How We Work
How We Work | EFT & NARM-Informed Therapy in Tigard, Oregon
Relational, trauma-informed therapy for people who want more than surface-level change.
At Hale Counseling NW, we believe healing happens in relationship.
Whether you come to therapy as an individual, a couple, or a family, we are interested in more than symptom management. We want to understand the patterns that shaped you, the strategies that helped you survive, and the ways those same strategies may now be getting in the way of the life and relationships you want.
Our work is relational, attachment-informed, trauma-aware, EFT-informed, and NARM-informed.
That means we pay attention to both:
- what is happening between people
- what is happening inside each person
Because most of us do not get stuck for no reason.
We get stuck because some part of us learned how to protect, adapt, disconnect, pursue, withdraw, please, perform, shut down, or stay in control in order to get through something.
Therapy helps us slow those patterns down, understand them with compassion, and begin creating more choice.
A couple walks into therapy…
After one nasty fight, Jim* and Pam* finally decided to try counseling.
During the first session, they were nervous. Pam sat on the edge of her seat and fiddled with her hands. Jim stayed hunched over and stared intently at the floor.
After some brief small talk, I asked them what they would like to get from counseling.
Pam glanced over at Jim, then said she wanted to stop fighting and communicate better. Suddenly, tears welled up in her eyes. She looked around for a tissue, took a few breaths, and said she was worried their relationship would not make it if they could not figure out how to improve things.
“This relationship is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I don’t want to give up. But I can’t keep living like this.”
Jim raised his eyes from the floor and watched Pam as she dabbed her eyes.
When I asked him what he wanted from counseling, he was quiet for a minute. His words were careful and hesitant. He said he wanted to stop walking on eggshells around Pam.
Jim wanted to support her through her feelings. But he also hated that he could not be open and honest without upsetting her. He agreed with Pam that he did not want to give up, but he was losing hope that they could repair the damage their words had caused.
So we started there.
Not with blame.
Not with “communication tips.”
Not with deciding who was right.
We started by understanding the pattern.
The problem was not that they did not love each other.
Pam and Jim both cared deeply.
But when conflict showed up, their protective strategies took over.
Pam’s anxiety about abandonment made her reach harder, protest louder, and look for reassurance that Jim was still there. Jim’s fear of failing her made him freeze, shut down, and try not to make things worse — which, of course, made Pam feel even more alone.
The more Pam reached, the more Jim withdrew.
The more Jim withdrew, the more Pam panicked.
The cycle became the enemy, but they kept experiencing each other as the threat.
Over the next several sessions, we helped them process their conflict patterns from both an individual and relational standpoint. They learned to recognize the triggers for their conflicts and how they could respond to each other in ways that slowed the conflict down rather than escalating it.
Jim began to understand that Pam’s anxieties were not entirely his fault.
Pam began to understand that Jim’s attempts to calm her down were not because she was “too emotional.”
As they began healing from the past and taking ownership of their patterns, they felt more connected and relaxed with each other. Gradually, they opened up more about their internal experiences, and the little miscommunications that used to send them spinning no longer had the same power.
They began to feel closer, more secure, and less afraid that their relationship would not make it.
Names and stories are composite narratives and do not reflect actual clients.
Types of Concerns We Can Address
Relationship Conflict and Disconnection
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We help couples, families, and individuals understand the patterns that keep creating distance, defensiveness, shutdown, resentment, or repeated conflict.
Using an EFT-informed lens, we look at the cycle underneath the fight so there is more room for repair, honesty, and connection.
Shame, Self-Criticism, and Not Feeling Good Enough
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Many people carry a quiet sense that they are too much, not enough, disappointing, selfish, needy, or somehow failing.
Therapy can help you understand where those beliefs came from, how they protect you, and how to relate to yourself with more compassion, honesty, and agency.
Anxiety, Overwhelm, and Emotional Reactivity
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Anxiety can show up as overthinking, irritability, perfectionism, panic, avoidance, people-pleasing, or feeling constantly on edge.
Therapy can help you understand what your nervous system is responding to and build more capacity to slow down, feel grounded, and respond with choice.
Neurodivergence, Masking, and Burnout
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For neurodivergent clients, couples, and families, therapy can help make sense of ADHD, autism, sensory needs, executive function differences, masking, rejection sensitivity, and burnout.
We are interested in helping people understand their actual nervous systems with less shame and more workable support.
Trauma and Old Survival Patterns
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Through a NARM-informed lens, we explore the ways earlier experiences may still shape your sense of self, relationships, boundaries, shame, and emotional responses.
The goal is not to relive the past, but to understand how old survival strategies may be affecting your life now.
Faith, Values, and Meaning-Making
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For clients who want faith included, therapy can make room for Christian background, spiritual questions, church hurt, shame, forgiveness, grief, repair, and meaning.
Faith integration is always client-led, and we do not push spiritual themes on clients who are not interested.
Relationships are our jam.
We draw on two main approaches to therapy: Emotionally Focused Therapy and the NeuroAffective Relational Model.
Emotionally Focused Therapy
Emotionally Focused Therapy, or EFT, is an approach to therapy originally developed to address adult relationships. It is based on decades of research on human bonding, attachment, and what helps relationships heal and thrive.
What drew us to EFT is that it does more than teach communication skills.
Communication skills can be useful, of course. But most people do not lose their skills because they forgot the sentence stem they learned in a worksheet. They lose access to their best selves when they feel threatened, ashamed, abandoned, rejected, overwhelmed, or alone.
EFT helps us understand what happens in those moments.
In couples therapy, EFT helps us track the cycle between partners and uncover the softer emotions, attachment needs, and fears underneath the protective reactions.
