Gottman Method Couples Therapy
Rediscover the love that brought you together with proven tools for healing, connection, and lasting change.
Dr. Carey, Certified Gottman Therapist
Dr. Carey is a Certified Gottman Therapist—a designation earned by only a few hundred clinicians worldwide over the past 25 years. This certification reflects advanced training in the Gottman Method, including completion of all three levels of standard coursework (Levels 1, 2, and 3), as well as specialized coursework in Treating Affairs and Trauma and Couples and Addiction Recovery. But certification goes far beyond coursework. After being accepted into the Gottman Certification Track, Dr. Carey worked closely with a Senior Certified Gottman Therapist who reviewed recordings of her actual sessions for two years, ensuring she demonstrated consistent adherence to the Gottman Method, clinical excellence, and the highest standards of care. Gottman Certification can only be successfully completed by therapists who meet rigorous criteria and demonstrate both precision in the use of the method and exceptional therapeutic skill.
​The Gottman Institute has certified fewer than 500 clinicians worldwide
over the past 25 years.
Dr. Carey is one of them.
The Foundation of Lasting Love
Gottman Method Couples Therapy is grounded in over five decades of research on what makes relationships thrive—and what causes them to unravel. Drs. John and Julie Gottman have distilled this work into Seven Principles that form the foundation of lasting, fulfilling partnerships. Their research also highlights the crucial role of mutual commitment, trust, and emotional safety in sustaining love over time.
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What the Gottmans discovered is both hopeful and empowering: even couples facing significant struggles often share meaningful strengths. The challenge lies not in the absence of love, but in difficulties applying the principles that nourish it. With the right insight and support, this challenge can be transformed into powerful growth points.
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Gottman Method Couples Therapy begins with a comprehensive assessment of your relationship to identify areas of strength and those in need of attention. From there, your treatment plan is created and tailored to your specific needs. It becomes the road map that your therapist will follow as they guide you and your partner to develop the skills and mental habits you need to heal past wounds, build trust and safety, and create deeper connection.
The Seven Principles
Proven Habits of Thriving Relationships
PRINCIPLE
1
Build Love Maps
This refers to an ongoing awareness of our partners' worlds as they move through time: how they think and feel; what day-to-day life is like for them; and their values, hopes, aspirations, and stresses.
PRINCIPLE
2
Express Fondness and Admiration
Couples who function well are able to appreciate and enjoy most aspects of each partner's behavior and learn to live with differences.
PRINCIPLE
3
Turn Toward One Another
Conversational patterns of interest and respect, even about mundane topics, are crucial to happiness. Couples who turn toward successfuly maintain a 20:1 ratio of expressing interest or acknowledgement vs. ingoring conversation gambits. This is referred to as the "Emotional Bank Account." Couples who are highly successful keep a 5:1 ratio during conflict discussions. In other words, they turn towards while arguing.
PRINCIPLE
4
Accept Influence
Members of a couple who take the other partner's preferences into account and are willing to compromise and adapt are happiest. Being able to yield and maintain mutual influence, while avoiding power struggles, helps couples keep a balance of power that feels reasonable and builds trust.
PRINCIPLE
5
Solve Problems That Are Solvable
Couples who can find compromise on issues are using five tactics. They soften their start up so the beginning of the conversation leads to a satisfactory end. They offer and respond to repair attempts, or behaviors that maintain the emotional connection and emphasize "we/us" over individual needs. They effectively soothe themselves and their partner. They use compromise and negotiation skills. They are tolerant of one another's vulnerabilities and ineffective conversational habits, keeping the focus on shared concern for the well-being of the relationship.
PRINCIPLE
6
Manage Conflict and Overcome Gridlock
The Gottman Method helps couples manage, not resolve, conflict. Conflict is viewed as inherent in relationship and doesn't go away. Happy couples report the majority of their conflicts, 69%, are perpetual in nature, meaning they are present throughout the course of time and are dealt with only as needed. These recurrent themes become part of the couple's shared landscape and are kept in perspective, not dwelt upon.
PRINCIPLE
7
Create Shared Meaning
Connection in relationship occurs as each person experiences the multitude of ways in which their partner enriches their life with a shared history and helps them find meaning and make sense of struggles.
Heal, Grow, and Thrive with the Gottman Method
Whether you're repairing what’s been broken or deepening an already strong connection, Gottman Method Couples Therapy provides the insight and tools to help you and your partner heal, grow, and truly thrive together.
Heal your relationship
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Address conflict productively
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Eliminate factors that predict divorce (e.g., The Four Horsemen; see below)
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Heal old wounds
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Restore your relationship after an affair
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Learn to manage your emotions during an argument
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Better understand expectations and needs
Grow closer
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Increase closeness
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Learn to effectively express fondness and admiration
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Experience deeper conversations
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Develop rituals that keep you connected
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Learn to compromise effectively
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Build emotional safety and trust
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Understand and navigate your own and your partner's "sensitive areas"
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Deepen your friendship
Thrive together
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Become an expert listener
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Enhance sexual satisfaction
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Create a life of shared meaning together
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Support your partner's dreams
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Build lifelong habits that support a strong relationship
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Create a joint mission and goals for the future
Avoid the Four Horsemen
Predictors of divorce
The Gottmans' studies pointed to relationship difficulties caused by the “Four Horsemen,” named after the famous Albrecht Durer engraving Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Research results strongly suggest that the presence of any one of these predicts divorce so some degree; contempt has a 90% prediction rate for divorce. ​
Criticism
Blaming a relationship problem on your partner's personality flaws
Defensiveness
Defending against your partner's criticism or contempt by either denying any responsibility for the problem, acting like an innocent victim, or counter-attacking your partner by criticizing them while ignoring their complaints
Contempt
Combining criticism of your partner with descriptions of your own superiority and disgust with your partner
Stonewalling
Shutting down completely and refusing to offer any verbal or non-verbal responses to your partner's statements (may be accompanied by being physiologically in a flight-or-fight state)
Telehealth and Gottman Method Couples Therapy
At Insight Psychology Center, our services are available via secure, HIPAA-compliant video sessions. Gottman Method Couples Therapy sessions are particularly well-suited to the telehealth format because the Gottman Method is "dyadic" in nature. That means that you and your partner spend most of the sessions sitting next to—and turned toward—each other and talking between yourselves while the therapist coaches you from their distant office.