Couples Workshops, Retreats & Us

About to commit or get married, and want to lay a strong foundation from the start?

Know your relationship needs help?

Need a boost or refresher?

Have you and your relationship endured a betrayal? Need to repair & rebuild?

Standard couples therapy is typically a 50-minute session per week which is very valuable to many couples. In addition to standard couples therapy, we also offer couples intensives for those who want to jump start their work together by either preparing to lay a strong foundation in their newer relationship or before tying the knot, discovering new areas in their relationship, resurrecting parts of their relationship that have been dormant or buried for years, or repairing and rebuilding one’s relationship due to many unhealed fractures and ruptures due to a betrayal.

Couples Intensives (aka Couples Marathon, Couples Retreats) can help achieve these goals by condensing several months of therapy into as little as 2.25 consecutive days or over the course of a a few weeks. Many couples participate in Couples Retreats alongside their standard couples therapy sessions or transition to standard couples therapy after participating in Couples Intensives.

We use The Gottman Method as the foundation while drawing from other therapeutic models (e.g. attachment-based and systems theories, Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)) that apply to each couple. At the beginning of your Couples Intensives, we conduct a thorough assessment to get to know your story and history as individual people as well as a couple.

The assessment process is rooted in The Gottman Method which consists of meeting with your Therapist both together and individually along with completing an online assessment. The assessment phase allows us to fully understand how you handle conflict, communicate, approach intimacy, your overall relationship history, and your concerns, needs, and hopes. It is essential we also understand some of your individual and family histories. Once the assessment phase is completed, we will sit down to go over your feedback session which is both informative and collaborative.

During the feedback session, we will highlight your strengths, areas that need attention and strengthening, and how information from your individual and family-of-origin experiences may be impacting your relationship.

Thereafter, this is when the heart of couples therapy and for many couples, healing begins. The work is tailored to each couple based on their assessment and feedback sessions. We address the areas that need attention by guiding couples to engage in specific exercises while providing education and guidance in areas, such as learning the important building blocks of deeper communication, restoring or rebuilding friendship and intimacy, navigating conflict with greater attunement, healing past wounds and ruptures, how to identify dysregulation and move into self- and co-regulation, and understanding ingredients which create overall relational well-being.

We believe it is an honor and gift to be involved with couples, walking and working alongside you while learning how to cultivate a more meaningful, authentic, and intimate relationship together.

Please note insurance companies do not pay for Couples Intensives and therefore, you are paying out-of-pocket for this service. Depending on your insurance, they may cover up to 1 hour of couples therapy session per day.

Contact us to learn more about tailored Couples Intensives by calling us at 312.725.3093 or emailing our Intake Coordinator at info@concentricchicago.com.

To learn more about standard Couples Therapy with Concentric, click here.