In individual therapy, EFT-informed work can also help clients understand relationship patterns, attachment wounds, emotional blocks, and the longing for secure connection.
We love that EFT gives us a map for how people move toward healing — because knowing how to get from point A to point B matters just as much as knowing where point B is.
The NeuroAffective Relational Model
The NeuroAffective Relational Model, or NARM, is an approach to therapy that focuses on complex and developmental trauma.
In other words, NARM is especially interested in the kind of trauma that does not always come from one obvious event, but from repeated relational experiences over time: not being met, not feeling safe, not being allowed to have needs, feeling responsible for others, being shamed, being emotionally alone, or learning that connection requires disconnecting from yourself.
NARM helps us understand how early adaptations continue to shape adult life.
You may know exactly what you want to change and still find yourself repeating a familiar pattern. You may understand something intellectually, but your nervous system still reacts as if the old danger is happening now. You may want closeness, rest, boundaries, honesty, or confidence, and still find yourself pulling away from the very thing you want.
That is not because you are broken.
It may be because a survival strategy is still doing its best to protect you.
NARM helps us work with these patterns at the level of identity, agency, emotion, body, and relationship. It helps us ask not only, “What happened to you?” but also, “How did you learn to survive, and what becomes possible now?”
How this applies to different kinds of therapy
Individual Therapy
In individual therapy, this approach helps clients understand patterns like anxiety, shame, people-pleasing, over-functioning, emotional shutdown, perfectionism, self-criticism, difficulty with boundaries, or feeling disconnected from their own needs and desires.
We are interested in helping you understand yourself more deeply, not just manage symptoms on the surface.
Couples Therapy
In couples therapy, this approach helps partners understand both the cycle between them and the protective strategies inside each person. We work with conflict, disconnection, repair, trust, intimacy, communication, affair recovery, neurodivergent relationship dynamics, and the longing to feel safe with each other again.
The goal is not to decide who is right. The goal is to understand what keeps happening and help both partners find new ways to reach, respond, repair, and reconnect.
Neurodivergent Couples and Families
For neurodivergent clients, couples, and families, EFT and NARM help us understand how nervous systems, sensory needs, executive function differences, masking, shame, rejection sensitivity, and relational patterns interact.
We are not trying to make anyone more “normal.” We are interested in helping people understand themselves and each other more accurately, with less shame and more workable support.
Christian Counseling
For clients who want faith included in therapy, our approach can make room for spiritual themes, Christian background, church hurt, shame, forgiveness, grief, repair, identity, and meaning.
Christian counseling at Hale Counseling NW is still therapy. We do not use faith to bypass mental health concerns, minimize trauma, or pressure clients toward a predetermined answer. Faith integration is client-led and available for those who want it.
What therapy with us is not
Therapy with us is not about:
- blaming one person for the whole pattern
- handing you generic advice and hoping it sticks
- telling you to just communicate better
- spiritualizing real mental health concerns
- pathologizing neurodivergence
- forcing forgiveness before repair
- pushing you toward choices that are not yours
- treating coping skills as the whole answer
- pretending insight alone creates change
We care about insight. We also care about embodiment, relationship, nervous-system capacity, agency, repair, and the real-life practice of showing up differently.
What therapy with us is
Therapy with us is a place to get curious about what is happening with more compassion and honesty. It is a place to understand why your patterns make sense.
It is a place to notice how you protect yourself, to explore what you want, to practice telling the truth. It is a place where old survival strategies can begin to loosen, and new possibilities can begin to emerge.
Slowly, honestly, and relationally. And sometimes with a little humor, because being a human is already hard enough.
Getting Started is Easy
Free 25 Minute Consultation
Schedule a meet and greet to determine if we’re a good fit.
Book Appointment
If we are a good fit, schedule your first session…
1st Session!
Start working toward what you want for yourself in your life.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to understand EFT or NARM before starting therapy?
No. You do not need to know anything about therapy models to benefit from therapy. These approaches guide how we listen, understand patterns, and support change, but we will explain anything that feels useful along the way.
Is this trauma therapy?
Often, yes. Many of our providers work from a trauma-informed lens, especially around relational, developmental, complex, or attachment trauma. That said, you do not need to identify as having trauma to work with us.
Do you use coping skills?
Yes, when they are helpful. We just do not believe coping skills are the whole story. Sometimes people need tools for the moment, and sometimes they need deeper support to understand why the same distress keeps returning.
Can this approach help if I am neurodivergent?
Yes. We welcome neurodivergent clients and couples, and we aim to approach neurodivergence with curiosity, respect, and less shame. We are interested in how your actual nervous system works, not in forcing you into a narrow idea of “normal.”
Is your therapy mostly for couples?
Relationships are a major focus of our work, but we work with both individuals and couples. Individual therapy can also be deeply relational, especially when you are working on patterns around connection, boundaries, self-worth, trauma, or identity.
Will therapy be practical or mostly reflective?
Both. We care about deep understanding, but we also care about real-life change. Therapy may include reflection, emotional processing, nervous-system awareness, relational practice, communication support, boundaries, repair, and concrete next steps.
Do all therapists at Hale Counseling NW use EFT and NARM?
Not every provider uses these approaches in exactly the same way. Sharon and Will draw strongly from EFT and NARM, and our broader practice is shaped by relational, attachment-informed, and trauma-aware values. If a specific approach matters to you, let us know when you reach out.
Can faith be included in this approach?
Yes, with select providers and only if you want that. Christian counseling is available for clients who want faith integrated into therapy, but it is not pushed on clients who are not interested.