Collaborative Couple Therapy

Problems tend to form through miscommunication. The collaborative approach helps everyone feel heard and understood. As a result, communication begins to improve, and problems start to dissolve.

A large majority of my client base is couples. I am currently working as a marriage therapist at The Relationship Institute in Royal Oak, Michigan.

My approach is designed to foster a supportive and cooperative environment where both partners are actively involved in the healing process. Together, we work to understand and address the unique challenges in your relationship, emphasizing open communication, mutual respect, and shared goals. By combining evidence-based methods like Gottman Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), I help couples navigate conflicts, rebuild trust, and strengthen bonds.

We understand that seeking therapy can be a vulnerable and challenging experience. However, Kinship Counseling Collective strives to create a safe and supportive environment that empowers our clients. Therapy is a collaborative process where the therapist and the client work together to identify and address the client's concerns. Our therapists are committed to building strong and authentic relationships with their clients, creating a space where clients feel comfortable doing their work.

We as individuals form our unique worldviews by the attachment styles we develop with our parents and by the dynamics of our family relationships, friendships, and romantic partnerships throughout our lives. I work collaboratively in partnership with you, honoring your worldview, to recognize what’s going well in your relationship dynamic, explore where and how you and your relationships can grow, and assisting you in deepening connection with your loved ones.

CCT is designed for couples who may be struggling with patterns of conflict in their relationship. The focus of CCT is helping partners work together in a collaborative way to solve problems and improve their relationship in the process. CCT therapists see a fight between partners as an opportunity for a conversation.

In addition to some well-honed, validated, finely tuned couple-specific modalities, I bring a heavily collaborative perspective to all of my work. Perhaps even more so when there are partners (or others) who feel adversarial -- my goal is to work within each person's strengths and desired outcomes.

Throughout my process of working with couples, I strive to create a safe and empathic environment in which both partners feel heard and comfortable sharing their experience. It is imperative couples take these first three meetings to decide if I’m a good fit. Also, it's important couples be able to share when they feel misunderstood, hurt, or disagree with me. Though I am an "expert" in couples therapy, it's important each partner feel their dignity, feelings, and beliefs matter.

Collaborative Therapy focuses on the language used to discuss problems. By parsing through language and expressing curiosity, a deeper understanding is achieved and couples and individuals have an opportunity to feel genuinely heard by their partner and/or their therapist.

I am a grad student (master's in marriage and family therapy) specializing in couples therapy. I have over 20 years of interpersonal communications experience and have spent the last seven years focusing on assisting couples with their communication challenges impacting their marital and custody decisions.

I believe that the core of a relationship is connection. I will use the strengths of the couple to assist the couple in collaborating on conflict resolution. In my experience, couples tend to get stuck on opposing forces, rather than learning how to work together as a support system to work through happy times, sad times, and all the times in between.

I was trained as a couples therapist to use a systems framework and work with couples and relational clients to address the current dynamics and patterns between you and your partner.

I love working with couples to support them in finding their path and helping them to learn each other's languages of communication. We all come from drastically differing experiences as human beings, and the work of bringing two worlds together can be incredibly difficult and frustrating, and it can also be full of joy and excitement. I am here to guide you through it all. I am a sex positive, LGBTQIA+ welcoming therapist who orients towards liberation psychology and theories of attachment.

I routinely saw couples during my postdoctoral training in sex therapy, and continue to work with couples wishing to enhance intimacy and connection inside and outside of the bedroom. Some common topics I work with couples on include repair from boundary violations (eg, infidelity), setting new boundaries, navigating conflict, developing empathy for one another, and recognizing when old/harmful relational patterns are surfacing in present relationships.