Rock Solid Relationships

Connect with each other through emotionally connecting conversations. About  your relationship together. And what can change to invite it to flourish.

Open Your Communication

Let’s explore helpful ways to encourage emotionally connecting conversations to flourish in your relationship.

My Work

marriage counsellor

Areas of my work with couples:

  • establishing honesty
  • offering transparency
  • creating a level playing field of knowledge
  • building trust
New Habits of Trust

  • feel heard again
  • respectful listening
  • intentional turns at speaking
  • non-defensiveness
  • opening up to talk
  • finding ways to go-on in the relationship
  • words that transform
  • negotiating relational space
  • florishing relationship communication
  • ways to connect with words
Florishing Communication

  • rekindling the love
  • restoring physical intimacy
  • finding safe boundaries
  • untangling irreconcilable differences
  • inviting helpful thinking
  • same partner, new dance: discovering helpful cycles in the relationship
    Untangling Issues

    Grief when the loved one has gone ahead.

    • stillborn / miscarriage / missed miscarriage
    • a child
    • a parent
    • a partner
    Grief

    marriage counsellor hamilton

    "I'm a person couples consult with about problems.

    I work with couples and relationships in the areas of couple communication, relationship recovery and rebuilding trust and love.

    Research-based relationship tools and couple communication skills seem to enable couple connection and intimacy."

    Henk Ensing

    Member IAMFC (International Association of Marriage and Family Counselling)

    In the couple session …

    Talk about the issues or hot topics

    Learn how to communicate with each other

    Change your future together

     

    "When there's a struggle to communicate, intentional communication can bring hope and change."

    Couples are often surprised at how relationship change can occur in when intentional communication is engaged and adopted.

    This is non-clinical transformative relationship work."

    Your Session

    My work is focused on relationship dynamics, ways of thinking and ways of going on together in the relationship. It includes relationship repairs, exploring cognitive distortions and attending to conflict in communication. Power operations and consent. Loss of trust and hypervigilance. Unhelpful communication patterns and bickering. I refer any MHD (Mental Health Disorders) as I do not diagnose or attend to MHD. If you want diagnosis of mental health disorders, I recommend you contact a General Family Counsellor.

    Personal Statement of Belonging

    I strive to create a practice where belonging is fostered. We as humans experience wide diversity across beliefs and values. This diversity can be expected in those who seek my help. 

    Amidst this diversity, I strive for a practice where people of diverse beliefs can feel a sense of belonging.

    A sense of belonging invites you to feel comfortable enough to attend to the challenges and problems that are visiting your relationship.

    Scope of Practice

    Instead of focusing on mental disorders, my focus is on improving relationship dynamics and couple communication.

    Identifying cognitive distortions and gaining insight into helpful and unhelpful cycles that may be playing out is part of my work.

    I continually question the thinking I support in therapeutic conversations.

    "As therapists, we are responsible for the consequenses of what we do, say and think" and "we have a special responsiblity to consider the ways in which we may have unwittingly reproduced assumptions about life and identity that are disqualifying of diversity in people's acts of living, and the ways in which we may have inadvertantly colluded with the power relations of local culture" (White, M., 2007), social discourse or assumed beliefs.

    I strive to continually question the metaphors I support in therapeutic conversations as part of this special responsibility.

    References

    White, Michael. 2007, Maps of Narrative Practice, 2007, pp 30-31).

    Thoughts on Responsibility - Henk Ensing

    Postliminary Studies

    Advanced Skills in Narrative Practice I