Trauma-Informed Emotionally Focused (EFT) Couples Therapy Online Throughout Washington
Couples Therapy for Conflict in Vancouver
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, sometimes about money, sometimes about the kids, sometimes about church or the faith questions one of you has been carrying quietly, 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 until it happens again.
In Clark County, your faith community is often your social life, your support system, your kids' school network, and your sense of belonging. The relationship struggle doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's connected to everything your life in Vancouver is built around.
You've tried to fix it: you've had the late-night conversations, tried being more patient, maybe prayed about it, picked up a book about relationships. Some couples in Vancouver have already tried 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 or any amount of trying harder. 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.
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.
How My Approach to Couples Therapy Helps
I use Emotionally Focused Therapy as my primary approach for couples therapy in Vancouver, combined with body-based trauma work and direct coaching from Gottman Method and Relational Life Therapy. We don't just talk about your conflicts, we work through them in the session so your body learns a different way to respond when things get hard at home.
In early sessions, we map the pattern between you: who pursues, who withdraws, where shame shows up, what each of you is afraid of underneath the fight about money or the kids or the in-laws. Then we practice something different, in real time, with me coaching you through it. When one of you starts to shut down, we don't just note it, we pause and work with what's happening in your body right then. When the shame spiral hits, we address it directly instead of letting it hijack the next forty minutes.
You leave having done something new with each other, not just having talked about doing something new. That matters because when the hard conversation comes up on a Tuesday night, your body has a reference point for another way through it.
What changes when couples therapy reaches the root underneath the conflict?
Your partner brings up the thing about your mother, the conversation that has gone badly every single time, and instead of the defensive spiral that usually follows, you hear what they're really asking for. You don't love the way they said it, but you can respond to what's underneath it instead of reacting to the tone. An hour later you're having dinner together in your Ridgefield home instead of spending the evening in separate rooms.
You're at a family gathering in Camas and your father-in-law makes the comment he always makes, the one about your career or your parenting or how you're raising the kids. Your partner catches your eye across the room. Later in the car, instead of the usual post-family-event blowup where you argue about whose family is worse, your partner says "that was a lot, I'm sorry he said that." And you can let it land instead of brushing it off or building a case for the drive home.
The fight about money happens on a Tuesday night, and instead of the three-day silence that usually follows, you're walking the Burnt Bridge Creek trail together on Wednesday evening, talking about what that fight was really about. Not the money, but the fear underneath it. And you can name it now without shutting down.
You stop performing your marriage for the people around you and start actually living in it. Decisions about your kid’s soccer league, weekend plans, how to handle the holidays with extended family without someone always giving in just to keep the peace.
Physical intimacy shifts from something complicated and loaded to something that feels like genuine closeness.
Who This Couples Therapy Approach Is For
This works for couples in Vancouver and Clark County 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 Vancouver and Clark County via Telehealth
I see couples throughout Vancouver, WA and Clark County through secure, HIPAA-compliant video sessions. Whether you're in Camas, Washougal, Ridgefield, Battle Ground, or Salmon Creek, you don't need to cross the river to Portland or drive to Seattle for specialized couples therapy. Sessions are available during daytime and evening hours from wherever you are in Vancouver.
Serving couples in Vancouver, WA and surrounding areas including Camas, Washougal, Ridgefield, Battle Ground, Salmon Creek, and throughout Clark County and Washington State.
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 Vancouver
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