Audrey Schoen, LMFT

Audrey Schoen, LMFT California Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist. Online video counseling for clients in California.

Helping couples and adults gain insight and clarity to feel more grounded, improve communication and create connection in their relationships.

Where does the score-keeping live in your relationship? And what would it feel like to put the ledger down?Retaliation i...
08/10/2026

Where does the score-keeping live in your relationship? And what would it feel like to put the ledger down?

Retaliation is the relationship version of burning your own house down to teach someone a lesson.

It makes sense in the moment. You were hurt. Something in you wants them to know what that feels like. So you deliver the comment. You withdraw the warmth. You go quiet in the specific way that communicates everything. You even the score.
Except the score doesn’t get even. It escalates.

Because now your partner has been hurt too. And hurt people retaliate. So they respond, and now you have something new to retaliate for, and the original issue, the one that actually needed to be addressed, is buried under layers of injury that nobody’s touched.

This is one of the five losing strategies in Relational Life Therapy. It’s the one that feels most like justice. It’s also the one that does the most damage quietly, because it doesn’t always look like a fight. Sometimes it looks like two people being perfectly polite while slowly dismantling their own relationship.

Retaliation doesn’t restore balance. It just raises what’s at stake.

The full breakdown of all five is in my blog post:
https://www.audreylmft.com/blogs/the-five-losing-strategies-what-we-do-when-we-feel-threatened-in-relationships

When one partner is carrying trauma, the couples work will not hold until the trauma work happens first.This is one of t...
08/08/2026

When one partner is carrying trauma, the couples work will not hold until the trauma work happens first.

This is one of the most common places I watch couples stall. They come in ready to fix communication, rebuild trust, reconnect. And underneath it all, one or both of them is still running a nervous system that has not had a chance to put anything down.

You cannot build relational safety on top of unprocessed activation. The body will not let you.

There is a specific order that actually works.

Step 1: Name what you are carrying.

The recent conflict is usually the surface. Underneath sits the older weight. Occupational stress from a high-stakes career. Past betrayals. Childhood patterns you learned in a house that did not feel safe. All of it shows up in how you fight, how you withdraw, how you go quiet at the kitchen table. Naming it is the first move.

Step 2: Process it at the source.

Talking about trauma is different from processing it, and that distinction surprises most people. ART and Brainspotting work at a neurological level, reducing the charge stored in specific memories without asking you to narrate every detail out loud. This is the stage that makes the relational work actually stick, because you stop reacting from a full tank.

Step 3: Rebuild from a cleared foundation.

Once the individual load has been reduced, relational safety becomes buildable. Communication skills. Conflict repair. Reconnection. This is where those tools finally take hold. Couples who try to skip to this stage without the first two often find themselves back at square one within months.

Healing in the right order produces the kind of change that actually lasts.

If this is the layer you have been trying to work around, that is the work I do with individuals and couples in Roseville, CA and online throughout California and Texas.

Most couples try to solve the argument before they've actually repaired the rupture.Those are two different moves. Doing...
08/07/2026

Most couples try to solve the argument before they've actually repaired the rupture.

Those are two different moves. Doing them out of order is why the same fight keeps happening.

The sentence I teach couples is simple.

"I want to repair with you before we figure anything out."

That's the whole opening.

Repair isn't agreement. It isn't deciding who was right. Repair is turning back toward each other after a rupture so the conversation you're about to have is actually possible.

Every relationship moves through the same cycle of harmony, disharmony, repair. Most couples get stuck in disharmony because no one ever taught them the way back. So they skip repair and jump straight to resolution.

They try to solve the dishwasher fight, the in-law fight, the money fight, while the rupture between them is still open underneath.

Then they wonder why the "solution" doesn't hold. Why the same argument comes back in a slightly different outfit next Tuesday.

You can't resolve anything across a rupture. You can only negotiate across a repair.

Start there. Say the sentence. Let the temperature come down before you try to think together.

The content of the fight will still be waiting for you. Most of the time, it's more solvable than you think, once you're on the same side of the room again.

