Couples & family therapy · Coastal Wellness

For families, conflict, changing roles, parenting challenges, loss, or major transitions can affect everyone differently.

At Coastal Wellness, we use evidence-based and research-supported approaches to couples and family therapy to help you understand the patterns underneath what’s happening and begin changing the way you communicate, respond, and connect.

Couples Therapy

You don’t have to wait until your relationship is in crisis to come to couples therapy.

Some couples want to feel close again. Others are struggling with conflict, trust, intimacy, parenting, or a significant change in their relationship. And sometimes couples come to therapy because they aren’t sure what comes next.

Couples therapy can help with:

Communication and recurring conflict
Emotional distance and disconnection
Trust and rebuilding after betrayal
Infidelity
Intimacy and affection
Parenting disagreements
Differences around finances, family, responsibilities, or priorities
Major life changes and transitions
Premarital concerns and relationship preparation
Separation, discernment, or uncertainty about the future

Evidence-Based Couples Therapy

Our therapists draw from established, research-supported approaches based on the needs and goals of each couple.

The Gottman Method helps couples recognize patterns that interfere with connection while strengthening communication, friendship, intimacy, and the ability to navigate conflict.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) helps couples understand the emotions and attachment needs underneath recurring conflict or distance, and begin changing the patterns that keep them disconnected.

Therapists may integrate additional approaches and skills when appropriate.

Family Therapy

Families can get caught in patterns that are difficult to change from inside the relationship.

Parents and children may feel like they’re constantly at odds. Communication may become tense, arguments may escalate quickly, or family members may begin withdrawing from one another.

Sometimes the difficulty isn’t conflict at all. A family may be adjusting to divorce, remarriage, a blended family, grief, a move, changes in a child’s behavior, or another transition that affects everyone.

Family therapy can help with:

Parent-child and parent-teen relationships
Communication and conflict
Blended families and stepparent relationships
Divorce, separation, and changes in family structure
Grief and loss
Major life transitions
Behavioral or emotional concerns affecting the family
Differences in parenting approaches
Boundaries and expectations
Rebuilding connection after conflict or distance

Evidence-Based and Research-Supported Family Therapy

Our therapists use approaches that look at both the needs of individual family members and the relationships between them. The approach used will depend on your family’s concerns, relationships, ages, and goals for therapy.

Structural Family Therapy looks at patterns, roles, boundaries, and relationships within a family and helps families make changes when those patterns are contributing to conflict or disconnection.

Bowen Family Systems Therapy explores how relationship patterns, emotional responses, and family dynamics can develop and repeat over time. It can help family members better understand their own responses and relate to one another differently.

Cognitive Behavioral Family Therapy (CBFT) combines family work with cognitive and behavioral strategies to address patterns of thinking, communication, problem-solving, and behavior that may be contributing to difficulties within the family.

Attachment-based approaches focus on strengthening emotional connection, safety, trust, and responsiveness within important family relationships.

Therapists may also incorporate Gottman-informed strategies, particularly when working with parents or coparents around communication, conflict, and maintaining their relationship while navigating the demands of family life.

Who Participates in Family Therapy?

Family therapy doesn’t necessarily mean everyone attends every session.

Therapy may include the entire family, certain family members, parents or caregivers, or different combinations of people depending on what is being addressed.

When children or adolescents are involved, parents and caregivers may participate when appropriate based on the child’s age, needs, circumstances, and goals for therapy.

The goal isn’t to decide who is right or wrong, or to identify one person as the problem. It’s to understand what’s happening within the family and help create patterns that work better for the people in it.

The Right Therapist Matters

Couples and family therapy asks you to talk about some of the most important relationships in your life. Feeling comfortable with the therapist you’re working with matters.

Our team brings different training, experience, and approaches to this work. We’ll help you connect with a therapist whose experience and style fit what brings you to therapy.

The relationships that matter most can also be the most complicated.