Couples Counselling in Surrey BC
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Couples counselling in Surrey, BC uses Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) to help partners understand the negative cycle underneath repeated arguments, rebuild trust and emotional safety, and reconnect. At Sojourn Counselling and Neurofeedback, our couples counsellors and marriage therapists provide relationship counselling using Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), attachment-based therapy, and trauma-informed approaches both in-person in Surrey and online across British Columbia.
Couples counselling appointments are available in Surrey and online
Sojourn Counselling and Neurofeedback offers couples counselling with Registered Clinical Counsellors, Registered Marriage and Family Therapists, and supervised intern counsellors. You can view therapist profiles, fees, and available appointment times through JaneApp before booking.
Fees and availability vary by counsellor and can be reviewed before booking.
Couples Counsellors in Surrey BC
Many couples enter therapy feeling stuck in painful or repetitive interaction patterns that leave both partners feeling misunderstood, disconnected, defensive, or emotionally alone. Over time, communication breakdown, unresolved conflict, parenting stress, emotional injuries, life transitions, and chronic stress can begin affecting the sense of safety and connection within a relationship.
Couples counsellors at Sojourn Counselling and Neurofeedback in Surrey help partners better understand the emotional patterns shaping their relationship while developing healthier ways of communicating, responding to conflict, and reconnecting emotionally. Rather than focusing solely on solving individual arguments, therapy often explores the deeper cycles underneath recurring tension and disconnection.
At Sojourn Counselling and Neurofeedback, relationship counsellors integrate approaches such as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and attachment-informed couples counselling to help partners strengthen emotional security, improve communication, rebuild trust, and navigate difficult conversations more effectively.
Partners may seek couples counsellors for concerns such as recurring arguments, emotional distance, parenting stress, intimacy concerns, trust ruptures, infidelity, life transitions, or difficulties feeling heard and understood within the relationship. Therapy provides a structured and supportive space where both partners can slow down reactive patterns and begin working toward greater clarity, understanding, and connection together.
Counselling for Married Couples
At Sojourn Counselling and Neurofeedback in Surrey, marriage counsellors focus on helping partners better understand the emotional and relational patterns shaping conflict and disconnection while developing healthier ways of communicating, responding to one another, and rebuilding emotional safety within the relationship.
For a fuller picture of how this work is structured, who it suits and what the first few sessions involve, see our dedicated page on marriage counselling in Surrey BC.
Why Couples Seek Counselling
Couples often seek counselling when they feel stuck in painful patterns they cannot seem to change on their own.
Relationship counselling can help partners slow down recurring conflict, understand what is happening beneath the surface,
and begin rebuilding communication, trust, and emotional connection.
At Sojourn Counselling and Neurofeedback, our couples counsellors in Surrey BC support couples facing concerns such as communication problems, emotional disconnection, recurring arguments, intimacy difficulties, parenting stress, betrayal, affair recovery, financial conflict, major life transitions, and the impact of anxiety, stress, or trauma on the relationship.
Couples commonly seek marriage counselling for concerns such as:
- Communication difficulties and feeling misunderstood
- Recurring arguments and unresolved conflict
- Emotional disconnection or loneliness within the relationship
- Trust ruptures, betrayal, or infidelity recovery
- Parenting stress and family-related pressures
- Intimacy and affection concerns
- Life transitions affecting the relationship
- Differences in emotional needs or attachment styles
- Anxiety, trauma, or stress impacting connection
- Difficulty recovering after emotionally painful experiences
Some couples enter counselling feeling stuck in patterns of criticism, defensiveness, emotional withdrawal, or conflict avoidance that leave both partners feeling unheard or emotionally alone. Others seek support proactively to strengthen communication, deepen emotional connection, and improve their ability to navigate future challenges together.
Couples counselling is not about determining which partner is “right” or “wrong.” Instead, therapy helps partners slow down reactive cycles, better understand one another’s emotional experiences, and begin developing healthier patterns of communication, trust, and connection over time.
