SPECIALTIES
Relationship Counselling
in Vancouver, BC
We don't arrive at our romantic relationships as blank pages. We bring our history, our earliest experiences of being loved and let down, and the strategies we developed to protect ourselves from both. Whatever your relationship structure looks like, monogamous, polyamorous, open, or something you're still defining, understanding what you bring, and where it comes from, is often the work that changes everything.
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UNDERSTANDING THE EXPERIENCE
How romantic relationship patterns develop and why they repeat
How Relational Patterns Form
Our earliest experiences leave templates that quietly organize how we experience intimacy, how much closeness we can tolerate, and how we respond to threat or abandonment. When patterns repeat, it isn't because you are broken; it is because you are operating from an old map drawn in very different territory. Therapy is the process of understanding that map so you can consciously revise it.
A CNM-Affirming & Relationship-Inclusive Space
These relational templates operate regardless of your relationship structure. I work affirmatively across the entire spectrum including monogamy, polyamory, open relationships, and relationship anarchy, without assumptions or hierarchy about which structure is healthier or more evolved for your life.
Signs you might benefit from relationship counselling
A recurring dynamic across different relationships — different partners, same pattern
Difficulty with intimacy or allowing people to get genuinely close
Losing your sense of self, your needs, or your voice in romantic relationships
Fear of abandonment, or conversely, feeling suffocated when a relationship deepens
Difficulty trusting partners, or feeling perpetually on guard for signs of rejection
Navigating jealousy, envy, or insecurity within a non-monogamous structure
Managing the complexity of multiple relationships — scheduling, emotional bandwidth, metamour dynamics
Tension between your relationship structure and expectations from family, culture, or community
Recovering from a painful breakup, divorce, the ending of a polycule, or a significant breach of trust
Wanting to understand yourself better before entering, restructuring, or returning to a relationship
MY APPROACH
How I work with romantic relationship challenges
The most significant relationship work I do with people rarely starts with the current partner — or partners. It starts further back — with the stories that were written about love, safety, and worth before any of those relationships began. Narrative Therapy gives us a way to examine those stories carefully: where they came from, how they've shaped the relationships you've chosen and the way you've behaved inside them, and what a different story might make available. This includes the stories you may have absorbed about what relationships are supposed to look like — stories that may have never fit who you actually are.
Depth Work is particularly central here. Romantic relationships have a way of activating the deepest layers of who we are — the parts that formed earliest, that are most defended, and that are most hungry for something they didn't always get. This is true in monogamous relationships and equally true — sometimes more visibly so — in non-monogamous ones, where multiple attachment bonds can illuminate relational patterns with unusual clarity. Mindfulness practices help in the moment — developing the capacity to notice what's happening inside you during relational experiences, including the complex emotional terrain of jealousy, comparison, and intimacy across multiple connections.
Narrative Therapy
The stories we carry about love what we deserve, what a relationship is supposed to look like, are often inherited rather than chosen. Narrative Therapy helps make those stories visible, examine where they came from, and open space for a different relationship with your own romantic life, on your own terms, in whatever structure fits you.
Mindfulness
Intimacy tends to activate our most automatic responses — withdrawal, pursuit, anxiety, jealousy, control. Mindfulness practices develop the capacity to notice those responses as they arise rather than being run by them, creating the pause in which a different choice becomes possible, whether you're navigating one relationship or several.
Depth Work
Romantic relationships reach into the deepest parts of who we are. Depth Work creates the space to understand what lives there, the longings, the wounds, the early relational templates that quietly organize everything and to do something with that understanding beyond simply recognizing it.
WHO I WORK WITH
You might be looking for this support if…
You've noticed the pattern. Different relationships, different people and yet somehow you end up in the same dynamic. You're self-aware enough to see it and frustrated enough to know that awareness alone isn't going to be enough. You want to understand what's actually driving it, and you want something to genuinely change.
