Couple Psychotherapy

Are you feeling alone in your relationship? Searching for help?

From Frustration to Fulfillment

Are you feeling alone in your relationship? Frustrated that you can’t seem to connect with the person you love? Discouraged when your best efforts don’t seem to help? Frozen because you can’t seem to do anything right? Angry when, once again, you feel misunderstood and criticized? Fed up with the spiraling cycle that leaves you wanting to get away? Maybe you also feel despondent and lost, not knowing what else to do?

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Cultivating a Loving Connection

Focusing on the importance of compassion to nurture your relationship into a deep and fulfilling commitment.

Fostering a loving and long-lasting connection with your partner is deeply meaningful, but sometimes this can feel elusive and unattainable. Research into the science of attachment and compassion repeatedly demonstrates the healthy human need for social and intimate connection. We need others in order to become most fully ourselves.

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What is Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy?

Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFCT) is an approach to couple therapy that grows out of John Bowlby’s attachment theory, which recognizes we have a neurobiological need for strong emotional bonds with others. Bowlby’s research demonstrates that these secure bonds remain vital throughout our lives. Yet traumatic relationship histories and negative interaction cycles with our partners can make connecting difficult, and we often fall into defeating patterns of criticism, anger, or withdrawal.

Fostering Emotional Safety and Connection with EFCT

EFCT addresses these core issues in our most important relationships. Formulated by Drs. Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg, EFCT is a highly researched, effective, evidence-based treatment, and is designed to help you create emotional safety with your partner. This model understands that if you care about each other, you will also impact, frustrate, and upset each other. The aim of EFCT is to help you learn not only how to be more open and trusting with each other, but also how to reach for each other to feel close. When you feel securely connected, you are more able to express your needs for love, support, and protection. A substantial body of research outlining the effectiveness of EFCT now exists. Research studies find that 70-75% of couples move from distress to recovery and approximately 90% show significant improvements. EFCT is being used with many different kinds of couples in private practice, university training centers, hospital clinics, and many different cultural groups around the world. Distressed couples include partners suffering from depression, post-traumatic stress disorders, and chronic illness. EFT is also effective with families (EFFT) and individuals (EFIT).

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Compassion Focused Therapy

The beneficial effects of developing compassion in relationships are clear from both brain and couple research. Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) is a process of developing compassion for the self and others and is a powerful and efficacious model. The Individual Psychotherapy page has more detail on CFT.

In-Person and Online Therapy

Whether online or in-person, we are here to support you.

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