When couples come together to learn collaborative listening and talking skills, they engage in conversations while maneuvering on floor mats, enhancing their listening and understanding and self-awareness through various activities and training:

1. Active Listening Exercises: Each partner practices truly hearing and understanding the other’s perspective, without interruptions or judgments, fostering empathy and trust. Couples receive feedback by reading their partner’s eye contact, tone, and other non-verbal cues. Sometimes words aren’t needed.

2. Shared Conversations: Through shared experiences, couples engage in exercises that require teamwork and cooperation to enhance empathy and collaboration. By slowing down their conversations, couples gain the ability to hear, see, and feel what is unfamiliar.

3. Open Dialogue: Curates courage to build trust and express thoughts and feelings, lending honesty and vulnerability, and strengthening the emotional bond. Partners skillfully resolve conflict together to find solutions to challenges, which cultivates a sense of partnership, shared accountability, and responsibility.

4. Mapping the Issue: By practicing listening and awareness skills on mats, couples build a stronger foundation for their relationship, enhance communication and connection, and deepen their understanding of each other.

To empower couples to resolve conflicts skillfully and to build caring and fulfilling relationships through eight dimensions of collaborative marriage skills. We aim to be one of the leading providers of collaborative conversations and create a transmutational impact on couples to influence families and communities. We differentiate by offering personalized coaching, evidence-based techniques, and experienced facilitators

• Enhance their well-being and nurture their relationship

• Spot and change breakdowns in communication

• Speak clearly and constructively using six talking skills

• Listen to understand using five listening skills.

• Deal with ‘what is’ personal and relational.

• Transmute conflict into collaboration.

• Enjoy a collaborating operating system.

• Increase self-awareness instead of focusing on partner awareness.

• Expand awareness of non-routine issues.

• Understand the mental view that exposes caring and uncaring.

At Hardeman Healing Hearts Counseling, L.L.P., Micah and Antoinette Hardeman believe in the transformative power of faith, resilience, and professional guidance. Through their unique therapeutic approach, they aim to help individuals and couples uncover their potential for healing and growth. Each section below reflects their core philosophy, blending compassion, faith, and evidence-based techniques to inspire change and renewal.

God’s love is ever-present, close to the heart of those who seek Him. He reminds survivors of trauma that He is near when they feel brokenhearted and crushed in spirit, offering comfort and peace. God promises to restore health and heal wounds, urging individuals to trust His plan, even when the path seems unclear. His message is one of hope: take each step of healing with faith, knowing He is guiding toward a future of renewal and joy. He invites all to bring their burdens to Him in prayer, assuring that His peace, which surpasses all understanding, will guard their hearts and minds. Nothing can separate anyone from His constant and unwavering love—not fear, shame, anxiety, or any earthly power. God heals the heartbroken and binds their wounds, offering them the hope they need.

Antoinette Hardeman M.A. LMFTA, is a Christian who acknowledges her imperfections yet treasures truth. She has personally worked through her childhood trauma to transition from survival mode to thriving. She believes trauma impedes spiritual, mental, and emotional growth, disrupts relationships, and creates internal disconnects. Antoinette views individuals as whole, with vulnerable parts yearning to be seen, known, and heard. Through her own journey of being wounded and restored, she has embraced the responsibility of healing and now uses transformative tools to guide others on their healing paths.

Experiencing trauma profoundly impacts mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Antoinette understands that individuals facing trauma, depression, anxiety, guilt, shame, abandonment, rejection, and interpersonal conflict are doing the best they can in the moment. She emphasizes that while each journey is unique, better is always possible. She reminds clients that they are formed by the Creator of the heavens and the earth, making them inherently resilient and deserving of healing, love, and acceptance.

The journey to healing and transformation begins with a single courageous step: reaching out for help. Antoinette works closely with her clients to establish trust, explore challenges, and set meaningful goals. Through the therapeutic process, clients develop essential skills for growth, work through difficult encounters, and reflect on their progress. She acknowledges that failure is part of the growth process, encouraging clients to “fail forward” as they learn and improve.

Clients leave with a deeper understanding of God, themselves, or their partners, along with a toolkit of strategies to navigate future challenges. Antoinette’s mission is to empower individuals and couples to succeed in building fulfilling, harmonious lives rooted in faith, connection, and resilience.