Couples Therapy
Echo Park, Los Angeles · and online across California
You are looking at the same thing and seeing something different. Neither of you is wrong.
Maybe you're stuck in a painful cycle, unable to stop fighting about the same old things. Maybe you still love each other, but being together hurts. Maybe you're recovering from a betrayal. You might be wondering if change is possible or if you have to walk away.
You don't have to be in crisis to come. Most couples wait until they're exhausted. Earlier is better, and earlier is easier.
To Love is not Enough
You may feel deep love for each other, but no two people speak the same language, even when they share the words. Each of us carries a private dictionary written in childhood, edited by every experience since.
This is where Imago therapy’s premise is useful: we're drawn, again and again, to partners who echo our earliest wounds, because some part of us is still trying to finish an old story with someone new.
The work is learning to read each other's dictionary. To translate instead of assume.
We look at the attachment injuries you each carry and the definitions the world handed you about what a couple is supposed to be, and you decide together which of it you keep.
Two people don't have to disappear into one unit to belong to each other. You build a culture of your own, on purpose, with room in it for each of you to become who you're capable of being.
Learning to hold yourself is
what makes it possible to hold each other.
You've probably already talked about it. Named the pattern and promised to do it differently. And then it happens again anyway. That's not a failure of understanding. The reaction moves faster than the understanding does — it lives in the body, and it was there long before this relationship. So we start there, at that nanosecond before you do your usual thing and learn how to choose something else. It’s a moment-to-moment practice.
Investment
Couples sessions are $200 each, or $1050 for a 6-session package. I'm also in-network with Aetna, so if you have Aetna coverage, your sessions may be partially or fully covered after your deductible.
Your Questions, Answered
-
Yes. Reluctance is normal, and it's often the more hesitant partner who ends up finding the work most useful. You can begin with one honest conversation about what's not working — no one is asked to commit to more than the next session.
-
No. I'm on the side of the relationship, which means making sure you both feel heard — especially in the places where you've stopped hearing each other. You'll each get room to say the thing you haven't found a way to say yet.
-
Usually not, though I'll always be honest with you about what I see. Couples come in at every stage — early cracks, long-standing distance, even one foot out the door. What matters more than how bad it's gotten is whether there's still some willingness, in both of you, to try.
-
Often the missing piece is a framework that gets underneath the surface fights to what they're actually about. I bring a variety of therapeutic approaches into the room and leave you with tools you can use when I'm not in the room. I assign homework and expect that it be completed by both partners each week.
-
Yes, and it's some of the most valuable work a couple can do — building the skills and shared understanding before the hard seasons arrive, instead of during them. We can focus on whatever feels most alive for you: money, family, intimacy, expectations, the future you're each picturing.
-
Couples sessions are $200 each, or $1050 for a 6-session package. I'm also in-network with Aetna, so if you have Aetna coverage, your sessions may be partially or fully covered after your deductible.
-
A free 20-minute consultation, with both of you or each of you separately. It's a low-pressure way to ask questions and see whether I'm the right fit.
Are you a clinician with a full practice? I have openings!
I’m an EMDR trained, registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist,
Echo Park + statewide, $175–$200; email me.