I work with couples in person in Roseville, CA and online throughout California and Texas. 🤍

You built a career on solving hard problems. Somewhere along the way you also built a rulebook for how to feel, and nobo...
08/07/2026

You built a career on solving hard problems. Somewhere along the way you also built a rulebook for how to feel, and nobody handed it to you.

You just absorbed it.

From the family that praised you for being easy. From the job that rewarded you for being unshakeable. From the part of you that figured out early it was safer to perform than to need anything.

A few of the rules I hear most often in my office:

You must earn rest by finishing everything first.

Needing help means you're not capable enough.

Feeling anxious means something is wrong with you.

Vulnerability is a liability you can't afford.

You have to understand why before you can change.

None of these were ever official. Nobody sat you down and made you sign. And yet they run underneath every decision about when you're allowed to stop, ask, feel, or lean on someone.

The quieter truths I offer clients sound like this:

Rest is not a reward for completion.

Needing help means you're paying attention.

Anxiety is information. It is not a verdict on you.

Vulnerability is what connection actually requires of us.

Change can happen before full understanding arrives.

The rules you never agreed to are usually the ones costing you the most. Your body knows. Your marriage knows. The version of you that used to feel things knows.

You are allowed to stop following a rulebook you never wrote.

You don't need a crisis to set a limit. You just need to know you're allowed.Here are six sentences I've watched couples...
08/07/2026

You don't need a crisis to set a limit. You just need to know you're allowed.

Here are six sentences I've watched couples in my office hesitate to say out loud, because saying them feels riskier than staying stuck.

"I need 20 minutes before we continue this conversation."

"I'm not willing to keep discussing this after 10pm."

"That comment landed as criticism, even if it wasn't meant that way."

"I need you to hear me out before you respond."

"I'm not ready to decide that right now, and that's okay."

"I love you and I'm not okay with how that was said."

None of these are attacks. None of them require your partner to agree before you're allowed to say them.

This is what full-respect living looks like in practice. You get to name the limit. They get to have their reaction. Both things can be true.

These sentences feel risky because most of us were never shown that we're allowed to say them at all.

You are.

Most couples spend years getting better at complaining.I teach something different on day one.It is a simple shift from ...
08/06/2026

Most couples spend years getting better at complaining.

I teach something different on day one.

It is a simple shift from Relational Life Therapy, the framework developed by Terry Real that anchors my work.

Inside of every complaint is a request.

Skip the complaint and go straight to the request.

When you complain, you are telling your partner what they are doing wrong.

Your partner's system hears an attack, and they immediately go into defense mode.

The conversation is over before it even starts.

When you make a direct request, you are telling your partner what you actually want.

You are giving them a map to succeed with you.

It looks like this:

The complaint: "You never want to spend time with me."
The request: "I miss you. Can we set aside an hour tonight to just catch up?"

The complaint: "You're leaving all the dinner dishes for me again."
The request: "After dinner, can you take care of the kitchen while I get the kids ready for bed?"

Notice how the request feels.

It is clean.

It is honest.

You are taking radical responsibility for your own needs. You are no longer waiting for your partner to read your mind.

This is the shift that changes the entire dynamic in my office.

It takes practice to pause when you are activated and find the request hiding under your frustration.

But it is how you actually get heard.

If you are ready to stop talking in circles and start changing the dynamic, this is where we begin.

My practice is located in Roseville, CA, and I work with couples online throughout California and Texas.

🔗 Learn more about my couples therapy intensives on my website.

Two people can walk into therapy with the exact same problem and need completely different formats to actually move thro...
08/06/2026

Two people can walk into therapy with the exact same problem and need completely different formats to actually move through it.

One needs a weekly rhythm. The other needs a concentrated reset.

Neither is more serious. Neither is more committed. They just process differently.

I offer both weekly sessions and multi-day intensives, and the question I get most often is some version of "which one is right for me?"

The real differentiator usually isn't urgency. It's how you process, what your schedule can actually hold, and whether you need sustained rhythm or a concentrated block of time.

