Strengthen Your Relationship Through Personal Growth

Support Your Relationship by Understanding Yourself

Counseling with Trish does not currently offer ongoing couples counseling. However, meaningful relationship change often begins with individual therapy. Many relational patterns are shaped by attachment history, family-of-origin dynamics, developmental stressors, and unresolved trauma. Individual therapy offers a contained and supportive space to understand how these experiences influence current relationships without placing the relationship itself under strain.

Relationships are Complex

Relationships are complex and changing, yet sometimes not changing at all. Each person brings their personality shaped by experiences, resources, health, habits, needs, education, family rules, world view, family, and culture. Each partner also has their own strengths, vulnerabilities, likes, dislikes, love languages, rules, and special interests. Moods, communication styles, skill sets, and parenting styles can be different., and career aspirations, hobbies, goals, and dreams can alter the shape of the relationship. Navigating these topics, communicating, coordinating, and agreeing how each partner will contribute, support, and promote each other can be contentious without help. Working through conflicting experiences can be triggering and painful where partners could unintentionally, or intentionally wound each other, and need care and experience to help heal together.

Clarifying Needs, Boundaries, and Values in Relationships

Individual therapy can support increased clarity around personal needs, boundaries, preferences, and responsibility within relational dynamics. Clients may explore alignment between values and behavior, reconcile value conflicts, and identify communication skill gaps. This work supports more intentional, values-consistent relational choices.

Neurodivergent Differences in Relationships

Neurodivergent differences—such as ADHD, autism, sensory processing differences, or differences in emotional regulation and communication styles—can significantly affect relational dynamics. These differences may influence how emotions are expressed, how needs are communicated, how conflict is experienced, and how connection or withdrawal occurs. Therapy focuses on increasing understanding rather than assigning fault to someone’s character, helping clients identify mismatches in expectations, pacing, modifying behaviors to use supports, or communication that may unintentionally create distance. Individual therapy can support self-awareness, self-advocacy, and relational clarity while honoring neurodivergent ways of thinking, processing, and relating.

When a Partner May Be Included

In some cases, an established individual client may invite their partner to attend a limited session to support a specific concern or conversation when clinically appropriate. These sessions are not offered on a routine basis and are not intended to replace couples counseling.

Attachment-Focused, Trauma-Informed Care

An attachment-focused approach supports awareness of how early relationships shape patterns of closeness, distance, conflict, and repair. Therapy may explore how needs for safety, connection, autonomy, and predictability are expressed—or constrained—within relationships. Anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment strategies are understood as adaptive responses developed over time rather than deficits.

Trauma-informed care recognizes the role of the nervous system in relational functioning. Individual therapy can support emotional regulation, interoceptive awareness, and increased capacity for vulnerability—foundational elements of secure attachment and relational attunement.

How Individual Therapy Modalities Support Relationships

While therapy remains individual in focus, several evidence-based approaches may be used to address relationship-related concerns:

• Gottman-informed principles may be used to increase awareness of communication patterns, conflict cycles, emotional bids, and areas of strength or breakdown in relational attunement.
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can help identify and modify unhelpful thought patterns, assumptions, and interpretations that contribute to relational distress or miscommunication.
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills may support emotional regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and boundary clarity during relational stress.
• Internal Family Systems (IFS) can help clients understand and unblend from protective parts that developed in response to earlier relational wounds, supporting greater self-leadership and emotional availability.
• EMDR may be used to process unresolved relational trauma, attachment injuries, or past experiences that continue to influence present-day reactions, expectations, or patterns of connection.

Igniting Hope and a Fresh Start

Couples have years of history of how they experience each other, and often know what has been successful and life giving. Tapping into these successes, even in individual therapy, can restore the friendship and trust that once was the foundation. Other times, a few skills need to be developed or motivated to employed, the narration of our story needs to be retold, or some restructuring needs to happen to create a healthier homeostasis. Sometimes healing conversations need to happen, and renewed pledges implemented with genuineness and resolve. Integrating many theories to understanding the partners and patterns, and how it effects the relationship is essential to getting the outcomes you want.

FAQ -Starting Therapy Together or Separate?

Ideally couples therapy should be started together, so both individuals can build rapport with their therapist, and both feel represented fairly. Different models of therapy sometimes split some of the sessions at the beginning and then end together. If a relationship is really volatile, it may be more effective to alternate or have separate sessions, and then combine sessions with the progress.Couples therapy can be started together or separately depending on what you and the therapist is comfortable with. I have a no secrets policy, meaning if one person starts individually and then the partner joins in therapy, relevant information may be shared. Which means, if your partner is not ready to come to counseling, you can still begin to work on your relationship. When the partner feels ready to come, they will need to decide if using the same counselor works for both of them.