Founded in Brooklyn, New York, in 2018, Tête Therapy frequently works with Brooklyn couples who present with a variety of life stressors, clinical issues, and symptoms.  As such, we’ve written this in-depth guide to better explain the couples therapy services we provide specifically from our Brooklyn office located in DUMBO.

What is couples therapy?

Couples therapy is when partners work with a trained therapist to address concerns within their relationship.  This can include maintenance couples therapy which ensures the ongoing health of the relationship.  In other cases, individuals seeking couples therapy have encountered more serious obstacles:  Maybe they’ve been arguing more often or have encountered a major life decision but have two fundamentally different takes on how to handle it?

In couples therapy, the clinician compassionately and objectively works alongside the couple to restore trust, empathy, open communication, comprehension, and mutual alignment in their relationship.  At our Brooklyn location, couples therapy is provided by highly trained clinicians with a strong and specific foundation in family and couples work and certification from various institutions, such as The Ackerman Institute and Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy.

Can you provide some examples of reasons why partners would pursue couples therapy?

Absolutely!  Here are some common challenges and topics we explore in couples therapy at our Brooklyn office.

Prevention and Maintenance

For many Brooklynites, the conventional image of a couple in couples therapy may be one on the brink of ruin—but this isn’t necessarily always the case.  In fact, many of the couples we see in Brooklyn come to couples therapy to hash out differences—such as arguments about responsibilities, intimacy, and childcare decisions—before they become substantial areas of conflict in the relationship.  Other couples are already in a great place but want to make their relationship even stronger.  Whether the end goal is prevention of a serious fallout or maintenance of a healthy relationship, our expertly trained Brooklyn-based therapists have extensive experience guiding Brooklyn couples through these concerns.

Finances

We often see Brooklynites who have a wide range of financial diversity.  In couples therapy, this can look like partners clashing over budget constraints, resentments about division of labor versus financial contributions, power struggles, competition, and difficulty making big purchases together such as home, car, childcare, and schooling expenses.  Often different value systems reveal themselves over time in a partnership and create friction.

Couples therapy offers a safe space to better understand the underpinnings of these differences and helps to create a path forward on how to adequately address and move through the various issues together.  For example, our Brooklyn therapists often explore with couples how finances were discussed in each of their homes and the effect that this has on them presently.  Ultimately, a stronger foundation is built on a new shared understanding of the goals and issues at hand.  Along with insight-oriented processing, this may also include more concrete exercises, skills, and/or communication training with our Brooklyn-based couples therapist.

Health

Many of the couples that we see in Brooklyn have difficulty navigating various issues surrounding health that tend to arise over the course of a long-term relationship.  Many couples are not immune to the stress of dealing with aging parents, sick children, managing their own health, and chronic illness.  This was especially true in 2020 during the global COVID pandemic, which affected residents and couples in Brooklyn particularly significantly.

From varying ideologies about germs, contagion, aging, changing bodies, and end-of-life care, many partnerships struggle with navigating health-related issues.  Moreover, stressors around health and illness can greatly disrupt couples’ livelihood, intimacy, and overall level of functioning and partnership.  Fortunately, couples therapy can be an opportunity for couples in Brooklyn to better understand how these obstacles are impacting their relationship.

One popular theory that we like to draw from is “Spoon Theory”, a term coined by Christine Miserandino in 2003.  As a sufferer of the debilitating chronic illness lupus, Christine uses a spoon to represent a unit of energy.  She furthermore describes how individuals with chronic illness have fewer spoons compared to healthy individuals to carry out daily activities.  As this concept has been generalized to include mental health, we work with couples in our Brooklyn office to understand how their partner may have fewer “spoons” to use on any given day.  The end goal is for Brooklyn couples to leave our couples therapy sessions with a greater understanding of how to show up for one another with more grace and understanding, fostering a stronger connection and better resilience going forward.

Trustworthiness

One of the most challenging situations in a couple’s relationship is when trust is broken—this can be an emotional, physical, or financial betrayal—and they must decide if repairing it feels safe, conducive, and productive.  Unfortunately, when this happens, there is no “perfect” or “textbook” solution that can be done to automatically fix the harm that has been created.  Our Brooklyn couples therapists always provide a secure, judgement-free space to explore and better understand how things unraveled the way they did.  If the couple decides that moving forward together is the goal, our couples therapists will work with couples in Brooklyn to analyze what could be done to repair trust and create a “new normal” that minimizes the chances of the behavior repeating itself.

If a decision is made to separate due to irreparable damage, our couples therapists in Brooklyn are expertly trained to handle such situations and can help position the couple to better understand what next steps are available to them.  After years of working locally in downtown Brooklyn, we’ve built a vetted network of professionals that we trust can help couples in Brooklyn during this phase of their relationship, including referrals to mediators and lawyers.

Why does couples therapy in Brooklyn matter?  Why be hyperlocal?

At its heart, the couples therapy we provide in our Brooklyn office shares the same goal as couples therapy in any region.  We problem-solve with partners to address issues of mistrust and lack of communication, while simultaneously creating goal-orientated, actionable solutions to strengthen their relationship.  Nevertheless, it’s important to mention that Tête Therapy is uniquely positioned to help Brooklyn residents specifically with their couples therapy.

In today’s world, access to licensed therapists is much easier than it has ever been.  This means that someone advertising couples therapy in Brooklyn might have the license to practice in New York State but doesn’t actually live near Brooklyn or the greater NYC region.  However, at Tête Therapy, all of our Brooklyn therapists live in NYC and deeply understand what it is like to live and work in the area.

One such case is Brooklyn’s dense population, often leading to rising rents, unstable job markets, cramped living spaces, and difficulty with transportation.  A commute on a map may look like just a mile, but when it takes forever on the F train, this frustration can compound with other life stressors.  Our Brooklyn-based therapists have a shared understanding of what life is like for couples seeking therapy in Brooklyn, as they can offer a unique understanding of the challenges that couples face building a life and family here.  In short, when couples in Brooklyn come to us, our couple therapists know the different neighborhoods, their varying identities, cultures, and pain points of living in Brooklyn.

Moreover, as New York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn is one of the most diverse areas on the face of the planet.  As such, we often see couples from diverse backgrounds in regard to religion, socioeconomic status, ethnic background, and sexual orientation.  Our therapists are trained to be culturally sensitive to the needs of our clients and have experience working with couples from all walks of life.

One circumstance we often see is when a diverse couple runs into issues when dealing with each partner’s family.  As both partners come from different demographic backgrounds, there may be various cultural, religious, and political differences that can be difficult to reconcile.  We work with these couples on how to talk with their family members and create an environment where their partner feels comfortable and everyone feels included and respected.

Reach out to our Brooklyn office for couples therapy today

We’re honored that you are considering Tete Therapy’s Brooklyn practice for couples therapy.  Feel free to read more about our highly experienced therapists here, and schedule an appointment using our secure and confidential ZocDoc plugin here.  We look forward to working with Brooklyn residents to address their concerns with their partners in couples therapy.