Great Couples Counseling in Clearlake, CA. Therapy to heal relationships.

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.

I work with couples to repair and rebuild their relationships. My practice focuses on providing couples with the tools they need to create a healthier and more connected relationship. I believe in an integrative approach that is rooted in evidence-based therapies such as Emotionally Focused Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Psychodynamic Therapy. My goal is to help couples find a deeper understanding of one another and create a more meaningful relationship. I strive to provide a safe, non-judgmental, and respectful environment that encourages honest communication and healing.

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.

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.

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.

My work with couples is developmental and focuses on self-confrontation, differentiation, and collaboration. Individuals in the partnerships that I work with take responsibility for their own mental health and happiness and learn to grow themselves up in a way that brings goodness and intimacy to their relationship. I can help them overcome gridlock and sexual challenges to strengthen the relationship and reignite desire.

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.

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.