 Hi, we're back with another great episode. I'm Rivka Slatkin. I'm Shlomo. And welcome to the Marriage Restoration Project channel on YouTube. Today we're gonna talk about three ways to find the right marriage counselor for you. And before we get into the meat of it, we wanna ask that you please like and subscribe to our channel so more of our videos are shared with other couples that are having the same questions that you are. So Shlomo, you are the relationship expert in marriage counselor. What do you think the best way for people to find the right marriage counselor for them could be? Well, the number one thing is to find someone who is trained in marriage counseling. That sounds like an obvious, but the truth is that, you know, all of us even mass, at least for master levels therapists know the licensors, your typical social worker, professional counselor, they had to have one class in marriage counseling, marriage and family therapy in grad school. Wow, just one? And that's enough to get yourself licensed as a therapist and then you can put on your shingle individuals, families, couples, whatever you want. Well, I can tell you that after doing one course in marriage counseling, which I don't remember too much about, I would not have been able to work with couples. So I read somewhere a study was, I think like 80% of people or more than 80% of people who are doing couples therapy have only had one class. So that's pretty scary. Wow. You know, it's like going to somebody who went to medical school. So they had a class in, you know, I don't know, brain surgery. And then they just decided, okay, I'm gonna start doing brain surgery. Cause couples work is so much harder than individual work. You're dealing with two people, two worlds coming together. It's a completely different. It's a different paradigm, it's a different skill set. Even if you're a graded individual therapy, you don't necessarily know how to work with a couple. So experience as an individual is not going to help you work with a couple. You need specific training and competency. I think that's ethically required, I believe, but unfortunately it's not the case. So if you're looking on psychology today, if you're looking on your insurance, if you're looking on Google for a couple of therapists, you'll get somebody, you don't have no clue. Unless you see that they have advanced training in couples therapy, all because they have a PhD or they have a SID or LCPC or LCSW, any of these things doesn't really indicate their training as a couple's therapist. So what would it say if they were trained in a specific couple's modality? Well, you'd want to probably see if they were actually certified in it. Because anyone, I give trainings for therapists, three hour trainings, and they could say, well, I'm training a model therapy. People write that on psychology today, went to my course. They're not certified, they're not experts in the field. So you want somebody who is certified in, Imago, Gottman, EFC, whatever type of modality you think is good. Someone who has advanced certification, you can find out that they have years of training in that. And of course, with the training, hopefully it comes to experience. And usually if you find someone who specializes in working with couples, then you can read more about what they do and they probably have advanced training. And that will lead us to step two, which is to talk with them and understand more about their approach, right? On the phone and see if it feels like a fit. So that sort of piggybacks off of number one is, find out if they have any specialized couples training. Number two, find out how you resonate with that training. Would you say that? Yeah, well, number one, it's important. There are a lot of different modalities. So you can learn about them and as an informed consumer and see which one speaks most to you. You can look at their website and see if it speaks to you. But more importantly, because it's a lot of glitz and everything, get on the phone with them. See how it, first of all, ask some questions that you have. If you wanna make sure they're a marriage-friendly therapist who's gonna encourage your relationship instead of encourage your divorce, you can ask them. What is their theory about relationships? What do they believe about couples? Do they think this situation is something that they could work with? How often are they recommending trial separation versus keeping couples together? Watch our video about trial separation too. And that big one. So all of these things, yeah. So all of these things are important. Ask any questions that you have. I mean, it's unfortunate because, you know, we're kind of naive consumers. You're thinking, I'm going to a marriage counselor. They're gonna help me save my marriage. Well, not everybody who does marriage counseling necessarily thinks that marriage is even the- We're saving. The ideal or they have different ideas. So you wanna make sure your ideas are your goals, your values are in line with the therapist. So do your research, call them up, ask them their questions. You also wanna feel if there's a good fit because somebody could look really good. You could read about them, but you talk to them on the phone and it's like, this person is just like, I don't feel comfortable with them or, and that's important also. So you wanna feel that since that connection- That was a lot of information in one step. And one thing you glossed over is going on psychology today and insurance panels. Unfortunately, most people, the way they look for a therapist is they call their insurance, they find out who's covered or they'll go on psychology today and look for the person closest to their zip code. And unfortunately, that's not always going to guarantee that you're finding the best fit for you. Sometimes you will have to pay out of pocket for the best. But think about it, if you had two months to live, God forbid, and you wouldn't just go to the doctor that's closest to your zip code or you wouldn't just find someone who's the cheapest. You want life-saving help and the same is true for your marriage. So don't just go on your insurance panel to look for who's on there or psychology today, the person closest to you. Right, because you don't really get brain surgery with somebody who just- Right. You know, run a DIY course in it, you're risking your life. Right, so that's for sure very important. And the last one, Shlomo, number three for how to find the right marriage counselor for you would be. So this one is a little bit more complicated. Right, so one of the, to look into, let's say alternatives to counseling, typical weekly therapy is 15 minutes a week. Even in Amago, it's an hour and a half. It's not selling enough to deal with a relationship in crisis. So look into other things that can give you a more bang for your buck. You know, a group workshop. You know, I know our Amago workshop, it's like six months of therapy in two days. Private retreats, all these things are ways to really create an intervention, to create a transformation, to give you the hope again, which is essential in to be able to recommit. And then also to help you learn the skills to be able to take it to the next level. Some alternatives you can Google for, as opposed to just going to regular traditional weekly counseling, our intensive marriage counseling, marriage retreat, marriage intensive, couples workshop, those are gonna be sort of jam-packed sessions in a finite amount of time, like a two day or a four day. We happen to do destination retreats in beautiful tropical destinations that are intensive, but also combine that vacation relaxation aspect. Or we have intensive marriage retreats all over United States. In our backyards. Yeah, with a clinician that is in your state, that you can see privately, in person or online for two full days, six hours each day to be able to really get to the root of what's going on. And then we also include weekly follow-up sessions so that way you also have accountability and support after the retreat. So those are three ways to help you find the best marriage counseling program for you. Please continue to watch and share our videos with anyone who might be needing this information. We also have an awesome free guide for you, the 60 second plan to saving your marriage. It's what we did, 60 seconds made a huge difference. A lot of times it did take us 60 seconds. We boiled it down for you to make it easier. Yeah, just a few changes you can make, 60 seconds notice noticeable improvements in your relationship, start right away to start creating the relationship of your dreams. And we look forward to reading your comments, answering any questions you have in the comments here right below. And we look forward to dropping you the next video. Take care. Take care, bye-bye.