couples alchemy

I believe that our relationship with our partner can be a brilliant resource for our health, healing and thriving. 

Our partnership can be a powerful support on our personal journeys. They can be a space to return to for recharging, healing, celebration, connection, pleasure, co-regulation, amplification, joy and so much more!

What would your relationship look like if it were as good as you know it can be?

When we are able to personally identify what we want and need and come together in transparent communication, without operating from our default survival patterning and triggers, we can be in our relationship with connection, passion and ease. 

Do you and your partner desire a space to drop into a supported container to transmute and alchemize challenges into new ways of being and connecting together?

Couple’s Alchemy Coaching is a space designed for both you and your partner to develop curiosity, gain new perspectives and understanding about your selves and your dynamic together and cultivate a safe space to explore challenges and desires, so that you can grow and flourish.

Knowing and understanding our physiology and our partner’s physiology is essential in accessing the most generative communication and connection in partnership and is the foundation of the work together. 

Why does understanding our nervous system and our default automatic responses under “threat” matter in a relationship?

Well, as mammals, we are governed by our biology (our nervous system).

When our nervous system is working optimally and experiencing safety, we have everything we need for belonging, connection, motivation, intimacy, pleasure, alertness, drive, focus, healthy aggression, and full emotional expression. We are able to sleep, rest, slow down, and get aroused. We can be in play and experience flow. We can access our thoughts and perspectives clearly and voice our truth.

Because we are wired to survive, we also have automatic protective responses in the body that are programmed to kick online when our system is sensing “danger” , “threats” or feeling overloaded in any way. 

This is our nervous system’s job- to identify threats and keep us safe.

We develop strategies and patterns of behaving, communicating and being in connection with others based on our environment growing up, the adults and peers in our lives, our ancestors and family history, and our past relationships.  The purpose of these learned behaviors is to support this feeling of “safety”, even if they’re not supportive to our current relationships.

Our system is holding these imprints of what it learned about the world and safety, whether we belong or not, and what signals trust.

We can want to be behaving and responding in a particular way in the face or conflict or connection (like desiring not to yell, be explosive, or shut down when your partner is angry), but if our system is sensing “danger” and moves into a state of activation, there are things that start to happen in the body automatically, often out of our awareness and out of our control!   

Our heart rate increases, our breathing gets shallow, our muscles get tight and we move into some sort of survival self-protective response based on our history.  

Our “default” response is the most common path your nervous system travels. 

Particularly as we connect in our most intimate relationships, we can react in ways as if we’re under threat: 

• Sometimes we move into the “fight” response: In relationships this can look like arguing, getting mad, reactive, yelling, being aggressive, defensive, feeling frustration and irritation. 

• Sometimes we move into a “flight” response: In relationships this can look like avoiding confrontation and/or physically leaving a room when presented with conflict. Feeling anxious, worried, and panicked.

• Sometimes we move into a “freeze” response: In relationships this can look like shutting down, feeling resignation, helplessness, apathy, numbness, disorientation and confusion. It can also look like avoidance/procrastination. 

• Sometimes we move into a “fawning” response : In relationships this can look like being nice, frequently acquiescing, appeasing our partners, and people pleasing behaviors. 

• Sometimes we move into a “fitting in” response: In relationships this can look like isolating, feeling loneliness, camouflaging or shapeshifting, minimizing our perspectives and experiencing imposter syndrome. 

  Building awareness of your patterns, your partners’ patterns and how each of your nervous systems reacts under threat in relationship is the first step to making real change in how you show up for each other.

Through nervous system education and healing, mindset work, reprogramming old default survival patterning, accessing resourcing and co-regulation, uncovering perspective shifts and more, all of the work together is customized to support you both where you are at individually and as a couple to invite in more balance, compassion and access the connection you desire.

From my perspective, the foundation of a successful partnership takes:

• Curiosity

• Patience

• Commitment to self, each other and the relationship

• Compassion 

• Holding the both/and

• Having a solid baseline understanding of how your bodies and minds are wired physiologically and how they have been wired to respond when under threat 

• Understanding your conditioned attachment style and habituated relationship dynamics from your upbringing, past relationship experiences and ancestral patterning.

personal story

I have been married over 10 years and my husband Jeff (and his nervous system!) has been one of my greatest teachers. Our marriage has been an amazing support for me on my personal journey.

