables each partner to extend themselves to understand the experience of the other as different from their own. The Imago dialogue shifts the conversation away from blame, shame and criticism, into mutual support, understanding and proactivity.
    • Imago addresses the roots of the conflict rather just trying to solve it in a surface way. Imago helps couples learn more about their partner’s emotional history, and what the underlying reasons are for things which show up in their disagreements. They begin to understand why their partner is really upset, and why what they are saying really makes sense in the context of their past. As such, Imago turns this conflict on its head. The conflict isn’t the problem, it’s the answer. The result is transformation of conflict into opportunities for deeper intimacy and connection. It teaches couples how learn how to better meet each other’s needs.
    • As partners help each other to heal, they are also helping themselves to grow, moving them both closer to becoming whole and complete. When individuals learn to be proactive and become a source of pleasure for the other partner and perform small changes, it makes the biggest difference in terms of happiness and fulfillment as individuals and as a couple.
    • Imago integrates couples workshops with coaching and therapy to create fast improvement in your relationship to make it fulfilling, alive, passionate, fun, transforming and source of increasing wholeness.
    • This transition toward healing cannot take place through insight alone. Specific skills and processes are necessary that need to be practiced daily to shift us from having an unconscious marriage or relationship to a conscious marriage or relationship.
    • It takes two to five years of on-going work although not necessarily therapy, to develop a conscious healthy marriage/couplehood, which is safe and passion.
    • Imago Therapy has shown successful results in helping couples to change unhealthy patterns of behaviour. By utiizing Imago therapy, spiral2grow efforts are focused on helping clients break their disruptive, negative patterns and cycles so they become more resilient, cope better with relationship challenges and enjoy greater relationsip and life satisfaction.

Communication Skill: Mirroring, Validation, and Empathy

Communication skills involve the use of “I-messages” and of active listening, which consists of paraphrasing of one person’s statements. It also includes elaboration and questioning to understand more clearly, thinking of what is underlying the person’s feelings and communicating an encouraging and empowering response. These methods are important and leads to an improvement in a couple’s communication program do not lead to healing. At the same time, Imago therapy believe that creating the safety is necessary for the couples to move beyond a conscious level to ultimately establish profound long term change.

Harvill Hendrix’s communication model also includes a mirroring response, teaches couples to communicate honest validation with compassion which expresses cognitive empathy, and then, to make an attempt to communicate an affective empathic response. This two-fold communication of empathy creates high level of safety. The safety and security allows the partner to move deeper into the process, and promotes greater intimacy in the relationship. In addition, addressing childhood issues and gaining access to unconscious processes is done. This further safety, and respects, as well as validation. It promotes understanding perceptions and feelings of the partner expressing a frustration or concern. Both people are given the time and space to show up in the relationship as differentiated, yet connected partners.

Healing the Self and Growing it

Imago therapist realizes that teaching couples on communication, de-escalation and negotiating skills as well as building the skills to create a truly mutually therapeutic relationship is paramount. It starts by mutual curiosity to learn and understand your partner, gaining access to the unconscious childhood wound and empowers couples to do the work of healing their wounds. The energy used by the unconscious to hold in place the repressed wounds and split off parts of the self, and to maintain defensive patterns is now freed and brought back into the relationship and to the life of the individual. The result is greater passion, spontaneity, intimacy and aliveness result and move both partners toward reclaiming their whole selves.

Read more about couples counseling by spiral2grow.

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