Relational Therapy

Relational therapy is about strengthening relationship-building skills and addressing issues involving relationships from the past. It can also be defined as building a relationship with one’s therapist. Building connections with others helps initiate individual growth.

Relational therapy offers valuable support for individuals navigating challenges in their intimate, professional, family, and social relationships. I work well with clients regarding diverse relationship issues. Common themes in relational therapy include addressing social factors such as culture, race, class, heteronormativity, and intersectionality.

I view therapy as a healing relationship. In our work together, I aim to offer consistent presence, care, and emotional safety. Many of the wounds we carry are relational—and it’s through real, attuned connection that new patterns and possibilities can gently unfold.

Relational therapy is about understanding how you show up in relationships, whether that’s with your partner, your friends, or yourself. A lot of men grow up without spaces to be fully seen or heard, and that shapes how we connect (or disconnect). Relational therapy can be a good fit for people who see the in-the-moment connection in therapy as a good place to practice trust, honesty, and showing up without the pressure to perform. You don’t have to do this perfectly—you just have to show up.

Relational therapy incorporates all of this wonderful internal awareness and asks, now how do we turn this into skills and felt experience between me and others? How do we become closer, set healthy boundaries, communicate skillfully and with intention, and prioritize joy? My approach is eclectic and flexible, incorporating couples modalities like Relational Life Therapy, Developmental Model, Emotion-Focused Therapy, Imago, and my background in somatics and parts work.

I provide therapy from a relational-cultural frame, with attention to how the past affects the present. Relational-Cultural therapy focuses on how connection is both a vehicle for and an outcome of healing.

Relational therapy is a type of counseling that focuses on the importance of our relationships in shaping our emotional well-being. It helps individuals understand how past and present relationships impact their thoughts and feelings, and it aims to improve communication, connection, and overall relationship quality. I collaborate with my clients to explore and address relational issues, aiming to enhance emotional health and promote more satisfying interactions with others.

Our damage happened through relationships with other people, so it needs to be healed through our relationships with other people. Our earliest experiences starting in the womb shape our bodies and our brains and impact how we are able to interact with the world around us. It takes repeated positive interactions in order to heal the repeated negative interactions that so many experienced as infants and toddlers.

Relational psychotherapy, an approach that can help individuals recognize the role relationships play in the shaping of daily experiences, attempts to help people understand patterns appearing in the thoughts and feelings they have toward themselves. I look at how to bring balance back into your relational agreements, explore consent and how it shows up in your relationship (or not), how to help clarify communication, and look at attachment styles.

In my relational approach to therapy, the relationship between client and therapist is central to the healing process. I focus on building a safe, trusting connection where clients feel truly seen and understood. Through this relationship, we explore patterns in how you relate to others, while engaging in process-oriented therapy to uncover deeper emotions, thoughts, and behaviors as they arise in the moment. By working together in this collaborative space, meaningful self-awareness and change

As a relationally-trained therapist, I specialize in working with clients by using a systemic perspective. This means that we will explore a client’s relationship to themselves, to others, and to society as a whole.

A big piece of our work in therapy will be examining how you feel in your relationships. We all have a deep desire to be known and understood, yet sometimes we get stuck repeating the same patterns that keep us from being truly seen, heard, and known. In our work together, we'll learn about these patterns and come to understand them with compassion for how they developed in the first place. In doing so, you'll be able to let go of patterns & fears keeping you from what you want the most.

Relational psychotherapy is an offshoot of psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy, both of which have a long and varied history going back to Sigmund Freud. As its basic premise, psychoanalysis assumes that people are often unaware of the factors that contribute to their mental and emotional state, and that uncovering these unconscious processes and assumptions leads to wellness. The way it is practiced today, there is a wide variety of approaches and styles in psychoanalysis (i.e. Freudian, Jungian, Object-Relations, Relational) that can look and feel quite different from the stereotype of the silent analyst saying only “Mmm Hmm” as the patient talks. Psychoanalysis is distinguished from psychoanalytic psychotherapy by both the frequency and setup of therapy. In psychoanalysis the patient usually comes in 2 – 5 times per week and often lays on a couch facing away from the therapist, whereas psychoanalytic psychotherapy incorporates the same theories and methodology of analysis without the same level of involvement. Psychoanalysts are required to undergo an additional educational training that often lasts for many years before being able to be called an analyst and perform analysis, whereas many therapists work from psychoanalytically-informed perspective and are well-trained in a psychoanalytic approach.

Relationships can be the most beautiful experience. They can also be difficult and bring tremendous conflict and pain. Poor communication, unspoken conflicts, past pain, old traumas, these get in the way. Close bonds are fractured when the foundations of trust are weakened. This often presents in avoidance or escalated fights. Relational work allows partners to start to resolve serious issues, restore trust, and get the relationship back to healthy connectivity.

I use relational psychodynamic therapy because I see the relationship we build together as the crucible of change: it acts as both a window into your interpersonal world, and also an arena in which you can try on new ways of being. We learn how to see ourselves and the world around in relationship, and this can become known and changed in relationship. In a non-judgmental, compassionate space, we contact and rework the dynamics that keep you feeling stuck, dissatisfied, and in pain.

I often work with clients from a relational perspective which means that I look at their patterns of relating to others, and how these patterns often originate from relationships earlier in life. Even though they begin early in life, they often continue throughout life, and they may cause problems in adulthood. Once people are aware of the interpersonal patterns they are engaging in during adulthood, we are able to start working on altering them if needed.

Relational therapy understands that our relationships with others can be at the core of our unhappiness or happiness, and that life can only be lived with others. And yet-- living with others can be hard! How do we bridge these two things? By understanding *your* role in a relationship, you can focus on where you have control and make your life and relationships better.

As a Marriage and Family Therapist I am always steering couples and individuals towards relational health. Moving towards relational health can be challenging. Often it requires stronger boundaries which upsets the dynamics families and couples are used to. However, the rewards of relational health are living a more purpose, authenticity, and joy.