Couples & family therapy
For the relationships that matter.
Friends, families, lovers, situationships, and everything in between deserve room for honesty, clarity, and care.
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More than couples therapy
Making room for what has not been said.
Relationship therapy is for all kinds of relationships: friends, families, lovers, situationships, and everything in between.
I have worked with couples and families from different cultural backgrounds and across a range of ages. This includes people navigating intergenerational differences and the dynamics of immigrant families.
Attending relationship therapy is not automatically a sign that your relationship is in bad shape. It can also show care, a need for clarity, or simply a wish to maintain an important connection.
Couples therapy
When you keep having the same conversation
Sometimes the topic changes, but the argument feels familiar. One person wants to talk things through right away, while the other needs distance. A request for reassurance sounds like criticism. Someone feels unheard, becomes louder, and the other pulls further away.
In couples therapy, we can slow these moments down and explore what is happening for each of you. What are you hoping the other person will understand? What hurts? What becomes difficult to say once you feel angry, overwhelmed, or disconnected? Together, we can look for ways to express those feelings and needs that give you a better chance of reaching each other.
When you miss feeling close
You do not have to be arguing all the time to feel that something is missing. You might still care deeply about each other while feeling more like roommates, struggling to find time together, or wondering why affection has become harder.
We can make room to talk about loneliness, closeness, intimacy, and the small moments that help you feel cared for. You can also bring differences around parenting, money, responsibilities, or extended family, especially when those differences have started to affect how you feel about each other.
Family therapy
Room for different experiences
People in the same family can experience the same situation very differently. A parent may see concern and protection, while their child experiences pressure or a lack of trust. Someone may feel responsible for keeping everyone together, while another feels they have little room to be themselves.
Family therapy gives us a place to explore these differences together. We can talk about recurring conflict, boundaries, changing roles, and things that have been difficult to discuss at home. I want children and teenagers to have a meaningful voice in those conversations, alongside the adults who care about them.
In immigrant families, these conversations may also involve different cultural expectations, languages, or ideas about independence, responsibility, and belonging. We can explore what those values mean to each person and how you might stay connected while making room for differences.
What working together can look like
We begin by hearing what has brought each of you here and what you hope might change. Your answers may be different, and that gives us somewhere to start.
During our conversations, I may help you pause when things become overwhelming, put a difficult feeling into words, or check whether what someone meant is what the other person heard. We can notice the patterns that emerge between you and try different ways of responding, at a pace we agree on together.
Making room for everyone’s perspective also means being able to talk honestly about the impact of someone’s behaviour. Understanding each other and taking responsibility can happen together.
For the relationship-therapy nerds out there, I generally follow the principles of emotion-focused therapy while drawing on the structure of the Gottman Method.
Despite what people may believe, relationship therapists like me do not have perfect relationships in our own lives. I sometimes struggle to live by the same principles I talk about in therapy. I am not an expert on how you should speak or act in your relationship. My role is to help organize our conversation.
Hopefully, we can uncover unsaid words, unnamed dynamics, and our vulnerabilities together. Since nobody taught us how to love ourselves and love each other, let’s figure this out together.
You can begin with uncertainty
You might want to reconnect, work through a hurt, or understand where the relationship is going. One person may feel hopeful about therapy while another is unsure. You do not need to arrive with everything settled.
We can begin with those differences, talk about what each of you wants, and explore whether working together feels like a useful next step.