Seven
LICENSED CLINICIANS
60-minute
SESSIONS
$150
SELF-PAY
Free
15-MINUTE CALL
Plans we work with: Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, DMBA, EMI Health, PEHP, SelectHealth, UMR, UnitedHealthcare and University of Utah Health Plans, with TRICARE coming soon. Couples work is generally billed under one partner's mental health benefit with a diagnosis attached to that person. That is the standard rule rather than something we invented, and we check your plan and explain it while you are on the line.
WHY COUPLES CALL
The fight is never about the dishes
It starts over something small on a Tuesday and by nine at night you are somewhere you have both been forty times before, saying lines you could each recite for the other. Then two days of careful politeness, and nobody mentions it again.
Or there is no fight left. You are efficient. You handle the kids, the calendar, the yard. You have not had a real conversation since March and you are not sure either of you would know how to start one.
Most couples come in able to describe the argument in detail and unable to say what it is actually about. That is normal, and it is most of what the first month is for.
WHAT WE WORK WITH
Six things couples bring us most
This is not everything, and you do not have to agree on which one it is before you call.
What we see
What it looks like
The same fight on a loop
Different subject every time, same shape every time, and it ends the same way whoever starts it.
Distance
Nobody is fighting. You are running a household together and the friendship underneath it has gone quiet.
Affairs and broken trust
An affair, an emotional one, a secret account, a phone that stays face down. Both what happened and what happens next.
Intimacy that has stopped matching
Different levels of desire, and the resentment that builds when neither of you can raise it without it becoming a fight.
Money, in-laws, and parenting
The three arguments that never fully resolve, and the version where one of you keeps score.
Deciding whether to stay
Couples come in already unsure. We will not push you toward an answer, and we will not pretend the question is not on the table.
HOW THE WORK GOES
Two bodies of work, doing different jobs
Emotionally Focused Therapy, developed by Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg, gets at what sits underneath the reaction. It answers why the same argument keeps happening even when you both agree it is stupid.
The Gottman Method handles the daily part. John Gottman and Robert Levenson did the research that predicted which marriages lasted, and Julie Schwartz Gottman built the therapy from those findings. In a room it looks like specific skills: how to raise something without an attack, how to stay in the conversation when your heart rate climbs, and what the twenty minutes after a blowup should look like.
Which one leads depends on you. A couple who fight well but feel nothing needs different work than a couple who love each other and cannot get through a Tuesday.
The goal is not a marriage without conflict. Every couple has a short list of problems they will still be discussing in thirty years.
The goal is that the fight stops costing you the week. That you can raise the hard thing without bracing, and that repair takes twenty minutes instead of three days.
WHAT TO EXPECT
What couples expect, and what actually happens
Most of what keeps couples out of the room is a picture of therapy where somebody loses.
What couples expect
What actually happens
The therapist will decide who is right.
Your therapist is looking for the cycle, not the culprit. If you came hoping somebody neutral would finally rule, that will not happen.
We have to agree we want to stay together before we start.
No. Plenty of couples start unsure. Deciding well is legitimate work, and it is better done in a room than at eleven at night.
You will make us do exercises that feel ridiculous.
Some of it will feel awkward the first time. Turning toward each other on purpose feels staged until it does not, which is usually around week four.
One of us will be blamed for everything.
Both of you are doing something that keeps the loop running. The work names both halves, and it is not a scoreboard.
It only works if both of us want to be here.
It works better when both of you are in the room. If your partner will not come yet, come alone. That is a real place to start and often the thing that gets them in.
WHEN YOU CALL
What actually happens when you call
The first call is fifteen minutes and it is free. Either of you can make it, and you do not need your partner on the line.
We want three things. Roughly what has been going on between you. What your week can hold, since couples sessions need both of you in the same hour. What insurance you have, which we check while you are on the line, including how couples work gets billed.
What the first call covers
What has been going on between you, in whatever words you have for it.
Which hours you can both actually make, and which clinician has that slot.
Your insurance, checked while you are on the line, with the copay figure said out loud.
If nobody here is the right fit, we will say so and point you to someone in Utah County who is. That is a better outcome for you than six wasted weeks.
Most couples start weekly. By session three or four you should both be able to name the cycle you are working on. If you cannot, say so out loud in the room.
WHO YOU WOULD SEE
Four clinicians who see couples
Brian Austin has been practicing for twelve years and is Gottman Level 2 trained, which is the level that covers the full assessment and the intervention set rather than an overview. He is an EMDRIA Certified Therapist and an AAMFT Approved Supervisor, which matters when what one of you is carrying into the marriage is trauma.
Emily Scoffield is a Utah approved supervisor with twenty years of work with families and adolescents behind it.
Brittany Taggart is EMDR and CAMS trained and sees couples alongside individuals and families. Aubree Stock, CSW, is EMDR trained and works with couples, families, and the parenting end of a marriage.
Brian Austin, LCSW · Teens (16+), Adults, Older Adults, Couples
Emily Scoffield, LCSW · Children (6+), Teens, Adults, Couples, Families
Brittany Taggart, LCSW · Children (6+), Teens, Adults, Couples, Families
Aubree Stock, CSW · All Ages, Couples, Families
We also run a Gottman Seven Principles group and an affair recovery group. Some couples do one of those alongside sessions, and some start there.
If you already know who you want, ask for them by name. If you do not, that is exactly what the fifteen minute call is for.
WHAT IT COSTS
What it costs
Sessions run 60 minutes. Self-pay is $150 whether one of you is in the room or both.
On insurance, couples work is generally billed under one partner's mental health benefit with a diagnosis attached to that person. That is the standard rule across the field, not a policy of ours, and we will tell you exactly how your plan handles it before your first session.
Good Faith Estimate
If you are uninsured or paying out of pocket, federal law gives you the right to a written estimate of what your care will cost before it starts. Ask us for one and we will put it in writing. Read how it works.