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  • elmarie@imagorelationship.co.za
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Powerful Change with ONE Skill and ONE Mindshift
Posted: November 21, 2023
Services ,workshops ,Sessions
Koos68

A high-impact 2 hour Imago Couples session that is personalized and effective, targeting your unique situation with precision.

Transform Your Relationship From Pain to Passion with Imago Relationship Therapy

The Pain is Real, and So is the Solution

Is the spark in your relationship fading? Do you find yourselves stuck in an endless cycle of arguments, blame, and emotional detachment? The pain you’re experiencing isn’t just “a phase”—it’s a crisis that can tear the fabric of your partnership and impact every aspect of your life. The hurt stemming from emotional disconnect, lack of intimacy, and recurring conflict isn’t something you should “learn to live with.” In fact, the magnitude of this pain speaks to the necessity of finding a real, lasting solution.

What Does the Pain Look Like?

  • Emotional Distance: The ache of waking up next to someone who feels like a stranger.
  • Frequent Arguments: The torment of disagreements that never seem to resolve, eroding your happiness.
  • Lack of Intimacy: The agony of feeling isolated and disconnected, even in your most intimate moments.
  • Unfulfilled Potential: The frustration of knowing your relationship could be so much more, but isn’t.

Imago Relationship Therapy: The Pathway to Connection, Growth, and Consciousness

We understand how unbearable the pain can be because we’ve helped countless couples transform it into something powerful—connection. Imago Relationship Therapy isn’t just another counseling model; it’s a scientifically backed, experiential approach that delves deep into your relationship dynamics.

How We Solve the Pain

  1. Break the Cycle: Learn the root causes of your recurring arguments and stop them from hijacking your relationship.
  2. Bridging Emotional Gaps: Understand your partner’s emotional language and create a safe space for vulnerable conversations.
  3. Revitalize Intimacy: Rekindle the spark that drew you together in the first place, experiencing a level of closeness you may have thought was gone forever.
  4. Personal and Relationship Growth: Foster an environment where both you and your relationship can thrive.

Don’t Let Pain Define Your Relationship—Let It Catalyze Transformation

It’s not just about ending the pain; it’s about beginning a new chapter in your relationship—one marked by growth, connection, and heightened consciousness. Imagine a life where you and your partner are true partners in every sense, passionately connected and unbreakable in the face of life’s challenges.

Are You Ready to Move From Pain to Passion?

Your relationship’s pain points are not your destiny; they’re a call to action. Seize this opportunity to invest in a therapy that can revitalize your partnership. Your happiness is worth it. Act now, and take the first step in transforming pain into passion and discord into lasting harmony.

Don’t let another day go by burdened by the weight of a painful relationship. Schedule your consultation today, and take the first step towards a life you’ll love—with the one you love.

You’re not just buying therapy; you’re investing in a lifetime of happiness. When the pain is the pitch, let Imago Relationship Therapy be the solution you’ve been searching for. Feel not just understood, but deeply connected.

Your Relationship Deserves This. You Deserve This.

Start Your Journey Today

Live a full and conscious life in connection

Take that vital first step towards transforming your relationship challenges into opportunities for growth. Believe in the achievable; believe in a renewed partnership with us by your side. Welcome to your new beginning.

Email Elmarie here or phone 081 559 9130 to book a session

Book now

Contact Elmarie for bookings. Email or phone 081 559 9130

Times

Kobus van der Merwe

  • Tuesday to Thursday 9:00-19:00

Fee

R10 000 two hours  (Kobus van der Merwe – Cash, credit card or EFT)

Address:

218 Cornus street

La Montagne

Pretoria

South Africa

Venue

The Transformative Journey of Imago Relationship Therapy

Embarking on the Imago Relationship Therapy program is a journey of self-discovery, healing, and deep connection with your partner. It is designed to facilitate profound changes not only in your relationship but also within yourself. Here’s a step-by-step guide through the transformative process:

Step 1: Register and Articulate Your Vision

Upon registration, you’ll be prompted to articulate the reasons behind seeking therapy—what circumstances in your relationship you wish to alter and the goals you aspire to achieve. The purpose of this introspection is to craft a high-impact session that is personalized and effective, targeting your unique situation with precision.

