When it seems like everything turns into an argument
A couples expert can help
You have no idea how you got here…
They’re packing their bags to leave the house after another blow-out fight.
You’ve thought about calling a divorce lawyer, but the idea just scares you to death, and you can’t even fathom splitting custody of your kids.
You know your kids are already suffering - they feel the tension, they hear you bickering, and you’re so short with them because you’re always walking on eggshells trying to avoid the next fight with your partner.
This is not the life you pictured.
You have been through these same cycles so many times. When things are good, they are really good. But those good times are fading and now you are either not talking at all, or you are tiptoeing around each other, waiting for the next explosion.
You do not talk like you used to. There is no real intimacy. You feel like roommates, and your heart is broken because you feel so lonely, and you have no idea how to get your partner to really understand you. You keep thinking, “If we could just communicate better, maybe we would not be here.
A Couples Therapist in Rancho Cucamonga, Temecula, or Online in California can help
I am a solo couples therapist who works with couples in an intensive format, and I completely understand just how tired and hurt you are.
I have dedicated my career to deep training in couples therapy and trauma informed work. I help couples who are exhausted from the constant fighting and confusion and who are ready for a focused, intentional reset, not another year of “trying to figure it out” in short weekly sessions.
In a couples intensive with me, you will not just show up and have the same fights over and over in my office because I help you understand more than the words that are being said by your partner - I help you both understand the patterns you’ve been in that are keeping you stuck.
Together, we slow things down. I provide a clear plan, ground rules, and a safe, structured space to have the hard conversations you have not been able to have on your own.
A highly trained Brainspotting Therapist can be what you need to make a huge shift in your relationship
As a Brainspotting therapist, I use brain and body based tools to help you clear the triggers that keep pulling you back into the same painful cycle.
In my couples intensives, we may integrate Brainspotting and, when it is appropriate and medically supervised, Ketamine Assisted Therapy (KAP) for individual partners who are deeply stuck in trauma or emotional shutdown. This combination can support powerful shifts in how your nervous systems respond to each other.
Instead of spreading this work out over months, you spend concentrated time together in a one or two day intensive, then we plan follow-up support so you can keep practicing what you learned and keep your progress going.
We focus on helping you both open your hearts again in a way that feels safer and more grounded. You will start to feel changes not just in how you think, but in your bodies and nervous systems, which is what leads to deeper, lasting change. You will leave with tools you can return to for years.
In my couples intensives, we will use tools like Brainspotting or Ketamine Assisted Therapy (KAP), to help you clear the triggers that have kept you stuck for too long.
What can change with a couples therapy intensive
With a focused couples therapy intensive, followed by supportive sessions for the rest of the year, you can finally stop walking on eggshells and know where you and your partner truly stand.
You can begin to:
Understand the cycle you get stuck in and what each of you is protecting when you fight or shut down.
As the tension eases, you may find yourselves wanting to spend time together again. Your children will feel the shift when the constant animosity softens and the house feels calmer and safer.
You can feel your partner in your corner again. You can enjoy your life without the constant fear that a simple comment will turn into a blow up, because you both have tools to talk about the hard stuff before it explodes.
You learn how to repair, not just avoid.
If you are ready to stop the fighting and the constant pain of wondering how much longer you can do this, I would love to talk with you.
IMAGINE A RELATIONSHIP FREE OF CONSTANT ARGUMENTS, FREE OF ANIMOSITY TOWARDS ONE ANOTHER, WHERE EACH OF YOU FEELS HEARD AND UNDERSTOOD.
CLICK BELOW OR CALL (909) 600-0306 TO SCHEDULE YOUR FREE 15-MINUTE PHONE CONSULTATION
What to expect during a two-day intensive for couples
What to Expect
ONCE YOU’VE COMPLETED YOUR CONSULTATION, AND SCHEDULED YOUR FIRST COUPLES THERAPY INTENSIVE, HERE IS WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:
PLANNING SESSIONS
Your first 50 minute session, you and your partner will meet with me, your couples therapist in my Rancho Cucamonga office, Temecula office, or Online from anywhere in CA together.
