Change Your Perception Of Love With Imago Therapy

Relationships are a mirror of our inner child and sometimes they show us things that can be highly triggering. Shift your perspective on love by healing your wounded patterns with the help of Now&Me imago relationship experts.

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What Is Imago Therapy?

Imago therapy is a concept used in couples therapy to help couples struggling with conflicts, intimacy, and communication. The term imago means an image, and in the context of imago therapy, it means having an unconscious image of familiar love. The basic idea of imago therapy is that everyone has an idea or image of “love” and relationships, which largely comes from their early childhood experiences.

The goal of this therapy is to work on the wounded and distorted image of love most couples carry by identifying their old patterns, questioning them, and making conscious changes in them. This is done through conscious effort and empathy, which alters your unhealthy image of love to a healthy image of love.

What Does Imago Therapy Help With?

Although imago therapy is not a widely known concept, it is considered to be a variation of couples therapy, which helps boost trust and communication in the relationship. Here are some of the other benefits of imago therapy:

  1. Helps in managing conflicts and fighting in a healthy manner
  2. Helps couples confront important issues rather than run away from them
  3. Looks at the root cause of lack of sexual or emotional intimacy
  4. Helps manage the root cause of jealousy, infidelity, or trust issues in relationships
  5. Helps in having clear communication without any blame game
  6. Overcoming childhood trauma in an effective way
  7. Working on defensive and critical aspects of the relationship

While there are many other things that imago couples therapy can help with, these are some of the major things it helps tackle.

Imago Therapy Techniques

Imago therapy is based on the idea that unresolved childhood issues tend to show up in relationships and creates an unconscious image of what love and relationships should look like. To curb these issues, imago relationship therapy teaches how to resolve those wounded patterns and build healthy patterns for yourself.

It is done through the following concepts:

  1. Healing wounded patterns of childhood by understanding your childhood conflicts and making new patterns for yourself and your relationship.
  2. Being present with each other by learning new things and trying out different things with each other.
  3. Learning new ways to spend time and communicating with your partner by having an open-ended conversation rather than talking in monosyllables.
  4. Replacing judgement with being curious and inquisitive Replacing judgement with being curious and inquisitive about your partner’s likes and dislikes. If you are not able to understand something, learn to communicate that to your partner.
  5. Finding different ways to spend time with each other, like going on dates, understanding their love language, and filling the relationship with complete love and care.
imago therapy techniques

Is Imago Therapy Only for Couples?

Imago relationship therapy is usually used for couples to understand their unresolved childhood conflicts and how they are affecting their present state and relationship. However, it can also be used by single people to understand their inner conflicts and how they have affected their former or past relationships.

What to Expect in Imago Relationship Therapy

While imago couples therapy is all about understanding how the distorted image of love and relationships from childhood affects your present relationship, the image is rectified with your therapist working along with you by providing an empathetic and safe environment. Let’s see how:

  1. Unveiling childhood wounds

    When you start taking imago relationship therapy, the therapist will ask you about your childhood and how you perceived relationships as a child. This can lead to difficult conversations, emotions, and memories altogether. However, to get to the other side, it is important to power through and talk about it openly without any hesitation.

  2. Healing the inner child

    When wounded childhood patterns are revealed, the difficult part of the journey begins, which is healing your inner child, which has a major effect on your present state and your relationship. With the help of Imago Couples Therapy, you are able to understand how your wounded patterns have an impact on your inner child and build conscious strategies to work on them.

  3. Empathy and validation for partners

    In imago couples therapy, the couples are asked to empathize with and validate their partners to foster a relationship of understanding, especially in relationships where there are a lot of conflicts. This is mostly done through role-plays, trying out new ways of communicating, or having uncomfortable conversations to understand each other.

  4. Practicing imago dialogue

    Imago dialogue is one of the techniques to strengthen understanding and build healthy communication in couples. In this, one is the sender and the other is the receiver. The sender shares whatever information and feelings they wish to share and the receiver's task is to listen to it without interrupting or judging. Doing this fosters active listening and makes the other person feel validated.

  5. Home assignments

    The therapist also gives home assignments to couples, which may include practicing the activities learned in the sessions, which helps foster empathy and communication between the couple. They may also be asked to come up with new ideas to surprise each other, learn each other's love language, and do one new thing every week to keep the surprise element in the relationship alive.

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Benefits of Imago Therapy

The main aim of any type of couples therapy is to improve the overall happiness and growth of the relationship and that is what imago therapy also does. Here are the benefits of imago therapy:

  1. Heals wounded patterns

    By talking about your childhood difficulties and how they made your belief system develop theories that might not be healthy for you, imago therapy brings the reality of your wounds out in the open so you can heal them.

  2. Understanding early attachment styles

    Imago therapy reveals your attachment styles from childhood and how they have an impact on you currently.

  3. Conflicts are used for growth

    In Imago Couples Therapy, conflicts are seen as stepping stones in a relationship that usually hint that there is something deeper that the couple needs to talk about.

  4. Team effort is prioritised

    In imago relationship therapy, the focus is not only on what the therapist is saying but also on the two partners and their collaborative effort to make the relationship work.

benefits of imago therapy

Limitations and Criticisms of Imago Relationship Therapy

  1. Imago therapy might highlight too much on the role of childhood conflicts and their reflection on the growing adult and their relationships.
  2. The notion of handling things with empathy and validation might not be the most ideal for couples who are logical or pragmatic.
  3. Some people may find the imago therapy dialogue hard to maintain for it can be quite draining and exhausting at times.

How to Find an Imago Therapist

Imago therapy is not widely known in India or worldwide and most people who are looking for such therapists are looking for couples counseling in general. However, there are different ways of providing couples therapy as well. A lot of people who wish to get this kind of therapy choose to sign up for an online course in imago therapy.

Others simply take up couples counseling to feel better. However, there are websites and trusted portals in India that can help you find such therapists and take up imago therapy.

Cost of Imago Therapy

Although the cost of imago therapy depends on the therapist's experience and qualifications, it usually starts at INR 2000 and can go up to INR 7000.

These are not fixed rates, as the freshers usually charge INR 500 and as they get more experienced and better at their practice, they start charging more.

Imago Relationship Therapy Vs. Other Couples Therapy Approaches

Imago therapy is somewhat similar to the other types of couples therapy as it also focuses on fostering communication, intimacy, and love between the couple.

However, the differing factor in imago relationship therapy is that it takes fewer sessions and is able to accomplish the goal of fostering growth in couples faster.

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List of Imago Relationship Therapists

Start Imago Therapy with Now&Me

If you are looking for an online mental health platform to heal your inner child, understand the basis of your childhood conflicts, and get proper guidance from an imago therapist, then you can try Now&Me by opting for the first chat for free.

If you wish to try out which therapist suits you the best, then you can try out different therapists by taking bite sized therapy, which means taking short sessions starting at just Rs. 35 to understand which therapist suits your needs the best.

The experts at Now&Me are well-qualified and have been handpicked to provide you with the best services so that you feel safe and comfortable while sharing your personal stories with them. Our experts understand the importance of confidentiality and how important and special a therapeutic relationship is and they make sure to nurture it and make you feel the best while you are at your lowest.

Download the app and start your therapy journey, along with sharing your personal stories with a like-minded community like-minded community right away!

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