Discernment Counseling
With guidance, you can find a clear path forward.
Unsure if you want to work on your relationship, separate, or divorce? Discernment Counseling is a great option for relationships on the brink of splitting up or divorcing.
What are the paths forward?
Lean In
Therapeutic Separation
Therapeutic Separation
Means doing the hard work to heal the relationship, focusing energy and effort toward the identified needs of both partners and working the developed plan. This most often involves Psychotherapy.
Therapeutic Separation
Therapeutic Separation
Therapeutic Separation
Sometimes healing needs to happen apart while still holding on to the relationship. A therapeutic separation is a structured time of healing while separated. See below for more.
Lean Out
Therapeutic Separation
Lean Out
Means deciding to divorce and ending the relationship. There are Divorce Options that minimize harm to the whole family.
Couples counseling can be ineffective when at least one person in the relationship is ambivalent about staying in the relationship. Having one foot out the door.
Divorce is one of life’s most stressful transitions that has a significant impact on those involved, especially children.
The Discernment Counseling process was developed for this in-between space that is not therapy but also not divorce. It is a short-term - no more than five appointments - structured process designed to help clients gain clarity about what needs to change in the relationship, if they agree to work on the relationship, and what it might look like to divorce.
Many clients gain clarity quickly in this process and all clients can leave with a plan for what is next – the healing work of therapy or the disentangling work of divorce.
We can help clients plan a Therapeutic Separation, which is a structured separation with clear goals and boundaries to support healing while the couple is living apart. Instead of separating without a plan, which most often leads to a divorce, a therapeutic separation is designed to continue exploring if the relationship can move forward. Relationships vary in what they need during a therapeutic separation, so Julia works with the clients to clarify needs and goals and develop a supportive plan.
Reach out to discuss how to start the process
and invite your partner to participate.