When someone you love is raging, withdrawing, or shutting you out
Maybe it’s explosions over small things. Maybe it’s weeks behind a closed door, one-word answers, plans that always fall apart. Maybe it’s blame, threats, or measuring every word you say — and still getting it wrong.
Led by Floyd Kelly, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), with three years co-leading evidence-based skills programs for families like ours.
This is six weeks of one-to-one coaching for parents and partners. Not another curriculum — we work on your family’s specific patterns. Some families eventually learn words like borderline personality disorder, emotion dysregulation, ADHD, or autism. You don’t need any of those words to start. If the pattern is wearing you down, that’s enough.
Does this sound like your house?
What we do, week by week
Each 50-minute video session is focused on your family’s actual situations — the argument that happened Tuesday, not a hypothetical from a workbook.
Map the pattern
We name the two or three loops that keep repeating: the trigger, the escalation, what you try, and what happens next.
Prepare the first script
We build words for one hard moment, usually rage, blame, shutdown, or refusal, and practise them before you need them.
Stay steady under pressure
We work on validation, pacing, and what to do when the conversation starts moving faster than your nervous system can follow.
Make boundaries usable
We turn a vague limit into a clear plan: what you will do, what you will not do, and how to hold it without turning cold.
Repair after rupture
We prepare for the aftermath: how to re-open contact, apologize for your part, and avoid restarting the same fight.
Build the next-month plan
We review what changed, what still catches you, and the practical plan you will keep using after coaching ends.
Sessions can include one or two members of the same family — both parents is common. The work is for you, the person doing the loving and the coping. Your loved one does not attend and does not need to know.
Brief check-in support between sessions is included, so the skill doesn’t have to wait a week when the moment arrives on Thursday.
By the end, what changes?
This is not a promise that your loved one suddenly becomes easy to reach. It is a practical promise about your side of the pattern: fewer improvisations, more prepared words, and less panic in the moment.
You should leave with:
- Scripts for your hardest recurring moments, written in language that sounds like you.
- A clearer boundary plan for the places where guilt, fear, or exhaustion usually makes the limit collapse.
- A repair plan for the day after the blowup, when everyone is raw and pretending nothing happened is tempting.
- A calmer way to decide what is yours to do and what needs clinical, family, or crisis support beyond coaching.
The fit call comes first, is free, and is exactly what it sounds like: twenty minutes to hear your situation and tell you plainly whether this would help.
What this is — and isn’t
This is coaching, not therapy. Therapy treats — it works on healing: your symptoms, your pain, making sense of your history. Coaching trains — it builds what you say and do in the moments that keep repeating. We don’t process your past; we prepare your Thursday.
If therapy is what’s needed, I’ll say so. Sometimes this work surfaces something that deserves a therapist’s care. If that happens, I’ll tell you directly and help you find the right person. Coaching clients are not converted into my therapy clients.
If your family is in active crisis with safety concerns, you need clinical care first, not coaching. In Canada or the United States, call or text 988 any time for suicide and crisis support. I’m glad to point you toward appropriate services — that conversation is free.
Common questions
Can both parents attend?
Yes. One or two members of the same family can attend the sessions. Many families use the work to get both parents responding from the same plan.
Is this for adult children or partners?
Both. The common thread is not the relationship label; it is the repeated pattern of rage, withdrawal, blame, threats, or walking on eggshells.
What does check-in support mean?
Brief message support between sessions for questions about the skill you are practising. It is not crisis support, therapy, or open-ended counselling.
Can I use insurance?
This is coaching, not psychotherapy, so it may not be eligible for psychotherapy benefits. The fit call is the best place to ask about receipts and fit.
What if there are safety concerns?
If someone may hurt themselves or someone else, start with crisis or clinical support. Coaching can wait; safety cannot.
The details
The fit call comes first, is free, and is exactly what it sounds like: twenty minutes to hear your situation and tell you plainly whether this would help. If it wouldn’t, I’ll say so and suggest what might.
Start with the fit call
Tell me what’s actually happening at home — no polished summary needed. I’ll tell you honestly whether six weeks of this work would change your Tuesdays.