This first session is focused on information and history taking. I will ask you questions about the issues that have brought you to therapy, what you’d like to see change, and also many questions about the history of your relationship. It is very important for me to understand your goals for therapy and what you want your relationship to look like so we can keep checking in and guiding you in the right direction.
Next, I will meet with each of you individually for a 50-minute session. This session is about establishing your individual goals and provides an opportunity to share from your heart about the way you see things in the relationship. We will also discuss your personal history and background, including details about your past traumas. This helps me in identifying the triggers that have kept you stuck in the same conflict patterns for far too long.
COUPLES COUNSELING INTENSIVE
Next, you will have your first 2-day intensive. We will meet for 4-hours each day, two days in a row. During this time we will use tools like Brainspotting, IFS (Internal Family Systems) and somatic practices to help you dive into the issues so you can find your way towards more healing and connection. The intensive format allows time for your nervous system to settle and create safety so you can open up in a way that weekly therapy doesn’t allow.
FOLLOW-UP TREATMENT AND ONGOING COUPLES THERAPY
Healing continues as you follow up with either a monthly couples counseling intensive or two 100-minute sessions of couples counseling per month. During these sessions, you will find even more rapid growth and change as you have had time between each intensive to integrate and live out what you are learning and experiencing in the session
If this sounds like what you’ve been looking for, click the button below and request a free 30-minute phone consultation or call us directly at (909) 600-0306 to get started.
Investment
2 Day Initial Intensive
$4,250
11 hour program
Pre-intensive couples interview (50 mins)
Pre-intensive individual interviews (50 mins for each partner)
2 days of intensive sessions - 4 hours each day (total of 8 hours)
Resources, assessments and personalized treatment
Following your initial intensive you will attend one 4-hour intensive per month ($1600) or two 100-minute sessions per month ($1400/ month or $700 each)
1 Day follow-up
$1,600
4 hour program
Once per month for ongoing treatment
Bi-weekly treatment
$700
100 minute sessions, two times per month
Utilized for ongoing treatment following your initial 2-day intensive
Why Intensives Are More
Cost-Effective
Intensives require a bigger financial investment up front, but they provide far more value in a much shorter amount of time. Instead of the constant stop-start rhythm of weekly sessions, you get 3-4 hours of uninterrupted deep work at once.
That’s the equivalent of 4–6 sessions’ worth of progress in a single meeting—without spending the first 10 minutes re-orienting, and without losing momentum week to week.
Let’s break that down:
Most traditional therapy sessions are 50 minutes—and most therapists charge around $250–$350 per session. But when you break that hour down, it’s easy to see why progress can feel slow.
The first 10 minutes are usually spent catching up.
The next 20 minutes is spent introducing an issue to focus on.
The next 15 minutes are where the deeper work happens.
The final 5 minutes are used to wrap things up and schedule the next appointment.
That means you’re really getting about 30 solid minutes of growth-oriented work each week. Over months or years, this adds up—not just in time but in cost.
When you’re in crisis, hurting from a rupture, or simply ready for serious change, you don’t want to wait months to feel better. Intensives are ideal for people who want:
Faster breakthroughs
Clearer direction
More time to process
A deeper, more transformative experience
Instead of stretching your healing over a long timeline, intensives allow you to make meaningful progress now.
Why a 4-Hour Couples Intensive Works
Most couples come to therapy carrying months — sometimes years — of unresolved pain, miscommunication, and emotional injuries. A traditional 50-minute session often isn’t enough time to slow things down, go beneath surface conflicts, and create real change.
A 4-hour intensive gives your relationship the time and space it actually needs to heal.
