Don Elium, MA MFT 925 256-8282
Services Available In Northern and Southern California
• TeleHealth Office in San Francisco Bay Ares
A committed relationship is as much about skill as it is about love.
However, without skill all the love you can muster won't make a relationship better. As a therapist, this approach has helped my own relationship and enhanced my ability to help other couples in so many learnable ways. Marriage researchers and therapists John and Julie Gottman have spent over 30 years with over 3000 couples discovering what works and what doesn't work by observing people in relationship.
They found that with the right set of skills, based on research with real committed relationships, you can feel closer, deal with conflict well and feel like yourself in your relationship. The Sound Relationship House model covers the basic elements discovered from the research.
“WHAT TO CHANGE? Your first THREE STEPS in an interaction with someone.
THE FIRST THREE STEPS OF an encounter. It is not just a series of emotions or issues, it is the THEME of HOW we interact with each other. Often determined in the first three steps each person takes.” —Ted Doherty, Discernment Counseling Approach
In our work together, you are able to make further use of this research through an online assessment tool, Relationship Check Up.
Relationship Check Up takes about two hours to complete, online. You can come and go with it until you are finished. When both partners complete their own individual private assessment module, the results are sent to me. The results help us zero in on the unique specifics in your relationship situation right from the beginning: the strengths that are already present in your relationship, the areas that are most troubling, the unique stressor you each bring to the relationships, where the new skills need developing and in what order that would be best to get the optimal relief from the troublesome areas while supporting the ares that are assets to your life together.
The Gottman Couples Method starts where you are, helps find relief in understanding what is off, and leads with your strengths to a closer relationship. Whether your relationship feels in trouble, struggling, just okay but not great, or good and wanting better, this therapy can help you start right where you are, gain new traction, to move forward in ways that you can.
Don Elium, MA MFT
This Couple Counseling can help you:
• Learn to recovery from a disagreement and make things better than before the fight.
• Learn to understand and delay request for change only until the emotion has been discharged and both people feel understood from THEIR persepctive, with each viewpoint being respected.
• Restore your lost "sense of self" in the relationship through being direct about how you really feel and listening for what is actually happening with your partner.
• Identify fixable problems and perpectual problems and how to approach each differently in a prodcutive way.
• Eliminate internal negative imaginary conversations by having real talks with your partner.
• Respect and like yourself again IN the relationship.
• Get out of marital gridlock and be friends again, on the same side.
• Seek clarity instead of change, where there is ambivilence.
FREE 20 MINUTE CONSULTATION: If you are interested in receiving teletherapy psychotherapy sessions with me, we will first have a free 20 minute consultation video session or by phone to (1) answer any questions you may have, (2) address the teletherapy technology for technology-smooth sessions, (3) get a sense of what it would be like working together, (4) address cost and payment arrangements, and (5) identify the issue(s) you are seeking psychotherapy for. If it turns out face to face therapy is best for you, or we are not a good match for any reason, I will do my best to provide referrals of other therapists you may want to consider.
My TeleHeath Office is in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA with counseling available anywhere in the state of California.
How to begin couple sessions with Don Elium, MFT, for the best start and clearest goals that apply to what is most current and essential in your circumstance.
A Good Faith Estimate of charges and services is available where applicable.
TeleHealth allows you the support your need in privacy and security of your own home. Some of the upside is the convenience of video sessions results in fewer schedule conflicts, traffic delays, weather or illness.
I hope I have the privilege to work with you soon.
Note: While I have completed Advanced Level Three Training in the Gottman Method of Couples Therapy, I am completely independent in providing you with clinical services. I alone am fully responsible for those services. The Gottman Institute or its agents have no responsibility for the services you receive.
