At Century Psychology Group, we understand the complexities of relationships and the challenges couples often face. Our couples counseling services in Los Angeles are designed to provide professional support for partners looking to enrich their bond, navigate conflicts, and enhance overall relational satisfaction. With approximately 70% of couples who undergo therapy reporting improved communication skills, our experienced team helps couples explore their dynamics in a safe and supportive environment.
Dr. Daneshrad is an amazing therapist who care deeply for her patients that she sees. She is kind, responsive and has made seeing a therapist very enjoyable for me. I recommend Dr. Daneshrad to all my friends and family. Both in person and virtual sessions are wonderful with Dr. Daneshrad.
How Couples Counseling Transforms Relationships
Couples counseling is a pivotal step for those seeking to enhance their connection and resolve ongoing issues within their relationship. This therapeutic process enables both partners to address individual and shared challenges, fostering a supportive framework for open communication. Couples therapy has a success rate of about 70% in improving relationship satisfaction, and with professional guidance, couples often rediscover trust and intimacy, addressing concerns like unhealthy communication patterns and external stressors. In Los Angeles, our skilled therapists offer tailored approaches, helping couples navigate through difficult times while empowering them to strengthen their partnership.
Exploring Couples Therapy Techniques and Approaches
Our approach to couples therapy in Los Angeles incorporates various evidence-based techniques to suit the unique needs of each couple. From Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), we explore methods that can help partners better understand their emotional responses and improve their interactions. With the average number of sessions for couples therapy ranging from 6 to 12, this flexibility in our therapeutic methods allows us to cater to diverse needs, whether through online couples therapy or in-person sessions. This ensures that all couples, including those in the Beverly Hills area, can access support tailored to their relationship dynamics.
Three levels of change
At Century Psychology Group, couples therapy addresses both the underlying causes of conflict and practical ways to respond differently. Our approach works on three levels at once: what is happening between partners in the moment, where those reactions originate, and what each partner can practically do differently. Each level strengthens the others, and together they produce change that is both deep and durable.
What is happening between you. Most recurring conflict follows a predictable cycle. One partner pursues and the other withdraws, or criticism prompts defensiveness, which prompts more criticism. Beneath the visible anger or distance are usually more vulnerable feelings: fear of being abandoned, hurt at feeling unimportant, or a sense of never being good enough. We help couples recognize their cycle as it unfolds, identify the emotions driving it, and learn to express those emotions in ways that draw a partner closer rather than pushing them away. As this happens, partners begin to feel emotionally safe with each other again, which is the foundation for every other kind of change.
Where it comes from. Every partner brings a history into a relationship. Early family experiences shape how each person expresses needs, handles disappointment, responds to conflict and seeks closeness. A partner who learned early that needs went unmet may pursue reassurance with growing urgency. A partner who learned that conflict was dangerous may retreat at the first sign of tension. These patterns often operate outside of awareness, which is why couples can recognize a problem and still find themselves repeating it. We help each partner understand how their history shapes their reactions in the present. That understanding turns conflict that once felt personal into something both partners can see clearly and approach with compassion.
What to do differently. Insight matters most when it changes how people act. Throughout therapy, we help couples identify the assumptions and interpretations that fuel their reactions, such as “he doesn’t care” or “she’s always looking for something to criticize,” and examine whether those beliefs hold up. We also work on concrete skills: how to raise a concern without triggering defensiveness, how to pause an escalating argument and return to it productively, and how to repair after a difficult moment. Couples practice these skills between sessions, so progress carries into everyday life.
Many approaches to couples therapy emphasize only one of these levels. Our work integrates all three, so couples leave with a deeper understanding of themselves and each other, a stronger emotional bond, and practical tools to sustain it.
Understanding Conflict Resolution in Couple Dynamics
Effective conflict resolution is a core focus of our couples counseling services. We guide partners in identifying the roots of their conflicts and teach methods to address these issues constructively. By improving communication skills and understanding each other’s perspectives, couples can turn conflicts into opportunities for growth. 65% of couples report a decrease in conflict after therapy, and our therapists in Los Angeles aim to rebuild trust and connection through tailored strategies, ensuring that even the most challenging situations become manageable.
Enhancing Communication Skills in Therapy Sessions
Building robust communication skills is essential in any relationship. In our counseling sessions, couples learn to express their thoughts and feelings openly, fostering a deeper understanding of each other. Through guidance, partners work on articulating their needs and resolving misunderstandings, leading to a healthier, more fulfilling connection. This focus on skill enhancement allows our Los Angeles clients to cultivate lasting improvements in how they communicate daily.
The Value of Premarital Counseling for Couples
Premarital counseling offers engaged couples a unique opportunity to prepare for married life. Through our comprehensive sessions, partners identify potential areas of conflict and learn tools to navigate them proactively. Couples counseling not only lays a strong foundation for a successful marriage but also equips partners with skills to handle life transitions, financial discussions, and family dynamics. Couples who participate in therapy are 50% more likely to stay together than those who do not, and in Los Angeles, we emphasize the importance of addressing these topics early, ensuring a healthier partnership down the road.
