Common goals that I help couples achieve include unpacking, understanding, and resolving conflicts, such as problems in communication or differences between you and your partner; enhancing intimacy—verbal, physical, and sexual; rebuilding or strengthening trust; and adjusting to major life changes.
Based on your and your partner’s unique needs, I personalize your treatment by synthesizing psychological theories and couple therapies validated by the strongest evidence from scientific research: Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy, and Enhanced Cognitive-Behavioral Couple Therapy. Dozens of randomized controlled trials (the gold standard for testing therapies’ effectiveness) have shown these therapies’ positive impact on relationships—follow-up studies have shown that couples tend to maintain significant improvement long after completing treatment.
What Does Couple Therapy With Me Look Like?
To ensure the best quality of care for my clients, I work with no more than a dozen couples per week. Our first video sessions are described below.
Intake Phase
Learning About Your Relationship (our first video session)
I meet you and your partner together for “conjoint intake.” I learn about both of your perspectives on your relationship’s conflicts, strengths, history, etc.
Learning About Each Person (1 or more video sessions per person)
I meet each of you separately for “individual intake.” I learn about your attachment experiences in childhood, past relationships, current relationship, etc. Importantly, I will assume that your partner already knows about everything you tell me. Do not tell me anything you wish to keep secret from your partner; if you do, let me know, and you and I will discuss how to handle this piece of information.
Feedback & Recommendations
(1 or more video sessions)
I meet with you and your partner together and share my initial analysis of your relationship. Collaboratively, we recognize your relationship’s strengths—often forgotten, but very important! We explore your relationship’s conflicts: what are they, and where did they come from? How have they been influenced by past experiences? Are they exacerbated by stressors outside the relationship? Putting everything together helps us see the big picture, find the roots of conflicts, and create the best solutions. Next steps I commonly recommend include a personalized treatment plan for additional sessions of couple therapy, individual therapy for one or both partners, or both.
Intervention Phase
The number of sessions couples complete range widely, from as few as 4 to more than 20. All improvement in your relationship is thanks to your and your partner’s courage and hard work: confronting difficulties, being vulnerable with each other, talking candidly and listening with compassion, understanding each other better—and understanding yourselves better, considering new perspectives, learning and practicing new ways of expressing feelings and affection.
Concluding Our Work
Whenever you have achieved your goals for couple therapy, you are ready to conclude our work and welcome to return for booster sessions as needed.
You have taken a courageous step by seeking therapy. To learn more about working with me, such as by scheduling a phone consultation (no charge), please click the button below. I look forward to learning about you and your partner.