Shelley is passionate in helping couples not just survive their marriage but thrive in their marriages.  She knows that with research based marriage therapy couples can experience renewed affection and respect for each other.  Her goal is for each couple to strive for oneness and not sameness and in their unity produce new intimacy and respect for each other.

Gottman Therapy will include:

• Embrace Conflict – “Run towards the Gun Fire”
• Build Love Maps
• Share Fondness and Admiration
• Work Better as a Team
• Create Shared Meaning
• Build Rituals of Connection
• Identify the Enemy of Marriage – Four Horseman
• Antidotes for the Four Horseman

Emotional Focus Therapy will include:

• Discovering the Intimacy of Attachment – “Are you there, are you with me?”
• Recognizing the Demon Dialogues
• Finding the Raw Spots of Your Partner
• Engaging and Connecting
• Forgiveness and Injuries
• Bonding Through Sex and Touch
• Keeping Your Love Alive
• Healing Traumatic Wounds – The Power of Love
• Ultimate Connection – Love as the Final Frontier

Shelley has a heart for working with trauma clients who are victims of abandonment, attachment disorders, and physical, mental and emotional abuse.  She works to develop a safe and healing environment where clients begin to heal, as they feel safe to tell their stories and are believed.    In the telling of their story, they begin to process through the emotions of their experience creating a scab over their open wound of trauma.  Helping clients developing a physical or mental “safe haven” to ground themselves is gratifying work.  Seeing client’s empowered to be angry and “fight back” to develop good boundaries to ensure their emotional, mental and physical safety is rewarding.

Shelley utilizes:

• Finger pulse oximeter to avoid “flooding” and its physical affects
• Relaxation techniques
• Emotional processing time line
• Reparative emotional connection
• Finding meaning from the trauma
• Anger wall
• Restoring emotional health through:

1. Art therapy
2. Music therapy
3. Self comforting

• Discovering how healthy friendships look and feel