Specialty · relationships
Therapy for relationship issues
You can be thoughtful, successful and deeply caring and still keep finding yourself in the same place with people: giving more than you get, choosing someone who cannot meet you, going quiet when you most need to speak, or feeling lonely in the middle of a full life. This page is about working on relationships on your own, whether or not anyone else ever joins. The pattern lives partly in you, which is good news, because that is the part you can change.
Telehealth only, by secure video or audio, for people physically located in California. Laurie, LMFT.
What relationship work looks like with me
We start with what is actually happening now. Who are the important people in your life, and where does it go wrong? What do you feel in your body just before you say yes when you mean no, or just before you pull away? The details matter, because relationship patterns are made of small, fast moments that happen below the level of decision.
Then we look for where the pattern was learned. Most of us absorbed our first rules about love, conflict and belonging long before we could question them: be good and you will be kept, do not need too much, keep the peace at any cost. Those rules made sense once. They may not serve the life you have now. Internal Family Systems is especially useful here, because it lets us meet the parts of you that still follow the old rules, with respect, rather than trying to override them.
And then we practice. Saying the true thing in a small way. Letting someone help you. Leaving a little sooner. Staying a little longer. Change in relationships is learned the way any skill is learned: by doing it, noticing what happens, and doing it again. Over time you start to feel more like yourself with other people, and less like a role you are playing.
The larger aim is relationships that add to your life: more ease, more honesty, more joy, and a deeper sense of connection with others, with yourself, and with whatever you hold as sacred, if you hold anything as sacred at all.
The pattern follows you from person to person. So can the change.
Boundaries are not walls. They are the shape of you.
Patterns people bring
Giving until empty
You are the one everyone leans on. You notice what others need before they ask. Somewhere along the way your own needs went quiet. We help them find their voice again, without you having to stop being generous.
The same kind of partner
A different face, the same ending. When a pattern repeats across relationships, it is worth understanding what draws you in, and what you are hoping will finally be different this time.
Conflict you avoid, or cannot stop
Some people go silent at the first sign of tension. Others cannot let a disagreement rest. Both are ways of managing fear, and both can soften.
Loneliness in a full life
Plenty of people around you and no one who really knows you. Loneliness is painful and common, and it often has more to do with how safe it feels to be seen than with how many people you know.
How we would work
We start with a free 20-minute consult by phone, text or video. You tell me what keeps happening and what you would like instead, and I tell you honestly whether I think we are a fit. There is no pressure in that call and no obligation afterward.
If we go ahead, sessions are weekly to begin with, by secure video or audio anywhere in California. I draw on Internal Family Systems, AEDP, somatic work for the body's part in the pattern, ACT and CBT where they help, and my own Positive Re-Narrative and Repatterning to build new responses until they hold.
- People-pleasing and difficulty saying no
- Repeating the same relationship pattern
- Fear of conflict, or conflict that escalates
- Loneliness and difficulty letting people close
- Dating again after divorce or loss
- Friendships, family and workplace relationships
- Rebuilding trust in yourself after a painful relationship
Questions people ask about relationship work
- Can I work on my relationship without my partner coming?
- Yes. Relationships are systems, and when one person changes how they respond, the whole system has to adjust. Many people make real progress on a relationship in individual work. If you later want couples sessions, we can talk about whether I am the right person for that or whether a separate couples therapist would serve you better.
- Is this only about romantic relationships?
- No. The same patterns show up with parents, siblings, adult children, friends, colleagues and bosses. We can work with whichever relationships are causing you the most difficulty, and you will often find that change in one spreads to the others.
- Will we spend all our time on my childhood?
- No. We look at the past when it helps explain the present, and some of that history matters. But most of the work is in the present: what happens in your relationships now, what you feel, what you do, and what you would like to do differently. Understanding without practice rarely changes much.
- What if I am the problem?
- People who ask this are usually not the problem, or not only the problem. Relationship difficulties almost always involve more than one person. That said, the part you can change is yours, and working on it is not the same as taking the blame. We look at your side honestly and kindly, and we look at the context too.
If the same dynamic keeps finding you
You do not have to wait for the other person to change before things can be different. Text or email and we will find a time to talk. Telehealth only, by secure video or audio, for people physically located in California. Laurie, LMFT.