for couples

MYTH: All we need is better communication.

TRUTH: Communication is important, but learning how to identify and skillfully attend to the deep wounds that drive conflict is the key to breaking toxic cycles and building healthy bonds.

OUR WORK TOGETHER: You and your partner will enter a safe space where you will both learn powerful tools for diffusing destructive patterns and increasing vulnerability, empathy, and accountability—the requisites for strong, lasting, deeply satisfying partnerships.

MY METHOD: I integrate principles and strategies from Terry Real’s “Fierce Intimacy”, Emotionally Focused Therapy, Internal Family Systems for Couples, and Somatic Experiencing.

Key Features

  • Recognizing and defusing self-sabotaging patterns connected to core wounds

  • Meeting and caring for your own wounds so they are not thrust upon your partner

  • Identifying losing strategies—control, emotional dumping, right/wrong thinking, retaliation, and withdrawal

  • Effectively asking for what you want

  • Taking space and making boundaries with love and respect

  • Deepening intimacy through conflict

  • Speaking to heal and connect, not to hurt and reject

COUPLES & FAMILY THERAPY IS FOR YOU IF:

  • You need help making major life decisions like having children, getting married/divorced, and moving

  • You want to create or repair a foundation of vulnerability, empathy, emotional intimacy, physical intimacy, and secure attachment

  • You’re stuck in the same old arguments

  • You feel hopeless and overwhelmed when “talking it out”

  • You have chronic anxiety about your partner leaving or rejecting you

  • You cannot tolerate the absence of your partner

  • You have a pattern of people-pleasing and over-apologizing in an attempt to manage your partner’s emotional experiences

  • You’re exhausted and disconcerted from the time and energy you put into your relationship

  • You stress about the future of the relationship

  • You often feel lonely or empty despite being in a romantic relationship.

  • You fear that you are “too broken” to be wanted or loved by your partner

Intimacy isn’t something you have. It’s something you do. It’s a minute-by-minute practice of connecting to others through empathy, vulnerability, and accountability.

- Terry Real