Summit Counselling Services — Specialty
Relationship CounsellingAll of our most important struggles happen in relationship with others.
How we connect, conflict, attach, and repair with the people in our lives shapes everything — our mental health, our sense of self, our capacity for joy. Relationship counselling helps you understand those patterns and change the ones that aren't working.
About Relationship Counselling
Relationships are where we are most ourselves.
We are profoundly shaped by our relationships — with our parents, our partners, our children, our friends, our colleagues. The patterns we learned early about how to connect, how to manage conflict, and how to ask for what we need follow us into every relationship we form. When those patterns no longer serve us, or when a relationship is in genuine difficulty, therapy offers a space to understand what's happening beneath the surface.
Relationship counselling at Summit is not only for couples in crisis. It's for anyone who wants to understand their relational patterns more deeply — how they show up in conflict, how they attach, what they need from others and why it's sometimes hard to ask for it. It's for families navigating a difficult period. It's for individuals who keep finding themselves in the same relational patterns and want something to change.
Our therapists bring a depth of understanding about attachment, communication, family systems, and relational trauma. They work with curiosity rather than judgment, and with a genuine belief that people have the capacity to build something better — in their relationships and in themselves.
"The quality of our relationships is one of the strongest predictors of mental health and wellbeing. There is no more important work than this."
Common reasons people seek relationship counselling
- Recurring conflict that never fully resolves
- Difficulty communicating — feeling unheard or misunderstood
- Emotional distance or disconnection
- Trust issues — including after infidelity or betrayal
- Differences in values, parenting styles, or life goals
- Navigating major transitions together — new baby, career change, relocation
- Struggling to ask for what you need in relationships
- Patterns that repeat across different relationships
- Attachment anxiety, avoidance, or fear of intimacy
- Family conflict — parents, siblings, adult children
- Rebuilding after a rupture or period of distance
- Relationship concerns connected to trauma or difficult history
What We Offer
Relationship support in every form
Relationship counselling at Summit is available for individuals, couples, and families — whatever form your relational work needs to take.
Individual Relationship Therapy
You don't need a partner or family member in the room to do meaningful relationship work. Individual therapy explores your relational patterns — how you attach, communicate, and show up in close relationships — and builds the insight and skills to shift what isn't working. Many people find that working on themselves individually creates the most profound change in their relationships.
This is the right starting point if you're navigating relationship difficulties alone, if a partner is unwilling to attend, or if you want to understand yourself before bringing someone else into the process.
Couples Therapy
Our couples therapists specialize in helping partners rebuild connection, navigate conflict with less damage, and understand the underlying dynamics driving their difficulties. Whether you're in acute crisis or simply feeling disconnected, couples therapy provides a skilled third party who can hold the complexity of both people's experience simultaneously.
Visit our dedicated couples therapy page for more detail on what to expect, who we work with, and the modalities we use.
Family Therapy
Family relationships are among the most complex and most consequential of our lives. Family therapy creates a structured space for difficult conversations — between parents and adult children, siblings navigating conflict, families adjusting to major change, or any configuration of people who love each other and are finding it hard to show it right now.
Visit our dedicated family therapy page to learn more about how we work with families.
Our Approach
Getting to the roots of how you connect
Relationship difficulties rarely exist in isolation. They're almost always connected to something deeper — an attachment pattern formed early, a history that taught you connection isn't safe, a communication style that made sense once but doesn't anymore. Our therapists work at that level of depth, not just the surface of the presenting conflict.
At Summit, we believe the therapeutic relationship is itself a relational experience. How your therapist shows up — with consistency, warmth, curiosity, and honesty — models what safe connection can feel like. Many people find that the work they do in the therapy room begins to change how they show up everywhere else.
Sessions are available in person at our Brewery District, St. Albert, and Windermere locations, and virtually for clients anywhere in Alberta.
