Most therapy will only validate you. Mine will transform you.
About
Some days are more tolerable than others. Sometimes there are even good moments. Which honestly? Just makes this more confusing.
When you do have a good moment, it's hard to even enjoy it because your head starts spinning. "Maybe I'm overreacting... Maybe this is what they mean by marriage is hard. Maybe I'm the problem."
Then the next bad moment happens and you're right back in it. Feeling stuck and miserable. Wondering how long you can go on. Each new fight, followed by silence and feeling like you can cut the tension with a knife, and you remember exactly why you've been feeling like this.
How can you be in the same room with someone who is supposed to know you better than anyone, yet you feel alone?
You've Googled "signs you should leave your marriage" at 1am. You've also Googled "how to save your marriage." Sometimes both in the same night.
You love him, you have a life together, starting "over" sounds awful, but staying is also slowly making you feel like you're disappearing.
So you do nothing. Because doing nothing feels like the safer choice. But you're also afraid you're going to wake up in 10 years full of regrets. You wonder how long you can keep carrying this before it breaks you forever.
My name is Corrin.
After a decade of couples counseling, something shifted for me.
I kept watching the same pattern play out. A couple would come in, do the work for a few weeks, and then he'd decide he has gotten enough out of therapy and stop coming. And she'd stay because she wasn't done yet and loved therapy.
One of those women changed everything for me.
They followed this same pattern and when she stayed, we worked together on something that sounds simple but isn't. Instead of reacting to everything, she learned how to identify what she actually wanted in a situation (as it was happening) and began to respond from that place instead. To do this, we worked on many different skills all at once so she could make this life changing shift. That shift also changed her relationship. It made it livable when she wasn't sure if she wanted to stay. It made her feel like herself again. And she also has a plan now. A plan for staying. A plan for leaving, if it ever came to that.
Either way, she became empowered. She no longer felt out of control and like each fight was devastating. She felt confident and ready for anything. That's when I knew shifting my focus to working with mostly women was for me.
I'll also tell you something most therapists wouldn't admit on their website: I'm a divorced marriage therapist.
Go ahead and say it with me "ohhh, a marriage therapist that got DIVORCED?!" I know. I know. Haha, how ironic. All I can say is, you know what they say: those who can't, teach! And I'm a damn good teacher.
Here's what I actually believe: relationships are worth fighting for. I'm a hopeful romantic who has seen real transformation happen in this work more times than I can count. Right now, I'm focused on raising my two teens, building incredible relationships with them, and pouring everything else I have into helping women like you figure our theirs. For now, I'm happy on the sidelines cheering everyone else on.
But this work?! This work fills me up. Because every woman I work with feels like a good friend to me. And actually being able to make a difference in someone's life? There is nothing like it.
The Boring Stuff
Just so you know I'm legit: I have a bachelor's degree in psychology from Minnesota State University, Mankato and a master's degree in marriage and family therapy from St. Mary's University.
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Minnesota and Wisconsin
Much of my training is in Relational Life Therapy (RLT), IFS, narrative, mediation, and Discernment Counseling. For trauma work, I use brainspotting.