In our work together, we slow things down enough to understand what’s really happening beneath the surface. Using Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) alongside trauma-informed approaches, we identify the negative cycles keeping you stuck and help you rebuild emotional safety, trust, and connection. You’ll learn how to recognize your patterns, communicate in ways that actually land, and respond to each other from a place of security rather than stress.

This is thoughtful, structured work, designed for couples who are capable and motivated, yet tired of doing this alone.

Many couples find they feel closer, more understood, and better equipped to navigate conflict, intimacy, and the pressures of dual careers, not by working harder at their relationship, but by creating a new relationship feels steady and supportive.

EFT is a research-based, attachment-centered therapy created by Dr. Sue Johnson. Grounded in attachment science, EFT teaches us that our emotional bonds shape how we experience love, safety, and trust. When those bonds feel threatened or broken, we often fall into protective cycles that deepen pain and disconnection.

EFT helps individuals and couples identify and shift emotional patterns that keep them stuck, whether that’s in relationships, cycles of anxiety, or self-doubt.

As a Certified EFT Therapist specializing in both:

• Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT)
• Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT)

Together, we uncover what’s beneath the struggles and create new emotional experiences that rebuild safety, strengthen your bond, and support lasting change.

EFT is not about blaming or quick fixes. It moves beneath the surface to uncover raw emotions, fears, and unmet needs driving reactive patterns. The therapy follows a structured, experiential process through three phases:

1. De-escalation: Identify the negative cycle (e.g., pursuit-withdrawal, conflict-avoidance, criticism-defensiveness), understand the emotions beneath it, and feel less blame and more understanding.

2. Restructuring: Share vulnerable emotions in new ways that help your partner feel closer and allow you to feel truly connected again.

3. Consolidation: Solidify new patterns of connection, emotional safety, and responsiveness for lasting change.

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy helps you:

Tune into vulnerable emotions and express them in ways that build connection instead of triggering fear or defensiveness

Rebuild safety, trust, and secure attachment, with your partner and within yourself

Create emotional experiences that promote healing, compassion, and deeper bonds

EFT for Couples is especially effective for:

• Repeated arguments and emotional distance
• Fear of abandonment, rejection, or intimacy
• Healing from betrayal, infidelity, or ruptures in trust
• Communication breakdown and relationship gridlock
• Anxious-avoidant or fearful-avoidant dynamics, especially in high-achieving couples
• Restoring emotional closeness and rebuilding connection

EFT for Individuals (EFIT) supports:

• Anxiety, depression, or emotional overwhelm
• Feeling disconnected, misunderstood, or unseen
• Patterns of people-pleasing, avoidance, or self-sabotage
• Low self-worth, shame, or difficulty expressing needs
• Healing childhood wounds and attachment injuries
• Developing secure internal connection and emotional resilience

EFT boasts one of the highest success rates of any couples therapy—70–75% of couples move from distress to recovery, and 90% see significant improvement.

Attachment theory offers a clear roadmap to understanding how early experiences shape your emotional regulation, sense of self, and ways of connecting with others. Negative emotions and coping strategies often trap us in painful, self-perpetuating cycles. Emotional isolation is a core risk factor for many mental health issues.

Emotionally Focused Therapy provides a safe haven and secure base in therapy, a place where you can face your most difficult emotions without fear, supported by a therapist attuned to your needs. This safety naturally calms your nervous system and opens the door to healing and growth.

In Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy, this healing extends inward, helping you comfort and validate vulnerable parts of yourself and reframe painful attachment wounds through imaginative encounters with key figures or aspects of self.

The true power of EFT lies in how it engages emotional experience itself, the “emotional charge” that shapes our perceptions, meanings, and behaviors. By safely evoking, ordering, and reshaping these emotions, EFT facilitates profound personal transformation.

Rather than focusing on solving problems superficially, EFT explores the processes that keep you stuck, helping you reassemble your emotional reality into one that feels coherent, manageable, and hopeful.

The goal is to create secure attachment bonds that reduce depression, anxiety, and relational distress, while building resilience and inner strength.

Do you work with dual-career couples in Orange County?

Yes. I specialize in working with high-achieving, dual-career couples navigating the strain of demanding careers, parenting, and emotional disconnection.

What if one of us tends to withdraw during conflict?

That’s common. Using Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), we slow down negative cycles and help both partners feel more secure and understood.

Is couples therapy only for marriages in crisis?

No. Many couples come before things feel unmanageable. Therapy can strengthen connection, improve communication, and prevent long-term resentment.

Do you see couples in person in Costa Mesa?

Yes, I offer in-person couples therapy in Costa Mesa as well as virtual sessions.

The goal is to create secure attachment bonds that reduce depression, anxiety, and relational distress, while building resilience and inner strength.

As a Certified EFT Therapist, I’ve helped many individuals and couples move from feeling stuck, disconnected, or overwhelmed, to feeling grounded, seen, and deeply connected.

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  Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) for relationships in distress
• Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) for attachment healing
• Support for anxious-avoidant dynamics in high-achieving professionals and couples
• Online EFT sessions across California and Arizona
• In-person therapy in Costa Mesa, Orange County, CA