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You're in a non-monogamous relationship structure whether polyamorous, open, or something harder to name and you're navigating something specific: jealousy that feels bigger than you expected, difficulty managing emotional bandwidth across multiple connections, tension between your structure and the world around you, or simply a desire to understand yourself more clearly in the context of the relationships you're building. You need a therapist who won't spend the session questioning your choices.
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A significant relationship has ended, a partnership, a marriage, a polycule, something that felt like it was supposed to last and you're somewhere in the complicated aftermath. The grief is real, and so is the desire to understand your part in what happened before you find yourself repeating it. You want to be ready for what comes next in a different way than you've been before.
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THE PROCESS
What to expect from relationship counselling at Grounded Practice
The First Session
The first session is a conversation about your relational history and what's brought you in now. I'll ask about the relationships and structures that have mattered most — not to evaluate them, but to begin to understand the patterns and themes that run through your experience. There are no assumptions here about what your relationship should look like, what the goal should be, or what kind of structure is right for you. This is your life and your relationships and my job is to help you understand yourself within them more clearly, not to steer you toward any particular arrangement.
Ongoing Work
Relationship counselling tends to move through layers. Earlier sessions often focus on the current situation, what's happening, what it feels like, what you want to change. Over time, the work tends to move deeper. Moving into the patterns that predate the current relationship or structure, the earlier experiences that shaped your attachment style, and the stories you carry about love and worth. This layered quality is what makes change more durable. Most clients meet weekly, and the pace adjusts as the work develops.
In-person sessions are available in Vancouver, BC. Online therapy is available across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut via secure video.
FAQs
Common Questions about Relationship Counselling
Is this practice CNM-affirming and non-judgmental about relationship structure?
1
Yes, unequivocally. I work with people across the full range of consensual relationship structures whether monogamous, polyamorous, open, relationship anarchist, and others, without assumptions about which is healthier, more evolved, or more appropriate. You won't need to spend session time explaining or justifying your structure. The focus is on your experience within your relationships, not on the structure itself.
Can individual therapy really help with relationship problems?
2
Yes, often more directly than people expect. While couples or multi-partner therapy addresses the dynamic between people, individual therapy addresses what you bring to that dynamic. Since the patterns, wounds, and relational templates that drive most relationship difficulties predate any specific relationship or structure, working on them individually tends to produce change that carries across all your relationships rather than being specific to one dynamic or one partner.
My partner won't come to therapy, can I still work on our relationship?
3
Yes. You cannot change another person's behaviour in therapy, but you can change your own and changing your own responses, patterns, and ways of engaging often shifts the dynamic in ways that affect the relationship as a whole. Individual therapy also gives you a clearer view of what you need, what is and isn't working, and what you actually want, which is useful regardless of what anyone else chooses to do.
I'm not currently in a relationship, can therapy still help?
4
Very much so. Some of the most valuable relationship work happens outside of relationships, in the space where there's less immediate pressure and more capacity to look clearly at patterns and history. Many people come to this work between relationships, or in the process of questioning what kind of relationship structure they actually want, specifically because they want to understand themselves more clearly before their next chapter.
OTHER AREAS OF SUPPORT
You may also be looking for help with…
Trauma & PTSD
Early relational trauma like neglect, abandonment, inconsistent care, or harmful early relationships is one of the most common roots of difficult adult attachment patterns. If your relationship history has a longer shadow behind it, trauma-informed work addresses the source rather than just the symptoms.
Anxiety & Depression
Relationship anxiety, persistent worry about partners' feelings, fear of abandonment, dread of conflict, or the emotional weight of managing multiple connections, frequently sits at the intersection of anxiety and relational experience. Addressing both together tends to be more effective than treating them separately.
Life Transitions
The ending of a significant relationship, a shift in relationship structure, or a decision to live differently than you have been, these are among the most disorienting transitions people navigate. Life transitions work provides space to grieve what was, understand what happened, and find your footing in what comes next.
READY TO BEGIN?
The patterns that have shaped your relationships so far don't have to shape every one that follows.
Request a free 15-minute consultation to learn more about working together. Whether you’re ready to start therapy in Vancouver or have questions about how we can work together online across Canada, I look forward to hearing what brings you to counselling