Here’s how the 240 minutes are intentionally structured:
10 Minutes: Arriving & Settling In
We begin with grounding, orientation, and gentle connection. This isn’t rushed small talk — it’s about helping both of you feel safe, regulated, and present before doing deeper emotional work.
20 Minutes: Identifying What Matters Most
We clarify the key issue from your week or return to an important unresolved topic. This sets a clear focus for the session so we’re not just reacting — we’re working intentionally on what will move your relationship forward.
200 Minutes: Deep, Transformational Work
This is where real change happens.
You’ll have extended time for:
Therapist-led interventions tailored to your unique dynamic
Repairing attachment injuries and trust ruptures
Regulating emotional intensity as it arises
Practicing new communication patterns in real time
Exploring the deeper meaning beneath recurring conflicts
Because we’re not watching the clock, we can stay with hard moments long enough for insight, emotional release, and repair to occur — instead of stopping just as something meaningful begins.
There’s also space for grounding, emotional regulation, movement, and meal or rest breaks as needed, so the work stays sustainable and embodied.
10 Minutes: Integration & Next Steps
We close by consolidating what shifted, naming key insights, and setting clear intentions for what comes next. This helps your nervous systems leave the session grounded, oriented, and supported — rather than emotionally flooded or unfinished.
The Real Value of an Intensive
A 4-hour intensive allows you to:
Break out of the same stuck cycles
Go deeper than surface-level communication tips
Make meaningful progress in a single day
Feel truly seen, heard, and understood
Create momentum that carries into your everyday life
Instead of spreading healing across months of short sessions, intensives offer a focused, immersive container where your relationship can finally exhale and begin to repair.
What happens after your intensive?
Following a 2-day intensive, couples continue the work with either a 4-hour intensive one time per month, or two 100-minute sessions per month.
Real relationship change doesn’t happen in a single conversation — it happens through integration, repetition, and continued emotional repair.
After a couples intensive, 100-minute follow-up sessions provide the ideal container to deepen the work you’ve already begun, strengthen new patterns, and support long-term healing without rushing the process.
These extended sessions allow your nervous systems to settle, your emotional truths to surface, and meaningful change to actually take root.
Here’s how the 100 minutes are intentionally structured:
10 Minutes: Arriving & Re-Connecting
We begin with grounding, orientation, and catching up. This helps both of you transition out of daily life and into the therapeutic space so you can be present, regulated, and emotionally available for deeper work.
20 Minutes: Clarifying the Focus
We identify what’s come up since your last session or return to a key theme we’re already working through. This ensures the session is purposeful, focused, and aligned with your larger relationship goals.
65 Minutes: Deepening the Work
This is where transformation continues.
You’ll have extended time for:
Therapist-led interventions that build on your intensive
Repairing moments of disconnection in real time
Strengthening emotional safety and trust
Practicing new communication patterns
Exploring attachment wounds and triggers as they arise
Because we’re not constrained to a brief hour, we can stay with emotionally charged moments long enough for insight, regulation, and repair — instead of stopping mid-process.
This extended block also allows for additional grounding and emotional regulation before ending the session, so you leave feeling settled, supported, and integrated rather than activated or unfinished.
5 Minutes: Integration & Next Steps
We close by consolidating insights, naming what shifted, and setting clear intentions for what comes next. This helps anchor progress between sessions and keeps your relationship moving forward with momentum and clarity.
The Value of Extended Follow-Up Sessions
100-minute sessions allow you to:
Build on the momentum of your intensive
Create lasting behavioral and emotional change
Address setbacks without losing depth
Repair ruptures as they happen
Strengthen trust, intimacy, and emotional connection
Instead of stretching meaningful work across many short, fragmented sessions, extended follow-ups provide the continuity, depth, and containment needed for real relational healing.
Cost comparison - Traditional Weekly Therapy vs Intensive Couples Therapy
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Weekly Therapy (Over 2 Months)
Traditional weekly therapy doesn’t begin deep work right away.
