Couples Therapy in Wexford & Online
A connection-focused, somatic approach
Couples therapy offers a space to pause the same argument, the same shutdown, or the same distance you keep getting pulled into. Rather than deciding who is right, the work is about understanding what is happening between you and creating more room for connection, clarity, and choice.
This may be especially helpful for LGBTQ+ couples, couples navigating neurodivergent difference, or relationships carrying the impact of trauma.
A brief first conversation to see whether this feels like a fit.
This approach centres on the felt sense of connection: the embodied experience of mutual safety, attunement, and aliveness with your partner. It is something you feel before you can explain it:
Your nervous system can settle around each other
Feeling seen, heard, and attended to
Being able to show vulnerable parts of yourself
When one of you reaches out, the other notices and responds
Connection is not the absence of conflict. Couples can argue and still be deeply connected; the real marker is whether you can find your way back to each other after distance, hurt, or misunderstanding. My role is to facilitate that process: supporting awareness and regulation of the nervous system, and helping you notice and make sense of what arises in you and between you, whether as bodily sensations, emotions, thoughts, images, memories, impulses, or the needs underneath them.
The work rests on one simple agreement, offered in the very first session: each of you is in the other's care.
You are not here to establish who is right or wrong. You are here to learn to understand yourself and each other, and to look after something you hold jointly: the connection between you. My role is to guide that process: to help each of you become more aware of what is going on inside you, and in between you. I am a guide to the process, never a judge of the content.
Many couples get stuck repeating the same fight, in different clothes. Usually, nothing is broken in either of you. Each of you is simply running a strategy that once protected you. Going silent, pursuing harder, withdrawing, defending: every one of these behaviours has a logic, and most of them are older than the relationship itself. In sessions we slow things down, so that what looks like conflict on the surface can be seen for what it is underneath: a protective pattern that can be made visible and workable.
Two principles guide how we work with this. Safety comes before change: a nervous system that doesn't feel safe cannot be curious, vulnerable, or flexible, so every step begins by establishing enough felt safety to work. And awareness comes before behaviour: you first learn to notice what is happening inside you and between you; new ways of responding are built on that awareness, not demanded before it.
From there, the work becomes concrete. We name the behaviour that isn't working, understand what it has been protecting, and define how you would want to respond instead. Then we ask two questions, always both: what do you need from inside yourself for that new response to be possible, and what do you need from your partner for it to be a safe process? That exchange is the care agreement in action: each partner's growth is placed, explicitly, in the other's care.
Underneath most repeating conflict there is one shared loop. Something small happens, each body reacts, often faster than conscious thought, and each partner's protection becomes the other's next trigger. Sessions are built around finding this cycle, slowing it down, and healing what drives it.
A tone, a look, a silence. Often something small on the surface
Attachment alarm or trauma response, sometimes conscious, often too fast to be
Pursue, criticise, defend, withdraw, shut down
Each partner's protection lands in the other's body as the next trigger, and around it goes.
Your partner's protective move, received as distance or threat
Its own attachment or survival response, with its own history and logic
…which loops straight back as Partner A's next trigger
Therapy steps into this loop to change your relationship to the cycle itself
Safety first
Enough felt safety, with me and with each other, that your nervous systems can stay present and look, instead of bracing.
Awareness
You learn to catch the activation as it happens: the heat, the drop, the urge to fight, flee, or disappear. What was too fast to notice becomes visible, and nameable.
The story underneath
Each reaction gets its story told, with your partner witnessing. Trauma is worked with so the old survival response can finally complete; attachment patterns are understood for what they once protected.
Completion & understanding
As each individual pattern makes sense and the old charge settles, it loses its automatic grip. The reaction may still visit, but it no longer drives.
What each of you heals alone becomes something you hold jointly. With safety and awareness in each body, the cycle can be seen as it starts, named out loud, and answered together: you respond to the pattern instead of from inside it. Each pass through this work makes the loop slower, softer, and easier to catch.
