ONLINE THERAPY IN WASHINGTON STATE & California

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy

Directive, Challenging and Supportive Couples Therapy

Your Past Is Impacting Your Present Relationship

Our early childhood experiences with our caregivers shape our current ways of relating to ourselves and others, especially as it relates to our relationship with emotions.

These experiences also changes the way our brain organizes events, thoughts, and feelings.

By helping you more deeply understand yourself, your partner, and the dynamics of your relationship, you can find long lasting solutions, to ensure your relationship is strong, no matter what life brings your way now or in the future.

People that are more securely attached have a greater ability to cope and manage stress, and better physical and mental health.

I practice a form of couples therapy called EFT which facilitates deep, long lasting, growth, change and insight.

What Is Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)?

  • EFT is an approach to therapy based on attachment science.

  • Humans are wired for connection and relationships are mandatory to our survival and thriving.

  • The model prioritizes emotions as it shapes individual experience and relationship interactions.

Types of Attachment Styles

Secure Attachment

  • Capacity to express full and wide range of emotions

  • Has the ability to self-soothe and regulate self when overwhelmed

  • Has the ability to share feelings and emotions

  • Is generally okay with others’ feelings and emotions

  • Has the ability to show and convey empathy

  • Reach & Receive: Can ask for needs and wants as well as receive love and affirmation from others

Avoidant Attachment

  • Restricted emotions and empathy

  • Comforts self with things, activities, distractions such as exercising, work, food, substances, television, etc.

  • Addictions and substance use is common

  • Finds it difficult to share feelings

  • Difficulty with commitment and intimacy

  • Suppression of needs and wants

  • Values distance and space

Anxious/Ambivalent Attachment

  • Desires closeness, but never enough

  • Enmeshment & Codependency: “Merges” with other

  • Fear of abandonment and rejection

  • Clings and criticizes

  • Cautious about depending on others

  • Difficulty feeling comforted

  • Pursuing to almost aggression to obtain a response

Disorganized Fearful Attachment

  • Desires closeness, but fears it at the same time so avoids

  • Merge/Distance Dance: Come closer, get away (paradox)

  • Fearful of abandonment and rejection

  • Sabotages closeness and intimacy

  • Attracted to people who victimize and take advantage of them

  • No real sharing ability

  • Overwhelmed by others’ feelings and emotions

  • Dissociates when in face of strong emotion


Common Conflict Cycles

Pursue-Withdraw or Attack/Defend

  • One partner attempts to talk and make connections (pursuing) while the other partner pulls away (withdraws).

  • The pursuer often pursues by demanding, criticizing and blaming, and they might appear angry and critical.

  • The withdrawer often withdraws by shutting down, avoiding or even leaving (physically, mentally or emotionally), and they might appear defensive, dismissive or indifferent.

  • The more the pursuer pushes to talk and resolve, the more the withdrawer feels uncomfortable, numb or the urge to run away.

Withdraw/Withdraw or Defend/Defend

  • The pursuer partner may be tired of protesting the other partner’s inability to connect and has given up.

  • While the withdrawing partner hated the attacks or criticism and now, actually believes that the relationship is getting better.

  • They may tell me in the first session, “I think we are getting along really well lately. We don’t fight as much.”

Reactive Pursue/Withdraw

  • Frequently seen when the couple is at the brink of separation -- follows a long history of pursue/withdraw.

  • Pursuer is “burned out”.

  • Withdrawer is “reborn” and pursuer doesn't trust it. It seems that when the pursuer is almost out the door, the withdrawer is coming back.

Burned out Pursuer/ Withdraw

  • One partner believes the relationship has gotten better.

  • The pursuing partner usually disagrees and responds with, “The reason we aren’t fighting is because we don’t talk anymore. I’ve given up trying to connect with them.”

  • The withdrawing partner then responds, “That’s right. I like this better than fighting.”

Complex Cycle

  • Often seen in trauma survivors where both anxiety and avoidance are high.

  • Pursuers may withdraw when connection is offered.

  • Connection is not trusted. Here we see more complicated sequences.

EFT Therapy Can Help You

✔️ Learn how to take care of one another

✔️ Make agreements

✔️ Identify the purpose of your relationship (what do you two do for one another that you can’t pay someone else to do?)

✔️ Understand the connection between mind and body and how these shape your reactions under stress

✔️ Have healthy and secure functioning relationships

✔️ Slow down and stay in the present moment (rather than the past and future) 

✔️ Become more comfortable with vulnerability and share your feelings and emotions with someone else (rather than alone) 

✔️ Feel more safe in your body (and understand the reactions and ways to manage them) 

✔️ Better understand why you do what you do (to interrupt unhelpful relationship and emotional cycles)

✔️ Create corrective emotional experiences (to heal from past experiences)

Healing Is Possible

There is hope.

I am a Seattle based relationship and couples therapist specializing in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT).

I enjoy working with people of color, interracial couples, gay couples and marriage counseling, queer men of color, and Asian immigrant and refugee diasporas.

It can be difficult to find a gay therapist of color help you on your journey in couples therapy as the field of mental health is overwhelmingly white and straight.

Research shows 70-73% of couples undergoing EFT successfully move from distress to recovery.

Of course, there are no guarantees counseling will solve or fix your relationship concerns, but it improves the odds, particularly if you start early. The sooner you get good help, the more quickly things can begin to turn around.

Reach out today to schedule a consultation.

Still Have Questions?

  • You can consider:

    • Discernment counseling which helps relationships where one partner is leaning towards separating and the other is not and wants to stay together. This form of counseling is great for “tough clients”

    • Individual therapy which can help you learn, explore, and assess your own relationship issues (boundaries, communication, emotions, attachment) and how they show up in your current relationship

    • Self knowledge through reading books, listening to podcasts, watching videos, etc.

    Attending couples counseling where one partner is unsure/doesn’t want to attend will not be helpful because it takes commitment to the process for couples therapy to be effective. In some cases, it can actually be ineffective and harmful.

    Discernment counseling would be a better fit. I am not trained in discernment counseling.

  • I do not work with couples/relationships in:

    • Active domestic violence/intimate partner violence

    • Narcissistic abuse

    • Where active infidelity is occurring

    Before other issues in the relationship can be effectively addressed the abusive behavior must end.

    Domestic violence is defined as “a pattern of coercive behavior used by one person to control and subordinate another in an intimate relationship.

    These behaviors may include physical, sexual, psychological, and economic abuse” (Oregon Domestic Violence Council).

  • Couples see me for about 3-6 months.

  • You might cry. Many people do. And it's completely okay.

    Crying is a normal, helpful, and natural way for our bodies to release pent-up emotions. Crying is a way to let go of the pain, sadness, or frustration you may be carrying inside. By crying, you're actually taking a step towards healing.

    Or you might not cry. And that’s okay too.

  • My No Secrets policy is based upon the premise that when I agree to work with a couple or relationship, I consider that relationship/couple to be the patient.

    Whatever is shared outside of session will not be held as a secret.

Start Therapy Today

Beginning therapy is the hardest step.

I’m here to make it as easy as possible.