Keith Miller Counseling & Associates

I’m having a fantastic experience in couples therapy with Dr. Mark Jacobsen, at Keith Miller Counseling. We’ve been to 4 sessions, one per week, and we plan to continue for a set of 12 (although obviously you can stop whenever you’re ready.) I was interested in imago therapy and (after lots of internet research) thought Dr. Jacobsen would be a great fit.
I was in what felt like a desperate situation, since my fiancé had moved out a few days before, but had agreed to go to a couples therapy session so someone could «tell us» if there was hope left. When I first called, expecting to leave a long, awkward voicemail about some of our issues and the urgency of an appointment, he first shocked me by answering the phone. I don’t spend a lot of time calling therapists, but I was under the impression they just don’t answer during the day because they’re so busy managing schedules. Then, he spent 20 minutes — right then — getting into some of the details, during which I decided I was sure he’d be able to help us. To top it off, there was a price deduction from our first session, since they offer a free 20 minute consultation, and he didn’t even count the time on the phone with me toward it! (The prices are quite reasonable — about the same you’d get for a solo therapy session in DC.)
Mark is quiet, nice, and highly empathetic. Our couples therapist in San Francisco (who gets rave reviews from everyone, including me at the time — we had signed up for some pre-​wedding counseling and then decided maybe marriage should wait) would make leaps and bounds with us in the sessions, drilling into our issues with enormous compassion and energy, but would leave us feeling awkward when we tried to talk afterward, like we couldn’t communicate about the hard subjects without him there to mediate.
Mark (in the Imago style) has us facing each other directly in chairs, and he’s on a couch in the periphery. This way he can gently guide the two of you without interrupting or managing your dynamic. It’s fantastic. I always thought we needed advice on how to «be better» together, but the practice of communication really leads into being able to solve any other problems between you, smoothly and with love. We now do the «mirroring» practice all the time at home when we start to misunderstand each other, and it works wonders.
Before, we knew we loved each other, but we couldn’t get out of our own way. We’d get stuck in these destructive spirals because we couldn’t figure out how to approach each other and how to get to a partnership built on real trust, which would lead to the whole relationship coming into question, like ‘maybe with someone else this wouldn’t be so damn hard’. I feel so lucky now to be with a guy who has stuck with it through all the hard stuff, and wants to work toward a truly intimate place, with me. I actually can’t wait to plan my wedding!
Mark also recommended a book called «Getting the Love You Want» — which I (also) highly recommend.