Question 1

Do you have training to work with couples?

Accepted Answer

Yes. I do work with couples. I started as a play therapist and then quickly realized that when I helped the parents with their relationships - the children needed less sessions (they felt safer, more at peace and had better confidence as a ripple effect). I am level two trained in The Gottmans Institute Training (they are the pioneers of couples therapy). But I've also trained in numerous other modalities over the last 12 plus years of seeing couples.

I work internationally with individuals or couples on relationships and identity. I am an avid learner and I know one size doesn't fit all, and so I approach each couple with openness and experience.

Please ask any therapist or coach that you want to work with this question. Just because someone is a professional doesn't mean they're trained to work with couples.

Question 2

Do you work with individuals? Women only, or men too?

Accepted Answer

Both.These days, the majority of my individual clients are women, but I also work with men.For some of the men I work with, there's an interesting gap between being incredibly capable in the rest of life and feeling completely out of their depth relationally. They're used to solving problems with logic, action and competence. Then relationships ask them to understand emotions, vulnerability, connection and experiences that can't always be “fixed.”We work on bridging that gap without asking them to become someone they're not.Many of the women I work with are also outwardly capable and successful. They may be thriving in certain areas of life while quietly feeling lonely, invisible, exhausted or disconnected from themselves in their relationships.They've become very good at being the mother, wife, professional, helper, peacekeeper or person everyone can rely on. Somewhere along the way, they disappeared from their own picture.Our work isn't about abandoning all those roles. It's about discovering who you are within and beyond them, and learning that putting yourself on the list doesn't mean taking everyone else off it.Some of the things individual clients come to work through include:People pleasing and difficulty setting boundariesLoneliness or disconnectionConflict avoidanceRelationship and marriage problemsParenting patterns and breaking intergenerational cyclesAnxiety and overwhelmAnger and emotional regulationBurnout and depletionDivorce or uncertainty about staying marriedAffairs, betrayal and rebuilding trustInsecurity and loss of self-trustGuilt and difficulty prioritising yourselfFeeling invisible, unappreciated or taken for grantedSleep, habits and behaviour changeWeight-loss patterns and understanding why knowing what to do doesn't always translate into doing itYou don't need to be in a couple to work on relationships. Sometimes changing the relationship starts with one person.

Question 3

Do you only work with Christians?

Accepted Answer

No.Many of my clients are Christian, and I love being able to include faith when it's important to them, especially when they're wrestling with questions about God, grace, identity, marriage, doubt or what they've been taught they should do.But you absolutely don't need to be Christian to work with me.My faith is part of who I am and informs how I see people, but I won't impose it on you. I'm not interested in converting clients, arguing theology or using Scripture to tell you what decision you should make.Jesus didn't send people away.I'm certainly not Jesus, but loving people without requiring them to believe exactly what I believe is pretty central to my faith.

Question 4

Do you work with same sex marriages too?

Accepted Answer

Yes.I want to be transparent that working with same-sex couples isn't my speciality. I typically work with around one same-sex couple a year, so if you're specifically looking for someone with extensive experience in the unique experiences and challenges LGBTQ+ couples may face, I completely understand choosing someone who specialises in that area.But if you're comfortable with that and feel that my approach is the right fit for you, you're very welcome here.Your relationship deserves the same curiosity, care, respect and lack of shame that I bring to every couple I work with.

Question 5

Who don't you work with?

