Micki Lavin-Pell
Marriage Therapist and Relationship CoachCreating Relationships That Soar Right From the Start
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Micki Lavin-Pell, MS, MA
Certified Marriage and Family Therapist and Relationship Coach
A Success Mindset About Marriage
You’ve spent years thinking about and building your career. But did you know that marriage also needs a success mindset?
Long-lasting, love-filled marriages don’t happen by chance. They are strategically built.
Whatever stage your at – pre-relationship, dating, you’re engaged, already married – or even in a perek bet stage – I can help.
There is no reason to feel ashamed. You deserved to feel loved and supported, and your feelings acknowledged.
But these skills are never taught. And it’s ok to need help.
I will work with you to become aware of where you are, and help you build the path for the future. Therapy brings up challenging feelings. Becoming aware and understanding that healthy relationships don’t just happen is an important first step.
Relationship therapy will help you create a lasting and loving relationship
I’ve been working with individuals and couples from all sectors of society for over two decades, specializing in working with those who have witnessed challenging relationships or have been in previous challenging relationships.
My education and experience have provided me with a vast range of tools that help me get to the heart of the problem quickly and efficiently.
Working with me, you can count on an efficient process. And while I’m more expensive than the kupa, I will help save you time and money, because the process with me is generally faster.
While there are no guarantees in life, I will help you bring your best self forward.
You can create a better future for yourself, your spouse and your children.
Contact me today to get started
I work at your pace so that you receive results as efficiently as possible.
I am happily married for 20 years with 4 kids. My husband and I use the same tools I’ll use with you to build a loving, satisfying, deep and meaningful relationship.
- Masters in Nutrition and Public Health (where I gained my prevention focus on creating healthy relationships)
- Masters in Counseling at La Trobe University in Melbourne in 2001
- Certificate in Couples Counseling from Relationships Australia (2001)
- Graduate Diploma in Marriage and Family Therapy (2006)
- EMDR Level I (2010)
- Somatic Experience Therapy (Intermediate Level 3)
- Member of the Israeli Association of Marriage and Family Therapy
- Co-creator of Dating with a Difference, which offers workshops and coaching throughout Israel
Services
Pre-relationship
Being single is an opportunity to focus on learning about the most important parts of who you are…
Dating
Dating is the best opportunity we have to meet that special someone…
Engaged
During this period, people often overemphasize the wedding at the expense of life together…
Married
Challenges often arise when couples get married. This is normal…
Re-marriage
Don’t make the same mistakes the next time around.
Pre-relationship
Being single is an opportunity to focus on learning about the most important parts of who you are. Many people rush into relationships hoping their partner will answer the “Who Am I” question for them. By encountering the best parts of yourself and shedding the unpleasant bits, you have an opportunity for the best chance at creating the most vibrant relationship imaginable.
When I came to work with Micki I was feeling depressed that I would never get married. I was a bridesmaid at so many friend’s weddings and started to believe that it would never happen for me. By working with Micki I realized that I wasn’t giving off the best energy and I also wasn’t really conveying to other’s what I needed from a relationship. I was very confused about my wants and my needs, and Micki helped me to get more clear about this. A year after I finished working with Micki I met and married my husband. It wasn’t easy hanging on to the hope and belief that this would actually happen, but thank G-d I did. Having sessions along the way was helpful as it helped me to really focus myself better.
I chose to work with Micki because I had read many of her articles about love and relationships and a lot of it resonated with me. I never really had a relationship with a woman, I mostly just had hook-ups. Being in my late 20’s I wanted to create a change. I wanted to start a family already and not continue with this pattern of going from woman to woman. By working with Micki I discovered that I had a problem with becoming bored easily and an underlying fear of intimacy which kept me from really getting to know the women I was with. By resolving these issues I was able to establish a long term relationship with a woman I really love and respect.
At the age of 41 I felt that I had hit a brick wall dating-wise. I kept on telling myself, ” I just hadn’t met the right one.” While I met lots of people, I never seemed to be able to move relationships forward. What I discovered was that having been raped in my teenage years, my self-esteem had taken a real hit. I still needed to heal from that experience in order to move forward. By doing Somatic Experience therapy (SE) with Micki I was able to break free from the chains of my rape in order to feel more positively about myself and feel capable of being in a relationship.
Dating Coaching
Dating is the best opportunity we have to meet that special someone. If we jump over this stage too fast, we can miss out on the most growth inspiring experiences we can ever have.