Whether you are looking for marriage counselling, relationship counselling, or counselling for relationship challenges
that have built up over time, couples therapy offers a structured and supportive space to better understand each other
and work toward healthier patterns of connection.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) in Surrey, BC
Many couples find themselves caught in repeating emotional cycles where the same arguments, misunderstandings, or patterns of withdrawal continue happening despite genuine efforts to communicate differently. Over time, these cycles can create increasing emotional distance, resentment, loneliness, and a sense that partners are no longer truly hearing or understanding one another.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is one of the most researched and effective approaches for helping couples strengthen emotional connection and rebuild a greater sense of safety and responsiveness within their relationship. Rather than focusing only on communication techniques or problem-solving strategies, EFT helps couples better understand the deeper emotional needs, attachment patterns, and interaction cycles shaping conflict and disconnection. Read more about how this looks in practice on our Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) in Surrey page.
Through EFT, couples begin recognizing how protective reactions such as criticism, defensiveness, shutting down, pursuing, or emotional withdrawal often emerge from deeper fears of rejection, abandonment, failure, or emotional disconnection. Therapy helps partners slow these reactive cycles down and respond to one another with greater openness, understanding, and emotional accessibility.
Many couples seek EFT-based counselling when they feel emotionally disconnected, stuck in recurring arguments, uncertain how to rebuild trust, or overwhelmed by stressors affecting the relationship. Others pursue therapy during life transitions such as parenting, career stress, loss, trauma, or changing relationship dynamics that have begun impacting emotional closeness and communication.
At Sojourn Counselling and Neurofeedback, EFT is integrated within broader attachment-informed and trauma-informed approaches to couples counselling that help partners strengthen connection, improve emotional safety, and build healthier patterns of interaction over time.
Sometimes these cycles are shaped by attachment patterns in relationships that formed long before the current partnership. When one partner wants to work on those personal patterns individually, attachment trauma therapy can complement couples work.
Gottman Method Couples Therapy
The Gottman Method is a research-informed approach to couples counselling developed from decades of studying relationship patterns, communication dynamics, emotional connection, and long-term relationship stability. Gottman Method Couples Therapy focuses on helping partners strengthen friendship, improve communication, manage conflict more effectively, and deepen emotional connection within the relationship.
Many couples enter therapy feeling trapped in repetitive cycles of criticism, defensiveness, emotional withdrawal, or escalating arguments that leave both partners feeling misunderstood and disconnected. Gottman-informed counselling helps couples identify these interaction patterns while building practical skills for communication, emotional responsiveness, conflict management, and relationship repair.
At Sojourn Counselling and Neurofeedback, Gottman-informed approaches may be integrated alongside Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and attachment-based couples counselling to support both emotional connection and practical relationship functioning. Therapy may include developing healthier communication habits, increasing emotional awareness, strengthening trust, improving conflict repair skills, and helping partners better understand one another’s emotional experiences and needs. If you are wondering which approach fits your relationship, our guide comparing EFT and the Gottman Method walks through the differences.
Gottman Method Couples Therapy can be helpful for couples navigating chronic conflict, emotional distance, parenting stress, intimacy concerns, rebuilding trust after betrayal, or major life transitions affecting the relationship. Many couples appreciate the balance between emotional insight and practical strategies that this approach provides.
What Happens During Couples Counselling?
Many couples begin therapy feeling uncertain about what to expect. Some worry that sessions will become emotionally overwhelming, turn into debates about who is “right,” or leave one partner feeling blamed or misunderstood. At Sojourn Counselling and Neurofeedback, couples counselling is designed to create a structured, supportive, and emotionally safe environment where both partners can better understand themselves, one another, and the interaction patterns shaping the relationship. If you are still weighing whether therapy is worth trying, our article on whether couples counselling actually works looks at what the research shows.
