Founder of Dialogue Therapy for Couples & Executive Director of the Center for Real Dialogue

DIALOGUE therapy for Couples.

Fostering trust, intimacy, forgiveness, and happiness.

New love can feel like a cotton candy meadow filled with wild flowers—sweet and playful with endless possibilities swaying gently in the breeze. As the relationship unfolds, you grow into and out of each other. Conflicts do arise. How you engage with each other is critical to maintaining trust, intimacy, forgiveness, and happiness.

Your family of origin stories—the foundational chapters that form the basis of how you engage and attach to others as adults—are key to understanding how you and your loved one engage with each other in the present.

Some may call it “personal baggage.” I like to call it “life chapters” because your earlier experiences are not something to denigrate or discard but rather to learn from and adapt.

You and your partner’s foundational chapters may include an attentive parent who provided you with a warm and loving bond. Or you might have had an insensitive caregiver. Or you might have had an inconsistent childrearing. These early experiences color how you engage with and attach to others. We cannot change the past, but we can adapt and grow in the present—creating stronger bonds built on respect, trust, and feelings of safety.

No matter your life chapters and coupling story, I am here to support you in your desire to improve your relationship, reestablish intimacy, seek and offer forgiveness, and adjust to role changes.

DIALOGUE THERAPY FOR COUPLES.

I am a formally trained and certified Couples Dialogue Therapist through the Center for Dialogue Therapy by Polly Young-Eisendrath, Jungian analyst and Zen Buddhist.

Originally developed in the 1980s, this evidence-based approach arises from the traditions of psychoanalysis, mindfulness, and psychodrama.

Dialogue Therapy seeks to identify and reduce a couple’s emotional entanglement, decrease active and passive aggression, and discover each other’s unconscious desires and needs.

Dialogue Therapy helps couples learn how to negotiate conflict through understanding of the Self and the Other. We examine emotional response patterns developed in your family of origin and how they can arise when you feel threatened, misunderstood, or in crisis.

These conflicts can evoke feelings of mistrust and uncertainty about whether one’s partner truly understands and supports them. Engaging in Dialogue Therapy can serve as a catalyst for growth and renewal within the relationship. By openly addressing and exploring conflicts together, couples have the opportunity to deepen their intimacy, gain insight into their own behaviors and triggers, and develop mindfulness skills to navigate conflicts more effectively. Through this process, couples may not only strengthen their bond but also gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their partner, ultimately fostering greater resilience and harmony in their relationship.

Relational Connections.

One of the more profound elements of Dialogue Therapy is the differentiation of relational connections:

1. Impersonal familiarity occurs between people who engage with one another through loving-kindness, in Buddhist teachings “metta.” I like to imagine it as the act of recognizing each other’s humanity and sharing an invisible embrace for our human condition, which includes both suffering and happiness. While we feel a loving-kindness towards people in this sphere of relational engagement, the relationships are non-confrontational.

2. Personal familiarity demands a level of commitment and acceptance and enables us to engage with others in loving, meaningful ways. But it is not without discomfort at times. We cannot help but compare ourselves to those we know personally. We can appreciate and even celebrate our differences while also growing weary or irritated by one’s demands.

In our couples therapy, we focus on your personal familiarity between you — looking at how you found each other, grew with and without each other, and how you can discover new things about your partner monthly, weekly, even daily with mindful curiosity and compassion. Mindfulness is at the heart of this practice, paying close attention to emotional expression, tone, volume, and physicality.

Through our work together, you learn skills that help you speak for yourself using “I” statements, listen with heart, and view your loved one with curiosity.

My Clients.

I welcome and work with individuals representing today’s couples: hetero, LGBTQ+, Black, Hispanic, LatinX, white, Asian-American, American Indian, bi-racial, intergenerational. You will find a safe space to explore your relationship free of judgment and accepting of your life journeys individually and together.

You, as a couple not as individuals, are my client. Many of my clients have shared their appreciation of my ability to not “take sides” in even the most delicate of relational conflicts and crises.

Issues for Therapy.

Parenting, attachment, communication, infidelity and betrayals, gender roles, illness and caregiving, transgender decisions, in-laws, gay/lesbian/queer, work/life balance, miscarriage/abortion/infertility, death and dying, and retirement, among others.

Contraindications.

Polyamory: While I support polyamorous relationship choices, the type of couples therapy I provide is contraindicated for poly relationships. I am happy to work with clients individually or provide a referral to a couples therapist.

Divorce: While I encourage and support couples seeking counseling during divorce, the type of couples therapy I provide is contraindicated for couples working through a divorce. Dialogue Therapy requires a commitment from both parties to work on improving and stabilizing the relationship. If after the end of the work, divorce or separation arises as the ultimate solution, I will provide a referral to a divorce counselor upon request.

Substance Abuse: I am not a substance abuse counselor. It is a highly specialized field that requires training and certification. The type of couples therapy I provide is contraindicated for couples in which one partner is abusing substances. I am happy to provide referrals to therapists who are Certified Substance Abuse Counselors.

How many sessions?

Dialogue Therapy is a time-limited couple therapy that facilitates insight and skills in the partners themselves so that they don’t come to depend on the therapist to negotiate their difficulties. Couple therapy is notorious for failing because partners depend too much on the therapist, and do not use new skills and insights on their own.

Dialogue Therapy was designed especially for couples to become experts on their own relationships and take that expertise home with them—without the need to return indefinitely for a marriage counselor to play referee when conflicts arise.

Dialogue Therapy with Lisa.

• Consists of twelve to seventeen 60-minute sessions.

• The Evaluation process takes place on a weekly basis until it is complete, and then couples come 2-4 times a month until the Dialogue Therapy process is completed. There is a six-month-follow-up that serves as an end to the therapy. A three-month-follow-up is available on an as-needed-basis.

Description of Sessions.

• Evaluation of the Couple: First 4 -6 Meetings

• Working on a Conflict: 5 Meetings

• Testing Your Empathy for Partner: 2 Meetings

• Practicing and Refining Skills: 2 Meetings

• Refining Dialogue Skills: 2 Meetings (On an as needed basis.)

• Six-month Follow-Up

Each session is a 60-minutes at $200/hour. Payment is expected at the time of therapy.