Feeling connection, protection, trust and safety with another person is an indescribable experience inside my body. Over the years we have learned how to most effectively communicate, navigate each other’s different needs, styles and processes, co-parent 2 boys together, one of whom is not Jeff’s biological child (my 16 year old, who is on the spectrum, is from a previous relationship), and find deep and expansive co-regulation in our connection and intimacy.  

Our relationship is generative. It feeds and fuels both of us.

We each create the space and container for the other to be in an emotional process when needed. We have mastered how to dance when both of us are struggling with our own shit and then something emerges (usually with the kids or our parents) needing our focus and attention. 

Together we have moved through intense intimacy challenges stemming from ancestral trauma stored in my body. Jeff’s patience and willingness to be in the messiness and learn, while I navigated pain with intimacy for many years, was essential to creating the conditions for me to feel safe enough to go deep in my healing. I taught him how to hold supportive space for my somatic integration process, which generated a container for massive healing. 

Through our own somatic and energetic exploration together we were able to access deep levels of physical and emotional healing and helped me activate and reconnect to pleasure. There was a lot of freeze and stuckness in my body and pelvis and thawing that, in order to get to the life force energy (the pleasure underneath) took time, consistency, gentleness and unrelenting trust.

Now, we have a rich, dynamic, intimate connection that keeps expanding and growing, as we uncover new ways to access and amplify pleasure together!

Our dynamic has not always been easy. When we first started dating into the first few years of marriage our styles were complete opposites. Jeff has VERY fiery Italian Bronx energy (and is also an Aries! Phew!), where everything immediately sets him off into the red zone, while I grew up in a family where everyone worked really hard to prove there was no need to ever be angry, and I was a smile-everything-is-great vibe, all the time (Libra here!). 

My default automatic response when confronted with any display of anger (whether directed at me or not) was to get super overwhelmed, stressed out and completely shut down or to try to move away from it. I found myself early on in our relationship working really hard to create our environment so that it “prevented” him from being upset, which as you can imagine is pretty hard to anticipate with success. 

My system simply couldn’t tolerate being in front of an expression of anger, irritation or even annoyance without moving into overwhelm, shutting down or stressing out.

Jeff calls himself my anger guru. Haha! 

I have done a lot of work to expand my capacity so that my system doesn’t feel threatened by other people’s emotions or shut down, no matter how grumpy Jeff may be. But instead, I have rewired the response in my own system in the face of that kind of activation. Jeff gets to be angry that he can’t find his socks. His mood does not have to dictate how I feel inside my body.

This kind of reorganization in our bodies takes time, commitment and some work, BUT change is possible. I am a mirror and example of the potential we have as humans to rewire and reprogram our own responses! We get to approach these dynamics in a different way instead of getting stuck in the same frustrating cycle.  

I designed the Couple’s Alchemy Container, because I was working somatically with so many individuals, who then asked me to start working with their partners. More and more I got asked if I provided couple’s sessions, so I began to offer these packages.

My background in education, family dynamics and guidance counseling, along with my Somatic Experiencing work and personal relationships experience provides the foundational lens that I work with as I hold space for couples. 

How does Couples Alchemy work?

Given that the work is deep, we want to make sure that we create a set container with a minimum time commitment. There will be things that will come up and it is important to know (and for your nervous systems to both know and expect!) that there is a safe set timeframe in which to go deep and keep going. This is why I typically work in 3 or 6 month minimum contracts. From a nervous system perspective, we want to really create a concentrated space to focus on what we are doing and building together, and give your systems time to drop in and unwind.

I offer Couples Alchemy Coaching Packages ranging from $2,250-$20,000 (3-6 months), depending on your needs and the desired frequency of sessions. I offer packages with couples sessions only and packages that offer a combination of couple sessions and solo sessions.

Called to connect and see if working together would be a good fit? I invite you to set up a Connection Call below.