Early sessions often focus on understanding the history of the relationship, identifying current concerns, and exploring the emotional cycles that contribute to conflict, disconnection, defensiveness, or communication breakdown. Rather than focusing only on the content of arguments, therapy often explores the deeper emotional experiences, attachment needs, stressors, and protective reactions underneath recurring relationship patterns.
Depending on the couple’s goals and needs, therapy may integrate approaches such as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Gottman-informed couples counselling, attachment-focused work, emotional regulation strategies, and trauma-informed approaches that support healthier communication and emotional responsiveness.
During sessions, couples may work on improving communication, slowing reactive conflict cycles, rebuilding trust, increasing emotional awareness, strengthening connection, and developing healthier ways of responding during moments of tension or emotional vulnerability. Therapy is collaborative and moves at a pace that respects the readiness and comfort level of both partners.
Some couples seek counselling during periods of significant distress, while others attend therapy proactively to strengthen their relationship, improve emotional intimacy, or navigate life transitions more effectively. In some situations, individual concerns such as anxiety, trauma, burnout, or chronic stress may also be affecting the relationship dynamic. In these cases, couples counselling may be integrated alongside services such as anxiety therapy or trauma-informed counselling approaches.
The goal of couples therapy is not perfection or the elimination of all conflict, but helping partners build greater understanding, emotional safety, flexibility, and connection within the relationship over time.
Marriage Counselling and Affair Recovery
Relationship injuries involving betrayal, secrecy, broken trust, emotional disconnection, or infidelity can feel profoundly destabilizing for both partners. Many couples navigating these experiences describe feeling overwhelmed by intense emotions, recurring arguments, uncertainty about the future of the relationship, or difficulty rebuilding a sense of emotional safety and trust.
Marriage counselling and affair recovery therapy provide a structured and supportive space where couples can begin slowing reactive conflict patterns, processing painful emotional experiences, and better understanding the factors contributing to disconnection within the relationship. Therapy is not focused on assigning blame, but helping couples explore whether rebuilding trust, emotional connection, and healthier relationship patterns is possible moving forward.
For many couples, betrayal creates deep attachment injuries that affect emotional safety, communication, vulnerability, and nervous system regulation within the relationship. Approaches such as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) may help couples better understand the emotional cycles and unmet needs underlying recurring conflict while supporting more open, responsive, and emotionally secure communication over time.
Couples may seek support for concerns such as emotional affairs, physical infidelity, repeated trust ruptures, secrecy, chronic conflict, emotional withdrawal, or difficulties recovering after painful relationship experiences. Some couples arrive uncertain whether they want to repair the relationship, while others seek therapy specifically to strengthen communication and begin rebuilding trust together.
In some situations, unresolved trauma, chronic stress, anxiety, burnout, or emotional overwhelm may also be contributing to relationship difficulties. Couples counselling may therefore be integrated alongside broader counselling services that support emotional regulation, individual wellbeing, and healthier relational functioning.
Healing after betrayal is rarely a quick or linear process. Couples therapy helps create space for honesty, accountability, emotional processing, and healthier communication while supporting both partners in moving toward greater clarity, understanding, and emotional connection over time.
Relationship Counselling in Surrey BC
Not every couple who comes to Sojourn is married, and not every relationship concern is a crisis. Some people are dating and unsure whether to keep going. Some have been together for years and feel more like roommates than partners. Some are navigating a relationship that has changed shape after a baby, a move, or a loss. Relationship counselling gives you a place to look at the pattern between you rather than deciding who is at fault.
The work is the same as it is in couples counselling: we slow the cycle down, name what each of you is protecting, and build enough safety for the harder conversations to actually land.
Couples Counselling for Parenting and Life Transitions
Even strong relationships can become strained during periods of significant stress or transition. Parenting responsibilities, career pressures, financial stress, health concerns, relocation, grief, burnout, or major life changes can gradually affect communication, emotional connection, intimacy, and the overall sense of partnership within a relationship.