Step 2: Engage with Transformative Video Content

You will be provided access to two pivotal video series designed to shift your perspective and prepare you for the life-changing session ahead. These videos lay the groundwork by explaining the root causes of pain and conflict in relationships and by identifying the essential conditions for successful relationship repair. This foundational knowledge ensures that any further skills learned are applied effectively and meaningfully.

Step 3: Participate in a Live Coaching Session

In this crucial step, you’ll learn one core skill in a live coaching session—an easy, four-step process designed to heal past wounds, foster present connection, and facilitate future goal achievement. This session is the cornerstone of the program, equipping you with practical tools to enact change.

Step 4: Practice and Develop Your New Skill

After the coaching session, practice becomes key. Developing competence in the core skill learned will enable you to apply it confidently in various scenarios within your relationship.

Support Materials to Guide You

Your journey is supported by an array of materials designed to reinforce learning and encourage consistent application:

  • In-Depth Video Material: Further explains the skills you learn, providing a deeper understanding and context.
  • Three-Month Daily Action Program: A structured guide with daily actions to enhance and enrich your relationship day by day.
  • Dialogue Scripts: Tailored scripts for navigating specific issues such as family dynamics, parenting challenges, work-related stress, and personal frustrations.
  • Weekly Live Online Webinars: These sessions offer real-time support and the opportunity to connect with a community of individuals on the same journey as you.
  • Achievement of Relationship Goals: The end goal is a strengthened, more resilient relationship, achieved through the dedicated application of the skills and principles learned throughout the program.

Embarking on the Imago Relationship Therapy process is more than just a series of steps; it’s a commitment to growth, healing, and deep connection. It’s a journey where transformation is not just promised—it’s delivered.

Feeling Overwhelmed by Pain?

Reignite the Connection:

It’s natural to feel that your relationship pain is too much to bear. Our solution offers a path to believing in healing again, with tools and strategies designed to facilitate recovery together. Learn how to move from hurt to healing with grace.

Differences Driving You Apart?

Reignite the Connection:

“Different” doesn’t have to mean “divided.” Our tailored solution helps you view your differences as strengths, building a unified partnership that celebrates uniqueness. Believe in the power of unity with our inclusive strategies.

Thinking It's Too Late?

Reignite the Connection:

No matter how far gone you believe your relationship might be, we offer a solution that shows it’s never truly too late. Embrace the process of reconnection and trust in the possibilities that await with our support.

Our solutions are more than just promises—they are pathways to genuinely attainable outcomes. We specialize in re-framing the insurmountable into achievable goals, providing you with the support, tools, and community to restore the connection you’ve been longing for. Join us and turn the page to a new chapter in your relationship where healing, understanding, and love are not just possible—they're within your grasp.

Contact Us

Phone     081 559 9130

Email:    Elmarie@imagorelationship.co.za

Address: 664 Rhode str

Faerie Glen

Pretoria

South Africa

Other Services

Couples Workshops

Couples Intensives

Couples Sessions

Free Online Workshop

Imago Training

Singles Workshops

Milenium Couples

Self Growth

Creative Self Discovery

Posted: February 15, 2021
Blog ,Couples Therapy ,Tips
Hendrien van der Bijl

Resolving Negative Emotions

“Conscious couples replace all spontaneous expressions of anger and rage with containment by expressing their negative feelings to each other ‘by appointment only’. Containment allows the expression of long-buried childhood resentment, anger, and rage in a safe environment in a way that leads to mutual healing and growth.”

When attending an Imago course or session one of the tools we teach our couples is the Imago dialogue. The Imago dialogue is a tool we can use which involves both the ability to express and contain emotions.

Anger and aggression are present in all intimate relationships. Recent research shows that anger leads to more anger. The more negative affect is expressed in a relationship, the angrier the partners become. Angry outbursts activate and further facilitate the activation of the neural pathways that are involved in anger thus further amplifying the anger.

Conscious coupes use the Imago Dialogue to share their feelings without blame or criticism and use the Behaviour change request Dialogue to transform frustrations. When unmet needs from childhood are acknowledged and respond to by the Imago Match partner anger and rage, triggered by the rupture of connection and the helplessness to restore that connection, diminish. It is important for couples to develop self-regulatory strategies to manage and calm their own anger so that they can express it by appointment in ways that create the increased safety, deeper understanding, and empathy that lead to growth and healing.

