Couples Therapy

What is Couples Therapy?

Couples Therapy is a type of psychotherapy. Couples therapy helps couples, married or not, gay or straight, recognize and resolve conflicts and improve their relationships. Through Couples therapy, the therapist assists the couple in making thoughtful decisions about rebuilding their relationship, or in some cases, going their separate ways. In his practices in New York City and Eastchester, NY, Joel believes the primary goal of Couples therapy is to gain clarity about your relationship so that each partner can make the most informed, healthy decisions.

What is Joel’s approach to Couples Therapy?

In his practices in New York City and Irvington, NY Joel believes that all participants need to be active and engaged, including the therapist. The goal is to create a safe environment in which each partner is assisted by the therapist in practicing the art of listening as opposed to recreating the arguments they engage in at home when the therapist is not present.

Joel will often meet with each partner separately for at least one session to gain a sense of their background history and will assess how that past history influences the present relational dynamics. He will then meet with the couple and utilize this information in helping them best understand each other and the ‘buttons they push’ either consciously or unconsciously, which adversely affect the relationship.

Joel’s primary approach to couples therapy draws from many schools of thought including cognitive behavioral therapy, modern psychoanalytic theory, and Imago Relations Therapy. Joel will often give the couple reading materials and homework assignments (Ungraded!) to emphasize that working on their relationship outside of the office is as important as the actual therapy session.

When in crisis, the couple is helped to realize that the relationship has to be tended to and nurtured like a lush garden in order to help ensure that a salvageable relationship will flourish and grow.