Individual Therapy

Life has a funny way of being wonderful and awful, all at the same time. If yours is weighted a little too heavily towards the awful side of things right now, I can help. I support individuals managing depression, anxiety, and more, using Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) and other strategies. I help clients connect to joy and balance again. I am LGBTQ+-affirming, sex-positive, and kink-aware.

Relationship Therapy

Relationships can both fulfill us and challenge us more than we even knew was possible. You don’t have to manage them alone. I provide marriage and couples counseling for straight and LGBTQ+ relationships, both monogamous and nonmonogamous, using Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT). I offer premarital counseling and can support partners recovering from infidelity. We’ll work together to help you learn how to better relate to one another and build a more secure connection.

Let’s Talk About Attachment

Read through the statements below. Do any of them resonate with you?

—————

I like to be close but only so close—I need plenty of space.

I have trouble committing in relationships.

I hate feeling controlled.

When I fight with my partner, I’m the one who shuts down and doesn’t talk. Sometimes I just get up and walk away.

—————

I want more connection than my partner does.

I need someone else to help me make sense of what I’m feeling.

I have trouble believing it when my partner tries to reassure me or show me love and desire.

When I fight with my partner, I want to fix things right now. It feels awful to wait to talk about it. It makes me panicky if they turn away or ask for space to think before we discuss the conflict.

—————

Relationships aren’t safe.

Sometimes it seems like I get triggered out of nowhere.

I want closeness but it scares me when I get it.

When I fight with my partner, I go back and forth between shutting down and lashing out.

—————

Do any of those statements sound like something you’d say about yourself? If so, you might have developed an insecure attachment style growing up that is making it hard for you to connect with others as an adult.

What’s the difference between secure and insecure attachment? Securely attached adults have a healthy sense of themselves and of other people. They tend to view people they care about in a positive light. They have strong self-esteem and feel competent. Insecurely attached adults experienced the world as an unsafe place and don’t believe that friends, partners, and family can meet their needs. They tend to have more difficulty establishing and maintaining relationships, and they’re more susceptible to depression, anxiety, and other mental health struggles.

Insecure attachment can make it hard to trust yourself and people around you—even people you care deeply about. If you’d like to experience the world differently, I can help. Attachment styles are not set in stone. They were learned, and like any learned behavior, they can be unlearned and restructured. Developing more secure attachment strategies as an adult is possible. Let’s work together to help you find more safety in the world and your relationships so you can start saying things like:

I’m comfortable being close with others—I enjoy it—but I don’t mind being alone either.

I’m dependable and I’m ok depending on other people sometimes.

I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about my partner leaving me, even when we fight.

If I’m upset, I can turn to the people who love me for support.

I know my partner’s not perfect, and that’s okay with me.

I can take ownership of my mistakes in my relationships and apologize for them.

Reach out to me using the Connect with Christopher link at the top of the page to learn more.

About Oak & Cypress Counseling

The name Oak & Cypress refers to a line in one of my favorite poems: Kahlil Gibran’s “On Marriage” from his book The Prophet. An excerpt:

Sing and dance together and be joyous,

but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone

though they quiver with the same music.

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow

not in each other’s shadow.

This section of the book profoundly affected me when I first read it years ago. Like so many of us, I grew up with the notion that love comes in the form of a rescuer who is ready to solve all our problems and complete us. Finding this poem was the first time I encountered an alternative view. This description of healthy and boundaried adult connection, in which partners maintain their own identity and are part of a greater whole, changed the way I viewed love. Today, I work with my clients to help them cultivate the same type of balanced, mature love in their own lives. You can find the entirety of the poem here and you’re likely to find a copy of the book in your local used bookstore.