Couples therapy · Walnut Creek & telehealth in CA
Couples Therapy in Walnut Creek
You’re having the same fight again. It started over something small, it got somewhere neither of you meant it to go, and by now you both know your lines well enough to skip ahead.
It’s not just as simply as you’re bad at communicating. The way each of you communicates in conflict is old, and it’s protective. It got built long before you met, and when it takes over it does exactly what it was designed to do. It also makes it nearly impossible to hear what your partner is actually saying.
What it looks like
The cycle you’re both stuck in
Most couples arrive describing different problems and turn out to be describing the same loop:
The same argument wearing different clothes, whatever it appears to be about.
One of you needs to resolve it now, one of you needs space, and neither of you gets either.
Escalating faster than either of you intended, and not being sure how you got there.
Long stretches of things being fine, in a way that isn’t quite the same as good.
Operating more like co-managers of a household than two people who chose each other.
Knowing exactly what they’re about to say, and saying your part anyway.
The specific content changes. The choreography doesn’t. That’s usually the first thing worth seeing clearly, because a cycle is something you can work with, and a list of grievances mostly isn’t.
Why it keeps happening
This isn’t a communication problem.
You’ve probably both read something about using I-statements. You may have tried them. They tend to work in calm moments and evaporate in the moments you actually needed them for.
That’s because by the time you’re four minutes into it, neither of your nervous systems is available for a conversation. One of you is mobilized and pushing toward resolution. The other has gone quiet and further away. Both of those are protection, both are automatic, and each one makes the other worse.
Two activated nervous systems can’t repair anything. That’s not a failure of effort or love. It’s physiology, and it’s workable once you can both see it happening.
Seeing it happening is a skill, not a mood. It’s the ability to notice what’s happening in your body while it’s still happening, before it fully takes over, and stay present enough to come back rather than escalate or disappear. That’s the regulation piece. Without it, even the right words land on a nervous system that isn’t available to hear them.
The approach
We slow the cycle down while it’s happening.
The useful thing about couples work is that the pattern doesn’t stay home. It comes to session. Within a few minutes of a real conversation, the loop starts running in the room, and that’s the moment worth having.
I’ll interrupt it. Not to referee or to decide who has the better argument, but to slow it down enough that you can both notice what just happened in your bodies before the next line comes out. What tightened. Where each of you went. What you were protecting.
Underneath the cycle there’s almost always a much older story in each of you about what closeness costs and who you have to be in order to keep it. That’s the depth part, and it’s where the Enneagram earns its place. It makes each of your default moves legible to the other, so less of what your partner does lands as a personal attack.
Then we practice something different, right there, with me in the room. That’s what makes it available to you at home on a Tuesday night, which is the only place it actually counts. See the full approach
Who this is for
This work fits if you’re
Two people who still want this to work, even if one of you is more sure than the other.
Stuck in a loop you can both describe and neither of you can stop mid-flight.
Willing to look at your own half, not only at what your partner does.
Ready for something active, with practice between sessions, not just a weekly airing out.
A note on fit: couples therapy isn’t appropriate when there’s ongoing violence, intimidation, or fear of a partner, and it isn’t the right container for untreated active addiction. Those situations need different support first, and I’m glad to help point you toward it. You can find crisis and support lines on my resources page.
Related work
Sometimes the work starts somewhere else
Not everyone arrives as a couple, and not every relationship problem is best worked on in the same room.
Where I practice
Serving Walnut Creek and the East Bay
I see couples in person in Walnut Creek, California, and work with partners from across the East Bay, including Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Alamo, Danville, Pleasant Hill, and Concord.
Couples sessions are also available by telehealth throughout California. Two busy schedules are the most common reason couples therapy never gets started, and video removes that obstacle. It also works when one of you travels.
Common questions
Questions couples ask before reaching out
Do we both have to want to be here?
You both have to be willing to show up. You don’t both have to be optimistic. It’s extremely common for one partner to have booked this and the other to be coming somewhat reluctantly, and that difference is usually worth talking about in the first session rather than pretending it isn’t there.
Will you take sides?
No. I’ll be direct with both of you, which sometimes means each of you feels challenged in the same session. What I’m after is the cycle rather than the verdict. If I ever seem to be siding with one of you, say so out loud, because that’s important information about what’s happening between us.
What kind of couples therapy do you do?
My work is somatic and depth-oriented, and I lean on the Enneagram quite a bit with couples. In practice that means we spend less time analyzing arguments after the fact and more time working with what’s happening in both of you as it unfolds, alongside the older material each of you brings. The Enneagram is useful here because it makes each partner’s core fear and default move recognizable to the other. I’m also active in session. I’ll interrupt, name what I’m seeing, and ask you to try something different in the moment.
Can couples therapy help if we’re thinking about separating?
Sometimes, and it depends on where you each are. If you’re both uncertain and want to find out whether this can work, that’s workable. If one of you has already privately decided to leave, couples therapy isn’t the right container and can make things worse. Tell me that in the consultation, even if you haven’t told your partner. I’ll help you figure out what would actually be useful.
How often do couples sessions happen and how long does it take?
Most couples start weekly, and weekly matters more in couples work than in individual work because the cycle keeps running between sessions. How long depends on how entrenched the pattern is and how much practice happens at home. Couples who do the work between sessions tend to move noticeably faster.
“Two activated nervous systems can’t repair anything. That’s physiology, not a failure of love.”Couples therapy · Walnut Creek, CA
Getting started
A free 20-minute consultation is the easiest first step, and only one of you needs to make the call. No intake forms, just a conversation about what keeps happening and whether we’re a fit.
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