Traditional marital therapy requires vulnerability with your partner, and is indicated when both partners feel aligned in focus, safe with one another, and open to creating new ways of increasing emotional intimacy. It isn’t as useful when one person feels uncertain about the viability of the marriage or unsafe in exploring honestly the issues that threaten connection.
Discernment Counseling is an intervention designed to help couples wherein one or both people aren’t certain that they want to increase emotional intimacy or even feel it’s possible, and/or are “leaning out” of the relationship. This intervention follows a specific protocol of no more than five sessions after intake (the first session). Sessions are 100 minutes, and I meet with each of you separately for the first 3/4 of session to create awareness around your contributions to the current state of the relationship in order to help each person discern whether they can participate in the kind of vulnerability and willingness required by marital therapy. The last 1/4 of the session is reserved for my takeaway observations of the work, and after each session you decide if you want to come back for a maximum of five times. At the end of the process (maximum five sessions after intake), you choose one of three paths: seek healthy divorce, commit to 6 months of marital therapy with full commitment to lean into the relationship, or either carry on with no changes and no further counseling.
Life Lab Counseling 