Marriage Counseling Raleigh, Marriage Counseling Cary and Marriage Counselors for Apex & Morrisville NC at Cary Counseling Center

Strategic Marriage Counseling and Marriage Counselors

For Raleigh, Cary, Apex & Morrisville, NC (Tele. 919 467 1180)

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Immediate Help From Bryce Kaye, PhD , Psychologist Offering Marriage Counseling for Raleigh, Cary and Apex and Author of The Marriage First Aid Kit - The popular book on how to repair your marriage.

If you want to learn about what's REALLY going on in a relationship:

Dr. Kaye discusses the hidden relationship killers, Parts and 2

Dr. Kaye on WRAL-TV in Raleigh:

Strategic Marriage Counseling is Active and Direct

"Strategic marriage counseling" is active and direct, not the passive listening performed by some other marriage counselors.

I work with couples to form a logical plan to help to their achieve goals. Some marriage counselors offer listening and support but I think you deserve more from marriage counseling. My active marriage counseling style teaches different strategies to gradually change your emotionally driven behaviors over time. Through this type of marriage counseling you can become the person or couple you want to be.

Many marriage counselors employ a communication model that assumes most couples' problems derive from dysfunctional communication. The assumption seems to be that teaching better communication should resolve their difficulties. Unfortunately, most well-designed studies show only about one-third of couples going through marriage counseling report significant post-treatment benefits. After two years, those number shrink by another 50 percent. Those are not impressive statistics and don't offer a strong argument for the simplistic communication marriage counseling model.

A couple's communication usually breaks down because of more complex emotional dynamics. You can probably remember when you and your partner could communicate just fine at the beginning of your relationship. What happens is that gradually accumulating emotional dynamics can gradually break down good communication in a long term relationship.

Those dynamics may involve historical shame issues, personality deficits, knowledge deficits, and boundary interactions. These issues can be quite complex but are still understandable through exploration in marriage counseling.

At Cary Counseling Center, teaching effective communication is only one small piece of a more comprehensive strategy. Our marriage counselors emphasize effective emotional regulation. This may involve learning how to influence one's own emotional state before projecting rage or behaving in a way that is toxic to the relationship. Old shame issues are clarified so that they do not unconsciously disrupt the relationship. Principles of "tact" are taught so that both partners experience less threat to their psychological boundaries while negotiating their needs. Couples are also taught about how "ego states" are often critical to getting their needs met and how to anticipate and schedule getting together so that both parties are receptive to each other.

Sometimes, other forms of therapy will be a necessary first step in marriage counseling work. Group therapy or individual therapy is sometimes necessary to help change a person's internal emotional responses before the couple's external interactions can constructively become the main focus.

While teaching is often employed in good marriage counseling, an emphasis is also placed on homework between sessions. The marriage counselor often assigns homework in the form of communication or behavioral exercises. A couple may be assigned homework to re-enact a recent argument but to do it in a newly agreed upon way. An individual may also be asked to practice self-talk or guided imagery to deal with irrational beliefs or old feelings of shame that are intruding into the relationship. There are many other forms of homework that are too numerous to list here. The main point is that Cary Counseling therapists place an emphasis on practice and implementation in addition to insight. Our marriage counselors do much more than just teach good communication.

So that you can better understand our approach, I have placed an incredible amount of useful information on this website. If you seek marriage counseling, please read my first four book chapters as well as the different syndromes discussed in The Marriage First Aid Kit. I believe it's always good to have more information, even if you don't come for marriage counseling.

Watch Dr. Kaye explain what really happens during destructive conflict:

Watch Dr. Kaye explain a useful tool for managing marital conflict:

Watch Dr. Kaye explain a tool to improve your anger management:

Internet Relationship Coaching is available with Dr. Kaye online. You and your partner can meet (via Skype Videoconferencing) with Dr. Kaye in the convenience of your home. Call Dr. Kaye at 919 218 5948 to see how easy this is to set up. Click here for a coaching registration and contract form.

Check the integrity of your relationship.

Print out this checklist to see where you may have fractures in your relationship's foundation. (PDF required)

Print Out This List of Responsibilities That Protect and Promote A Happy Relationship (Adobe PDF required) You can then evaluate how disciplined you are. A failure in a specific responsibility may indicate where you are experiencing emotional dysregulation of that discipline.

Save Your Marriage With A Private Marriage Counseling Retreat

In addition to being an accomplished marriage expert and marriage counselor, Captain Kaye is a U.S. Coast Guard licensed merchant marine officer with a masters level certification. Read about our private marriage counseling retreats . Each couples counseling retreat takes place on a 7 day nautical odyssey. Learn how our private couples counseling retreats employ a very unique strategy.

Read some chapters from Dr. Kaye's book:

Contents

Introduction

A few words about how and why this book was written

Chapter 1 - The Great "No-No"

This chapter illustrates how our own fear of shame is the greatest obstacle we have to face if we want to improve an intimate relationship.

Chapter 2 - The Structure of Vital Relationships

Love based relationships do not have as much stability or resilience as do integrity based relationships. This chapter describes the strong foundation of a relationship that can stand the test of time.

Chapter 3 - Balance and Paradox

A vital relationship needs to be dynamic and not static. Opposing needs and emotional states must be kept balanced over time. This chapter unravels the paradox.

Chapter 4 - Nurturing Healthy Attachments

Relationships must be fed. It’s not enough just to feel. Marriage counseling alone doesn't address the problem. This chapter explains the fundamentals about how attachment needs can be effectively met.

Chapter 5 - Love's Hidden Assassin

A very common relationship killer operates far below our awareness. It leads to the numbing loss of attraction and affection.