Couples Therapy in Dallas / online Across TX
Couples Therapy
Interventions for recurring conflict, attachment differences, and shared trauma
Attachment Differences
One of you pushes for communication and intimacy and the other pulls away to protect the peace; one of you invites connection and then rejects it, leaving the other party feeling abandoned and enraged.
If you and your partner came from homes that didn’t feel safe, your survival strategies may have been what brought you together. They were probably just different enough from each other to be exciting but similar enough that they remind you of what is familiar - healthy or not. Intoxicating at first, these often opposing attachment styles quickly bring out the defenses in each of you, turning the relationship into a war zone.
Recurring Conflict
You knew there would be conflict in your relationship but you never pictured it that it could that it could feel this hurtful and never-ending.
There’s unquestionably a lot of love between you and your partner but whenever you argue it feels like going back to square one. The banter, play, and joy you have together evaporates as you both feel like enemies attacking each other instead of the issue at hand. Conversations start out about mundane issues and quickly escalate into personal attacks.
You promise to do better next time but nothing ever feels truly resolved when you end a fight.
Shared Trauma
When trauma dictates your relational pattern, it can feel hopeless to keep trying to heal. Worst of all, you struggle to understand how you both got to such a lonely, confusing place when you’re doing everything you know to fix it
Sudden losses, fractures in important friendships, and career setbacks are just some that can overwhelm a couple’s ability to cope. Spousal betrayal also creates a chasm that wounds the very core of the relationship by destroying trust.
Finding your way back to a secure place with each other where you can fully trust feels out of reach. But there is hope.
you both tried your best to avoid the problems you could see coming and weather the ones that you couldn’t with the tools you had, but somewhere along the way, you got trapped in a pattern.
Every couple has one. When you choose one other, you each bring in your own histories that combine to form a template for how to relate. A dynamic develops around how conflict is handled, sex is experienced, and lifestyle goals are set.
This cycle can either be the best thing that happened to you or the worst nightmare of your life.
HEre’s the good news about patterns: they can be broken and remade.
You just need a safe space to deconstruct what’s happening between you and practice new ways of experiencing each other.
As a trauma-informed couples therapist, my passion is helping partners deconstruct the cycle that keeps them stuck and exploring strategies to rebuild a sense of empathic curiosity between them. My approach is direct, experiential, and collaborative and puts both parties in charge of the goals of the session. Rather than just regurgitating your latest argument or replaying the conversations you’re having at home with no resolution, you both get a chance to experience each other differently in session.
Couples therapy is an investment of your shared time, energy, and resources. Sessions with me place an emphasis on honoring that investment by collaborating with you to establish practical goals for our time together. You get to decide what kind of relationship you’re looking to build and gain me as a teammate in working towards growth.
My approaches involve teaching you to understand and track your core relational cycle in real time. This allows you both to become aware of the feelings and sensations that are guiding your automatic responses to each other. With time and trust, you develop the kind of vulnerability that increases emotional security (Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy).
An active guide in this process, I study your dynamic as it unfolds in front of me and directly address each person’s role in it. You are both invited to explore the pain underneath your part of the pattern and where it comes from while your partner observes and supports in real time. (Relational Life Therapy).
A Sex Therapy Informed Professional, I am also equipped to help you understand how your intimate life has been affected by trauma or betrayal. I take a non-pathological approach that encourages curiosity towards each part of a person that carries wounding, desire, shame, anxiety, or hope related to their sexuality (IFS Couples Therapy). This type of counseling allows you to better understand each other’s needs and desires, decode your fantasies, and practice skills that promote erotic fulfillment and recovery.
FAQs
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There is a broad spectrum of reasons for why couples choose counseling. Some are in a relatively healthy place and want to capitalize on not being in active crisis by learning skills for when the hard times do hit. For others, therapy is crucial in addressing a serious issue (such as betrayal or a shared traumatic experience) that feels too big to handle on their own. I have also worked with partners who wanted to treat counseling as a “wellness check” to measure the health of their relationship and gain practical tools for managing communication better. No matter where you fall on that spectrum, research suggests that all couples can benefit from an objective, mediated space to work on the patterns in their relationship. The more insight you have into your core dynamic, the more empowered you are to keep building healthy ways of relating.
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Because this process involves two people with their own unique needs, histories, and goals, couples therapy (including couples sex therapy) is typically a long-term process in which there are no quick fixes. Growth happens as you implement the tools, skills, and awareness that you learn in session in everyday life. The majority of my clients notice a significant shift in their dynamic within eight to ten sessions and it largely depends on how willing you are to engage in the process. My goal is to facilitate new, reparative experiences between you both and we do a lot of practicing together, but you are ultimately the one in charge of your progress.
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My job is to be a student of your relational dynamic in order to help you both deconstruct it and examine your options for change. I do not judge because we are not in a courtroom and litigation rarely leads to increased empathy. Both parties have their own equally valid reality of what it’s like to be in the relationship and my hope is to help you both increase your curiosity about each other’s experience, as well as take individual responsibility for what you are each in control of. I am very direct in calling out the patterns that I see and that process is not always perfectly “equal” between partners, but the responsibility never rests on one person alone and the blame is always on the pattern, not the person.
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Therapy is most effective when both parties want to be there and are motivated to do the work. That does not mean that someone who is ambivalent or skeptical towards therapy cannot benefit from it, but at some point they have to be willing. If your partner has expressed that they are open to trying counseling but that they have doubts, I am capable of meeting you both where you are at. If, however, your partner has made it clear through words and action that they are not ready to try at this time, I encourage you to focus on what is within your control. This might look like getting therapy for yourself and benefitting from a space that is dedicated to exploring options for your own wellbeing.