If you or your spouse or life partner are considering divorce or ending the relationship but are not completely sure that’s the best path, you are in a tough spot. And Discernment Counseling is designed for you. It’s a chance to slowdown, take a breath, and look at your options for your relationship.

Discernment Counseling is a way of helping couples where one person is “leaning out” of the relationship—and not sure that regular marriage counseling would help–and the other is “leaning in”—that is, interested in rebuilding the marriage.

The counselor will help you decide whether to try to restore your marriage to health, move toward divorce, or take a time out and decide later.

The goal is for you to gain clarity and confidence about a direction, based on a deeper understanding of your relationship and its possibilities for the future.

Session 1: $350/2 hours

Sessions 2-5: $262.50/90 minutes

Specializing in couple and family therapy for adults age 18+ in a family, including adult siblings, adult children and their parents, multigenerational adults and extended family members, close friendships, couples and polyamorous relationships.

The goal is to help couples and families better understand themselves and each other within the context of the relationship. Sessions may offer assistance in deepening relationships, handling conflict in a healthy way, discussing vulnerable subjects and emotions, and getting out of harmful negative cycles.

This type of therapy from my theoretical framework is to treat the family unit as a whole system, with the assumption that each member is contributing to the negative cycle and responsible for creating change. I will not identify a singular client as the patient or provide a diagnosis, therefore sessions are not eligible for coverage via insurance. If you prefer to have one person as the identified patient with a diagnosis and sessions focus solely on supporting that person’s diagnosis, relationship/family therapy with me would not be a good fit as it does not fit within the model in which I work.

Generally couple/family and therapist will meet weekly or bi-weekly. At times you may be asked to join the therapist in individual sessions. A therapists role is not necessarily to ensure that a relationship stays intact; it is to create a contained supportive space for all members of the relationship/family to learn and grow either into a healthier relationship together or into a healthier individual separate from the relationship. The outcome of whether you stay in the relationship or not is solely up to you and therapist will not make a recommendation for one or the other.

$175/50 minute session.

Individual Therapy sessions last for 50-ish minutes and consist of one on one time between you and the therapist. With collaboration you will decide what you want to spend your time on. The therapist is there to facilitate deeper thinking and help you build awareness of how your developmental experiences interact with how you see yourself and the world around you. Then you and the therapist will transition into challenging unhealthy patterns, recovering from trauma, and creating new ways of engaging with yourself, others, and the world in the present. Generally you and the therapist will meet weekly or bi-weekly.

$150/50 minute session.

LMSW professionals ready to pursue a clinical license are required to participate in regular clinical supervision for a specified time period and document the supervision details for submission to the state board for licensure approval. Each supervision session lasts for 60 minutes with the expectation that supervision will occur weekly. You will be expected to be responsible for bringing clinical details and questions, ethical questions, etc for discussion. The supervisor will provide feedback, recommendations, etc and it is up to you to bring that information back into your work for integration.

If you work for an employer that covers the cost of some or all of supervision, we will work together to coordinate the details of how that will work. The supervisor is required to evaluate the supervisee’s learning, growth, performance, and adherence to clinical and ethical standards. The supervisor will support the supervisee in this growth and discuss any concerns in real time. If concerns become ongoing and do not improve, the supervisor is not required to “pass” the supervisee or to provide a recommendation that the supervisee be allowed to be fully licensed. The supervisor is as much a protector of the field of social work and the quality of ethical care clients receive as they are a supporter of the supervisee and must hold both roles in equal importance.

$100/60 minute weekly session.