Now offering · With Carissa
Couples Counselling in Calgary & Okotoks
Strengthen your relationship. Improve communication. Build a future together — with Gottman Method and Gottman-informed techniques, guided by Carissa Cochrane, CCC.
What is couples counselling?
Couples counselling is a form of talk therapy where partners work with a trained counsellor to understand recurring conflict patterns, rebuild trust and connection, and develop practical communication tools together. Every relationship goes through seasons where communication gets harder, distance creeps in, or old patterns of conflict keep resurfacing. Couples counselling gives you and your partner a supportive space to slow down, understand each other more clearly, and build the tools to move forward together.
What couples counselling can help with
- Communicating with more clarity and less conflict
- Rebuilding trust, intimacy, and understanding
- Managing conflict effectively instead of avoiding or escalating it
- Navigating a major life transition together — a new baby, a move, a career change, blending families
- Creating a relationship that feels safe, connected, and fulfilling
How Carissa approaches couples counselling
Carissa provides couples counselling using the Gottman Method and Gottman-informed techniques — a research-based approach that helps couples build stronger friendship, manage conflict constructively, and create shared meaning. Her approach is compassionate, evidence-based, and relationship-focused.
You don't have to do it alone. We're here to help.
Goals of couples counselling
Every couple's goals look a little different, but sessions with Carissa are built around a few core outcomes:
- Understanding the cycles and triggers behind recurring arguments, instead of just the surface-level fight
- Learning to repair after conflict — how to reconnect once things have cooled down, not just avoid the disagreement next time
- Rebuilding day-to-day habits of appreciation, curiosity, and turning toward each other
- Creating shared meaning — the rituals, goals, and vision you're building together as a couple
- Feeling more like a team, even when you disagree
What to expect
Carissa works through a clear sequence, so you know what is coming and why. It is a starting point rather than a fixed programme — she adapts it to suit each couple.
The process
How couples counselling works
Five stages, from the first session through to keeping the changes going.
Initial couples session
You meet together to talk through your relationship history, current concerns, strengths, and what you would like counselling to achieve.
Individual sessions
Each partner meets with Carissa separately to explore personal history, perspective, and any factors that may be affecting the relationship.
Assessment feedback
You come back together to review the key relationship patterns, strengths, and areas for growth, and to develop a plan for counselling.
Ongoing couples sessions
Working together using Gottman-informed strategies to strengthen connection, improve communication, manage conflict, rebuild trust, and develop healthier relationship patterns.
Review & maintenance
Progress is reviewed regularly, with time to practise new skills and build strategies for maintaining the changes outside of counselling.
Alongside the Gottman work, Carissa draws on attachment-based and nervous‑system‑informed tools where they are useful. The steps above can be adapted, reordered, or revisited to suit what a particular couple needs.
Who it's for
You don't need to be in crisis to benefit from couples counselling. Carissa works with couples navigating a wide range of situations, including:
- Communication that keeps breaking down into the same arguments
- Feeling more like roommates than partners
- Rebuilding trust after a breach or a hard season
- Major life transitions — a new baby, a move, blending families, career change, or retirement
- Wanting to strengthen an already-good relationship or prepare for a big step, like marriage or starting a family
Where to find this
Available in Calgary & Okotoks
In person at either office, or virtually anywhere in Alberta.
Couples Counselling questions