Great Couples Counseling in Santa Rosa, CA. Therapy to heal relationships.

Even with well-meant intentions to find one another or to create harmony in your relationship, partners fall into repeating negative patterns which can include angry pleading, accusation, defensiveness or cold withdrawal. This is painful. I help you to understand how you get stuck and then guide you through new emotional experiences which stop the old negative patterns and help you to find safety and feel connected and in love again. I specialize in couples therapy. I have over 27 years working with couples and many hours of training specific to helping couples. I am certified in Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples (EFT), an evidence-based, empirically validated approach.

Discover how you can go from rejected to connected! Did you know the reactivity you experience is not your fault? (This is one of the main things that causes fights and arguments. It's when you feel out of control, & it leads to doing or saying things you regret, impulsivity, & leads to hurt & separation). I show couples how they can reduce the personal & relational reactivity they experience & increase feeling peaceful, calm, understood, validated, safe, accepted, & connected. I help couples discover their attachment strategies (how we feel safe & get our needs met). This is necessary in order to create lasting improvement, safety, trust, understanding, & connection, in your relationship.

Couples counseling has been a passion of mine and one of my top two specialties for 15 years now. I blend Imago, Emotionally focused, and Gottman techniques into a process I call "Conscious Love." Conscious Love is based on the concept that we tend to come together with a romantic partner who will trigger our core wound and bring our attention to where we need healing. It's an opportunity to learn how to become a team to overcome the patterns that are blocking the flow of love between you. This is a beautiful process blending mindfulness techniques, inner healing/soul work, and a powerful communication method I call “nurturing talks.” Feel free to read the testimonials on my website.

My passion is helping couples and individuals see, understand, and feel the cycle of conflict that’s keeping them stuck in disconnection, frustration, and unhappiness and teach them new ways to interact with each other - ways that lead to connection, emotional safety, belonging, trust, and love. I am not a sit-back-and-listen therapist. I consider myself a process consultant. I want to see you get the results you want, and I will guide you in an active, warm, loving and direct way to help you have a different kind of conversation than you’ve been able to have with your partner before. I love helping love thrive!

Let me guess. One partner feels alone and like they don't matter and the other feels they are always being criticized and can't get anything right. The more one asks for the other to show up, the more the partner disappears physically and emotionally. You both bicker and fight and the idea of sitting and just hanging out seems elusive, if not impossible. Something like this? Often we crave connection but are blocked by the pain and the history that gets in the way. Small fights about little things become battles that highlight our struggle to have our basic relational needs met. I can help you get under the bickering to the parts crying out for connection- to an enriching relationship.

Choosing to share our lives with someone can be a beautiful but challenging experience. Everyday life can rob you of the joy that you felt at the beginning of the relationship or maybe larger stressors happen and communication can be hard. Let's work together to find solutions to the stressors, increase communication, and find joy in the relationship. If you decide that the relationship is no longer a healthy one for you and instead you and your partner need support in separating, that is something I can also support with. A healthy divorce, separation, or breakup is better than an unhealthy relationship.

Without conflict, couples do not achieve intimacy. The challenge is helping you and your partner learn how to have healthy conflict that leads to intimacy, rather than destructive conflict that destroys the relationship. I specialize in working with affairs and broken trust, abgtneuro-diverse couples. I usually start with helping you learn ground rules for being able to have safe, constructive, healthy conflict to reduce and eliminate destructive relational patterns. I also use Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) to help you reconnect, learn healthy communication skills, rekindle the flame that you once had, and start talking to each other again. If you are willing to work, I am here for you

Why do we seem to have the same arguments over and over again? How do I know if we are really supposed to be together? Are there things we could be doing to better support each other, to help each other grow and be our best selves? If we really love each other, why do we so often hurt each other? How do I know if this is real love, anyway? Relationships are hard. Even more than desire, they require effort and understanding to make them work. Often, even if two people really love each other, one or both may need help to maintain the right effort or understanding to keep the balance necessary for long-term success. Having outside, objective support can make all the difference.

I see clients in relationships of all kinds. Whether you are in a poly relationship, you practice non-monogamy, or if you are in a traditional marriage, you are in the right place. I offer a non-judgmental space where we work as a team to improve communication, develop connection and understanding, and use real tools to better your relationship. I am more than a mediator-- I help each person communicate their true thoughts and true needs without conflict. Do you have intimacy issues and need sex therapy? I provide that service as well. Sex is part of every relationship and should always be a priority. Physical intimacy is vital and I can help you make improvements that stick over time.

Relationship problems are one of the most common causes of distress and unhappiness around! We seek comfort, security, companionship, connection, sexual fulfillment in our relationships. When there is a problem, it can feel like our very survival is at stake! I help couples to reconnect in a loving way, so they experience greater joy and happiness with one another. I use a variey of benefical techniques to help you work through your problems. You learn to really listen and tune into one another through a special communication process I developed. You also learn to identify and let go of old baggage that gets in the way of your connecting.