Client Resources

The Appreciation Exercise

A short daily ritual in which partners take turns offering three specific, heartfelt appreciations, then asking what the other would like to be appreciated for.

Useful for: Couples who want more warmth and positive connection day to day.

Attachment Styles in Relationship

Describes secure, anxious, avoidant and fearful patterns as two dials (fear of being left and discomfort with depending), with what each looks like under stress and what helps.

Useful for: Understanding why you and your partner react the way you do when you feel disconnected.

Draws on Bowlby, Ainsworth, Hazan & Shaver, Bartholomew & Horowitz, Mikulincer & Shaver, and Sue Johnson

Emotionally Focused Therapy: A.R.E.

Introduces the core idea of EFT: the negative cycle is the enemy, not your partner. Shows how to spot the cycle, read the softer feelings under reactive ones, and be Accessible, Responsive and Engaged.

Useful for: Couples caught in repeating fights who want to get on the same team.

Based on Emotionally Focused Therapy by Dr. Sue Johnson

Emotionally Secure Couples

Eight check-in questions that happy couples ask each other regularly to build trust and emotional safety, each with alternate ways to ask.

Useful for: Starting everyday conversations that help your partner feel seen.

Based on the work of Dr. Cortney S. Warren, PhD

The Five Love Languages

A summary of the five ways people most deeply feel loved (words, time, gifts, service and touch) and how to learn and speak your partner's language.

Useful for: Couples who love each other but keep missing each other's signals.

Summary of The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman (Northfield Publishing)

Imago Structured Dialogue

A step-by-step guide to mirroring, validating and empathizing, with sentence stems for the sender and receiver and a second pass to switch roles.

Useful for: Talking through a hard topic slowly enough that both partners feel heard.

Based on Imago Relationship Therapy by Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt

Prompts for Couples

Seventeen sentence starters, such as “I feel close to you when…”, for sharing appreciation, hopes and the ways you protect yourself.

Useful for: Opening a warm, honest conversation when you don’t know where to begin.

The Pursuer–Withdrawer Cycle

Explains why one partner presses for contact while the other steps back, why a break costs each of them differently, and why coming back is what builds trust.

Useful for: Couples who need to take breaks during conflict without leaving one partner stranded.

Draws on John & Julie Gottman (flooding) and Sue Johnson (EFT)

Repair Statement (One Page)

A single-sheet script for taking responsibility after a rupture: describe the trigger, name your protective reaction, then share the core feeling, fear and need underneath.

Useful for: Coming back together after a painful moment or argument.

Repair Statement: Speaker (Sheet 1)

The speaker’s half of the two-sheet repair process. Walks you from the trigger through your protective story to your core feeling, fear and need.

Useful for: The partner who is starting the repair. Use it with Sheet 2.

Repair Statement: Listener (Sheet 2)

The listener’s half of the repair process. Guides you to record what you hear, reflect it back, check that you got it right, and offer a core reassurance.

Useful for: The partner receiving the repair. Use it with Sheet 1.

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

A summary of Gottman’s seven research-based principles, from knowing your partner’s inner world to creating shared meaning.

Useful for: Couples who want a research-backed roadmap for a lasting friendship and partnership.

Summary of the book by John M. Gottman, PhD & Nan Silver (Crown Publishers)

Stages of Relationships

The Developmental Model’s five stages of a couple’s growth, from early merging to mature partnership, with the task of each stage and the signs of being stuck.

Useful for: Seeing where your relationship is right now and what it is asking of you.

Based on Ellyn Bader & Peter Pearson, In Quest of the Mythical Mate (1988)

The Four Horsemen

The four conflict patterns that predict relationship breakdown (criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling) and the antidote for each one.

Useful for: Catching destructive habits in an argument and knowing what to do instead.

© The Gottman Institute

Managing Anger

Explains what anger protects, how to cool down in the moment with a pause, breathing and movement, and longer-term practices for understanding its roots.

Useful for: Anyone whose anger feels bigger or faster than they would like.

Managing Anxiety

Breathing techniques (belly, 4-7-8 and box breathing), ways to work with anxious thoughts, daily habits that build resilience, and signs it’s time to ask for more help.

