Areas of Interest
Modern, client-centered therapy guiding you through connection, communication, and life’s messy chapters.
What I help with | Individuals & Couples Therapy in Northern Utah
Relationships are messy. They change, go through seasons you did not sign up for and sometimes you just know something needs to be different but you are not sure where to start.
I focus on all things couples, the perinatal season in all its complexity and the hardest question a couple can face, should I stay or should I go. I also work with individuals navigating anxiety, trauma, PTSD, and all things perinatal health including infertility, pregnancy loss, pregnancy, and postpartum. I am a Marriage and Family Therapy Intern (MFT-I) working under the supervision of Stefanie Petersen, LMFT at Aspire Counseling Services in Layton, Utah.
Nothing is off limits. No stuffy therapy vibe. Just real support for wherever you are right now.
Couples Counseling & Relationship Therapy
Every couple hits rough patches. But when communication shuts down, conflict keeps cycling or intimacy has quietly disappeared it can start to feel like you are living with a stranger.
Couples therapy here is not about deciding who is right. It is about understanding what is actually happening between you — the patterns, the unspoken stuff, the distance — and building something better on purpose. That includes intimacy and sex. If that part of your relationship has gone quiet, gotten complicated or just needs a real conversation, you are in exactly the right place.
Both of you deserve to feel heard. Both of you deserve a relationship that actually works.
This includes couples who are not sure whether they want to stay or separate. That is real work too and you are welcome here.
What I help with:
Communication breakdown
Recurring conflict
Emotional and physical disconnection
Intimacy concerns
Rebuilding after infidelity
Infertility and its impact on your relationship
Miscarriage and pregnancy loss as a couple
Navigating the postpartum season together
Major life transitions as a couple
Separation and divorce
What changes:
Fewer recurring arguments
Deeper connection
Better intimacy
A relationship that feels like a partnership again
The ability to actually talk about the hard stuff
Perinatal Mental Health:
Before, During, and After
The perinatal season asks more of you than most people prepare for. Whether you are in the thick of infertility, navigating a pregnancy after loss, moving through the postpartum period or somewhere in the middle of all of it, this season is one of the most significant and most underserved when it comes to mental health support.
Your body is going through something real. Your relationship is shifting. Your sense of yourself may be changing in ways you did not expect. You are allowed to need support for all of it. Not just the physical parts. All of it.
I have lived some of this personally. Infertility, miscarriage, a C-section. That lived experience is not on my resume but it is in the room every session. You do not have to explain what it feels like. I already have some idea.
What I help with:
Infertility and the emotional toll of fertility treatments
Pregnancy loss including miscarriage and stillbirth
Pregnancy anxiety and prenatal depression (yes, postpartum depression can exist throughout an entire pregnancy)
Birth trauma
Postpartum depression and anxiety
The relationship strain that comes with the perinatal season
The identity shift of becoming a mother & how not to lose yourself
No rush to get your body back — body image in the postpartum period
What changes:
Making sense of what you are going through
Feeling less alone in it
Support that actually meets you where you are
A path forward that honors the full complexity of this season
Trauma Therapy & Support Through Life’s Hardest Seasons
Some seasons of life ask more of you than you ever expected. Infertility. Loss. Military life. A diagnosis. The kind of change that quietly rewrites everything and leaves you wondering who you are on the other side of it.
Trauma and major transitions do not just affect you individually. They ripple into your relationships, your sense of self and your ability to show up for the people you love.
You do not have to make sense of it alone.
What I help with:
Trauma and PTSD
Childhood trauma and the patterns it creates in adult life
Complex trauma
Military life and combat related PTSD
Religious trauma
Birth trauma
Infertility and pregnancy loss
Grief
Major life transitions
What changes:
Making sense of what happened
The past staying in the past rather than running the present
Rebuilding steadiness in your body and your relationships
Finding a path forward that honors your experience without letting it define you
Discernment Counseling:
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Sometimes the hardest part is not knowing what you want. One or both of you are questioning whether the relationship has a future. You love each other but you are not sure love is enough. You are exhausted from trying and not sure you have anything left to give.
Discernment counseling is not couples therapy. It is not designed to save your marriage or push you toward any particular decision. It is a short structured process specifically for couples where at least one person is considering separation or divorce.
The goal is clarity. What do you actually want? What have you already tried? What would it take for each of you to feel at peace with whatever decision gets made?
Most discernment work is done in three to five sessions. At the end couples typically choose one of three paths: committed couples therapy, a structured separation or moving toward divorce with more clarity and less chaos than they came in with.
Whatever you decide, you deserve to make that decision from a place of clarity rather than exhaustion. That is what this process is for.
What I help with:
Ambivalence about the relationship
The question of whether to stay or go
Understanding what each of you actually needs
Making a decision you can live with
Navigating separation with more intention
What changes:
Clarity about what you actually want
Less chaos in a painful decision
A path forward regardless of which direction you choose
How we work together.
I work experientially and relationally grounded in the belief that we heal in the context of safe, honest connection. My approach is attachment-informed, meaning I pay attention to how your earliest bonds shaped the way you show up in relationships today, and how those patterns play out in the room between us.
Therapy here is not one-size-fits-all. I pull from several approaches depending on where you are and what you need:
Experiential (Satir-informed): The emphasis is on what happened to you, not what is wrong with you. We look at the survival strategies you learned, how you learned to shut down, perform, fight, or protect yourself and gently invite something different. This work is embodied, compassionate, and rooted in your inherent worth.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) The emphasis is on what is happening underneath the conflict. We look at the patterns and cycles showing up between you, the attachment needs driving them, and what each person actually needs to feel safe and connected.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) The emphasis is on slowing down enough to notice what is actually happening — in your body, your mind, and your relationships. As a registered yoga teacher, I bring embodiment and present-moment awareness into the therapy room in a way that feels natural, not clinical.
Discernment Counseling: A short structured process for couples navigating the question of whether to stay or go. Not couples therapy. Not pressure toward any particular decision. Just clarity.