Trauma-Informed Emotionally Focused (EFT) Couples Therapy In Bothell and Online Throughout Washington
Couples Therapy for Conflict in Seattle
For Conflict that Keeps Repeating
Every couple has disagreements. But if you're here, what's happening between you and your partner probably doesn't feel like a normal disagreement. The same fight keeps showing up in your Ballard apartment or your Queen Anne living room, sometimes about money, sometimes about the kids, sometimes about something as small as whose turn it is to deal with dinner, and it ends the same way.
One of you goes quiet, and the other pushes harder for resolution. Or you both say things you regret, and then spend the next few days in a careful but tense truce, riding the bus to South Lake Union in silence, pretending everything is fine until it happens again.
You've tried to fix it. You've had the late-night conversations, tried being more patient, maybe picked up a book about relationships. Maybe you've already done individual therapy, enough to understand your patterns and name your triggers. Some couples in Seattle have already tried couples therapy and found that the communication tools helped for a few weeks before the same pattern reasserted itself. The effort is real, but the frustration when nothing changes is real too.
What most couples don't realize is that their reactions during these fights, the shutting down, the escalating, the going completely blank at the worst possible moment, are being driven by something that moves faster than any communication skill. Your body has learned to respond to certain kinds of tension in automatic ways, and those responses kick in before you've had a chance to think. That's why knowing what you should say doesn't help when your chest is tight and your partner is staring at you waiting for a response you can't find.
Couples therapy that works with those automatic responses, rather than trying to talk over them, can change what your next argument looks like and what happens after it.
Read more about my approach to couples therapy here.
Why the Same Fight Keeps Happening After Every Work Trip
You've been gone for four days on a work trip. When you get home, you want to talk, really talk, about how much you missed each other. Your partner gives you a hug, then goes to check their phone or start dinner. You read that as distance; they read your need to talk right away as too much, too soon, after four days of managing on their own.
A lot of my Seattle clients travel regularly: airline crews based out of SeaTac, Boeing employees traveling to other sites, and people in tech or corporate roles with regular travel built into the job. When you normally spend several days a month living your life and making every decision solo, it can take a little time to shift back into sharing space with someone else again.
After years of this cycle, you might start dreading the tense reunion after you travel. Coming home, which should be the best part of the trip, becomes something to get through instead.
In our sessions, I work with the specific fear behind each side of that reunion. The partner who's been traveling and wants to talk right away is often afraid that if you wait, the moment will pass and you'll both move on without reconnecting at all. The partner who stayed home and needs space first isn't avoiding you; they've spent four days deciding everything alone, and being asked to talk immediately can feel like being asked to share those decisions again before they've had any time to adjust.
That's the same dynamic behind your other fights about money or the kids. I coach you through it the same way I do with any other fight: so you can say “I need twenty minutes” or “I'm afraid this moment is going to slip away” out loud, instead of either of you reading the other’s behavior as rejection or pressure.
What changes when couples therapy reaches the root underneath the conflict?
You sit down to talk about the thing you've been avoiding, the career change, the conversation about having kids, the tension with her family, and an hour later you're eating dinner together instead of spending the evening on opposite ends of the house. Not because the conversation was easy, but because you stayed in it instead of retreating.
You walk through the Fremont Sunday Market together and your partner mentions something about finances. Three months ago, that would've spiraled into a silent car ride home. Now you feel the tightening in your chest, and instead of shutting down, you say “that worries me, can we talk about it when we get home?” And your partner says “yeah, we can do that,” and you keep walking. The conversation happens later that afternoon, and it goes somewhere instead of nowhere.
You have a bad fight on a Friday night, the kind that used to mean a ruined weekend, and by Saturday afternoon you're at Golden Gardens watching the water and actually talking about what happened. Not performing reconciliation, but really coming back to each other.
You bring up the conversation you've been dreading for months, and your partner listens instead of getting defensive. Not because they suddenly don't have feelings about it, but because their body doesn't go into protection mode the second you raise it.