Useful for: Calming your nervous system and lowering day-to-day stress.

Synthesized from Verywell Mind’s stress and anxiety series

Feelings Wheel

A color-coded wheel of feelings when your needs are met and when they are not, plus a list of words that sound like feelings but are really judgments.

Useful for: Finding the precise word for what you feel.

Based on Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, PhD; graphics by Bret Stein

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

Describes the eight core steps of MBCT for noticing the early signs of low mood and stepping out of autopilot before depression takes hold.

Useful for: People who have been through depression more than once and want to prevent relapse.

Based on The Mindful Way Through Depression by Williams, Teasdale, Segal & Kabat-Zinn

Nonviolent Communication (NVC)

The four-step NVC process (observations, feelings, needs and requests) for expressing yourself honestly and listening with empathy.

Useful for: Saying what matters to you without blame, and hearing others without defensiveness.

© Marshall B. Rosenberg, Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC.org)

SMART Goals

Turns vague intentions into clear, workable goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound, with example goals and a note on self-compassion.

Useful for: Setting goals for change between sessions.

Universal Human Needs

A list of the needs every person shares, grouped into physical needs, connection, meaning, autonomy, mastery, safety and more.

Useful for: Naming the need beneath a feeling or a conflict.

Holding Two Opposites at Once

How dialectical therapy (DBT), Buddhism’s Middle Way and particle physics each treat holding two contradictory truths as a sign of a clearer mind, with a simple “but to and” practice.

Useful for: Moving from rigid “either/or” thinking toward “both/and.”

Hoʻoponopono

An introduction to the traditional Hawaiian practice of healing and reconciliation and its four phrases: I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.

Useful for: A forgiveness and self-compassion practice.

Traditional Hawaiian practice; modern form by Morrnah Simeona and Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len

An Integrated Therapy Framework

A one-page map of how Buddhist psychology, Internal Family Systems and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy all point to the same insight: suffering comes from our relationship to experience.

Useful for: Understanding the approach behind our work together.

Draws on Buddhist psychology, IFS (Richard Schwartz) and ACT (Russ Harris)

Man’s Search for Meaning

The story behind Viktor Frankl’s book and the three paths to meaning at the heart of logotherapy, with questions for reflection.

Useful for: Finding purpose and footing during a hard season.

Based on Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

The Second Arrow

The Buddha’s teaching on the difference between the pain that happens to us and the suffering we add with the stories we tell about it.

Useful for: Noticing and setting down the extra suffering you add to hard moments.

Adapted from the Sallatha Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 36.6)

Shame: Naming It, Speaking It, Moving Through It

What shame is, how it differs from guilt, and four practices of shame resilience, with questions for reflection.

Useful for: Anyone who struggles with feeling “not enough.”

Grounded in the research of Brené Brown

Working with Shame: An Integrative Map

A companion to the Shame handout that compares how four traditions each loosen shame’s grip: shame resilience, narrative therapy, Internal Family Systems and Buddhist psychology.

Useful for: Going deeper into how shame works and how it heals.

Draws on Brené Brown, Michael White & David Epston, Richard Schwartz and Buddhist psychology

Understanding Intimate Partner Violence

A gentle guide to the forms abuse can take, warning signs, truths to hold onto, and confidential places to get help.

Useful for: Anyone wondering whether what is happening in their relationship is abuse.

The Cycle of Violence

The four repeating phases of abuse (tension building, incident, reconciliation and calm) and why the cycle often grows shorter and more severe over time.

Useful for: Recognizing the pattern, and remembering it is not your fault.

Based on Lenore Walker’s cycle-of-abuse model

Supporting Your Autistic Pre-Teen

A resource guide for parents covering trusted organizations, education rights and IEPs, sensory and social support, podcasts, YouTube channels and caregiver self-care.

Useful for: Parents and caregivers of autistic children, especially in the pre-teen years.

Getting on the Same Page

Why parenting disagreements feel so charged, and five principles to help partners agree on a shared approach their children can count on.

Useful for: Co-parents who disagree about rules, discipline or values.