-Imago Couple’s workshop manual.

We as Imago therapists are trained to support your relationship and teach couples a new way to deal with difficult, painful, and/or negative situations in their relationship. A way that leads to more growth, understanding, and safety.

The emphasis is on a new way because we believe if the way you have been working through difficult situations was successful, you would not get stuck at the same place over and over again. We need to do something different to arrive at a different place.

Also, it is a process. The Imago dialogue is a structured process. It is not just having a normal conversation. To work through difficult situations in the same way we have a normal day-to-day conversation only leads to more aggression, misunderstandings, reactivity, and as a result to more disconnection. We as therapists, teach and facilitate you and your partner to communicate to each other in a different way which leads to more connection, despite the pain or uncomfortableness of the topic.

If we are able to have the most difficult conversation with our partner AND feel more connected towards each other afterward, just imagine what new possibilities can arise.

If you are interested in learning a new way to communicate, which will allow you to express and be contained in any and every emotion you are currently experiencing and to feel more connected, contact us today to book your space for now of our available processes.

Go have a look at our website for more information

We have different options to cater to every need and every relationship. Head over to our website to find out more about our session options, upcoming workshops, or intensives.

Book one of our other processes here:

Workshop/ Intensive/ Sessions with:

Kobus van der Merwe
Hendrien van der Bijl
Dr Cornel vd Merwe (Medical aid)

 

Posted: January 29, 2021
Couples Therapy
Hendrien van der Bijl

The Gift of Frustrations

“Frustration is a sign that something needs to change”

Did you know that some of the biggest frustrations you are currently experiencing in your relationship can also be one of the most beautiful gifts you can ever receive within your relationship with your partner?

Yes, you read it right. If you are currently feeling like you are ready to explode or like you are going to pull all the hair from your head because of frustration you have with your partner, to experience this ultimate frustration is not a sign that you made a mistake to be with the person you are today or that your relationship is busy failing. To be so irritated or frustrated with your partner is not a sign of the end but rather a sign that something needs to change in order for something new, and better to show up.

All relationships experience frustrations but it is possible to not get stuck to only focus on the negative but to move quicker through the frustration towards a mutual understanding. If you can start to realize that conflict and frustrations are part of your relationship and that every time an uncomfortable situation arises you are able to deal with it instead of denying it or running from it you will be able to discover something wonderful.

Like Harville Hendrix and Helen La Kelly wrote in one of their e-books, How to have a fight-free relationship:

“While conflict might make you uncomfortable, it can also invite you to reflect on your situation from a new perspective. You have a choice. You can act in ways that keep the conflict going. Or, you can turn the conflict into creative tension, which gives birth to new insights and talents. In fact, conflict is growth trying to happen.”

We believe that all frustrations contain a hidden desire.

“Dumping out your frustrations on your partner is toxic to the relationship but to break this destructive pattern of conflict requires effort. To have a fight-free relationship, you need to overcome your Autopilot responses and learn a new way of talking and listening. We call this intentional way of talking and listening to the “Imago Dialogue.” It is a structure to help facilitate partners a way of talking without criticism, listening without judging, and connecting through differences. Using this process, both the talker (the “Sender”) and the listening (the “Receiver”) will feel more respected and heard which begins to shift the negative patterns of relating.”

If we are able to listen to our partner’s frustrations without any judgment, criticism, or guilt, but just to listen to it we might come to understand where the frustration comes from and how we can start to act differently today. And if we are able to talk about our frustrations to our partners without only accusing them of experiencing the frustration, but if you are able to identify and own your own contribution to the situation and to explore it deeper to understand the actual fear or desire behind it- you as a couple can grow tremendously in ways you did not even know is possible.

But I hope you hear that is a co-creation, we need to listen in a certain way that invites our partners to also speak to us in a different way. If you are interested to learn more about how you and your partner can turn your ultimate frustrations into an ultimate growth opportunity for your relationship, please contact us to book your session today. We as Imago therapists specialize in helping couples to learn how to change the way they are speaking, the way they are listening in order to create a safe space where we are able to work through the difficult stuff that shows up in our relationships.

ALSO, GO HAVE A LOOK AT OUR NEW SPECIALIZED HYBRID PRODUCTS AT A REDUCED PRICE 

We have different options to cater to every need and every relationship. Head over to our website to find out more about our session options, upcoming workshops, or intensives.

