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Feeling Isolated? Struggling with Friendships? What about dating?
Struggling to build meaningful relationships, navigate dating, or establish and maintain romantic connections? Whether you're dealing with friendship struggles, dating challenges, or difficulties in romantic relationships, I offer individual relationship counseling to help you understand relational patterns and process unhealthy or traumatic past experiences. By addressing family of origin trauma, we can work together to break cycles and develop the emotional skills needed to create fulfilling, meaningful connections with others.
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My goal is to provide a supportive, nonjudgmental space where you can heal from past pain, improve communication, and build stronger, healthier relationships. I welcome people of all sexual orientations and backgrounds, offering guidance in dating and individual relationship counseling to help you foster the relationships that matter most.
What leads people to seek therapy for their relationships?
​You keep choosing emotionally unavailable partners
Dating feels overwhelming and triggers intense anxiety
You sabotage relationships when they start to get serious
You're always the "too much" person, too needy, too intense, too anxious
Intimacy scares you even though you want it
You repeat the same relationship patterns your parents had
You're codependent and lose yourself in relationships
You're tired of being the anxious one
You want a relationship but keep people at a distance
You're done with surface-level therapy that doesn't address the real issue
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This work is for women in their 20s and 30s who are ready to understand themselves at a deeper level—not just change behavior, but understand why the behavior exists in the first place.
Understanding Why You Keep Repeating the Same Relationship Patterns
You're not broken. You're replaying what you learned.
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Maybe you're always the anxious one—texting too much, worrying they'll leave, reading into every silence. Or you're the one who pulls away when things get too close, keeping people at arm's length even when you want connection. Perhaps you keep choosing partners who are emotionally unavailable, repeating the same painful dynamic your parents modeled.
These aren't character flaws. They're attachment patterns. And they make perfect sense when you understand where they came from.
Individual relationship therapy in Austin gives you space to explore:
- Why you're attracted to certain people (and why those relationships don't work)
- How your early relationships shaped your attachment style
- Why intimacy feels threatening even when you desperately want it
- How anxiety shows up in your dating life and relationships
- What you're actually seeking in relationships, and why you're not finding it
-How to stop relational patterns to not pass them on to your kids (and general parenting)
This is psychodynamic work. We're not just managing symptoms or teaching communication techniques. We're getting to the root of why you relate the way you do.
Attachment-Based Therapy for Relationship Anxiety
Anxious Attachment, Avoidant Attachment, and the Patterns in Between
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Anxious attachment: The constant fear of abandonment, the need for reassurance, the panic when they pull away
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Avoidant attachment: The discomfort with closeness, the impulse to run when things get serious, the attraction to people you can't actually have
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Anxious-avoidant dynamics: Why you keep picking avoidant partners (or why avoidant partners keep picking you)
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Disorganized attachment: The push-pull of wanting closeness and fearing it at the same time Understanding your attachment style isn't about labeling yourself. It's about seeing the logic in your behavior and then choosing something different.
What Makes Individual Relationship Therapy Different from Couples Counseling
This is NOT couples therapy. You come alone.
Individual relationship therapy focuses on YOUR patterns, YOUR attachment style, YOUR history. Even if you're currently in a relationship, the work is about you—understanding how you show up, why you choose who you choose, and how to build the capacity for healthier connection.
Couples therapy works on the relationship between two people. Individual relationship therapy works on your relationship with relationships.
Benefits of individual work:
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Freedom to explore your patterns without worrying about your partner's reaction
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Space to work through family-of-origin issues that shaped how you relate
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Ability to do this work whether you're single, dating, or in a relationship
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Depth work that goes beyond communication skills
Many people do individual relationship therapy before they're even in a relationship—because the goal is to understand yourself well enough that you stop repeating the same patterns with the next person.
How Attachment Based Therapy Works
We're interested in insight, not just skills. Because once you understand the "why," the "what to do differently" becomes much clearer.
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In our work together, we'll explore:
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Your relationship history: Who you've chosen, why you've chosen them, and what patterns emerge. Not to dwell on the past, but to see the through-line.
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Your family of origin: How your earliest relationships taught you what love looks like, what's safe, what's dangerous, and what you're allowed to need.
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Your attachment style: Not as a fixed diagnosis, but as a framework for understanding your behavior in relationships. Anxious attachment? Avoidant? Some combination?
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The deeper work: Why intimacy feels unsafe. Why you're drawn to people who can't meet your needs. What you're actually afraid of when you get close to someone.
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Building new capacity: Learning to tolerate intimacy if you've been avoidant. Learning to self-soothe if you've been anxious. Building the internal resources for healthier relationships.
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Common Relationship Patterns
Anxious Attachment, Avoidant Attachment, and the Patterns in Between
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Anxious attachment and relationship anxiety: Constantly seeking reassurance, fear of abandonment, reading into every text
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Dating anxiety: Overwhelming anxiety in early dating, fear of rejection, avoidance of dating entirely
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Choosing emotionally unavailable partners: Repeatedly attracted to people who can't give you what you need
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Codependency: Losing yourself in relationships, putting others' needs above your own, difficulty with boundaries
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Avoidant attachment: Discomfort with closeness, fear of being trapped, attraction to unavailable people
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Push-pull dynamics: Wanting closeness but pushing people away when they get too close
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Repeating family patterns: Finding yourself in relationships that mirror your parents' dynamic
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Fear of intimacy: Sabotaging relationships when they start to get serious
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Self-sabotage in dating: Creating problems, picking fights, or pulling away just when things are going well
Working with a Relationship Psychologist in Austin
I'm Dr. Emily Turinas, a licensed psychologist in Austin specializing in depth-oriented psychodynamic work with women. My approach to relationship therapy is informed by attachment theory, psychodynamic psychology, and relational psychotherapy.
I work with women who want to understand themselves—not just fix a problem, but see the deeper patterns. Women who are tired of repeating the same relationship dynamics and ready to do the deeper work of understanding why. If this sounds like you reach out today.
512-766-9871
2525 Wallingwood Drive 7D, Austin, Texas 78746
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Virtual therapy in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming