Couples Intensives
For couples seeking immediate and lasting results for recurring or unresolved issues
Are you ready to address the most difficult problems in your relationship? Are you looking for quick results, and you want those results to last? Would you like to speed your learning and deepen your understanding of ways that you can repair and reconnect?
If you’ve tried working things out on your own without success, then a an Integrated Intensive could be exactly what you need.
Integrated Intensives allow you to learn quickly, and in ways that address the roots of your repeating arguments and self-defeating patterns. Taking time to focus exclusively on your relationship in a structured way helps you learn how to use the most effective relationship theories and tools to decrease relationship conflict, improve overall happiness and satisfaction, and leave with tools that will enhance continued growth.
An Integrated Intensive can help with:
- Exploring events that may have weakened or destroyed trust
- Dealing with strong differences and personal preferences
- Maintaining emotional balance without resorting to destructive defenses
- Creating and maintaining a healthier relational mindset
- Limited or self-defeating communication skills
- Identifying factors that trigger or escalate negative cycles and conflict
- Working together when commitment between partners is unequal
- Rekindling passion and connection between vou and your partner
Learn and use customized tools, techniques, and strategies for:
- Repairing broken bonds and rebuilding trust
- Moving from judgment and criticism to genuine understanding of your differences
- Tolerating tension between you and your partner so you can work together better
- Deepening your commitment and connection
- Learning and using open dialogue, reflective listening, conflict and anger management skills
- Understanding what impacts your relational stance and balance
- Handling differences and working together when there are challenges
- Nurturing connection, caring, and cherishing
There’s a reason standard couples therapy hasn’t helped
Studies show that working intensively, in a concentrated period of time, helps to improve retention, develop a deeper understanding, and learn more effective practices than using the same amount of time spread over weekly sessions.
It can be hard to make progress when learning is spread over months, and you have to deal with real-life situations.
A focused Intensive offers a more comprehensive approach using proven processes and approaches, allowing you to make your relationship the top priority over a 1-2 day period so you can practice and get feedback immediately- being able to use these tools once you are back home. This is an opportunity to repair, reconnect, and boost your relationship exponentially and in no time.
Total focus = faster progress = improved connections
How it works
Jumpstart your journey to relationship health.
This two-day intensive can be particularly helpful in the aftermath of learning about an affair. Those are challenging moments, and it can be hard to think about anything else in the relationship except the affair.
The Intensive process guides you through a way to talk about and deal with the affair, its causes, and its aftermath so you can heal from the pain and move forward again.
How it works
Jumpstart your journey to relationship health.
This two-day intensive can be particularly helpful in the aftermath of learning about an affair. Those are challenging moments, and it can be hard to think about anything else in the relationship except the affair.
The Intensive process guides you through a way to talk about and deal with the affair, its causes, and its aftermath so you can heal from the pain and move forward again.
What to expect
Before your Intensive
I’ll have a 30-60 minute phone consultation with each partner to assess if a Couples Intensive is right for you.
We start working together right from the first phone consultation. After determining if an Intensive would be a good way to proceed, we confirm a schedule that will work for you. It’s important that during your 1 or 2-day Intensive, you are free to focus on the work for the entire day- we usually meet between 9am and 4:30pm local time.
To individualize your intensive, you and your partner will then receive an assessment and visioning packet where you get to describe your current situation, your view about where you and your partner are and where you want to be, and the type of changes you are willing to make to create the relationship you want to have.
After receiving your input, I do a thorough analysis of your answers to determine the best ways to customize our time together. A schedule of activities is planned so we get to the heart of things quickly and target those areas most important to you.
Once we have a clear plan for moving forward, you’ll receive final details about time, location, and other preparation needed for your integrated intensive.
During your Intensive
Day 1: Building a Strong Foundation
- Learn about your own and your partner’s attachment and adaptive styles and how they impact the way you respond to your partner.
- Clarify your individual and relational goals
- Understand how to manage emotional brain; learn how to respond, not react
- Develop a window of tolerance using self-regulation and how to recognize automatic negative beliefs that trigger a negative cycle
- Identify self-protecttive behaviours that escalate conflict or keep you stuck
- Create a more relational goals
- Understand how to manage your emotional brain; learn how to recognize, automatic negative beliefs that trigger a negative cycle
- Identify self-protective behaviours that escalate conflict or keep you stuck
- Create a more relational mindset and identify your losing strategy profile
- Learn, practice and get coaching new, more effective communication strategies
Day 2: Strengthening the Team
- Practice using open, direct communication with your chose topics that have created conflict in the past
- Experiment with self-soothing and distress tolerance skills
- Identify autonomous goals and choices for each partner
- Expand the skills needed for creating the conditions for desired change to happen
- Deepend your understanding of core skills and strategies, identify areas for additional practice and coaching
- Collaborate on follow-up plan
- Use visioning tools to co-create a new chapter in your relationship
- Leave with a personalized guidebook that will help you remember and use the ideas and tools you have used in our intensive. Your guide will include lists of additional references and resources couples have found helpful to stay motivated and reach their relational goals.
After your Intensive
Once your Intensive is complete, we’ll collaborate on implementing your follow up plan. If additional sessions are recommended, we can decide to continue to work together or coordinate care with your existing couples/individual therapist.
Your integrated Intensive includes a 40-50 minute follow-up session done online. This gives you a chance to check on your progress, review any details about your new skill set, and answer your questions so you can continue to practice, improve, and help your relationship to flourish.
- A 9am start with scheduled breaks and a 90-minute lunch to give you time to consolidate new learning, relax and recharge. We’ll end at 4:00-4:30pm Try to keep your evening between Day 1 and Day 2 free of social or family commitments so you can focus on your relationship
- An opportunity to ask any questions or address any concerns about your progress
- A review of goals and areas of focus to address that day: accommodating any needed changes or requests that may enhance your experience
- Practice, coaching and feedback of new skills
- Reflecting on your insights and plans to use these ideas and practices at home
About your coach
Dr. Rosalie Hydock Licensed Psychologist, Ph.D.
As a therapist, coach, and educator with more than 25 years of experience, I bring a deep understanding of how relationships work—and how they don’t.
My lifelong passion and research interests have focused on how adults and relationships grow and flourish at each stage of development.
Actively working with the most prominent couples/relational therapy practitioners allows me to tailor treatment approaches to meet your individual needs and goals.
My approach uses only evidence-based tools and techniques that have been proven to deepen intimacy, improve communication, and foster ongoing growth.
Over the course of my career, I’ve worked effectively with couples and individuals of all types. I specialize in creating a learning experience that will give you increased understanding, proven tools, and an action plan for continued growth.
How to know if a Couples Intensive is right for you
An Intensive is right for you if you can answer “yes” to 3 or more of these questions:
- Do difficult moments last too long?
- Do you and your partner have frequent, heated arguments without always knowing what you’re really fighting about?
- Do you have difficulty managing strong emotions or keeping your emotional balance when your partner gets triggered?
- Can a single negative comment or reaction ruin a whole evening or weekend?
- Is your relationship more stressful than rewarding? More tension and less fun?
- Do you feel like you are always “walking on eggshells” and holding back your thoughts or feelings?
- Are you going to bed angry more often? Sleeping apart more often? Staying angry or getting “the silent treatment” more often?
- Did you recently discover or admit to being in an affair—sexual, emotional, or other?
- Have you been wondering about divorce or separation even if you love your partner?
- Do you feel mistrustful because your partner makes critical decisions without consulting you- be it about finances, career choices, family events, or health issues?
- Are you and your partner exhausted from dealing with unsolvable, long-term conditions like parenting a child with physical or learning disabilities, dealing with chronic health conditions, or coping with career or financial constraints?
- Have you stopped sharing life updates, ideas, dreams, goals, or daily events with your partner?
- Is there little or no physical or emotional intimacy?
- Have you stopped talking about and thinking about joint goals and future possibilities?
An Intensive is right for you if…
- …you answered “yes” to 3 or more of the questions above
- …you are ready and willing to work on your own partnership patterns
- …you feel motivated to understand your role in growing, healing, and strengthening your relationship
- …you are willing to adopt new strategies and accept your partner’s efforts to improve the relationship
Frequently Asked Questions
As with any learning process, your success is directly related to your willingness and interest in developing your relational and partnership skills.
Intensives have shown to be 70-90% more effective in helping motivated couples identify and make the changes needed to improve the overall quality of their relationship.
If either partner has checked out, is involved in an active affair, or has no interest in learning or change, it may be better to consider discernment therapy rather than a Couples Intensive.
Discernment therapy is a limited, solution-focused approach that allows each partner to identify their commitment to the relationship, their motivation to address current problems, and their own contribution to ongoing conflicts.
Any form of couples therapy—traditional weekly sessions or a Couples Intensive—is for couples who are committed to strengthening the relationship and each partner’s role in making that happen.