Weekly therapy tends to fit you if:
✓ You process best in small, steady increments and want time between sessions to try things on
✓ You want a sustained relationship where patterns can surface as they naturally come up in your week
✓ Your schedule can hold a consistent hour, and consistency is part of what regulates you
✓ You're not in crisis and you're not trying to compress a decision

An intensive tends to fit you if:
✓ You've been circling the same conversation for months (or years) and you're done tolerating the dynamic
✓ Your calendar makes a weekly hour genuinely hard to protect, and you'd rather block dedicated time and go deep
✓ You process faster when you're not context-switching back into your regular life every seven days
✓ You want a concentrated container to work on one specific thing. A rupture. A decision. A pattern you can name but can't shift on your own.

A lot of the entrepreneurs and couples I work with land on intensives because of how they already operate. They're used to blocking time, going in, and doing the work. The format matches the way their nervous system already handles hard things.

Others do their best work in the weekly rhythm, where the insight from one session has room to breathe before the next.

Both are real therapy. Both do real work.

The useful question is which one is actually yours.

If you're trying to figure that out, that conversation is part of the intake. In person in Roseville, CA and online throughout California and Texas.

You've been on the waitlist for weekly couples therapy for six weeks. Your partner is sleeping in the guest room.Those t...
08/05/2026

You've been on the waitlist for weekly couples therapy for six weeks. Your partner is sleeping in the guest room.

Those two things are not equally urgent.

This is the conversation I have almost every week with couples trying to figure out what kind of help they actually need. And the confusion usually isn't about cost or logistics. It's whether choosing an intensive means things are "more serious" than weekly therapy would be.

It doesn't. They solve different problems on different timelines.

Weekly therapy works when time is on your side. You're not in crisis, you're building skills, and you have the bandwidth to practice between sessions. An hour every Tuesday for six or nine months is enough room to grow into a different version of your relationship.

Intensives work when time is the thing you don't have. Either because you're in acute crisis and another four months of weekly sessions feels like watching the house burn while you schedule the fire truck. Or because you're the kind of couple who genuinely cannot protect a recurring Tuesday hour, but you can clear 3 days and go deep.

Neither format is the "real" version of the work. They're tools matched to different problems.

If you're trying to decide, ask yourself two questions. How much runway do we actually have before something breaks or someone leaves? And what's more realistic for us to protect: a weekly hour for the next six months, or two focused days in the next six weeks?

The answer is usually pretty clear once you stop asking which one sounds more impressive.

The last time you said something in your relationship because you felt it: was it in service of connection, or in servic...
08/05/2026

The last time you said something in your relationship because you felt it: was it in service of connection, or in service of your own release?

Because there's a difference between telling the truth and delivering the truth at full volume, with no filter, because you feel it and therefore it must be said.

One is integrity. The other is unbridled self-expression and it's one of the five losing strategies in Relational Life Therapy for a reason.

"I'm just being honest" is one of the most commonly used covers for not bothering to consider impact. The feedback delivered like a verdict. The observation that didn't need to be said out loud. The thing that's technically true and lands like a weapon.

Your partner isn't your journal. They're not your emotional outlet. They're a person trying to feel safe in a relationship with you. What they receive is part of the deal, not just what you intended.

The full breakdown of all five is in my blog post:
https://www.audreylmft.com/blogs/the-five-losing-strategies-what-we-do-when-we-feel-threatened-in-relationships

The Sunday night blow-up isn't happening because you forgot the script.You already know the "I feel" statement. You've r...
08/05/2026

The Sunday night blow-up isn't happening because you forgot the script.

You already know the "I feel" statement. You've read the book. One of you probably has the attachment style memorized. And still, somewhere between loading the dishwasher and setting the alarm for Monday, it turns into the same fight you've been having for years.

That's the piece most couples therapy skips. Teaching the skill is the easy part. The harder work is the part of you that refuses to use it, right at the moment it would actually matter.

A shutdown. A defensive reflex. A need to win. That's not a communication failure. That's something older than the relationship, running the show mid-sentence.

Skills don't fail. The part of you that won't use them does. That's the work I do with couples in Roseville and online throughout California and Texas. 🤍

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