For relationships that need a deeper level of care and healing, I guide partners to observe and identify relational patterns from the past in service of understanding what is occurring in the present moment. Relationship counseling is multi-dimensional work, adapted to provide care for relationships across all stages. 

Relationship counseling can help partners develop empathy, self and co-regulation skills, and resilience in the face of major stressors such as attachment trauma, life transitions, betrayal, physical illness, and sexual health challenges.

My trauma informed approach is guided by extensive training in the Developmental Model for Couples Therapy and PACT Model (Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy). I use the tools from these models to help partners learn and practice the skills necessary for greater intimacy, differentiation, and security in relationships. I also weave aspects from my psychodynamic, contemplative, and spiritual training into partner work.

Relationship counseling sessions include embodied co-regulation and attunement practices, psychodrama exercises, structured emotional processing, and relational repair dialogues among others.

Sessions are a minimum of 75 minutes.

Some common reasons partners begin relationship counseling:

• Recurrent cycles of conflict: “We get stuck in the same fight over and over again.”
• Insecure dynamics (fear of intimacy, codependence, ambivalence about intimacy): “When I come close, she moves further away.”
• Betrayal of an agreement: “I can’t imagine how we move forward.”
• Lack of agreements, recurrent boundary ruptures: “I do all the…they never do…”
• Sexual/Erotic stagnation/difficulties: “It’s been months since they even came near me.””I’m not even sure how to move towards her anymore.”
• Pervasive sense of distance in the relationship: “We’ve just grown apart, it’s gotten cold and dry here.”
• Discernment about the future of the relationship: “How do we know if we should stay together?”