Couples therapy in Coquitlam
You don't need better communication skills. You need to actually feel each other again.
Most couples therapy teaches you to fight better. That has its place. But if the real problem is that you've stopped being honest, stopped reaching for each other, or lost access to the aliveness that brought you together, you need something that goes deeper than technique. This work goes to the body, the nervous system, and the relational patterns underneath the conflict.
What brings couples to this work
Sometimes it's a crisis. An affair, a breakdown, a moment where someone finally says the thing that's been true for years. But more often it's a slow erosion. The conversations that stopped happening. The tension you've both learned to walk around. The realization that you're roommates performing a partnership instead of actually living one.
Neither version is too late. Both are worth working with.
Common Patterns
You might recognize this
"The problem is almost never what you're fighting about. The problem is what happens in your bodies when you stop being able to reach each other."
How I Work
Somatic, embodied couples work
I work with both of you in the room (or on screen), tracking what happens between your nervous systems in real time. When one of you tightens, the other responds. When someone risks honesty, there's a ripple. When contact actually happens, you can feel it. I track all of this.
My approach is Gottman-informed but goes further. I integrate somatic awareness, depth psychology, polarity work, and conscious relating practices. We don't just talk about your relationship. We work with it as a living thing in the room.
Working with the relational nervous system
Your relationship has a nervous system of its own. When one of you activates, the other responds. We slow these cycles down enough to actually see them, feel them, and begin to interrupt them at the body level. Not with scripts. With real-time somatic awareness.
Tracking what's alive between you
I pay attention to the moments when something real passes between you. When one of you softens. When a truth lands. When there's a spark of contact that cuts through the layers of protection. Those moments are not small. They're the signal of what your relationship is capable of.
Underneath the conflict
Most couple fights aren't about what they appear to be about. They're about safety, longing, fear of loss, old wounds getting activated in the present. We go underneath the content of the argument to the relational and developmental patterns driving it.
Polarity, desire, and aliveness
Many couples lose access to the current of desire and play that brought them together. This isn't just about sex, though it can include that. It's about the alive, magnetic quality of connection that gets buried under logistics, resentment, and self-protection. We work with its restoration.
Honesty as a relational practice
Most couples are managing each other rather than being honest with each other. We build the capacity for real truth-telling: what you want, what you feel, what you're afraid of, what you need. Not as a weapon. As an offering.
What changes between you
Couples who do this work don't just learn to communicate better. They learn to feel each other again. The changes aren't abstract:
Is this the right approach for you?
This work is for couples who want more than conflict management. If you're looking for a referee to decide who's right, this isn't that. If you want someone who will track what's actually happening between your nervous systems and help you build a different kind of contact with each other, it might be.
It works well for couples who are both willing to look at their own patterns, not just their partner's. It works especially well for couples who sense that the real issue isn't the surface conflict but something older, something each of you brought into the relationship from before you met.
You don't both have to be equally enthusiastic about therapy. One of you reaching out is enough to start. We'll figure out the rest together.
If individual work would serve one or both of you alongside the couples sessions, Therapeutic Foundations is available for that.
Begin couples therapy in Coquitlam
Book a free 15-minute consultation. We'll talk about what's happening in your relationship, how this approach works, and whether it feels right. Only one of you needs to reach out.
Coquitlam, BC V3C 2H3