Couples Therapy in New York & California

Every relationship is drastically different and should be treated as such in couple’s therapy. Understanding how a partnership is its namesake, but how it also consists of individuals with their own viewpoints and conflicts, is vital for healing the unit. The information below dives into the complexity of each couple and our approach towards your couples therapy journey in New York, NY and California.

  • Shanti: inner peace

  • Bhāvanā: mental insight

  • Karuṇā: guided healing

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Loving Couple

What Is Couples Therapy?

Couples therapy supports relationships experiencing conflict, disconnection, or repeating patterns that feel difficult to change. Challenges can surface for many reasons, including major life stressors, communication breakdowns, differences in family backgrounds, parenting concerns, unresolved resentment, or painful events such as infidelity. In some cases, conflict appears suddenly after a rupture; in others, it builds gradually over time through unmet needs and ineffective conflict repair—sometimes leading couples to consider separation or divorce counseling.

Every relationship is approached with care and individuality, because no couple’s story fits into a single, pre-set path. Couples who are married, engaged, dating, or navigating transitions all bring different histories, personalities, and communication styles into the work. Couples therapy focuses not only on the relationship dynamic, but also on each partner’s internal experience—attachment patterns, emotional triggers, learned behaviors, and the unspoken needs underneath conflict. Meaningful change becomes possible when both partners are willing to take ownership of their role in the cycle, strengthen emotional awareness, and practice new ways of relating that support trust, clarity, and connection.

Divorce Mediation

“Your task is not to seek for Love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it” (Rumi)

Remember, these are mere possibilities and can be interconnected or not involved at all.

  • Life stressors
  • Communication issues
  • Personality discrepancies
  • Intimacy issues
  • Financial issues

This list is not the end all be all and couple conflict can take many forms.

  • Arguments and conflict
  • Relationship and marriage crisis
  • Infidelity
  • Emotional distance/unmet needs
  • Lack of healthy communication strategies
  • Power struggles/Parenting conflicts

Healing is a complicated journey, not an impossible one. Opening your heart and mind to your own well-being will enlighten your path and reveal your destination.

Couples therapy focuses on understanding the patterns underneath conflict—not just resolving the argument in the moment. The goal is to help partners step out of blame, see the problem more clearly, and begin approaching it as a team. Through small, meaningful changes and a flexible approach, couples can build empathy, improve communication, and reconnect in ways that support long-term growth for both the relationship and each individual.

Our Therapeutic Approaches

Holistic & Transpersonal

To delve into your relationship conflicts effectively, a holistic and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is helpful. EFT looks at the whole person, their attachment styles in relationships (romantic and otherwise) and uses that transpersonal information to address unhealthy patterns of behavior, defense, and bonding.

The term holistic also applies to you as part of a unit, a family system. Your actions and behavioral decisions directly affect those of your partner and vice versa. By recognizing you and your partner’s established roles in this integrative behavioral therapy, it becomes easier to determine if they are healthy, empathetic, and productive in the functioning of your familial system.

‘You’-centric & Relational

Our insight-oriented approach allows your own interactions to guide your treatment path. Your therapist will use the information they’re given from your communicative style, past issues, and current raising of issues, to determine the most productive course of action.

Every approach is different, but sometimes a more structured and tangible therapy is required. Utilizing the Gottman Method, in which the core aspects of affection and mutual respect are promoted, helps guide you and your partner through small steps and goals, and towards a healthier existence. Love maps, dream sharing, and various other emotionally driven and spiritually directed techniques remain at the forefront of our therapeutic methods.

Mindfulness

By remaining in the present moment and acknowledging the current conflict at hand as existing outside of yourselves, a narrative can be brought forth. By separating the issue, this narrative allows you to recognize each other’s strengths that were previously drowned within the conflict itself.

This is not to say that the influence the past has on current conflict is not vital towards understanding the path towards healing. Empathizing with your partner’s problematic sources, and providing you with tools to see yours as well, will only serve to make your relationship stronger, especially when new conflict arises.

Your Counseling Experience

Every therapeutic experience is different, and each session can open new insights and directions in the healing process. The information below offers a general idea of what to expect when reaching out for services, with the goal of providing clarity, building confidence, and easing some of the uncertainty that can come with starting therapy.

  • 60-minute sessions generally, once a week
  • Short-term work can last between 3-6 months or whenever you feel you’ve reached the version of relationship you were seeking
  • Long-term work also lasts as long as you both need

Elements of Couples Therapy

  • What the couple wants to change, heal, or strengthen
  • How each partner communicates under stress
  • The patterns that keep repeating (and why they may be hard to break)
  • The type of support that feels most helpful—structured tools, deeper insight, or both

In the Meantime

Extensive research has found that these simplistic and mindful lifestyle changes have a drastic effect on daily life. Give them a shot if you need some immediate peace.

  • Meditation
  • Yoga
  • Reiki
  • Experiencing nature
  • Conscious, deep breathing
  • Maintain an active lifestyle
  • Healthy diet

FAQs About Couples Therapy

There’s always hope, even when issues are deep-seated and seem unconquerable. Generally, long-term fights remain as such because the same conversation is had every time. If you keep trying to use a hammer to screw something in and don’t ever break out the screwdriver, it seems likely the project will never get done.

Couples therapy can be whatever you need it to be. Oftentimes, however, communication is a major part of reestablishing healthy connections and strategies for conflict management. Maybe that is your mental roadblock that could end up being the starting point of your journey.

It depends on how you feel that one thing is managed. If it is a repeat offender in causing conflict in your relationship, there seems to be a barrier towards resolving it. There may even be other issues that you don’t realize cause distress, but stem from that one issue. That’s not always the case, but it seems important to delve into that issue if it’s causing havoc on an otherwise healthy communication style.

Couples counseling can provide you with future tools and strategies to tackle something unknown in the future. Seeking treatment, however, is a choice made between you and your partner about what’s best for the future of your relationship. It would never hurt to have an outside perspective on whether or not you are healthily addressing conflict for you both, and get some guidance for any potential, larger roadblocks.

Absolutely. There is no one size fits all, especially within our clinic where more naturalistic and holistic methods towards treatment are emphasized. We use our own insight gathered as therapists to address the issues you raise and the issues we can see from speaking with you both. Seeking treatment is nothing to be ashamed of and should be commended as an example of how much you care about each other and your relationship as a whole.