Couples and Relationship Counseling

Couples therapy with me is not about deciding who is right. It is about understanding what is happening beneath the conflict.

Most relationship distress is not actually about the dishes, the tone of voice, or the missed text. It is about nervous systems colliding. It is about attachment wounds being activated in real time. It is about protective adaptations that once kept each of you safe now showing up in ways that create distance.

I am deeply grounded in the principles of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), which means wefocus on attachment, emotional safety, and the patterns that keep couples stuck. EFT teaches usthat beneath anger or withdrawal is often longing; a need to feel chosen, valued, and secure.

We slow it down.

Attachment & Early Patterns

Each of you brings early lived experiences into the relationship, templates for closeness, safety,conflict, and repair. When attachment wounds are triggered, partners often fall into pursue/withdraw cycles, criticism/defensiveness, shutdown/escalation.

Together, we identify these cycles as the shared enemy, not each other. We explore how your early relational experiences shaped the ways you protect yourself now. Awareness reduces shame. Understanding creates space.

EMDR & Healing Attachment Injuries

When appropriate, I integrate EMDR into couples work to process attachment injuries, betrayals,or earlier life experiences that are intensifying present-day reactions. Sometimes the charge in the relationship is amplified by unprocessed experiences that predate the partnership.

As those memories are reprocessed, reactivity softens. Emotional accessibility increases.

Conversations that once felt impossible begin to feel safer.

Nervous System & Somatic Awareness

Conflict is physiological. When your nervous system is activated, logic disappears. We begin with regulation by helping each partner recognize fight, flight, freeze, or collapse responses in themselves and in each other.

Through somatic awareness and nervous system work, couples learn how to pause escalation, co- regulate, and create safety during hard conversations.

Neurodivergence & Relational Understanding

If one or both partners are neurodivergent, we approach relational differences with curiosity rather than criticism. Variations in communication, sensory processing, emotional expression, or conflict style are not character flaws, they are differences in wiring.

Understanding these differences reduces misinterpretation and builds compassion.

Couples therapy is about healing the attachment bond. It is about transforming protective adaptations into vulnerability, and vulnerability into connection.

The goal is not perfect communication. It is secure attachment, a relationship where both partners can feel safe, valued, and emotionally known.

When you’re ready, we begin.