Consultation is a place to slow down and look underneath the presenting problem.

Together, we might explore:

• How the couple's relational system is organized beneath the conflict

• When one partner has inadvertently become the "identified patient"

• Pursue/withdraw dynamics and the ways our interventions can unintentionally reinforce them

• Differentiation, enmeshment, and the tension between autonomy and connection

• Sexual desire discrepancies, sexual avoidance, and patterns of pursuit and pressure

• How to work with couples when both partners have legitimate—and conflicting—perspectives

• When empathy and validation are helpful, and when they begin to reinforce the very pattern you're trying to change

• How your own reactions to each partner are shaping the therapy

• Countertransference, therapist alignment, and getting pulled into the couple's dynamic

• Knowing when to regulate, when to challenge, and when to get out of the way

• Moving from "What intervention should I use?" to "What is actually happening here?"

This is not about collecting more techniques.

There is always another intervention to learn.

But becoming a better couples therapist requires something more than a bigger toolbox.

It requires developing the ability to hold multiple perspectives at once, tolerate complexity, recognize your own participation in the system, and understand what a couple's interaction is communicating beneath the content of their conflict.

My approach to consultation is collaborative, curious, and direct. I won't simply tell you what to do with your clients. We'll work together to understand the case well enough that you can make your own clinical decisions with greater clarity.

Sometimes that means finding an intervention.

Sometimes it means recognizing that the intervention isn't the problem.

And sometimes it means taking a closer look at what you, the therapist, are bringing into the room.