We begin with each partner as an individual. Before examining the relationship, we work to understand who each person is: the family environment that shaped them, the relationships they observed growing up, their expectations about closeness, independence, conflict and roles within a marriage, and what committing to a lifelong partnership means to them personally. For some, marriage represents security and belonging. For others, it may also bring unspoken concerns about losing independence, repeating a parent’s difficult marriage, or meeting expectations from family and community. Through time with each partner individually as well as together, we help these feelings and expectations come into view, often for the first time.
When each partner understands themselves more fully, they can understand each other more fully as well. Joint sessions focus on how the two individual histories meet: where expectations align, where they differ, and how each partner tends to respond when they feel misunderstood or unsupported. We identify the early signs of patterns that could become entrenched over time, and couples learn practical skills for communicating about difficult topics, resolving disagreements and repairing after conflict. Conversations about finances, family involvement, children, careers and intimacy become opportunities to understand each other rather than sources of tension.
Supportive Spaces: Emotional Benefits of Counseling
Engaging in couples counseling provides emotional support crucial for personal and relational growth. Our therapists create a safe, supportive environment where couples can openly express concerns without judgment. Many couples report feeling a sense of relief and renewed hope after attending sessions, which aids in building resilience and understanding within their relationship. This fosters a nurturing space where both partners can thrive emotionally while enhancing their connection.
Multicultural and Multilingual Couples
Relationships do not exist apart from family and culture. Every partner brings expectations shaped by how they were raised, including how families express affection, handle conflict, divide responsibilities, make decisions and stay involved in a couple’s life. When partners come from different cultural backgrounds, when one partner grew up in another country, or when partners share a culture but relate to it differently, these expectations can collide in ways that are difficult to name. Differences that seem small, such as how often to see extended family or who has a voice in major decisions, often carry deep meaning tied to identity, loyalty and belonging.
We do not approach any couple with assumptions about what their culture means to them. Two people from the same background may hold very different relationships to its traditions, values and expectations. Early in therapy, we take time to understand how each partner experiences their own cultural identity, including the values they hold closely, the expectations they feel from family and community, and the parts of their upbringing they have embraced or moved away from. This allows us to tailor the work to the couple in front of us rather than applying a single model of what a healthy relationship should look like.
Cultural history is also personal history, which makes it central to understanding where each partner’s reactions come from. A partner’s response to a mother-in-law’s involvement, a disagreement about finances or a conflict over how children should be raised often reflects years of family experience and cultural meaning. When couples see their differences as rooted in experience rather than as a lack of care or respect, they can approach them with curiosity instead of defensiveness. From there, we help them develop practical agreements that honor what matters to each partner, whether that involves boundaries with extended family, decisions about religious or cultural practices, or how to raise children between two traditions.
Century Psychology Group is a multicultural practice, and our therapists bring a range of cultural backgrounds and lived experiences to their work. Couples therapy is available in English, Farsi and Spanish, with clinicians who work with couples and families in each language.
Language matters in couples work. Many people can discuss everyday matters in a second language but find that emotion, family memories and their deepest concerns come more naturally in their first. Sessions can move between languages as needed, so each partner can speak in the language that best reflects what they feel. Couples also don’t have to explain or defend their cultural context before the real work can begin. They can focus on the relationship itself.
We work with couples who share a cultural background as well as intercultural couples, including those balancing the expectations of parents and extended family, differences between generations, and the experience of building a life between two cultures.
Fertility, Intimacy and Sexual Health
Infertility and fertility treatment place significant strain on a relationship. Months or years of appointments, procedures, waiting periods and uncertain outcomes affect each partner differently. One partner may want to talk through every development while the other copes by turning inward, and each can misread the other’s response as not caring. Scheduled intimacy, financial pressure, repeated disappointment and grief can gradually erode a couple’s sense of closeness at the very time they most need each other.
Our approach to fertility-related therapy is built around seeing both partners individually and together. Each partner has their own experience of this process, shaped by what parenthood means to them, how they relate to their body, their family’s expectations, and their own history with loss and hope. Individual sessions give each partner space to explore that experience fully, including feelings they may hesitate to share with their partner, such as guilt, resentment, fear or exhaustion. Joint sessions then bring those experiences together, helping partners understand each other’s inner world and respond with empathy rather than frustration.
This dual focus serves two purposes. It ensures that each partner receives the support they need for themselves, rather than setting their own needs aside to care for the other. It also helps each partner become the support the other needs, by understanding what that support actually looks like for this person, which is often different from what they would want for themselves. Alongside this emotional work, we help couples develop practical ways of coping: managing anxiety during waiting periods, making difficult treatment decisions together, setting boundaries with family about questions and expectations, and protecting time for connection that has nothing to do with fertility.
We pay particular attention to the male partner’s experience, which is frequently overlooked in fertility care, especially in cases of male-factor infertility. Men often feel pressure to remain the steady one and may have few places to express their own grief or sense of inadequacy. Giving that experience its own space strengthens both the individual and the relationship.
