Welcome to The Center for Healthy Relationships where we specialize in helping you heal yourself while you heal your relationship. We are pleased to provide online therapy and coaching services to California residents. If you found your way to our site because you want to heal your relationship with yourself, start here
Looking for help with your relationship?
Most people who have been hurt in relationship wonder how to break the cycle of pain.
You might be at the point where you have tried to understand your partner, yet your communication styles don’t seem to mesh.
Maybe you are finding yourself struggling to trust; old patterns you tried to avoid are showing up even though you thought you had made a good relationship choice in choosing your partner.
Perhaps you find that you are having the same arguments over and over without finding solutions that the two of you can agree on.
The more you try, the more it seems that you and your partner can’t see eye-to-eye on certain topics.
You find that what you need most seems to be the hardest for your partner to give you; and what your partner needs from you seems impossible for you to give.
The things that you saw in your spouse that made you fall in love don’t show up in your day-to-day life any more.
Maybe you have even been to relationship or individual therapy to try to deal with these problems without satisfactory results.
Whether you are finding yourself hurt over and over again in your current relationship or you have noticed that the same pattern repeats for you in relationship after relationship, there is hope.
Not only is it normal for your relationship to include conflict that is difficult to overcome, it is expected that your relationship will offer you challenges of the sort that seem impossible to resolve without support.
Here’s why:
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- Each of us has “pockets” of residual “energy” within the body that maintain internal narratives composed of pivotal beliefs and unresolved feelings. We call these pockets of energy our Body History.TM
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- When our relationship is going smoothly, the Body History remains quiet.
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- When stress, unresolved conflict or uncontrollable events enter into our lives, they impact our relationship because our Body History wakes up, undermines in-the-moment interactions with self-protective beliefs from the past and discourages us from remaining open, vulnerable and curious with our partner.
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- Soon, informed by the beliefs held within our Body History, we begin to assume that our partner no longer has our best interest in mind. The truth is often just the opposite, but everything in the Body History resonates with the directive to self-protect rather than to move toward more trust and intimacy.
The Good News: this natural process has led you to the place where you’re seeking help because you’re stuck – and this feeling of being stuck is an invitation to deep healing, transformative intimacy and lasting attachment for the two of you.
People often have the mistaken belief that they should attend individual therapy before seeking therapy with their partner.
We disagree.
In fact, research indicates that when a therapist opts to separate partners who come to therapy for relationship work, more of those relationships end in separation than those which are repaired.
The best approach is to keep you together during the treatment process and to teach you how to tolerate your discomfort together in order to come to new solutions while working as a team.
To do this you need therapists like those at The Center for Healthy Relationships who:
- Are comfortable with conflict – and can deal with it directly without fear.
- Understand how your Body History and that of your partner interact in tandem to create the patterns that are causing problems.
- Have a strong ethical belief that you and your partner hold the best chance of resolving your struggles by keeping you together during couple’s work. (There are a few exceptions to this belief, but your therapist can discuss them with you at the beginning of your work with them.)
We work on the belief that the most effective couple’s work occurs with minimal interruption by the relationship therapist. Most therapists will sit in the room with partners, each partner facing and talking with the therapist, while all three discuss the issues.
At The Center for Healthy Relationships, your therapist will encourage you to talk to each other in a special way that will help you have a corrective emotional experience while exposing patterns that need correction to the observation of your therapist. Your relationship should be the crucible for healing between you and our process helps you activate the crucible to the greatest extent. We will teach you the process of Empathetic ConversationTM which is focused on helping you develop connection and emotional safety. We will help you understand what is happening when your Body History shows up to disrupt your connection in service of self-protection and we will show you how to increase vulnerability, openness, curiosity and trust. Most importantly, your therapist will help you do the work in the therapy office with the only interruptions of your work being those that support greater connection and understanding.
The greatest benefit of sessions that focus on you connecting (with the therapist watching and providing feedback and direction) is that you will learn the skills you need to be successful together long after your treatment at The Center for Healthy Relationships has ended.
We believe that your relationship should be a place of safety, nurturing, satisfaction, deep intimacy and fun. We believe that your relationship is a unique creation that you build together. We stand ready to give you the tools that will serve as a launching pad as well as preventative maintenance after you leave our services.
Ready to Heal your Relationship with Yourself?
In order to have a healthy relationship with anyone else, you must begin with a healthy relationship with yourself.
You may find yourself in a constant struggle with self-doubt.
Your fears about the opinions of others might keep you awake at night or keep you from doing the things you want to do.
You may be struggling with habits that you would like to change, but haven’t been about to find the right support to make a permanent transformation.
You have realized that you have difficulty finding someone who treats you well or that, when you do find a caring person, you are riddled with self-doubt and behaviors that push others away rather than initiating connection.
You’re not alone and it isn’t your fault.
The truth is that the field of mental health has been behind when it comes to getting the language and tools for well-being into the hands of the masses. We are a very young profession and because of that, your parents and grandparents likely didn’t have access to the kind of education and help that would have equipped them to offer you the tools you needed while growing up that would have helped you to overcome challenges in life unscathed.
Instead, you learned from your parents, unusual circumstances and from culture at large to just push through, ignore your feelings, make the best of things and not to let anyone see you sweat. These lessons might have been communicated through words, but probably not. Most of these lessons are taught “under the radar” of your conscious awareness: in the way a parent responded to your unmet needs, in the subliminal message placed in a commercial that you’ll be happy if you just open a beverage or in conclusions you drew while you observed the world around you and you were trying to make things make sense.
All of us have had to learn how to navigate safely in the world while making sense of the things that happen around and to us. Many, many of us end up developing uncomfortable symptoms and habits in spite of our best efforts – because survival without information about how to take care of yourself is hard.
The good news is that we have a clear, easy to understand the process that will give you the tools to take your life back. To find more details about our process for helping you heal your relationship with yourself and reclaim your life, click on over to our Individual Therapy page under the Services tab.
Tamara’s Rates for Individual, Couple or Family Sessions
$200 per 50-minute session
Insurance
While Tamara is not an in-network provider for any healthcare insurance companies, you may be eligible for third party reimbursement after attending online counseling sessions at The Center for Healthy Relationships. This means that you are responsible for paying the full fee at the time of each online visit, however, you may receive a portion of your payment back from your insurance provider after completing the appropriate steps.
To assist you with the claims process, you will receive an invoice from our office to submit along with any other documentation they request from you. If you are interested in knowing if you qualify for third-party reimbursement, here are a few questions you should ask your insurance provider:
- Do I have mental health benefits?
- What is my deductible and has it been met?
- Does my plan provide any coverage for out-of-network providers?
- How much does my plan cover for an out-of-network provider?
- What is the coverage amount per therapy session?
- What forms do I need to complete and submit for my claims to be considered?
- How long does it take to receive reimbursement once I’ve submitted a claim?
- What information does my therapist need to submit to ensure the process is complete?
Payment
Cash, checks, debit cards, flexible spending account credit cards (FSA), Venmo and all other major credit cards are accepted for payment. Payment is due at each session. There is a 3% processing fee for credit card payments. There is a $50 fee for returned checks.
Cancellation Policy
It’s understandable that things come up which require you to cancel your session. However, to ensure that all clients have an opportunity to be seen at the practice, we require 24-hour advance notice of cancellations or reschedules. Failure to show up for your scheduled appointment without cancellation or rescheduling will result in a $150 no show/late cancellation fee, due at the time of the missed session.
