Couple Therapy in Santa Barbara, California
As a couple therapist in Santa Barbara, I help my clients become skillful partners by learning how to create a secure functioning relationship. With therapy, couples find a clear new path through the hardest of times, resolve painful conflicts large and small, and prepare for life-long lasting love. I can show you how you get into trouble and decode the way out so you can get back to the good stuff.
What is Couples Therapy?
Life is better when our relationships are healthy, and It feels good to know how to be a successful partner. Couple therapy can help create a deep sense of security, trust and mutual respect in a way that feels fair, mutual, sensitive, and loving. Healthy, secure relationships are a source of vital energy, and our need to be securely attached is so powerful that it can get us through the hardest of times and help us float through day-to-day routines with ease, skill, and grace. Relationship therapy and couple work can help you build practical skills to develop and maintain a healthier and happier connection in a supportive, precise, and even playful way.
Common Reasons for Seeking Couples Therapy
Communication Issues
Arguments, Fighting, Stress, & Conflict
Pre-marital Therapy
Commitment & Marriage
Sexual Issues
Emotional Intimacy Issues
Separation, Break-Ups, Divorce
Affairs, Infidelity, & Betrayal
Parenting Challenges
Life Transitions and Preparing for Change
Neglect & Disconnection
Strengthening Healthy Relationships
Neuroscience
Neuroscience is the study of the human brain. Understanding how the brain works provides a basis for appreciating how people act and react within relationships. Some areas of your brain are wired to reduce threat and danger and seek security, while others are geared to establish mutuality and loving connection. Understanding our partner’s brain helps us work with and adapt to each other’s strengths and challenges.
Arousal Biology and Regulation.
This area of study allows us to learn how to help our partners and ourselves keep the "smart part" of our brains online so we can be our best under distress. Couples can get stuck in cycles of fighting, withdrawal, and shutdown (fight, flight & freeze). Seeing responses through this lens reveals that our immediate interactions when upset is simply how we are wired and “not personal or intentional”. The "primitive part" of our brains make decisions without our permission and we make mistakes and misappraisals - this is usually what we fight about.
Attachment Theory
Attachment Theory explains the biological need to bond with others. Experiences in early relationships create a blueprint that informs the sense of safety and security you bring to adult relationships. Insecurities that have been carried through life can wreak havoc for a couple if these issues are not resolved. When resolved, safety and security is restored for the couple and the individual. Understanding our attachment type and what that means in your relationship allows us to understand and respond to each other with more care.
Welcome!
I’m Eva Van Prooyen, MFT, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist practicing in Santa Barbara since 2001. My couple work and marriage therapy is inspired and informed by (PACT) Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy - integrating neuroscience, arousal regulation, and attachment theory. Couples come to better understand one another’s patterns of relating and how to support each other more successfully and skillfully. This therapy approach is innovative, experiential, and has a reputation for effectively treating challenging issues in a shorter amount of time. Couples essentially become experts on one another and create significant satisfying long lasting changes in how their relationship feels and functions. It is a relationship upgrade.
Couples Psychotherapy Pricing
$400 per hour (60-minute)
The initial session for couple therapy is 3 hours.
Subsequent sessions (if necessary) may be 1 ½ or 2 hours.
Contact
Become a skillful partner and get a relationship upgrade.
Email or call Eva for an appointment (805) 845-4960
Relationships are messy, and all couples experience conflict. Becoming skillful at repairing those conflicts quickly is the ultimate goal, but when we are in distress, under threat, or in the heat of an argument, it can be hard to stay connected to the (higher cortical) parts of our brain, which use intelligence to create and maintain peace and harmony.
Blog: In It to Win/Win It
Your success is my success. If one partner wins at the other’s expense – then both partners lose. There are certain codes, creeds, maxims, and attitudes that serve, solidify, and support the foundation of long lasting loving relationships.