Couples Counseling in Spokane, WA

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We offer a prescribed 6-8 sessions of preventative conversations and exercises to prepare couples for the challenges and joys of a life spent together. We will discuss things like communication styles, love languages, conflict management, external relationships, and more.

Relationships don’t usually devolve overnight.

More often, it happens slowly, from misunderstandings, unresolved conflict, unspoken resentment, stress, or past wounds that never fully healed.

Couples counseling offers a structured, supportive space to slow down, understand what’s happening beneath the surface, and learn how to move forward differently.

At August Bloom Counseling, we provide couples therapy in Spokane for partners who want something more than surface-level communication tips. We help couples understand the patterns they’re stuck in and how to shift them.

Most couples say they struggle with communication. But in therapy, we often discover that the real issue isn’t what you’re arguing about — it’s what the argument represents.

Communication problems often stem from:

• Feeling unheard or dismissed
• Escalation cycles
• Defensive patterns
• Emotional flooding
• Fear of vulnerability
• Avoidance of difficult conversations
   

In couples counseling, we work on identifying your conflict cycle, the predictable pattern you both get pulled into, and helping you interrupt it.

Conflict itself isn’t unhealthy.

Avoided conflict, explosive conflict, or conflict that feels emotionally unsafe — that’s where damage happens.

Couples therapy helps you:

• Slow arguments down
• Recognize triggers
• Develop regulation skills
• Repair after rupture
• Express needs without attacking
• Listen without shutting down
   

Many couples seek therapy not because they don’t love each other — but because they don’t know how to fight in a way that protects the relationship.

Individual trauma doesn’t disappear when we enter a relationship. It shows up.

Past experiences, such as childhood instability, betrayal, abandonment, abuse, chronic stress, shape how we respond when we feel hurt or threatened.

Trauma in relationships often looks like:

• Intense reactivity
• Withdrawal or emotional shutdown
• Hypervigilance
• Difficulty trusting
• Fear of being “too much” or “not enough”
   

Couples counseling can help partners understand how attachment wounds are influencing present dynamics and create new, safer relational experiences.

 It is not:

• A space to determine who is right
• A place to gang up on one partner
• A quick fix
   

It is:

• A structured process
• A collaborative space
• A place to learn new relational skills