For Relationships
​It is amazing what relationships can do when they have the right support.
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I work with couples dealing with broken trust, emotional distance, power struggles, and frustration of navigating the stress of work, parenting, and daily life with someone a partner who doesn't understand. My training and experience are well-suited to include concerns about physical intimacy, trauma recovery, chronic pain, and navigating ADHD, Autism, and other diagnoses that can shape how partners relate to each other.
These are common - and often painful - challenges. They usually don’t improve on their own. They need focused, skilled support.
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My approach is steady, direct, and emotionally attuned. Sessions are active and structured. You won’t just talk about your relationship - you’ll learn how to shift it in real time.
How It Works
Head:
Frameworks and Ideas to Co-Construct the Relationship You Want
Partners build a shared understanding of what is happening between them, and learn to figure out what they want to happen, instead.
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Using ideas from evolutionary psychology, particularly Attachment Theory, Polyvagal Theory, Neuroscience, and others, partners orient and gain the capacity to name what's happening.
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More importantly, partners build vision and confidence that they can build something better - together.
Heart:
Access Empathy and Care
When our relationships have been in conflict, it's hard to feel safe. When we don't feel safe, it's hard to be warm and understanding.
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My work can offer containing safety and clarity for how a partnership can work. This stability opens the door for you to reconnect as people who care about each other, and who know how to keep each other safe enough to express that care.
Hands:
Embody and Enact Care
Ideas and empathy are lovely, but at the end of the day, what matters most is how you treat each other.
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My work allows partners to explore what works for the other, including intentional focus on the subtle things we do that, if we shifted, could signal more safety and care for our partner.
I use fun, low-stakes exercises to practice important interactive skills involving tone of voice, touch, and even how we use and interpret each other's faces.
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Partners don't have the luxury of neutral interactions; so we can (and must) learn how to make our interactions consistently and intentionally positive.
Approach
My work is structured, focused, and collaborative.
Sessions are active. We pay close attention to what is happening between you in real time.
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I help you notice and interrupt the automatic patterns that drive conflict and disconnection.
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Insight matters, but it is not enough. I guide you to work directly with your moment-to-moment interactions, so you can build the skills needed for repair, emotional regulation, secure connection, and reliable plans to successfully prevent and navigate inevitable future conflict.
I draw from multiple therapeutic models, each with its own strengths. My approach integrates my extensive training, clinical experience, and what I have seen work consistently in real relationships.
I am trained in the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT), and it is the primary framework I use in my work.
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I also integrate tools from other advanced trainings to make sessions more effective and more tailored to each couple. These include:
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Toni Herbine Blank's Intimacy from the Inside Out (IFS Certified and Level 2, IFIO Level 1)
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Martha Kauppi's Addressing Sexual Issues in Psychotherapy (Level 2, Level 1 Trainer: Implementation Coach)
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Ellyn Bader and Pete Pearson's Developmental Model
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John and Julie Gottman's work
Methods Matter
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I am a trauma-responsive practitioner
trained modalities that reduce symptoms and increase your skills and agency.
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Most importantly, I practice in ways that prioritize your values, autonomy, and choice.
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The individual modalities that inform my relationship work include:
Evolutionary
Psychology
Our biology has a lot to do with how we experience the world. Deep expertise in impacts and implications of social-species membership support clients to understand why they are the way they are, and how to express themselves to get what they need.
IFS
Internal Family Systems (IFS) supports clients to build caring relationships with themselves while cultivating what found Dr. Schwartz named "The 8 C's": calm, clarity, confidence, courage, curiosity, connectedness, compassion and creativity.
Somatic Regulation
Somatic Regulation helps shift the impact that mental health has on our nervous system. Guided by Polyvagal Theory, we can incorporate awareness and exercises to support
mind-body integration.
This integration can help us
to feel safe and calm.
In addition to the main approaches above, I am also trained in EMDR, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness-Based CBT, Psychodynamic and Narrative therapies. Jess also actively pursues ongoing learning about womanist multicultural theory and pre-colonial indigenous healing ways, which she utilizes when appropriate and with permission from both cultural teachers and clients.
What support is right for you?
Therapy
Relationship Therapy is available to clients who are physically located in Colorado or Utah, or who are able to travel to Colorado for in-person intensives.
Therapy is the right fit if:
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at least one partner is working with an individual therapist
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that partner has a diagnosis from their individual therapist that they wish to disclose and utilize to guide treatment
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reimbursement from. insurance will be requested via "super bill" receipt
Consulting
Relationship Consulting is available to couples located anywhere in the Unites States who are not seeking clinical support, and who are not utilizing a diagnosis to work with insurance to pay for sessions.