Couples therapy for when you’ve tried everything else.
I help couples rebuild relationships on trust and truth, then equip them with the skills to find their way back to each other when things come apart. Online, and in person by arrangement.
Oliver Barnett
Relational work for couples and business partners, built on truth, accountability and repair.
Oliver Barnett
Relational work for couples and business partners, built on truth, accountability and repair.
Where this starts
When talking is not enough.
You, and perhaps your partner, have done all the right things. Read the books, worked through the workbooks, listened to the podcasts. Your feed is full of relationship advice.
You may have spent money on therapy, sitting opposite someone who nodded and gave you both space to talk. And yet nothing has really changed.
Checklists, reading and gentle, neutral advice were never going to shift your relationship from just surviving to something that genuinely works for both of you.
What you need is someone who will get involved..
All relationships go through phases of...
What makes this different
A different kind of help.
Most couples therapy is deliberately neutral. The therapist stays out of the way and helps you talk. For a lot of couples, that is exactly the problem. You have done the talking. You can talk in circles for years.
My approach is different. I will intervene. When one of you is doing something that quietly corrodes the relationship, I will name it, kindly and clearly. I will challenge the stories you have each decided are true. I will not let either of you hide, and I will not let either of you carry all the blame.
This is work that holds both people accountable. To the relationship, and to each other. It is drawn from Relational Life Therapy, the method developed by Terry Real, and it is built for couples who would rather hear the truth than be carefully managed.
“Love is a constant process of tuning in, connecting, missing, misreading cues, disconnecting, repairing, and finding deeper connection.
It is a dance of meeting and parting and finding each other again. Minute to minute and day to day.”
— Dr Sue Johnson
How the work feels
Direct, not harsh.
Being challenged is not the same as being attacked. That distinction matters, so let me be clear about it.
You will not be ambushed. You will not be made to feel small. The directness sits alongside real warmth, because the point is never to win an argument. The point is to help you understand what is actually happening between you, why you each react the way you do, and what to do differently.
Some of it will be uncomfortable. Most things worth doing are. But you will always know I am on the side of the relationship, and on the side of both of you in it.
How the work feels
Direct, not harsh.
Being challenged is not the same as being attacked. That distinction matters, so let me be clear about it.
You will not be ambushed. You will not be made to feel small. The directness sits alongside real warmth, because the point is never to win an argument. The point is to help you understand what is actually happening between you, why you each react the way you do, and what to do differently.
Some of it will be uncomfortable. Most things worth doing are. But you will always know I am on the side of the relationship, and on the side of both of you in it.
Training and experience
Credibility, without overclaiming.
Trained in Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy.
Trained in Internal Family Systems.
In advanced training to become an RLT Certified Therapist.
Founder of the London Clinic of Nutrition.
RLT Certified Coach. IFS Informed. In advanced training to become an RLT Certified Therapist. Decades of clinical experience as the founder of the London Clinic of Nutrition, where I learned how closely our relationships and our health are tied together.
From Instagram
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Who this is, and isn’t, for
This work is for you if you’re ready.
For you if
you are willing to look honestly at your own part in things, not just your partner’s.
you want a guide who will tell you the truth rather than referee politely.
you are tired of approaches that go nowhere and you are ready to do something that asks more of you.
Probably not, if
you are looking for someone neutral who will stay out of it.
you want a space simply to air grievances each week without changing anything.
you are not ready, yet, to be challenged. That is no judgement. It is just not what this is.
The couples who get the most from this are the ones who have run out of patience with the alternative.
Beyond crisis work
Other ways to work.
Not in crisis, but want to go deeper.
Not everyone who comes to me is in difficulty. Some are in good relationships and want better ones. The same work that repairs a relationship under strain can take a strong one somewhere richer, whether that is with partners, family, children or friends.
Business partners.
The relationships that run businesses can fail the same way marriages do, and they rarely get help. The working relationship can be repaired with the same honesty, whether you are business partners or a couple who have built something together.
Start here
Every relationship moves through harmony, disharmony and repair.
If you have lost your way back to each other, that can be learned again.
Start with a free 15-minute call. No pressure, no commitment, just a conversation about whether this is right for you.
RLT Certified Coach. IFS Informed.
In advanced training to become an
RLT Certified Therapist.
Relational work for couples and business partners, built on truth, accountability and repair.
CUSTOMER CARE
Something to read while you decide.
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