Sex stops being the thing you avoid or go through the motions of. Physical closeness starts to feel like actual connection again.
Who This Couples Therapy Approach Is For
This works for couples in Seattle where the same conflict keeps replaying regardless of the topic. When your reactions during fights feel bigger than the situation warrants, when one partner shuts down and the other escalates, when you go blank at the exact moments you most need to be present, when chronic pain or health issues are creating tension, withdrawal, or resentment, or when you've tried couples therapy before but the tools don't hold up when emotions run high.
I also work with couples where faith changes, mixed-faith dynamics, or purity culture aftermath affect your intimacy and connection. If one or both of you are questioning what you were raised to believe, those issues often need their own focused work within the couples therapy process. See my page on couples therapy for faith and identity changes here.
This approach to couples therapy will not work well if:
There’s active abuse happening between you: physical, emotional, or verbal
Substance abuse or active addiction is the primary issue
Either partner is unwilling to look at their own role and contributions to the conflict.
Couples Therapy in Seattle via Telehealth
I see couples throughout Seattle and King County through secure, HIPAA-compliant video sessions. Whether you're in Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, Wallingford, West Seattle, the University District, or anywhere else in the Seattle area, you can access couples therapy from your living room.
Sessions are available during daytime and evening hours. For many couples, telehealth works well because you're in your own space, which is where the real conflicts happen anyway.
Serving couples in Seattle and surrounding areas including Shoreline, Burien, Renton, Tukwila, SeaTac, Lynnwood, and throughout King County and Washington State. I also see couples in Bellevue and on the Eastside.
Schedule Your First Session
Schedule Your First Session
Questions?
FAQs About Trauma-Informed EFT Couples Therapy for Conflict
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Couples sessions are $350. I don't accept insurance directly, but I can provide a superbill for you to submit to your insurance for possible out-of-network reimbursement. Please see my FAQ page here for more information.
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Most couples therapy focuses on teaching communication skills, how to listen, how to compromise, how to fight fair. Those tools are useful when both people can stay calm enough to use them. But if one of you shuts down the moment conflict starts or the other floods with emotion and can’t stop, the skills don’t stick. This approach works with your nervous system responses first, so that the tools you already know become accessible when the conversation gets hard.
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You don’t need a trauma diagnosis to benefit from this work. If your reactions during fights feel bigger than the situation calls for, if one of you goes blank or the other can’t stop escalating, if the same argument keeps repeating with different content, those are signs that something deeper is getting activated. We figure out what’s driving the pattern together. Many couples discover connections they hadn’t seen before once we start looking at what’s happening in the body during those moments.
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That’s common, and it doesn't mean the other partner sits on the sidelines. When one person's nervous system is running protective interference, the other partner is affected whether they realize it or not. The partner without the history often feels confused, shut out, or like they’re always walking on eggshells. Both of you will learn how this dynamic works between you, and both of you develop new ways of responding.
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Yes. Chronic pain or illness often create a dynamic where one partner feels guilty or burdensome and the other feels helpless or resentful, and nobody talks about it directly. Intimacy changes, activities get dropped, and the relationship quietly reorganizes around the pain. We work with those dynamics directly. Learn more about chronic pain therapy here.
About Ingrid Johnston, LMFT, MDFT
EFT couples therapist in Seattle
I’ve been working with couples since 2014, specializing in relationships where the conflict runs deeper than what communication tools alone can reach.
I’m trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy, EMDR, somatic therapy, and Pain Reprocessing Therapy, and I hold advanced certification in Medical Family Therapy from Seattle Pacific University.
I'm a member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) and the Washington Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (WAMFT).
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist: Washington State License #LF61033631
Get In Touch
Contact Ingrid
Please complete the form, and I will be in touch within 48 business hours.
Office and mailing address:
19803 North Creek Parkway, Suite 205
Bothell, WA 98011
In-person in Bothell & online across Washington