Couples Therapy

“To be in a supportive and understanding relationship is to have a partner in navigating the storms of life.”

— Dr. Sue Johnson

Do you long for the days when everything seemed easier in your relationship? It’s normal to experience disconnection, frustration, or dissatisfaction at times. Having a safe space to explore and address old hurts can help you and your partner regain closeness and understanding.

Understanding Relationship Challenges

Relationships are fundamental to a healthy life, yet they often come with challenges. You might struggle with compromise, unresolved past wounds, poor communication, or differing intimacy levels. These issues can lead to repeated arguments, feelings of isolation, or mixed signals, making it seem like your relationship is stuck in a cycle of frustration.

The Role of Couples Therapy

Couples therapy is a vital tool for improving communication and connection. It helps partners understand each other’s attachment styles and emotional responses, especially during major life transitions like marriage, career changes, or having children. Therapy can help manage key emotional responses, create emotional balance, and enhance feelings of competence and responsive engagement in your relationship.

At HST, our therapists provide Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples to support partenrs in: 

  • Understanding their attachment needs

  • Identifying their emotional patterns

  • Learning how to express their vulnerabilities in ways they can be heard

  • Breaking negative cycles that lead to repeated emotional ruptures and pain

  • Learning the skills to enhance communication to establish emotional safety  

  • Addressing past wounds, repairing ruptures, and rebuilding trust in one another

  •  Developing new interaction and communication to foster emotional responsiveness to one another. 

How Trauma and Complex PTSD affect relationships

Trauma and complex trauma can profoundly impact a relationship, affecting emotional connection, communication, and overall relationship health. Trauma often creates emotional barriers, leading to feelings of isolation and detachment that make it challenging for partners to connect and nurture intimacy. Communication can become strained due to heightened sensitivity and reactivity, resulting in misunderstandings, defensive reactions, and conflicts that are difficult to resolve. Trust issues may arise as past trauma undermines faith in a partner's reliability and commitment, putting strain on the relationship and making it hard to build a secure bond. Increased emotional reactivity can lead to more frequent arguments and tension, with past issues potentially being projected onto current situations.

Trauma also affects attachment styles, making it difficult to maintain closeness and stability. Intimacy may suffer, with individuals experiencing a reduced desire for physical closeness or struggling to fully engage in intimate interactions. Emotional regulation issues can cause mood swings and irritability, impacting how partners respond to each other's needs.

Additionally, trauma can lead to low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy, which affect interactions and contributions to the relationship. Unresolved trauma and unhealthy relational patterns can complicate current dynamics.

Addressing these issues requires a supportive, trauma-informed environment where both partners can work through their challenges with a compassionate understanding of each other's triggered traumas.

Here at Holding Space Therapy,

We use the framework of Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT) while incorporating our expertise in treating complex trauma and dissociation. We understand the interconnectedness between individual trauma and challenges in romantic relationships. Our goal is to help you and your partner identify how current relational issues are influenced by past wounds, then teach you how to break cycles of disconnection, and eventually develop healthier, more responsive interactions with one another.

Meet Our Couples Therapists