In person in Wichita & online across Kansas
Therapy for Painful Relationships
EMDR, Somatic & CBT Treatment
Relationship Therapy in Wichita, KS
When relationships get complicated…
It starts to bleed over into other things too. You’re thinking about it while driving, while working and while lying awake in bed at night. Your social media somehow guesses and starts offering you advice videos. You feel generally more irritable or perhaps crying feels just under the surface all the time.
When the relationships that matter the most are hurting, your brain goes into overdrive trying to solve the problem. But sometimes, no matter how hard you work to fix it, it’s still messy.
I help individual adults facing challenges in family or in romantic relationships, so that it doesn’t stay as difficult as it feels today.
You can find your way again!
Difficult Family Relationships
Does something on this list sound familiar?
You’re considering going no-contact with someone or bewildered because of an estrangement
You feel torn between wanting family closeness and feeling suffocated by the reality
You sense diverging stances on worldviews, eldercare, raising children, or young adults
You’re struggling to blend multiple family systems via step-parenting or in-laws
Family relationships can be the best humans have to offer each other and they can also be a source of disorienting pain and confusion.
But what if you could shift the dynamic?
You don’t have to keep living in the same gridlock, repeating multi-generational patterns, or waiting for other people to change: you can change part of the story now.
Together we can look at what’s happening, identify places where a change could make a difference, figure out how you want to balance conflicting needs and taking care of yourself by mending painful experiences - so you can feel peace with how you’re moving forward in complex family relationships.
Complicated Romantic Relationships
When your relationship first began, it felt hopeful and new, like this was going to be your happy ever after. Now, though… conflict and tension are the norm, not laughter and hope.
Does some of this sound familiar?
You wonder how you keep picking people who are bad for you as you recover from yet another relationship that went south
You’re trying to figure out if this is just the normal kind of hard in a relationship, or something worse than normal
Conversations that should be simple instead become dramatic and chaotic - communication is somehow always difficult
The relationship feels lopsided and you can’t figure out how to balance it
Terms like abuse, codependent, narcissist, attachment style, or betrayal trauma are popping up in your social media algorithm, and they sound awful familiar
Whatever the struggle looks like right now, you don’t have to figure it out alone.
I provide individual therapy for adult men and women who need support while navigating or healing from a painful romantic relationship. Relationships are a place we feel broken, but relationships are also the place we heal - reach out today to start walking toward something different.
Therapy for Family & Romantic Relationships
In therapy for painful relationships, we’ll talk about your experience in this painful relationship, where it’s been and how you hope to shift the narrative in future. But as we do so, we’ll also focus on your brain and your body, noticing the point when thoughts start to swirl, the thing that makes your heart race, and catching right where your throat begins to tighten. Caring for your whole self can help shine a light on the way forward so you can feel less overwhelmed and more sure of the path forward.
Some of the specific treatments I like to use for painful relationships include:
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EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) can be particularly useful for where trauma has intersected with your relationships. If your history includes assault, violence, threats, betrayal or other trauma, EMDR can help release where those experiences are stuck and impacting you today.
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Somatic therapy also focuses on the brain+body experience. Human are good at talking themselves into all kinds of things, but as they say: “the body keeps the score”! Your body holds subtle wisdom and tremendous healing capacity so we’ll bring both the intuition of your body and of your brain into the room together. Bringing the body into therapy is a critical part of healing.
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Mindfulness is a form of CBT treatment that can help you step back from thoughts that want to spiral, slow your breath and reconnect your brain and body toward wholeness. From this more centered place, you can step forward in wisdom.
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If you’re interested in being a cycle-breaker after generations of difficult relationships, Bowen Family Systems Theory explores multi-generational patterns behind how families relate to each other so you can build relationships marked by both closeness and healthy boundaries, and so you can successfully move the needle on the patterns that keep popping up.
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