Relationship Intensives with CJ Everhart, LMHC, MS Ed

CJ Everhart
Licensed Mental Health Counselor

Couples work can be incredibly challenging, vulnerable, and ultimately transformative. Often, there exists between two people, so much history that weekly sessions don't feel like a sufficient enough place to start. For other couples, there may be a sense of urgency where waiting several weeks for progress doesn't feel tenable. The extended time and space during an intensive with CJ creates a container for risk-taking, tenderness and growth without the timer going off in 75 minutes.

CJ has a strong capacity to hold space for both people in a partnership. Their expertise guides couples towards uncovering unseen dynamics that impede connection, forging a path towards a mutually clear and attainable concept of how you want to be in relationship. Compassionate, insightful, and skilled, CJ humbly holds space for individuals from many different walks of life, offering a deep dive into the work needed for couples to clear build up and shift perspectives so productive change can take hold afterwards.

Relationship Intensives for Queer Identifying couples

Working with a queer practitioner, without having to do the exhausting work of translating the nuances of living as part of the LGBTQ+ community, can offer a unique healing experience for queer identifying couples. Daily, we are inundated with homophobia and transphobia; knowing our most vulnerable moments will be held with non-judgmental openness fosters intuitive connection and the potential for deeper transformation. CJ creates a therapeutic setting where you will feel safe enough to shed the protective layers often built up to guard against a heterosexist society and allow for authentic, openhearted work. This processing aims to illuminate the complexities of our personalities and histories, whether these parts are defined by our queerness or not. CJ is experienced in guiding couples through the intricacies of relating as queer people so that folks can strengthen relationships and discover joyful manifestations of who they are as individuals and as a couple.

For couples who identify as queer, an intensive with CJ offers support, insight and healing regarding: 

  • Impacts of misogyny

  • Internalized homophobia and transphobia

  • Navigating gender transitions

  • Attachment issues rooted in early rejection trauma due to queerness

  • Non-monogamous relationship support 

  • Navigating sexual intimacy and desire discrepancy

  • Safety and sexual trauma history

  • Queer parenting

 

Relationship Intensives for married and/or separated co-parenting couples

Being a parent is one of the most challenging identities we can inhabit and brings up some of our most tender and significant understandings about ourselves and the world. We all come to the role with our own stories of being parented, and this deeply impacts us as we navigate this part of our lives. Attempting to hold these distinct histories while navigating the journey with a partner can be fraught with conflict. With an eye towards child development, powerful and respectful parenting, and trauma awareness, CJ can help you work towards healing your family connection while learning to reparent your inner child.  Therapy with CJ aims to reveal the moving pieces at play both internally and externally for parents to identify clear paths for conflict resolution, value and perspective alignment, and teamwork within the parental unit. As adults process their individual childhood blueprints and work towards true co-parenting, children can feel held by parents who provide secure, clear, consistent, and loving guidance and boundaries. Additionally, parents can feel relief as understanding grows regarding the impacts of early childhood family dynamics, creating room for presence and joy in the parent/child and parent/parent relationships. Whether you're married and struggling to maintain alignment with your partner or separated and trying to navigate a new family system after a split, CJ guides parents through this enormous mental and emotional challenge and helps to foster a harmonious connection between adults as well as adult/child relationships.

A parenting focused intensive with CJ offers support and insight with:

  • Expressing parenting values, fears, goals, and expectations

  • Navigating conflict between parents who hold different ideals and ways of parenting

  • Developing clear, consistent, and loving boundaries with children

  • Exploring the way family of origin dynamics impact present day parenting

  • Creating healthy parenting approaches that diverge from ingrained and outdated patterns

  • Creating a cohesion and mutual support in the parenting dyad

  • Fostering connection between parents and children after conflict, including but not limited to separation/divorce

  • Navigating gender roles and their impacts on parenting expectations and approaches

Parent-child & adult sibling relationship dyads

Our families of origin create the complex blueprints for the individuals we become; the relationships with our parents and siblings form the cornerstones of our identities and cast long shadows regarding our definitions and experiences of intimacy. While these relationships often shape us positively, allowing us to feel deep gratitude for our families of origin, they can simultaneously leave us longing for healing and catharsis. It is never too late for this work to happen and when it does - it is transformative. The complexities of adult parent-child relationships and adult sibling relationships hold within them time machines as they contain many iterations of who we are across decades and through uniquely shared familial experiences. Looking back to heal these relationships and looking forward to reshape and reimagine these connections can provide immense relief both within the dyad and for each individual. The processing of these formative memories and bonds offers exponential growth as the effects extend into the other important relationships in each person's life. CJ holds space for the various and at times conflicting stories of each member of the family to create a space where profound healing is possible. 

 A familial dyad intensive with CJ offers support and insight with:

  • Healing generational trauma

  • Identifying and expressing unearthed feelings, stories and beliefs

  • Creating space for expressions of accountability and repair

  • Redefining relationships through boundary negotiating

  • Learning new ways to connect and communicate

Intensive Fees & Payment

  • Please contact the center at (413) 217-0170 to discuss fees.

  • No insurances are accepted

  • Payments can be made through the Couples Center of the Pioneer Valley via credit card

Testimonials

“Thank you SO much for all that you did to support us this weekend. We were both so blown away by your skill on so many levels, not the least of which was holding space for each of our styles and needs.”- MC & AC