Growing up a dysfunctional family challenged me to answer the question; "What is functional?"   I have resolved major relationship issues with my step-mother (now deceased).  I am currently writing a book about it.   I hope my book will help others find healing in their most difficult relationships.

I went to college late in life and happily remarried in 1998.  I was widowed in 2011. I was blessed in my marriage and now it is time for me to figure out what is next.

Life is a wonderful challenge and  learning experience.  Any lesson not learned will be repeated until it is learned.   Problems are opportunities that can often lead to the creation of a much happier and more successful life.

It is important to define yourself and the impact that you want to have on others.  Counseling, coaching and group therapy call all assist in helping you find your authentic self.

Integrative Couples Therapy ™

This is what happens:

As couples fall in love they create the “good story” of their relationship – for instance – how they met and the details of their growing romance.  Over time, conflicts normally arise, and if those problems are not resolved, they come together to create the “bad story” of the relationship.  Integrative Couples Therapy© can help couples resolve their problems and have those past issues become part of the “good story.” 

Developmentally, couples often get stuck in differing stages.  One partner may be longing for the closeness originally shared in the earliest stages of the relationship while the other partner is out experiencing the world – appearing to have left the relationship emotionally.  Each party can be helped in understanding normal relationship development and how to get back on the same “page” as a couple. 

Integrative Couples Therapy© includes a detailed family history  assessment, personality testing and developmental assessment, in order to offer in-depth understanding and tools for coping with differences.

As a mature and happily married therapist, Vikki has had first-hand experience of the struggles and joys romance can bring.  As an NLP Brief Therapist and the originator of Integrative Couples Therapy© she has a deep knowledge about how happy relationships work.

Vikki is a Licensed Marriage and Family therapist at Sequoia Counseling Services, where she holds office hours for individuals, couples and groups.

Integrative Couples Therapy™ can help couples:

• resolve problematic issues which can, over time contribute to the “good story” of the deepening relationship.
• understand their individual and relationship strengths and weaknesses and make changes where necessary.
• get back on track with the continuing development of their relationship.
• understand, utilize and cope more effectively with personality differences.
• develop mutually shared goals for the future.

SINGLE WOMEN'S RELATIONSHIP THERAPY GROUP: late 20's – late 30's

Educational/Therapy/Process Group

This group is for single female adults who want to change the way they experience themselves and others in relationships, especially romantic. Group members will explore their personal issues in the process of learning new and more successful ways of interacting with others and forming lasting ties.

In this interactive group you can:

• Assess your personal (family of origin) issues and their effects on your relationships

• Identify your patterns and learn more fulfilling ways to connect and sustain relationships.

• Work through your own emotional reactions to the behaviors of others

• Work on improving your communication skills

•Discover how beliefs and traumas can impact emotional bonds

• Use the group as a safe place to practice new skills

Ongoing Group

(Three months minimum commitment)

(1/2-hour no-fee interview required)

Thursdays, 7:30 – 9:00 pm

$35 per session

office located at:

Sequoia Counseling Services

165 Arch Street, Redwood City

For information call: Vikki Hoobyar

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

Office (650) 363-0383

Voice Mail (650) 363-0249, ext 115

Email Vikki at vikki@vikkihoobyar.com

 The NLP Presuppositions

1)             Experience has structure.

2)             People are like map makers.

3)             People’s maps are made up of pictures, sounds, feelings, smells and tastes.

4)             The map is not the territory.

5)             People respond to their maps of reality, not to reality itself.

6)             If you change someone’s map,; their emotional state will change.

7)             Some maps are out of awareness.

             Behind every behavior is a positive intention.

9)             There is no such thing as an inner enemy.

10)          Choice is better than no choice.

11)          People always make the best choices available to them.

12)          A system’s most flexible element has the most influence.

13)          The meaning of any communication is the response it elicits.

14)          People work perfectly to produce the results they are getting.

15)          Every behavior is useful in some context.

16)          Anyone can do anything that anyone else can do.

17)          Chunking: learn big subjects by breaking the task into small chunks.

18)          People already have all the resources they need.

19)          There is no such thing as failure; only feedback.

20)          The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our communications.

21)          Mind and body are part of the same system and they affect each other.

22)          Communication is redundant.

23)          Positive change comes from adding resources.

24)          If what you are doing isn’t working, try anything else.

Romantic Relationships:

Looking for love in all the wrong places… (looking for love in too many faces)?

Do you know people who experience their romances like “déjà vu”?  You know.. over and over again?  You may see them regularly or periodically.  When one relationship breaks up and they get into another one.  Eventually, the similarities between this current relationship and the last one become glaringly similar.  It seems your friend (or you) is in the same relationship, but with a different person (each time around).

The truth is that often women recreate past relationships by projecting dysfunctional information onto the new love interest.  Without dealing with dysfunctional ways of thinking and acting some women experience one unsatisfying relationship after another.   The problem is that "where ever we go, there we are."