Many couples notice that once children enter the picture, conversations become increasingly focused on logistics, responsibilities, and stress management rather than emotional connection and support. Sleep deprivation, shifting roles, parenting disagreements, limited time together, and ongoing family demands can leave partners feeling emotionally distant, reactive, or misunderstood despite caring deeply for one another.
Couples counselling provides space for partners to slow down these patterns and better understand how stress, emotional overwhelm, and changing life circumstances may be affecting the relationship dynamic. Therapy may help couples improve communication, strengthen emotional responsiveness, navigate conflict more effectively, and reconnect during periods when life feels particularly demanding or emotionally draining.
Some couples also seek support while navigating challenges related to parenting, blended families, fertility concerns, caregiving responsibilities, or supporting children experiencing emotional or behavioural difficulties. In some cases, couples counselling may exist alongside services such as child and youth counselling or broader family-oriented therapeutic support.
At Sojourn Counselling and Neurofeedback, therapy recognizes that relationship stress does not occur in isolation. External pressures, nervous system overwhelm, unresolved emotional experiences, and life transitions can all influence how partners communicate and connect with one another. Couples counselling helps partners develop greater understanding, emotional flexibility, and resilience while strengthening their ability to navigate future challenges together.
Meet Our Couples Counsellors in Surrey, BC
- Jonathan Wieser — Registered Clinical Counsellor and Registered Marriage & Family Therapist offering couples counselling grounded in attachment theory, emotionally focused approaches, and trauma-informed relationship therapy.
- Katherine Ouano — Registered Clinical Counsellor trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy who has supported families in Surrey since 1998 and enjoys working with couples. She helps partners understand their negative cycle and rebuild emotional safety and connection, with evening and weekend appointments available.
- Alexandra DeFazio — Associate Therapist (MEd) who sees couples using emotionally focused and attachment based approaches, with sessions available in English and Spanish.
- Sarah Ball — Counselling intern studying Marriage and Family Therapy, offering low-cost counselling support for couples and individuals in a collaborative, relational, and emotionally supportive therapeutic environment.
- Mike Murie — Counselling intern with training in Couples and Family Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples, families, and individuals, offering low-cost couples counselling under clinical supervision.
Couples may seek counselling for concerns such as recurring conflict, emotional disconnection, parenting stress, intimacy concerns, trust ruptures, attachment-related patterns, or navigating major life transitions together. Therapy is always adapted to the unique emotional needs, experiences, and goals of each relationship.
How Couples Counselling Can Help
Couples counselling offers a structured, supportive space to slow down reactive patterns and understand what is happening beneath recurring conflict. Rather than focusing on who is right or wrong, therapy helps both partners feel heard, recognize the cycle they get caught in, and respond to one another with more openness and care.
Research suggests that couples therapy can be helpful for many couples experiencing relationship distress. A widely cited review reported that a majority of couples improve with treatment, with gains often comparable to those seen in individual therapy. Emotionally Focused Therapy, one of the approaches our counsellors use, is among the more researched couples models, and meta analyses report improvements in relationship satisfaction for many couples during and after therapy, though evidence on how long those gains last varies.
Outcomes differ from couple to couple, and therapy is not a guarantee. What counselling can offer is a clearer understanding of your patterns, practical skills for communication and repair, and a safer space to work toward the changes you hope for.
Our Approach to Couples Therapy
Our counsellors tailor the work to each couple rather than applying a single formula. Broadly, the work tends to move through three phases: understanding your relationship and the patterns that fuel conflict, working through those patterns to build safer communication and connection, and consolidating the changes so they hold over time.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is an attachment based approach that helps partners recognize the emotional cycle driving conflict and respond to each other with more safety and responsiveness. You can learn more about EFT.
The Gottman Method is a research informed approach focused on strengthening friendship, managing conflict more constructively, and building shared meaning, with practical tools for communication and repair. You can read about Gottman Method couples therapy.
For many couples these approaches are integrated alongside attachment and trauma informed work. Your counsellor will discuss which approach, or combination, may suit your goals.
