Therapy and Relationship Coaching

Counseling in California, Oregon, Connecticut, and Florida & Relationship Coaching Internationally

You just had another fight. The same arguments happen over and over; sometimes they are trivial and other times they are big, but it leaves you both feeling misunderstood…mistreated...lonely.  Your relationship isn’t terrible or on the brink of falling apart, per se, but you are not having nearly as much connection as you had hoped or would like, both emotionally and physically. 

Resentment builds as you try to be there for each other, but when one of you is stressed it stresses the other. It can feel like your partner doesn't get you or doesn't care…perhaps they just want to avoid things getting any worse. So you, or they, wait for the perfect moment to have the hard conversations…but that moment never happens. It all weighs very heavily on your hearts and you can each feel the heaviness in the air…in the space between you on the bed…and in your own and the other’s eyes and faces.

You are ready for a real change.

You both truly want this relationship to work. You can see having many adventures and life experiences together and it fills your heart with warmth and excitement thinking about building a life (and perhaps a family) together but reading a book or taking a weekend workshop on how to have a successful relationship isn’t going to cut it. What you want is help from someone who knows what they are doing—with eyes and ears wide open to help you examine and assess the good, the bad, and the ugly; someone who is not afraid to get in the fray as needed to help you and your partner sort things out and learn how to do things differently.  

My name is Phillip, and I Can Help.

I help couples who have grown beyond the honeymoon phase of falling in love,  but are struggling in spite of their love and care for each other to create a roadmap for how to find each other again after drifting apart or becoming divided and distant over significant differences.  

Through either couples counseling or relationship coaching you will learn how to have constructive conversations about not only difficult topics but also about important and under-explored topics that may have been hard to have in the past. From the first session, you will learn how to work together to really feel gotten by your partner. You will learn how to better understand and read each other by paying attention to not only what is expressed verbally but also by paying attention to the non-verbal expressions of voice tone, gesture, and posture, to name a few. You will learn to get the words as well as the music behind the words.

Together we will explore, identify, and begin to prioritize goals. Over time you will learn to not only identify the behaviors that are getting in the way goals but also develop the skills and capacities to reduce these restraining forces and explore and practice more functional alternatives.

I don’t just sit and nod my head— I am very active, engaging, and collaborate with you to figure out what really makes sense for your circumstances. There are no cookie cutter solutions here, because life is never that simple, but I do have a diverse range of tools and strategies at my disposal AND the intuition to help direct you to the right thing at the right time so you can get where you want to go.

In either of my roles as therapist or relationship coach, I strive to be an invested, experientially and theoretically informed facilitator and guide. I provide you with consistent and reliable structure that supports your unique learning and growing processes. The requirements of your role is to consistently show up and provide the courage and effort to try new things.

I have been helping people uncover what is stopping them from feeling the way they want to feel for over two decades. I provide therapy services in CA, OR, CT and FL and relationship coaching across the United States and internationally.

Contact me for a free counseling consultation

It takes courage to reach out and step into the unfamiliar, yet doing so opens a world of possibilities. It can feel like a big step to call a counselor, but I’ll make it easy. We’ll spend about 15-minutes on the phone or in a video call and I’ll let you know if or how I can help. If I am not the right person, I’ll do my best to get you to the right person. Whether you are in the midst of a crisis, or at a point in which you simply want to begin to take more charge of your life, your relationships, your family situation, I invite you to contact me for a free consultation to discuss if working together would be helpful.

Contact me at (415) 574-0796 or email me at phillip@developingcloseness.com to set up your free 15-minute phone consultation.

I offer individual, couples, and family therapy as well as relationship coaching.