Gottman Referral Network

About

Most couples arrive at this work from different starting points. One of you has been awake to the trouble for years: noticing the cycle, reading the books, naming the four horsemen, often dismissed. The other has been winning everywhere else. Complex problems, high-stakes decisions, unrelenting pressure. Lately something at home has gone quiet. Panic on one side, exhaustion on the other. Neither can change this alone. That gap between knowing and changing is where real work happens, and where most therapy never reaches.

The quiet exhaustion of being in the same room with someone and somewhere else entirely starts to feel permanent.

It does not have to be.

I'm Travis Atkinson. Thirty years in that gap pushed me through three models and into co-developing a fourth. Certified Gottman Method Couples Therapist since 2006, with eight years of regular supervision through The Gottman Institute. Trained directly with Sue Johnson, founder of EFT, and Jeffrey Young, founder of Schema Therapy. Co-developer of Schema Therapy for Couples, built for the chronic distress standard frameworks miss.

Gottman is the foundation. Schema therapy comes in for patterns older than the relationship: subjugation, self-sacrifice, resentment that built before this person could hear it. EFT comes in when the bond itself needs repair.

We start with Gottman Connect, individual sessions, then a Feedback and Goal Setting session mapping what's underneath and what to do about it. Goals target the source, not the symptoms. Nothing off a shelf.

Most of my couples have tried therapy before. The shift I hear most often, by session three or six: now I understand. Not reassured. Oriented. The work starts to compound.

I also work with neurodiverse couples (ADHD, ASD, OCPD), where conventional approaches miss the underlying mechanism.

Sessions online. Private intensives available.

One of fewer than a handful trained directly by the founders of all three methods used here.

Special populations

High-conflict; Last-chance; Affair recovery; Intercultural couples; Neurodiverse (ADHD, ASD, OCPD)