Love is as unique and adaptable as the human spirit. Regardless of an intensive past characterized by love and tenderness, even stable and strong relationships may face challenges that they cannot overcome without help. The Imago Relationship Therapy follows a modern approach that provides solution-focused support and accompanies you and your partner through relationship and life changes.
The special opportunity in Cosmopolitan Choice – Couple Counseling is that I am able to provide Imago Relationship Therapy together with an inter-cultural approach, if needed. Couples with different cultural backgrounds face special challenges in their daily routines that may be easily and gracefully overcome if the partners have a true understanding for each other.
How you perceive your partner is driven by your individual experiences and your cultural imprint, that’s why every couple has a unique combination of pasts and characteristics. As part of the Imago Relationship Therapy, couples will become aware of these unique correlations and learn how their very own problems arise.
An imago is an idealized image of attachment figures like parents or siblings, which people subconsciously acquire during childhood. This ideal subsequently influences the decisions and actions of adults.
The founders of the Imago Relationship Therapy, Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt, assume that people always select partners that resemble the idealized imago (corresponding with the mother or father) with their positive and negative characteristics. The Imago method is furthermore based on the assumption that unresolved childhood conflicts and problems influence the adult person’s relationships. Particularly the negative characteristics of the imago offer the option to work through conflicts experienced during childhood and to overcome them.
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It’s not easy to anticipate someone’s every wish or to even know exactly what one’s partner feels or thinks. This is particularly the case in relationships, which are characterized by cross-cultural influences. Couples who don’t share their first language meet certain obstacles – as it’s not always easy to strike the right tone to express oneself or to fully sense the fine nuances of what was said by one’s opposite.
The central factors of the Imago Relationship Therapy are empathy, understanding and compassion. Alone or as a couple: work with me on your relationship in a focused and structured manner.
Once the source for your conflict has been acknowledged, you and your partner will have a better basis to understand each other. Now, you can actively support each other in overcoming these specific issues and at the same time initiate a sustainable re-harmonization of your relationship.
Sometimes, couples ask me if it is even possible to move beyond the current obstacles? And, how many sessions do we need?
My honest answer is: it depends. It depends on whether you both of you really want to change the current situation or not. It depends on what your goal is. Sometimes, it is love to say goodbye. Sometimes, it is love to hang in. Both situations may need professional assistance for a period of time.
As your counselor I am facilitating a power partnership, a safe space to grow and change and my professional knowledge – thus assistance. The actual transformational work is done by both of you.
If you are interested in turning around the current situation, please contact me.
During an intensive Cosmopolitan Choice – Couple Counseling weekend, you and your partner will participate in coaching sessions in a stimulating and relaxing wellness environment combined with spa treatments. Individual change processes are initiated in a focused manner apart from your daily routine and enhanced by a wellness program.
You will learn when communication between two people is effective and when it is not, and you will find out where most problems in a relationship arise and what is necessary to recover and re-establish a successful relationship between partners.