Where We Serve
Our clinic is located in Cloverdale, Surrey, and we welcome couples from across the region, including South Surrey, Langley, White Rock, and surrounding communities. For partners who prefer to meet from home, or who live farther away, we also offer online couples counselling across British Columbia.
Online sessions let partners attend from the privacy of home, reducing travel time and scheduling barriers, and can also help when partners are temporarily in different locations. They are held through a secure video platform and follow the same collaborative process as in person work, including EFT, Gottman informed, and attachment focused approaches.
Frequently Asked Questions
Couples often have questions before starting therapy, and we’re here to help you feel comfortable and confident in taking the next step. Below are some common questions about couples therapy and what you can expect at Sojourn Counselling.
1. What is couples counselling?
2. How do I know if we need couples counselling?
3. What happens during a couples counselling session?
4. How long will therapy last?
5. Is it too late to start couples counselling?
6. Can stress, anxiety, or nervous system regulation affect our relationship?
Yes. Stress, anxiety, and how the nervous system handles pressure can shape how partners communicate and connect; our post on when stress or burnout strains your relationship looks at this pattern in more detail.Couples counselling focuses on the relationship itself, and where it is helpful, some clients also explore individual counselling or neurofeedback to support regulation alongside the relationship work. Your counsellor can help you decide what fits.
Men who would rather begin with individual support can learn more about our counselling for men.
7. How much does couples counselling cost, and is it covered by insurance?
Couples counselling is $160 to $175 per 50 minute session with a Registered Clinical Counsellor or Registered Marriage and Family Therapist, and $240 for an extended 75 minute session. Sessions with our Associate Therapist are $120, and supervised intern counsellors offer couples sessions at $60 per 50 minute session, with the first intern session free. Sessions with a Registered Clinical Counsellor may be covered by some extended health plans, though coverage varies by provider. Even if we can’t direct bill your insurer, plans covering RCC or RMFT services may reimburse you — we provide receipts you can submit. You can review each counsellor’s fees and availability on JaneApp before booking.
8. What if my partner is reluctant, or can one of us start alone?
It is common for one partner to feel more ready than the other. You are welcome to begin individually to clarify your own goals, and many partners choose to join once they understand what sessions involve. Your counsellor can talk through the options with you.
9. Do you offer online couples counselling across BC?
Yes. Sessions are available in person in Surrey and online for couples throughout British Columbia, held over a secure video platform. Many couples find online sessions a flexible and effective option, and the same approaches are used as for in person work. Book online or telephone counselling.
10. What is the difference between EFT and the Gottman Method?
Emotionally Focused Therapy focuses on the emotional bond and attachment needs underneath conflict, while the Gottman Method offers practical, research informed tools for friendship, conflict management, and shared meaning. Many of our counsellors draw on both.
11. Do you work with LGBTQ couples and diverse relationships?
Yes. We aim to offer an inclusive, respectful space and welcome couples of all backgrounds and relationship structures. If you have questions about fit, our team is glad to help you find a counsellor.
Related Services
Couples work often connects with other support at Sojourn. You may find these pages helpful:
- Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for a closer look at the attachment based model many of our counsellors use
- Gottman Method Couples Therapy for the research informed Gottman approach
- Online therapy across BC for virtual couples sessions
- Anxiety counselling when stress or anxiety is affecting the relationship
- Child and youth counselling for families navigating a child’s needs
- Low cost counselling for reduced fee sessions with supervised interns
- Pregnancy and postpartum counselling for couples adjusting to pregnancy, birth, or life with a new baby
Start Couples Counselling in Surrey BC
Relationships can become strained when communication breaks down, conflict becomes repetitive, or emotional connection
begins to feel distant. Couples counselling provides a supportive space to better understand these patterns, strengthen
communication, and rebuild connection together.
Don’t wait to invest in your relationship. Contact us today to learn more about our couples counselling services or to schedule your first session. We offer flexible appointment times and an easy-to-use online booking system to make it convenient for you to get the support you need.
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