You may know that you or your friend is doing everything perfectly to create what she is currently experiencing, but you have no way to tell her. People are not wrong, stupid or bad., they are just repeating the only behavior they know. A lot of what most people (who experience relationship problems) are doing, is (for the most part) out of their awareness. The same thoughts, feelings and behaviors they have carried with them from childhood are still working on them, along with the wounds from the recent past.  People change when they've had enough pain and realize that 1) they want to change, that 2) those changes are within their control, that 3) only they can make those changes, 4) and that the time for change is now.

Healing from romantic relationship problems often involves taking a look at personal, family, work and social relationships. Group therapy can help people become aware of what their behaviors are and the effect those behaviors have on others. Members can decide what changes they want to make. In Group, time is spent searching for who one "really" is – not who one "wishes to be". Communication skills are learned and practiced. Self-awareness is encouraged; healing and hope come naturally, and most people find it challenging and often fun.

Helping women become fully aware of themselves and what they really need and want in romantic relationships can go a long way in preventing future divorce and the heartbreak it brings. Making a relationship commitment that is informed and complete helps build strong families, neighborhoods and communities.

So when you see your friend who is in the grips of another relationship failure, you may gently want to explain to her that romantic relationship problems are very common and that there is help available which can lead the way to a much brighter future.

Vikki Hoobyar, M.S. is a “happily married”, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist at Sequoia Counseling Services in Redwood City.  She holds a weekly therapy groups for adult women and can be reached at (650) 363-0249 ext. 115.

Help for “Troubled” Couples – Integrative Couples Therapy©

This is an example of couples therapy integrating several couples counseling modalities, which allows the therapist to switch gears quickly in order to best serve the clients' needs.

Mike and Laura (not their real names) came into my office anxiously — most couples do.  When I obtained their history, several patterns emerged.

Developmentally, they were stuck in differing stages.  Laura felt emotionally abandoned while Mike craved the freedom to get back to his life as it was before they met.  She was stuck at the beginning of the relationship, wanting the exclusive closeness couples share when they first fall in love.  He was out catching up with his friends and his hobbies, which he had ignored over the past 5 years.  She needed to take a step forward (seeing more of her friends) and he a step back (planning time for them to be together) so that they could do the work of individuation and define the relationship itself more clearly.  They also needed an effective “fight-style” to express and resolve differences without undue injury. 

By employing a Solution Focused approach I was able to help each party discover things they needed to do less of and things they needed to do more of, in order to improve their relationship.  Laura discovered that by sharing every little feeling she was damaging their relationship.  Mike discovered that by constantly declaring his feeling of lack of commitment he too was damaging their relationship.  They learned that they needed to talk less about “the relationship” and more about specific behavioral issues.

 After they took the Meyers-Brigs Personality Type Indicator they were able to see how their personalities were working for and against each other.  Both were extroverts, intuitive and perceptive.  However, Laura was a “feeler” and Mike was a “thinker.”  They developed greater understanding and sympathy for one another when they realized how they reacted to each others’ personality differences. 

 NLP (Neuro Linquistic Programming) was helpful in several ways.  The NLP orientation encouraged the viewpoint that the couple’s problems were a puzzle to be solved.  They learned about their Meta-program differences (these are filters created by belief clusters that bias perception).  Laura learned why it took Mike so long to say what he needed to say.  He was very “procedural”, and needed to tell how he came to think a certain way.  She communicated much quicker by listing her criteria – she was “optional”.   Also they were able to discover that they had very different styles of communicating and processing information.   She was an “auditory” and needed to “hear” more about his feelings for her rather than his process.  He was a “visual” and needed to “see” her positive feelings in action rather than understand her reasons for them.

This couple was helped dramatically by what they learned through Integrative Couples Therapy©.

Victoria Hoobyar, M.S. is an LMFT at Sequoia Counseling Services.  She specializes in working with both singles and couples with romantic relationship problems and can be reached at (650) 363-0249 ext. 115.

Is it too late for your relationship?

Lets face it, contemporary marriage is a mine field.  Fewer than half of those who enter this field cross it unscathed. As a therapist I have seen couples suffering with: addictions, affairs, anger, codependency, communication problems, control issues, depression, exhaustion, financial problems, loss of self, parenting problems, personality differences, separation, and stress. 

Couples today are beset by problems earlier generations never dreamt of.  How do couples stay together in this age of dual careers and changing sex role expectations, stress from exhaustion and overwork, anger and resentment, codependency and addiction, communication problems and personality differences, combined with the baggage of the past relationships and experiences?  With all the problems that can beset any couple, relationships that survive seem nothing short of miraculous   Then when you add parenting and/or step-parenting to the mix with the guarantee of disagreements in parenting styles and conflicts with teenagers it is even harder to imagine that any couples thrive and yet some do. 