Book one of our other processes here:

Workshop/ Intensive/ Sessions with:

Posted: March 7, 2020
Couples Therapy
Koos68

What is Imago?

Imago Relationship Therapy is a therapy process developed by Harville Hendrix to create safe, conscious relationships – especially marriage relationships. As he describes in his book “Getting the Love you Want” you will grow to a relationship where:

  1. You realize that your love relationship has a hidden purpose – the healing of childhood wounds. Instead of focusing entirely on surface needs and desires, you learn to recognize the unresolved childhood issues that underlie them. When you look at marriage with this X-ray vision, your daily interactions take on more meaning. Puzzling aspects of your relationship begin to make sense to you, and you have a greater sense of control.
  2. You create a more accurate image of your partner. At the very moment of attraction, you began fusing your lover with your primary caretakers. Later you projected your negative traits onto your partner, further obscuring your partner’s essential reality. As you move toward a conscious marriage, you gradually let go of these illusions and begin to see more of your partner’s truth. You see your partner not as your savior but as another wounded human being, struggling to be healed.
  3. You take responsibility for communicating your needs and desires to your partner. In an unconscious marriage, you cling to the childhood belief that your partner automatically intuits your needs. In a conscious marriage, you accept the fact that, in order to understand each other, you have to develop clear channels of communication.
  4. You become more intentional in your interactions. (more…)
Posted: January 21, 2020
Services ,workshops ,Sessions
Koos68

Imago Couples Sessions

Imago Therapy Sessions

Imago couples therapy is designed to not only help those whose relationships are experiencing some difficulties but also people who want to deepen the bond they have with one another. Imago therapy can bring you the healing you have been looking for and gain a better understanding of your loved one.

Over the past 28 years, I have worked with more than 3 000 couples. I have seen how painful experiences can be used to strengthen a couple’s love for one another. The Imago couples’ sessions equip you with the skills needed to revitalise the quality of your relationship.

While a couple can start seeing results after just one session, it is recommended that they commit to at least 8 to 12 sessions to bring a meaningful change to their relationship. Providing you with a safe, structured, and non-blaming environment, Imago Therapy gives you the insight required to maintain a strong marriage or relationship. Each session helps couples explore and nurture one another with creativity.

Please phone +27 81 559 9130 or email me to make an appointment.

Kobus van der Merwe

Rates:

R10 000 2 Hours

Hendrien van der Bijl

R900.00 per hour (3hrs)

(Cash/Credit Card/EFT)

Cornel van der Merwe

R1500.00 per hour

(Medical Aid/EFT)

Kobus (Hybrid sessions)
Kobus (Hybrid sessions)
R 950
(Cash/VISA/EFT) per hour
Hendrien
Hendrien
R700 per hour
(Cash/EFT) per hour
Kobus
Kobus
R 1500
(Cash/VISA/EFT) per hour
Dr Cornel
Dr Cornel
R 1500
(Medical Aid/EFT) Per hour

Book a session here

Live a full and conscious life in connection

First sessions, follow up sessions

Face to face or Internet (Skype/Zoom)

Email Elmarie here or phone 081 559 9130 to book a session

Book now

Contact Elmarie for bookings. Email or phone 081 559 9130

Times

Kobus van der Merwe

  • Tuesday to Thursday 9:00-18:00

Hendrien van der Bijl

  • Monday to Saturday 9:00-19:00

Dr Cornel van der Merwe

  • Monday to Friday  9:00-18:00

Fee

R1 650 per hour (Kobus van der Merwe Cash, credit card or EFT)

R5 000 per hour High impact session  (Kobus van der Merwe – Cash, credit card or EFT)

R1500 per hour (Dr Cornel vd Merwe – Medical Aid or cash or EFT)

R900.00 per hour -3hrs (Hendrien van der Bijl – Cash or EFT.)

Address:

218 Cornus street

La Montagne

Pretoria

South Africa

Venue

Contact Us

Phone     081 559 9130

Email:    Elmarie@imagorelationship.co.za

Address: 664 Rhode str

Faerie Glen

Pretoria

South Africa

Other Services

Couples Workshops

Couples Intensives

Couples Sessions

Free Online Workshop

Imago Training

Singles Workshops

Milenium Couples

Self Growth

Creative Self Discovery