Welcome to the Center for Couples & Self, where we approach all problems of living through an attachment-based, emotionally-focused lens. We believe that a felt sense of security with the ones who matter most in our lives is vital to our emotional well-being, and when we experience a threat to our needs for safety, belonging, and connection, our mammalian brains enter into a state of fight-or-flight, survival-oriented behaviors. Whether within ourselves or with those we love most, we find ourselves in problematic patterns of interaction and coping behaviors as we protest against or detach from our pain, perhaps exacerbating our own and our loved ones’ suffering as we struggle to find our footing again.
We help our clients explore the nooks and crannies of the emotions that fuel these painful patterns of interaction and coping behaviors, as this constitutes the roadmap to healing our suffering. While our emotions can feel inconvenient at times, we know from years of solid research that our emotions are too survival-oriented to be random and that they are full of deep wisdom that must be mined for and listened to in order to find relief from our pain. This runs contrary to how many of us were socialized, where certain emotions were deemed “bad” or unacceptable and had to be cut off for us to move through the world. We will work with you to find your humanity again and to bring you back to the pure simplicity of your emotional world and all that it has to offer.
As doctoral-level providers with years of experience and training, we are eager to offer what we have been privileged to learn in our work with you. As a husband and wife team with our own trials and tribulations in “getting it right,” we are eager to partner with you as fellow human beings. Please use this site to learn more about us as clinicians and individuals. If it seems we may be a good fit for you and/or your partner, please don’t hesitate to contact us directly. We look forward to hearing from you.