Relationship Therapy in Oakland and Across California
Most relationship therapy helps two (or more) people communicate better. That matters, and sometimes it is enough. But some relationships are carrying something more specific underneath the surface arguments, a pattern that gets missed because their therapist was never trained to look for it.
Maybe you have tried the standard advice already. Talk more, listen better, use "I" statements. And maybe it helped a little, then the same painful loop returned, because the real issue was not a simple communication skill deficit. It was something with its own shape and its own solution: the anxiety or overwhelm that hijacks the situation, the neurotype or “wiring” differences that get misread as not caring, the inaccurate narratives that divide two people who love each other.
My orientation to working with relationships is informed by more than ten years working with mixed-neurotype couples by telehealth throughout California, and locally in Oakland and the East Bay.
In my work, we will focus on the places where your real struggle may be a pattern that needs to be understood on its own terms. Then skills can be taught, practiced and learned.
When OCD and Anxiety Are Present
Some of the most painful relationship patterns are not really about the relationship at all.
Sometimes, there is reevaluating “is this person right for me” and frequently wondering if your partner is good enough, or worth your time, or a good person to raise children with. While some partners may experience intermittent doubt or worry, people with ROCD will be stuck in a painful cycle of questioning the relationship. They will try to seek reassurance to ease the discomfort. Unfortunately, relationship OCD is running a loop that no amount of reassurance ever closes. The pattern does not stop, and relationships suffer again and again.
I have extensive and specific training in OCD and anxiety, including the approaches that interrupt these patterns rather than feed them. When this is what is happening between you and your partner, naming it correctly changes everything, because you can learn to address the actual problem.
When Your Brains Work Differently
You can love each other deeply and still feel constantly out of sync, not because either of you is failing, but because your nervous systems run on different settings.
One of you experiences time, attention, follow-through, and emotional processing one way. The other experiences them another way entirely. When that difference goes unnamed, it hardens into a story: they don't care, they never listen, they're always criticizing me. ADHD and other neurotype differences get read as indifference, laziness or as being controlling, when the truth is that the two of you are speaking genuinely different dialects and no one provided a way to translate.
The work here is to understand the actual wiring underneath the friction, so the differences become something you navigate together instead of something you resent each other for. It is affirming of how each of you is built. Not about making one partner more like the other, but about helping you both feel understood.
Who Is Welcome And How The Work Happens
Relationships come in many forms, and all of them belong here. Couples and partners of every configuration are welcome, married and unmarried, monogamous and non-monogamous, queer and straight, and every way people build committed life together. Sonia is enthusiastically queer-affirming, and the language reflects the actual people in the room rather than a template.
Sessions are held by telehealth across California, so you can do this work whether you are in Oakland, the wider Bay Area, or anywhere in the state. The approach is collaborative and pragmatic, with real warmth and, when it fits, some humor. No lecture, no rigid protocol. Just someone who takes your specific situation seriously and helps you make genuine progress on it.
A Different Kind Of Conversation
If something here felt like it was describing your relationship, that recognition is worth paying attention to. These patterns respond well to the right help.
Reach out to schedule a consultation. You do not need to have it all sorted out first. Bringing the question is enough.