I had been severely abused by my father as a child and was struggling to believe that I was worthy of love. I kept choosing partners who were bad for me. When I came to see Micki I had started dating a man who treated me really well. I continued to test him and treat him badly to see if he would stay. By working with Micki I got to see how I had to handle my own anxiety and not throw it onto my partner. By staying the course I was able to work on my ability to trust both myself and my partner and to be able to develop a loving and healthy relationship.
I have always had a difficult time committing to important things. This fear of commitment has hampered my life. I came to see Micki because I was dating a woman whom I really loved but was scared of committing to because she didn’t fit the cookie cutter mold. After several sessions of Somatic Experience therapy with Micki I was able to let go of some old wounds that had been holding me back and was able to find a new way of moving forward. I have since been able to feel complete about my decision to marry my girlfriend.
I decided to seek out Micki’s help because I was dating aimlessly and not feeling as though I was getting anywhere. I dated women I really liked who dumped me after a few dates. Micki helped me to see that I may have been turning women off by presenting with overconfidence. In other words, because I was so concerned about women liking me, I acted so cool and confident that it was actually “too much” and made women fear they would never be good enough for me. Since this realization, I now have toned things down to the extent that women get to see the real me…which is ideal.
Engagement Coaching
During this period, people often overemphasize the wedding at the expense of creating a vision for how you will enjoy life together. Things can get very stressful and out of hand. The engagement period and early marriage, needs to be the time that you invest in building your emotional relationship. By investing time and energy learning about how to deal with important things now, the rest of your lives will flow much more smoothly.
I came to see Micki because I just started dating a woman that I thought was the most beautiful woman in the world. I was freaked out because I didn’t want to “screw it up.” I had a history of suffering from depression and anxiety. Micki really helped me to hold myself together and see this woman, in a more realistic way so that I wouldn’t put her on a pedestal which would have completely destroyed the relationship. We have now been married for a year and have a baby together. We did some pre-marriage couples work with her so we could learn some tools and skills for how to work together. So grateful we did.
There is nothing worse than realizing you have made a huge mistake in marrying the wrong one. We had fun together when we were dating, but only realized after we had made a huge mistake. We felt like such failures as we tried so hard to keep pushing each other to keep going. It was only by working with Micki that we got to see that who we are as people just wouldn’t work long term as a couple. We are so grateful that we managed to get out of this relationship before complicating things by having children together. We now feel free to live our lives in a way that suits each of us individually. We have also learned what our true needs are so that we will choose partners who are better for us going forward.
We did the Prepare/Enrich workshop with Micki a year after we got married. We than did some couples work with Micki as we had some different ideas about our relationship expectations. Micki was very good at seeing both of our perspectives and not making us feel that she was taking sides. She enabled each of us to see what we needed to do differently to get the relationship in the best place possible.
Marriage Coaching
Challenges often arise when couples get married. This is normal. Often people are so in love, or they want things to work out that they overlook differences. The main thing is to know that the best time to work on differences is at the beginning. The biggest mistake a couple can make is to wait it out. The longer a problem continues, the harder it is to change and the less motivated you may feel to work on it. The best time to get help is from the beginning.
After the happy first years of our marriage, we began to experience a breakdown in communication. I had been sexually abused by a relative when I was a teenager and this held me back from being truly present, emotionally and physically, with my husband. Rather than sharing my feelings with my husband, I withdrew and blamed him for our problems. Our work with Micki enabled me to recognize my difficult feelings and learned how to express myself so that my husband could better understand me. We are now able to deal with challenges head on so that they don’t snow ball and become crises.
We came to Micki because we were not connecting well with one another after only a few years of marriage. I (Man) felt like I was making all of the decisions in our relationship and felt my wife was just coming along for the ride. Working with Micki enabled both of us to recognize the pattern we had developed where I wasn’t allowing my wife to be heard. I previously believed that it was my job to make the decisions and didn’t realize that my wife wanted to be involved, but that I was simply blocking her from doing so. Having turned this dynamic around we are now in such a healthy place.
Recent Blog Posts
Do You Dance Like this as A Couple?
The negative cycle begins and ends at exactly the same point. She reaches for her husband, her need gets missed and then she shouts and spews anger as she feels ignored. This then causes her partner to pull away as they run and hide.
Who doesn’t want to be the Wise Child?
On Passover, we mention the 4 sons: the Wise, the Wicked, the Simple one and the “Child Who Doesn’t Know What to Ask.”
How to Avoid a Rude Awokening!
The Harry and Meghan TV interview was the big news this week. Read on for my take and learn more about how you can be prepared to deal with your future in-laws.
Take control of your relationship and make an appointment now!