The first 3 sessions are typically intake, assessment, and history-gathering, which means real therapeutic work often doesn’t begin until week four. Weekly therapy gives you:3 intake sessions before progress even starts
5 sessions of actual therapeutic work
$250-$350 per session
Total cost: $2,000 - $2,800
True deep-work time:
~30 minutes per session → ~2.5 hours of deep work
Progress unfolds slowly, with weekly resets
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Two-Day Intensive + Prep Sessions
But when your relationship is hurting, you don’t have time for slow.
A two-day intensive gives you:
Structured prep ahead of time
Faster, more meaningful breakthroughs
A clear plan for what comes next
All for $4,250—a powerful investment in the future of your relationship and your healing.
8 hours of dedicated, uninterrupted deep work
No waiting weeks to begin healing
No stop–start momentum
Meet Your Couples Expert
I’m Alicia, and I work with couples who are exhausted from trying to fix things on their own and are finally ready for focused, intensive help.
For years, I did couples therapy the way I was trained. One week at a time, 50 minutes at a time. For some couples who needed a tune up in communication or a little help reconnecting, that format worked beautifully. They made steady progress and felt closer and more confident in their relationship.
But for couples carrying big resentments, deep hurts, or the aftermath of infidelity, it became clear that traditional weekly sessions were not enough. The issues were too layered, the pain too intense, and the time too short. By the time we settled in and reached the hard stuff, we were already watching the clock.
The couples who could rearrange their lives, never miss a session, and stay in therapy long term often experienced powerful transformation. The problem was that most couples are juggling careers, children, aging parents, and a thousand other responsibilities. It was not a lack of desire or commitment. They wanted change yesterday, and they needed more support in a shorter window of time.
So I began offering longer sessions and full intensives to the couples who were really stuck and needed something different. At first I did it quietly, without much advertising. What I saw in those rooms changed the way I practice. When couples had protected time to drop in, stay with the process, and keep going instead of stopping at the 50 minute mark, they were able to move through layers of hurt and disconnection that had been there for years.
Now, this intensive format is at the heart of how I work.
My intensives are designed to help us dive deep, create real change, and do it in a way that respects how busy and overwhelmed you already feel. Instead of four hours scattered across a month, we might spend four hours in a single day. We start with a 2 day intensive and begin making progress on day one. From there, we continue our work together for one year. That is not a random number. It is the average amount of time it takes most couples to truly heal from infidelity and long held resentments.
After your initial 2-day intensive, we will meet either once a month for a 4-hour follow up intensive, or twice a month for 100-minute sessions. This gives you ongoing support while you implement new patterns at home, without losing the momentum you built in those first two days.
I also think outside the box when it comes to healing. When it is clinically appropriate and you are interested, we can talk about integrating Brainspotting or Ketamine Assisted Therapy into your plan. These brain and body based tools can help clear old triggers and trauma responses that keep pulling you back into the same painful arguments, even when you are trying to do things differently.
I specialize in working with couples who are truly committed to their relationship, but feel like they have tried everything. Couples recovering from affairs. Couples buried under years of unspoken resentment. Couples who still love each other, but are not sure how much longer they can keep going like this.
In our work together, I hold a clear, structured space where both of you can be honest, seen, and heard. We map out your patterns, name what has been too hard to say, and create a plan for how to move forward. No more spending half the session on small updates and then watching the clock, wondering how you will ever get to the important stuff.
If you are ready to sit down, slow things way down, and actually do the work your relationship has been needing for a long time, this is what I am here for.
Couples Therapy in Rancho Cucamonga FAQs
Rancho Counseling is a solo, trauma-informed couples therapy practice located in Rancho Cucamonga, California. I specialize in helping couples improve communication, heal emotional disconnection, recover from infidelity, and break long-standing relationship patterns using evidence-based approaches.