Accepted Answer

Who don't you work with?I don't work with relationships where there is domestic violence or ongoing abuse. If you're wondering whether your relationship is abusive, you don't need to wait until someone else agrees with your definition of abuse before seeking support. Please reach out to someone who specializes in this area. And if the first person doesn't help, keep looking until you find someone who does.And yes, men, this includes you too. Men can be abused by women. Being physically bigger, stronger, or male doesn't make controlling, threatening, degrading or violent behavior okay. If you're a man experiencing abuse, please don't let shame stop you from getting support. There is nothing shameful about asking for help.I also don't work with couples where one person has come primarily to get their partner fixed. You can absolutely be hurt, angry, frustrated or deeply unhappy with things your partner is doing. Accountability matters. But for this work to be effective, both people need to be willing to look at themselves too. No policing each other's progress. Self-growth for relational growth.My work is also not the right level of support for someone who is currently suicidal, experiencing severe depression or otherwise needs acute mental-health care. In those situations, please work with an appropriate mental-health professional or medical provider who can give you the level of support you need.I don't work with someone who is currently struggling with active substance abuse, including alcohol. There are some approaches I use, including BWRT®, that can be incredibly useful alongside addiction work, but active addiction needs appropriate specialist support.And finally, this probably isn't the right fit if you're looking mainly for a place to vent, prove someone else is the problem, or move from professional to professional hoping to find someone who will finally agree with your version of the story.That doesn't mean your partner, parents, childhood, circumstances or other people haven't affected you. Of course they have. Understanding those things matters. But this work is about discovering what you can do with what you've been handed.There is absolutely a time and place for being heard and held. But my sessions tend to be pretty proactive. We'll make space for what happened to you while also getting curious about your patterns, your capacity, your choices, your boundaries, your needs and the parts of the story you actually have the power to change.

Question 6

What are your costs?

Accepted Answer

You can find full pricing on the Ways To Work With Me page, but my private 1:1 sessions start at $400 for 45 minutes.
If you earn in South African Rands, let me know. As a fellow South African, I keep a limited number of spaces available at a different Rand-based rate. These rates are still above the average South African coaching or counselling rate, but they make working together more accessible without trying to make an international fee work on a Rand income.And if private work isn't in your budget right now, there are plenty of other ways to access my work. I share a lot through my courses, books, blogs, podcasts and social media, including practical tools you can start using straight away.You don't have to work with me privately to start doing the work.

Question 7

Are you a counselor or a coach?

Accepted Answer

I'm both, but for all intents and purposes, I work as a coach.I qualified in 2007 with a postgraduate Bachelor of Social Sciences degree in Psychology and am registered as a counsellor in South Africa. I spent many years working in private practice before moving predominantly into coaching.Coaching isn't necessarily as new as the internet makes it look, but it is a different way of working. It tends to be more outcome-focused and forward-moving, usually working within a particular container towards something you want to understand, change or create.One of the difficulties with the coaching industry is that anyone can call themselves a coach. There isn't one regulatory body governing the profession or a universal standard of training. My background is different. Although I practise internationally and locally as a coach, I maintain my professional registration and the ethical standards that come with my counselling background.That doesn't mean we ignore your past. Quite the opposite. We'll often look at childhood patterns, attachment, family dynamics, nervous-system responses and the beliefs or strategies you learned along the way. We may do reparenting, pattern work and rewriting too.The difference is that we're not exploring your history simply to understand your history. We're interested in how it's showing up in your life and relationships now, and what needs to shift so you can move towards the outcome you came for.So yes, there's psychology in the room. There's history in the room. There's emotion in the room. But there's also somewhere we're going. Here I am a coach, grace-led mentor.

Question 8

We've tried therapy before - it didn't work. Why would this be different?