These are contexts I work with deliberately, and ones I know from the inside. I'm gay, and I'm on my own neurodivergent journey. That means you can start the work from where you actually are, with the basic reality of your relationship already understood.
For LGBTQ+ couples, this means attention to the pressures that sit around a relationship as well as inside it: minority stress, family acceptance or its absence, differing levels of outness between partners, and relationship structures that follow your own agreements rather than inherited scripts. All of these are treated as part of the terrain the two of you are navigating, and the work honours that.
For couples navigating neurodivergent difference, it means recognising that many "communication problems" are really translation problems: two nervous systems with genuinely different sensory needs, processing speeds, and ways of expressing care, each reading the other through their own lens. Masking, burnout, and capacity differences are taken seriously as real forces in the relationship. Both partners' ways of being are treated as valid, and the work is building a shared language between them.
Couples work is a distinct discipline, and I have trained in it specifically. I hold a Professional Certificate in Relationship Therapy from the Institute of Couples Therapy, alongside an MA in Arts Psychotherapy and a BA in Psychology. My training in Somatic Experiencing and EMDR grounds the somatic and trauma side of the approach: tracking each partner's nervous system in the room, and working with the individual trauma that so often drives a couple's cycle.
I am a HCPC-registered psychotherapist (UK), a full member of BAAT, and a pre-accredited counsellor with the APCP in Ireland, and all of my work is held within regular clinical supervision.
- You keep having the same argument in different forms
- One or both of you shut down, escalate, or withdraw during conflict
- You feel stuck, distant, or reactive with each other
- Communication quickly turns into defensiveness or misunderstanding
- Your relationship is affected by trauma, stress, or old survival patterns
- You are trying to understand each other across neurodivergent differences
- You want LGBTQ+ affirming support
Free consultation: A brief first conversation to discuss what brings you here and whether couples therapy feels like the right fit.
First session: We begin exploring the difficulties between you and how your pattern tends to unfold.
Ongoing work: Some couples come for a focused number of sessions, while others work together over a longer period. Frequency is discussed together.
Individual sessions: At times, individual sessions may be suggested if helpful. This would always be discussed openly with both partners.
Couples therapy works best when both partners are willing to attend. If that is not possible right now, individual therapy can still be a meaningful place to explore your own patterns in the relationship and clarify what you want for yourself.
I take a safety-first approach. Couples therapy may not be appropriate where there is:
- violence, fear, or controlling behaviour in the relationship
- an ongoing undisclosed affair
- active and untreated addiction
- severe and untreated mental health difficulties that make the work unsafe
If you are unsure whether this applies, you are welcome to raise it in the consultation.
No sides: Couples therapy is not a courtroom. My role is to help slow the process down and support both of you in understanding what happens between you.
Confidentiality: Sessions are confidential except where there is a serious risk to safety or a child protection concern. I also attend clinical supervision, where confidentiality is maintained.
Respect: Strong emotion is welcome, but sustained shouting, name-calling, or contempt are not workable in the room.
What training do you have in couples therapy specifically?
I hold a Professional Certificate in Relationship Therapy from the Institute of Couples Therapy, alongside my core psychotherapy training (MA in Arts Psychotherapy, BA in Psychology) and training in Somatic Experiencing and EMDR. I am HCPC-registered and work under regular clinical supervision.
How long does couples therapy take?
There is no fixed length. Some couples come for a focused piece of work, while others stay longer. We discuss frequency and pace together.
Is online couples therapy effective?
Yes. Online sessions can work very well, and some couples find it easier to talk from their own space.
Do you work with LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent couples?
Yes, deliberately and from lived experience: I'm gay and neurodivergent myself. In practice this means minority stress, outness differences, masking, sensory needs, and communication-style differences are worked with as real, valid parts of your relationship.
If this feels like it might be supportive, you are welcome to book a free 15-minute consultation.