I serve couples throughout Rancho Cucamonga and the Inland Empire who are looking for a top-rated couples therapist and a more focused alternative to traditional weekly therapy. My work integrates Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Gottman-informed methods, Brainspotting and Internal Family Systems (IFS) to support deep, lasting relationship change, including intensive couples therapy formats.
Below are answers to common questions about couples counseling in Rancho Cucamonga, how I work with couples, insurance and payment options, and how to get started.
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Couples therapy (also called couples counseling or relationship therapy) is a structured, supportive process where I help partners improve communication, resolve conflict, rebuild trust, and strengthen emotional connection. Couples therapy in Rancho Cucamonga can be helpful at any stage of a relationship — whether you feel disconnected, stuck in repetitive arguments, healing from infidelity, or wanting a stronger partnership.
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If you and your partner are experiencing frequent conflict, emotional distance, trust issues, or feel stuck having the same arguments over and over, couples counseling can help. Many couples in Rancho Cucamonga seek therapy not only during crises, but also proactively to deepen intimacy and prevent future problems.
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I specialize in intensive couples therapy and trauma-informed relationship work. Instead of relying solely on months of weekly sessions, I offer focused, multi-hour intensives that allow couples to make meaningful progress in a shorter amount of time. I integrate Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Gottman-informed approaches, Brainspotting and Internal Family Systems (IFS) to address both relationship patterns and underlying attachment wounds.
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Your first couples therapy session in Rancho Cucamonga focuses on understanding your relationship history, current challenges, emotional needs, and goals. I work with both of you to identify the patterns that keep you stuck and begin creating a clear plan for healing, connection, and communication.
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There is no single timeline for couples therapy. Some couples notice meaningful shifts within a few sessions, while others benefit from deeper work over time. Couples who choose an intensive therapy format often experience faster progress because the work is concentrated and uninterrupted.
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Yes. In addition to longer biweekly sessions, I specialize in couples therapy intensives in Rancho Cucamonga. These extended sessions — often half-day or multi-day — are designed to help couples break entrenched patterns, heal trust wounds, and build lasting emotional connection without months of weekly appointments.
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Yes. I work extensively with couples healing from infidelity, emotional betrayal, and broken trust. My trauma-informed approach focuses on emotional safety, accountability, repair, and rebuilding connection in a way that supports long-term healing.
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You can begin with individual relationship-focused therapy. When one partner works on attachment patterns, communication, and emotional regulation, it often creates positive shifts in the relationship and increases the likelihood that the other partner becomes open to couples therapy.
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No. I remain neutral and focus on relationship dynamics rather than fault or blame. My role is to help both partners understand their patterns, emotional needs, and how to move toward healthier communication and deeper connection.
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It is never too late to seek support. Whether you are early in your relationship, navigating long-standing resentment, or considering separation, couples counseling in Rancho Cucamonga can offer clarity, healing, and a new relational foundation.
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No. While many couples seek therapy during high-stress moments, couples counseling is also effective for strengthening connection, improving communication, preparing for major life transitions, and preventing future relationship breakdowns.
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I am an out-of-network provider for most insurance plans. Many clients choose to self-pay for couples therapy and intensives, as insurance often does not cover couples work or extended sessions. I can provide a superbill upon request for possible out-of-network reimbursement and you may use FSA or HSA funds to pay for therapy if that is available to you through your insurance plan.
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Fees vary depending on session length and whether you choose biweekly couples counseling or an intensive format. Payment is due at the time of service, and a deposit to secure your intensive is due one week prior. I accept major credit cards and secure electronic payment methods. Please see above for my current rates and availability.
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My practice is located in Rancho Cucamonga, California, and I work with couples throughout the Inland Empire. I also offer telehealth for California residents when appropriate.
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The first step is scheduling a free 30-minute consultation. During this call, I’ll learn more about your relationship concerns, discuss your goals, and help you determine whether couples therapy or an intensive format is the best fit.