Intimacy and sexual concerns, whether connected to fertility or not, are approached with the same depth. Changes in desire or connection often reflect emotional distance, unresolved hurt or earlier experiences that shape how each partner relates to closeness. We address those emotional roots while also helping couples take concrete steps toward rebuilding physical and emotional intimacy.
Many couples come to us through physician referrals, including urologists, psychiatrists and reproductive specialists. With the couple’s consent, we coordinate with their medical providers so emotional and medical care support each other.
When an Individual Concern Is Driving the Conflict
Sometimes a relationship problem is partly rooted in one partner’s undiagnosed condition. Untreated ADHD, for example, can look like carelessness or indifference to the other partner. Anxiety or depression can show up as irritability, withdrawal or a loss of interest in the relationship.
When this seems likely, a licensed psychologist on our team can provide a psychological evaluation within the practice, without a separate referral or wait. A clear diagnosis often changes how both partners understand the conflict. Behavior that felt personal can be seen for what it is, and treatment can address both the individual concern and its effect on the relationship.
Couples Considering Separation
Some couples arrive at therapy uncertain whether the relationship can continue. One partner may be ready to leave while the other hopes to repair things, or both may be exhausted and unsure.
In these situations, rushing toward a decision in either direction rarely helps. We first work to understand how the relationship reached this point and what each partner is truly experiencing beneath the frustration. For some couples, uncovering the source of the conflict, and learning new ways to respond to each other, opens a path forward that didn’t seem possible before. For others, the work brings clarity that separation is the right choice.
When couples do decide to separate, our background in high-conflict divorce and family work becomes especially valuable. Shannon Daneshrad, Psy.D., Licensed Psychologist (California license PSY34382), and her team at CPG work extensively with families after separation and understand how unresolved conflict between parents can affect children for years afterward. We help couples who are parting ways do so with less hostility, protecting their children and their ability to co-parent.
What to Expect
Couples therapy typically begins with a joint session to understand the relationship and the concerns that brought the couple in. From there, sessions focus on identifying the recurring cycle, understanding the emotions and history beneath it, and building new ways of responding to one another, both in session and in daily life.
Sessions are available in English, Farsi and Spanish, in person in Beverly Hills or by telehealth throughout California.
Frequently Asked Questions about Couples Counseling Services
-
Couples counseling is a therapeutic process that helps partners address and resolve conflicts, improve communication, and strengthen their relationship.
-
Typically, couples therapy sessions last about 50 minutes to one hour, depending on the therapist’s approach and the couple’s needs.
-
Yes, couples counseling is effective in addressing trust issues by fostering open communication and conflict resolution strategies to rebuild trust.
-
Couples therapy typically begins with a joint session, but one partner can begin individually if the other is hesitant. We also see partners individually when it supports the work. Individual sessions are a central part of our approach in fertility-related therapy and premarital counseling, and they can be part of couples therapy more broadly.
-
Yes, many couples find online therapy significantly effective as it allows flexible scheduling and accessibility, making it easier to engage in therapy from various locations.
-
Our work integrates three levels of change: understanding the cycle that keeps repeating between partners, exploring where each partner’s reactions originate, and learning what to do differently. This combines emotional connection and insight with practical skills for everyday life.
-
It varies by couple. Some see meaningful change within a few months. Couples working through longstanding patterns, infidelity or significant loss may benefit from longer work.
-
Sometimes. Coverage depends on your insurance plan, the treating clinician and the service provided, including whether treatment addresses a diagnosed condition. The practice accepts Aetna, Blue Shield and Medicare, but acceptance does not guarantee coverage for couples therapy. A sliding scale is available for those who qualify. Please contact the practice to confirm eligibility, benefits and fees before starting treatment.
Why Choose Century Psychology Group for Couples Counseling?
Choosing Century Psychology Group for couples counseling means working with a team led by Dr. Shannon Daneshrad, a licensed psychologist with extensive training and experience in relationship dynamics. With dual licensure in California and Virginia, and advanced training from esteemed institutions like The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Dr. Daneshrad offers culturally competent care tailored to diverse populations.
- Care led by Shannon Daneshrad, Psy.D., Licensed Psychologist, licensed in California and Virginia
- Specialization in high-conflict relationship issues, including parental alienation and family reunification therapy
- Focus on evidence-based practices to foster effective communication and conflict resolution
- Flexible therapy options available, including in-person and online sessions
- Emphasis on personalized care for every client
Reconnect and Strengthen Your Relationship with Our Couples Counseling in Los Angeles
Schedule a session with our dedicated team at Century Psychology Group for professional couples counseling tailored to your needs in Los Angeles. Contact our award-winning team today! Our compassionate approach, led by a licensed psychologist, is designed to help you and your partner navigate challenges and improve your connection. Begin your journey towards a healthier, more fulfilling relationship today.
Medically reviewed by Shannon Daneshrad, Psy.D., M.A. on
