Relationship Therapist · Chicago
Your relationships shape everything. Therapy can help you show up in them differently.
Relationship difficulties are one of the most common reasons people come to therapy in Chicago, and one of the most meaningful areas to address. The way we show up in our relationships — with romantic partners, family members, friends, and ourselves — affects nearly every dimension of our wellbeing.
I offer virtual relationship issues therapy to teens and adults in Chicago, Illinois. My approach is warm, direct, and grounded in the understanding that relationship difficulties are rarely about surface-level conflict.
The patterns causing the most pain were usually developed for a very good reason
They are almost always adaptive responses to early experiences — ways of connecting, protecting yourself, or maintaining closeness that made sense given your history. The problem is not that you developed these patterns. The problem is that they have outlived their usefulness, and now they are creating the very disconnection you were originally trying to avoid.
Using an attachment-based lens, we explore how your early experiences — including how consistently you felt supported, seen, and safe with the people who raised you — shaped your current relationship templates. Fear of rejection, difficulty trusting, emotional withdrawal, people-pleasing, and the push-pull dynamic of anxious attachment all typically trace back to these early experiences.
This is not about blaming parents or reliving the past for its own sake. It is about understanding the operating system that is running beneath your relationships so you can update it.
Relationship issues therapy may be helpful if you are experiencing any of the following
You do not need to be in a crisis in your relationship to benefit. Many people come to relationship therapy when they notice recurring patterns — not when things have fully broken down.
Ongoing Conflict
Ongoing conflict with a romantic partner, family member, or friend that leaves you consistently drained, misunderstood, or without hope of resolution.
Difficulty Communicating Needs
Difficulty communicating your needs, feelings, or limits without shutting down, escalating into conflict, or feeling guilty afterward for asking.
Repeating Painful Patterns
A pattern of relationships that seem to follow the same painful script regardless of who the other person is.
Fear of Intimacy or Rejection
Fear of intimacy, vulnerability, or rejection that is standing between you and the connections you actually want.
People-Pleasing
People-pleasing tendencies that leave you exhausted and quietly resentful, never quite knowing who you are outside of what others need from you.
Family Dynamics
Difficulty navigating family relationships, including parental expectations, adult-parent dynamics, sibling conflict, or feeling perpetually unseen by the people who raised you.
Friendship Struggles
Friendship struggles, including difficulty making or keeping close friends, setting healthy limits, or recovering from a significant friendship rupture.
Dating Challenges
Dating challenges such as anxiety around vulnerability, fear of rejection, difficulty trusting, or noticing the same unhealthy patterns showing up in new relationships.
Relationship Loss
Processing a significant relationship loss, including a breakup, divorce, or the end of a close friendship, that has left you confused, stuck, or uncertain about your future.
Real skills, not just insight
Relationship therapy is not just about gaining insight. It is about building new skills, practicing them in real interactions, and coming back to session to process what happened and adjust.
| Area | What the Work Looks Like |
|---|---|
| Communication skills | Learning to express needs, set limits, and navigate difficult conversations without shutting down, avoiding, or escalating into conflict that damages the relationship. |
| Attachment patterns | Understanding whether you tend toward anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment and building more secure, grounded connection over time through insight and new experience. |
| Trust and vulnerability | Exploring where difficulty trusting others comes from and gradually building the capacity to take authentic risks in relationships again without being reckless. |
| People-pleasing | Identifying the deeply learned pattern of prioritizing everyone else at your own expense and developing a more honest, balanced, and boundaried way of relating. |
| Self-worth and confidence | Addressing the negative self-beliefs that color how you show up in relationships, including the persistent sense of not being enough or not being worthy of real connection. |
| Conflict and repair | Learning how to move through disagreement without it destroying the relationship and how to repair ruptures in a way that actually strengthens trust over time. |
| Family dynamics | Processing adult-parent relationships, navigating changing family roles, and finding more honest and sustainable ways to relate to family members. |
| Self-relationship | The relationship you have with yourself is the foundation. Addressing self-criticism, self-doubt, and negative self-talk directly so that it changes how you relate to others. |
Warmth and directness in equal measure
At the core of our work is a trusting therapeutic relationship where you can feel genuinely safe exploring what is actually happening beneath the surface of your relationship struggles. I will never make you feel judged for the patterns you have developed, because those patterns developed for a reason. My job is to help you understand that reason and then help you build something different.