Specific Areas
Relational concerns we work with
Relationship counselling covers a broad range of specific concerns — some of which have their own dedicated pages at Summit.
Communication & Conflict
The same argument on repeat. Feeling like you can't say what you mean without it escalating. Shutting down instead of speaking up. Communication patterns in relationships are deeply ingrained — and deeply changeable with the right support.
Betrayal & Infidelity
The rupture of trust through infidelity, deception, or betrayal is one of the most painful relational experiences. Therapy provides a space to process what happened, understand what it means for the relationship, and make informed decisions about what comes next.
Attachment & Intimacy
Fear of abandonment, avoidance of closeness, difficulty trusting — these attachment patterns shape every relationship we form. Understanding your attachment style is one of the most transformative pieces of relational work available.
Parenting & Co-Parenting
Parenting differences, co-parenting after separation, blended families, the relational strain of raising children — all are areas where skilled support makes a real difference. See our parenting support page for more.
Relationship to Self
The most foundational relationship is the one we have with ourselves — our inner critic, our self-worth, our capacity for self-compassion. Therapy that touches this level creates change that ripples outward into every other relationship. See our self-compassion page.
Relationship Trauma
Difficult or abusive past relationships leave marks that show up in current ones. Trauma-informed relational therapy addresses these roots so they have less power over your present relationships.
Therapeutic Approaches
How our therapists work
Our relationship therapists draw on a range of evidence-based approaches — selected for the person, not the presenting concern.
Gottman Method
One of the most research-based couples therapy approaches available. Gottman therapy identifies the specific communication patterns — the "Four Horsemen" — that predict relationship breakdown, and builds practical skills for healthier conflict and deeper connection. Particularly effective for couples doing repair work.
Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT)
EFT works with the emotional experience beneath surface conflict — the fear, the longing, the hurt that drives the cycle. By accessing and expressing those deeper emotions, couples and individuals can break out of negative patterns and build more secure attachment. One of the most effective approaches for relationship work.
Attachment Therapy
Understanding how your early experiences shaped your attachment style — anxious, avoidant, disorganized, or secure — is transformative for relational work. Attachment-based therapy helps you recognize these patterns in your current relationships and build toward something more secure.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
Identifying the thought patterns and assumptions that drive relational conflict — the mind-reading, the catastrophizing, the black-and-white thinking — and building more accurate, flexible ways of interpreting what's happening between you and the people you're close to.
EMDR
When relational difficulties are rooted in past trauma — a difficult childhood, an abusive relationship, a specific rupture that never healed — EMDR processes that underlying material so it no longer drives current reactions. Particularly valuable when relational trauma is part of the picture.
Somatic Experiencing
Relational patterns live in the body as much as the mind — the tension of conflict, the shutdown of avoidance, the physical activation of attachment anxiety. Somatic approaches work at a physiological level to help regulate the nervous system's responses in relationship.
Book a Session
Find us in Edmonton, St. Albert & Windermere
Relationship counselling is available in person at all three Summit locations, with virtual sessions available across Alberta.
Wîhkwêntôwin ᐄᐧᐦᑫᐧᐣᑑᐃᐧᐣ (Oliver)
Grandin Plaza, 2nd Floor
Edmonton, AB
Common Questions
Relationship counselling — your questions answered
Our Therapists
Therapists specializing in relationships
The clinicians below specialize in relationship work — individual, couples, and family. Use the Find Your Fit tool to explore further, or start with a free 15-minute consultation.
Related Support
Other areas we work with
Better relationships begin with one honest conversation.
Your first consultation is free — no commitment, no pressure. Just a conversation about where you are and whether we're the right fit.
We acknowledge that our practice is located in Treaty 6 territory, on the traditional lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Métis, and Nakota Sioux Peoples, including our Brewery District office in Wîhkwêntôwin ᐄᐧᐦᑫᐧᐣᑑᐃᐧᐣ (Oliver). We recognize that healing and reconciliation is a responsibility shared by all.