Accepted Answer

Firstly, I'm really glad you're still looking.Reaching out for help can feel incredibly vulnerable, especially because by the time many couples finally do it, things are already pretty painful. Sometimes it feels like you only have so many attempts left before one of you says, “See? Nothing works.”The fact that something didn't work before doesn't mean nothing will. Different therapists, coaches and approaches really are different. I'm not going to tell you I'm definitely the right fit either. That's exactly what the free call is for.But there are a few things that make my approach different.I work from a multidisciplinary approach. I don't believe one theory explains every person or every relationship. My work draws from relationship psychology, attachment, nervous-system and somatic work, parts work, BWRT®, family systems and the work of people such as John and Julie Gottman, Terry Real, Esther Perel, Brené Brown, Diane Poole Heller and others.We work with the roots, not only the symptoms. The argument about the dishes usually isn't just about the dishes. We want to understand the pattern underneath it: what gets activated, what meaning each of you gives it, what you've learned to protect, and why you keep ending up in the same place even when you both swear you're going to do it differently next time.I'm pretty proactive. I'm warm, but I'm also directive when that's what you need. I'm not going to sit silently while you spend an hour repeating the same argument you had in the car on the way over. We'll slow things down, interrupt patterns, get curious, practise different responses and actually work with what's happening.Sessions can be flexible. Individual sessions can range from 45 to 90 minutes, depending on what you need. Sometimes someone wants more than one session in a week while we're working through something significant. That's okay too. Couple sessions are a minimum of two hours because I want enough space for both people's experiences without rushing one person out the door just as we're getting somewhere important.This work is shame-free. Accountability matters enormously to me. Shame doesn't. You can have patterns that hurt your relationship without being a bad person. You can take responsibility without being reduced to the worst thing you've ever done.And yes, my faith matters to how I work. I believe God guides me, and I believe deeply in grace, inherent worth and the importance of families and relationships. You don't need to share my beliefs, and I'm not going to preach at you or force faith into our work. But I'm also not going to pretend it isn't part of who I am and the lens through which I see people.Most importantly, I care about helping you create change that still exists when I'm no longer in the room.Because the goal isn't to get really good at therapy.The goal is to not need me anymore.

Question 9

I'm not sure I still want to stay married?

Accepted Answer

Yes. And you don't have to know yet.I work with both individuals and couples who aren't sure whether they want to stay in their marriage.Sometimes couples come to me because one or both people have been checked out for a long time. Sometimes they're only still there because of the kids. Sometimes there's still a lot of love underneath an enormous amount of hurt. And sometimes an individual comes to me privately because they're lying next to someone every night thinking, “I genuinely don't know if I want to do this anymore.”It usually takes a lot to get to that point, and I'm sorry you're in such a painful place.One of the first things we'll explore is: Are you unsure whether you want to leave, or are you actually sure you want to leave and unsure what to do next?Those are two very different places.If you're genuinely unsure, we don't start with the goal of saving your marriage at all costs. We start with understanding what happened to it.What went offline? What belongs to the relationship? What belongs to your partner? What belongs to you? What has been hurt, lost or buried along the way? And is there something here that could actually be rebuilt?My experience working with couples is particularly valuable when I'm working with just one person. After sitting with so many marriages, I'm very aware that there are usually two experiences of the same relationship. So even when your partner isn't in the room, I'm not going to automatically make them the villain or assume your interpretation is the whole story. We'll take your experience seriously while still getting curious about the bigger relationship pattern.The assessment process I use can also help us map where your relationship went offline, which can make a decision that feels like one enormous emotional knot much easier to understand.If you've already decided that you want to leave, that's different. Individual work can help you process that and think through what comes next. If you're working with me as a couple, please let me know privately before using a couple session to announce a decision your partner doesn't know about so we can decide how best to handle it.And if telling your partner doesn't feel safe because there is abuse or domestic violence, please seek specialist support rather than navigating that conversation alone.You don't have to come to me knowing whether you want to save your marriage. Sometimes figuring that out is the work.

Question 10

My partner doesn't want to come. Can I still work with you?

Accepted Answer

Absolutely.It takes two people to create a pattern, but only one person needs to step out of the dance for the dance to change.Ideally, both partners are willing to work on the relationship. But your partner doesn't have to be ready for you to start.You can work with me individually on the patterns you're caught in, how you respond when you're triggered, the boundaries you struggle to hold, what you're asking for (or not asking for), what you're tolerating, what belongs to you and what doesn't, and how you can start showing up differently in the relationship.And this is where my years of working with couples really matter. I've sat with enough couples to know how completely different the same relationship can look from each person's chair.So even when I'm only working with you, I'm not automatically going to assume your partner is the problem because I'm hearing your side. I'll take your experience seriously while also playing devil's advocate, looking at the relationship system and helping you consider what may be happening from your partner's perspective too.In fact, even if you don't work with me, I'd recommend choosing an individual coach or therapist who also has significant experience working with couples. They're more likely to recognize the relationship dynamics underneath what you're describing rather than looking at everything through an individual lens.You don't have to wait for your partner to be ready before you start changing your part of the dance.

Tehilla Luttig

Author · Relationship & Identity Coach · Speaker

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