I draw on several frameworks depending on what each person needs. Compassion Focused Therapy helps soften the self-criticism and shame that often accompany relationship difficulties. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps challenge the specific thought patterns creating friction. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps clients reconnect with their values in relationships and take action toward the kind of connection they actually want.
Progress is visible, and it happens in the space between sessions as much as inside them.
Relationship therapy questions, answered
Why do I keep ending up in the same kinds of relationships?
This is one of the most common and most important questions in relationship therapy, and it is one I work on specifically with clients in my Chicago-area virtual practice. The patterns that repeat across relationships almost always have roots that go deeper than the individual people involved. Early attachment experiences shape what we expect from relationships, what we believe we deserve, how we interpret ambiguous signals from others, and what strategies we unconsciously use to protect ourselves from pain. If closeness felt dangerous early on, you may find yourself pulling away just as things get intimate. If love felt conditional, you may find yourself performing and people-pleasing in every relationship you enter. In relationship therapy, we work to identify those patterns, understand where they came from with genuine compassion rather than self-blame, and gradually replace them with responses that are more conscious and more aligned with what you actually want.
Can I benefit from relationship therapy without my partner?
Absolutely. Individual relationship therapy can be extraordinarily valuable, and in many cases the shifts that happen when one person does the internal work ripple outward into the relationship in meaningful ways. We focus entirely on your experience, your patterns, and your growth. You develop clearer insight into what you bring to your relationships, stronger communication and coping skills, and a better understanding of what you actually want and need from connection. Many clients who come to relationship therapy in Chicago without a partner find that the work changes their relationships more than they expected, even with no one else in the room.
How does early childhood experience affect my adult relationships?
Our earliest relationships with caregivers become internal templates for what relationships feel like, what we can expect from others, and whether depending on someone is safe. A child who grew up feeling consistently supported and attuned to develops what is called secure attachment, which tends to translate into more trusting, confident adult relationships. A child who grew up with inconsistent, unavailable, or frightening caregiving often develops anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment patterns that show up in adult relationships as difficulty trusting, fear of abandonment, emotional withdrawal, or a confusing push and pull dynamic. In therapy, we identify your attachment patterns and build new skills that support more secure connection over time.
I struggle more with my relationship with myself. Is this still the right fit?
Yes, and that is actually one of the most valuable starting points in relationship therapy. How we relate to ourselves is the foundation for how we relate to everyone else. If your internal relationship is characterized by harsh self-criticism, persistent negative self-talk, or the belief that you are fundamentally not enough, those patterns show up in your relationships with others whether you intend them to or not. Compassion Focused Therapy and the other approaches I use work directly on building a kinder, more grounded relationship with yourself. That internal shift tends to change how you show up externally as well.
What if the problem is my family, not me?
Sometimes the most honest answer is that a relationship is genuinely difficult, not because of your patterns or history but because of how the other person shows up. Relationship therapy does not require you to take responsibility for things that are not yours. What therapy can offer in those situations is support in understanding your options, building the tools to navigate the relationship in a way that protects your wellbeing, and making decisions about how much energy to invest and where to draw the line. Working with a relationship therapist in Chicago means having a space that is genuinely on your side.
Where do you offer relationship therapy sessions?
All sessions are conducted virtually. I offer online relationship therapy to clients in Chicago and throughout Illinois. Virtual sessions take place through a secure, HIPAA-compliant platform and can be attended from your home, your car, or any private space that works for your schedule.
Your relationships can feel different. Let's work on it together.
Virtual relationship therapy for teens and adults throughout Chicago and Illinois. A free 20-minute consultation is a low-stakes way to see if we're the right fit.