Therapy for Relationships
Relationship healing comes in many forms. You may want to work on issues in your marriage, romantic partnership, issues with dating, family, parenting, friends, colleagues, authority figures, or even strangers. There may be issues coming up around community and differences in culture. You may be healing from a breakup, betrayal, or rupture in an important bond. Relationships touch on many of our deepest longings and needs as human beings. As a trauma and attachment specialist, working with issues in relationships is often one of the most powerful and productive doorways to healing.
You may be looking for…
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Relationship Therapy for One
Relationship therapy for one is individual therapy with a focus on working through issues in your current relationships. We use whatever feels emotionally charged as a doorway to healing, which may include healing trauma and early attachment wounds. We may practice tuning into your emotions and needs, embodied communication, and boundaries. We may heal root causes of negative patterns in relationships and practice ways you can shift dynamics in your current relationships.
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Trauma-Informed EFT Couples Therapy
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy is a wonderful evidence- based treatment if you and your partner are interested in working on your relationship together. I specialize in a trauma-informed approach to EFT and typically work with couples where high reactivity is a part of their cycle or where one or both partners has a history of trauma. EFT can help couples facing infidelity, chronic illness, a history of childhood abuse, trauma, anxiety, and depression.
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Somatic Therapy to Support EFT Couples
I offer somatic trauma therapy to support individuals who are in the EFT couples therapy process. As an EFT therapist and trauma specialist I offer this very focused type of somatic work in the context of with your negative cycle so you can move forward in EFT and build a more secure bond.
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Adjunct Somatic Trauma Therapy
If you are currently working with a therapist but would like to try somatic methods, adjunct somatic therapy can be a wonderful way to expand your healing journey. I work with you somatically in specific areas while you continue to see your current therapist. If it feels right, we may use issues from your current relationships as doorways to healing.
Relationships, Attachment Needs, and Emotion
At the heart of all relationships in both childhood and adulthood are basic human attachment needs - to be seen, heard, understood, accepted, nurtured, supported, respected, validated, valued, and protected. To know we matter to people for who we are deep down - this is what it means to be human. We are wired to have these needs for our survival and our emotions are like lighthouses helping us navigate these needs in ourselves and others. When these attachment needs are not met it may cause issues that bring people to therapy - from painful relationships, to anxiety, depression, big feelings, addictions, conflict issues, boundary issues, and communication issues. Many people disown some of these needs at some point in childhood because there is no chance for them to be met, but the needs are still there and tuning into them is an important part of having more satisfying relationships. Sending clear emotional signals about these needs is often at the heart of better close relationships because emotions are the glue that binds people together. We need to be able to send and receive clear emotional signals for bonding and connection.
Relationships Cycles & Attachment
Understanding relationship cycles can be an important first step in healing relationship distress. It might feel really confusing and out of control at times but what we’ve learned through research is that what’s happening during relationship distress is often right out of a textbook. It’s actually very predictable and we can organize our understanding - this helps people reach and respond new ways. If there is deep emotional wounding or trauma, it is not enough just to organize however, healing often needs to happen inside before these patterns shift in a meaningful way.
When relationships aren’t working humans generally have just a few options of how to cope. 1) They can reach out and respond in an emotionally connected way (this is generally referred to as secure attachment). 2) They can pursue connection with an anxious flavor. 3) They can protest the disconnection with anger or resentment. 4) They can withdraw. Some people have a tendency to do a combination of these strategies. If you are interested in Internal Family Systems, we can say these are different parts of you that are managing the disconnection and protecting from pain in different ways.
These strategies can cause self-reinforcing cycles in relationships that either pull people together or push them apart. In particular, it is very common to see pursue-withdraw patterns in relationships that feel problematic - this is characteristic of something called insecure attachment. When there is disconnection, one person pursues connection and has a tendency to get bigger emotionally, while the other person pulls away and turns down the emotional heat. When they withdraw, the pursuer gets more activated, and when the pursuer gets more activated the other person withdraws even more. It goes around and around in a loop. Working with these cycles is the foundation for Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT or EFCT), Emotionally Focused Family Therapy, and Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) - three types of therapy I incorporate into relational work in individual and couple therapy. Ultimately the goal of these therapies is send and receive clear emotional signals about attachment needs to have more secure bonds.
Relationships & Trauma
“Trauma blocks love, love heals trauma.” - Frank Anderson
When there is trauma many times negative relational cycles can get very intense and pronounced leading to painful disconnection. This can be one of the most heartbreaking aspects of trauma because these wounds are where love is needed the most, but there is hope. I’ve found that trauma work with somatic approaches can greatly help trauma survivors feel more comfortable in relationships. It can also help people tune into what they need emotionally so that they can figure out whether those needs have any hope of being met in various relationships. I believe that many times without specific trauma work it can be hard to engage in different types of relational therapies that work with emotion. If you’ve tried to work on relationships in therapy but found that things did not shift as much as you needed, I invite you to reach out and see if somatic therapy through an attachment lens could help.
Now accepting individuals and couples in California for online therapy.
