At Turning Point, we believe the greatest need in your marriage and family is the ability to maintain healthy relational connection with God and others. Marriage and family are some of the most intimate relationships you can experience. These relationships have the potential for the most hurt if there are obstacles to true relational connection, but also the most healing when those obstacles are removed. We are hurt in relationship, but also healed in relationship. Relational problems in marriage and family need to be met with relational solutions. The inability to have and keep healthy, intimate relationships in marriage and family can contribute to significant life problems, which often cause people to seek the assistance of a counselor.
At Turning point we offer premarital counseling, marriage counseling, and family counseling through a therapeutic framework based on the belief that God’s Spirit can minister in and through caring, relationally connected, and confidential relational experiences to accelerate growth and healing. As you encounter God through the therapeutic process, experience his grace and truth, and work through your relational blockages- growth, healing, and lasting change can occur.
Premarital Counseling
Are you considering marriage?
If so, then you will benefit from exploring your relationship issues (or potential issues) prior to making a long term commitment. Premarital counseling provides an opportunity for you to explore the dynamics of your partnership and set yourselves up for a satisfying future.
There are three components to the pre-marital counseling we offer at Turning Point: Assessment, Education, and Coaching.
Assessment– We do a relationship assessment using Prepare/Enrich, an assessment based on solid research that is intended to help you identify the unique strengths and potential growth areas of your relationship.
Education– The educational component is designed to help you learn better communication skills and how to negotiate conflict so you can resolve your differences in a way that strengthens your connection.
Coaching– Our coaching component gives you the opportunity to practice, with the therapist’s help, the new perspectives and new skills you are learning.
Marriage Counseling
Marriage is perhaps the most intimate relationship one can experience. It has the potential for the most hurt if there are obstacles to true intimacy. Intimate relationships play an important role in our development and well-being throughout our lives. Your ability to experience intimacy in marriage is contingent upon having strengths in three areas:
Closeness– Closeness takes place when we allow another to see us as we really are, to let down barriers, and let others see us ‘warts and all’ without fear of abandonment and rejection.
Communication– Healthy communication takes place when there is intimate knowing and being known. There is honest sharing of thoughts, feelings, and desires. This does not mean avoiding conflict, but rather approaching it with compassion and openness.
Commitment– This involves being able to commit to our relationship through difficult times as well as pleasant ones.
Our counselors seek to provide you a safe, structured, caring, and supportive environment where God’s processes for healing hurts, resolving conflicts, and alleviating fears that block intimacy can be applied to help you restore trust and overcome unhealthy thinking or harmful behaviors.
At Turning Point, we are committed to providing and utilizing evidenced based approaches to the marriage counseling we offer. This means we don’t adhere to one particular orientation or approach, but seek to adapt our approach to ensure we are following the best evidence based, both clinical and research.
Family Counseling
At Turning Point we offer family therapy for anyone seeking healthier and closer family relationships. Every family system has its own structure and patterns of communication, which may be defined by parenting style, personalities and other influences. Every individual is, in part, a product of the environment they grew up in. Family plays an important role in our emotional, physical and spiritual development since each individual in the family system impacts and is impacted by the others.
Family therapy may be beneficial for you to:
- Prepare your family for a major life change such as a divorce or remarriage
- Address the role that family plays in each individual’s life within the family
- Provide healing around specific issues your family is facing (addictions, parent-child conflict, sibling conflict, lack of communication, and blocks to relational connection)
Evaluating issues in family therapy can help you as an individual by:
- Understanding how your family functions
- Identifying strengths and weaknesses within your family system
- Improving communication skills
- Making the entire family stronger
- Helping you set goals and develop strategies to resolve challenges in your family
Services we offer in the realm of premarital, marriage, and family counseling include:
- Adolescent Behavior Issues
- Affair recovery
- Blended Family Issues
- Child Play Therapy
- Communication Skills
- Divorce Recovery
- Life Adjustments
- Life Cycle Transitions
- Marital and Family Conflict and Resolution
- Marriage Counseling
- Marriage Enrichment
- Parenting and Child Discipline
- Pre-Marital Counseling
- Relationship Reconciliation
- Singleness and Single Parenting Issues
- Addiction recovery and support for families