Today, divorce rates are higher than ever in U. S. History with more than 50% of first marriages ending in divorce.  Exhausted and angry adults give up and leave their marriages and their children  Yet, hope springs eternal… so people continue in their re-coupling efforts not realizing that they are very-highly likely to repeat their past relationship experiences.  And it is commonly known that the statistics on the success rates of second and third marriages are even worse than first marriages.  

Although, the majority of relationship problems are solvable once they are adequately sorted out and understood, many couples do not seek out therapeutic assistance until it is too late.  Frequently,  by the time some couples come to counseling they feel completely hopeless.  Often, one of them has already withdrawn (emotionally) and given up on the relationship.  Therapy is often seen as a “last ditch” effort although in actuality counseling is much more effective when it is used as a “first line of defense.” 

In my own marital history I have been widowed once, divorced once and am now happily re-married.  I have seen all of the above mentioned issues have effect on my relationships, some with devastating results.  My marriage of 10 years has been wonderfully happy and although we have had our disagreements and stuck points, one agreement we are united in is our desire to immediately seek out counseling for any problem we can not resolve between ourselves.  Misunderstandings instead of becoming “deal breakers” have become sources of deeper understanding and appreciation of each other.

Troubled couples, please come to therapy before it is too late! You must meet today’s more sophisticated pressures with more sophisticated resources.  Counseling is more relevant and useful than ever before.  In the absence of yesterdays village elder, todays wise couples in crisis turn to their family therapist.

Victoria Hoobyar, M.S. is a Licensed Marriage Family Therapist at Sequoia Counseling Services.  She has had extensive training in Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), Brief Therapy and is the developer of the Integrative Couples Therapy© Model.  Voice Mail (650) 363-0249 ext. 115.  

The Couple’s Conversation

On the differences between men and women…

Let’s say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine.  He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time.  A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves.  They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.   And then, one evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking she says it aloud; “Do you realize that, as of tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

And then there is silence in the car.  To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence.  She thinks to herself; “Geez, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that.   Maybe he’s been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I’m trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn’t want, or isn’t sure of.”

And Roger is thinking: “Wow!  Six months.”

And Elaine is thinking: “But, hey, I’m not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either.  Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I’d have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward …  I mean, where are we going?  Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy?  Are we heading toward marriage?  Toward children?  Toward a lifetime together?  Am I ready for that level of commitment?  Do I really even know this person?”

And Roger is thinking: “… so that means it was … let’s see … February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer’s, which means … lemme check the odometer …  Whoa!  I am way overdue for an oil change here.”

And Elaine is thinking:  “He’s upset.  I can see it on his face.  Maybe I’m reading this completely wrong.  Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment, maybe he has sensed – even before I sensed it – that I was feeling some reservations.  Yes, I bet that’s it.  That’s why he’s so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings.  He’s afraid of being rejected.”

And Roger is thinking: “ I’m gonna have them look at the transmission again.  I don’t care what those morons say, it’s still not shifting right.  And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather?  It’s 87 degrees out,.”

And Elaine is thinking: “He’s angry.  And I don’t blame him.  I’d be angry, too.  I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can’t help the way I feel.  I’m just not sure.”

And Roger is thinking: “They’ll probably say it’s only a 90-day warranty.  That’s exactly what they’re gonna say, the scumballs!”

And Elaine is thinking: “Maybe I’m just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I’m sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.”

And Roger is thinking: “Warranty?  They want a warranty?  I’ll give them a darn warranty.  I’ll take their warranty and stick it right up their …”

“Roger” Elaine says aloud.

“What?” says Roger, startled.

“Please don’t torture yourself like this,” she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears.  “Maybe I should never have … Oh my, I feel so…” (She breaks down sobbing.)

“What?” says Roger.

“I’m such a fool,” Elaine sobs.  “I mean, I know there’s no knight.  I really know that,  It’s silly.  There’s no knight, and there’s no horse.” 

“There’s no horse?” says Roger.

“You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” Elaine says.

“No!” says Roger, glad to finally know the correct answer.

“It’s just that … It’s that I… I need some time,” Elaine says.

(There is a 15-second pause while Roger, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally, he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)  “Yes,” he says.

Elaine, deeply moved, touches his hand. “Oh, Roger, do you really feel that way?” she says.

“What way?” says Roger.

“That way about time,” says Elaine.

“Oh,” says Roger.  “Yes.”

(Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse.  At last she speaks.)

“Thank you, Roger” she says.

“Thank you,” says Roger.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Roger gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a tennis match between two Czechoslovakians he never heard of.  A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it’s better if he doesn’t think about it.  (This is also Roger’s policy regarding world hunger.)

The next day Elaine will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours.  In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification.  They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it, either.

Meanwhile, Roger, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Elaine’s will pause just before serving, frown, and say: “Norm, did Elaine ever own a horse?”