relational therapy in los angeles

Our Approach to Care & Connection

We believe healing happens in relationship.

Our Relational Therapeutic Approach

People don't exist in isolation. We become who we are through our relationships. From our earliest experiences with caregivers to our current partnerships, friendships, workplaces, communities, and the larger systems we live within, our relationships influence how we see ourselves, connect with others, and move through the world.

Relational therapy begins with a simple idea: if relationships shape us, relationships can also be a place of healing.

At Kindman & Co., relational therapyisn't just one technique among many. It's the foundation of how we understand emotional well-being, growth, and meaningful change. Whether you're seeking therapy for anxiety, trauma, relationship challenges, burnout, grief, or a major life transition, our therapists work collaboratively with you to understand not only what you're experiencing, but how those experiences have influenced your relationship with yourself and others.

What Is Relational Therapy?

Relational therapy is an approach to psychotherapy rooted in this understanding that we are shaped through relationships. As relational therapists, we don’t ask "What's wrong with you?" (there’s nothing wrong with you!). Instead we ask, "How have your experiences shaped you?"

Together, we become curious about the patterns that once helped you survive but may no longer serve you. Therapy isn't about assigning blame or endlessly analyzing the past. It's about understanding yourself with compassion so you can create relationships, including the one you have with yourself, that feel more authentic, connected, and supportive.

The Relationship Is the Work

One of the defining features of relational therapy is that the relationship between therapist and client isn't simply the setting where healing happens—it's one of the primary ways healing happens.

Instead of only talking about relationships, therapy offers the opportunity to experience a different kind of relationship: one grounded in curiosity rather than judgment, collaboration rather than hierarchy, and true authenticity rather than performing who you think you need to be. As trust develops, the therapy relationship becomes a place to notice familiar patterns, practice expressing needs, embrace vulnerability, and experiment with new ways of relating that gradually ripple into every other relationship in your life.

How We Practice Relational Therapy at Kindman & Co.

At Kindman & Co., this philosophy shapes how we show up in every session.

We strive to create a warm, collaborative, and nonjudgmental space where you can feel genuinely seen, heard, and understood. Rather than positioning ourselves as distant experts, we bring our full humanity into the room. Therapy with us often includes humor, curiosity, honest conversations, moments of play, and yes, sometimes a little swearing.We believe authentic relationships foster authentic healing.

Our work is grounded in connection, curiosity, humility, and a commitment to social justice. We recognize that emotional distress doesn't exist outside the contexts of culture, identity, power, and systemic oppression. Rather than asking people to adapt to systems that have caused harm, we support clients to make meaning of their experiences while reconnecting with their own values, strengths, and agency.

We are explicitly LGBTQIA+-affirming and BIPOC-affirming, and we strive to create a therapeutic space where gender diversity, sexual fluidity, racialized experiences, disability, and intersecting identities are not only welcomed, but understood as essential parts of each person's story. We know that affirming care isn't a destination but an ongoing practice of learning, humility, accountability, and repair.

Above all, we want therapy to be a place where you can show up more fully as yourself.

The core focus areas below reflect the ways our clients deepen self-understanding, strengthen relationships, and move through the world with greater agency—creating change not only within themselves, but in the communities and systems they touch.

increase authenticity

From a very early age, we are subjected to inescapable pressures and messages from our family, our social spheres, and dominant culture that tell us we’re supposed to be a certain version of ourselves. Our therapy work together will help build a deeper understanding of you in the complex context of your culture, relationships, and other important external factors, to focus on separating out who you think you “should” be from who you actually are.

We will collaborate to cultivate authenticity of self, drawing a rich landscape for transformation to occur at a pace that is comfortable for you. We want to help you celebrate and accept yourself for who you truly are and what you stand for.

build connections

Our culture prioritizes individualism and fleeting connections over close relationships, resulting in increased levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. To feel content and be thriving, we need each other and we need intimacy in relationships.

An essential support for sustainable, proportional relationships is developing curiosity, empathy, and clear communication of the unmet needs you’ve been carrying and the ones you may not even know yet. We’re here to help you improve your relationships so that you have a stronger sense of community, care, and support. In therapy together, we will help you better clarify what you’re needing from your relationships, cultivate more meaningful connections, build greater awareness of fears and conflicts that tend to get in the way, and support you to start getting more of what you’re wanting!

cultivate a supportive relationship

At Kindman & Co. we emphasize that the core foundation of meaningful therapeutic work is a therapeutic relationship built on warmth, empathy, and trust—where both parties are continually growing and learning from each other.

Together we will co-create a supportive and non-judgmental environment that values transparency, vulnerability, and exploration of how we both impact one another.

This is not Freud’s therapy! Here, your therapist is not an authoritative “blank slate,” but instead, a whole human being who will walk alongside you on this journey. You will get to know your therapist and what they stand for. We believe that the most powerful way to find healing and bring about change is through lived experience; We’re here to start a therapeutic relationship where you feel seen, heard, understood, and accepted for who YOU are.

increase complexity

As humans, we lean on our unconscious nervous system to determine our safety.

Since this happens rapidly and automatically, we are frequently on guard for potential threats. This can lead to fearing perceived difference and discomfort with experiences that are new or vulnerable. When we have experienced trauma or harmful relationship dynamics, we tend to view the world in more simplistic, concrete terms (good/bad, black/white, right/wrong, etc.) to help us stay safe.

In our current political climate and the divisive state of the world, we can also easily fall into looking at situations through these more concrete terms, which lessens our empathy and compassion for one another.

We know that when we can tolerate more grey areas, we build more capacity to confidently navigate our human experience.

We want to help you increase your comfort with complexity to support you to hold the both/and of situations, relationships, and your emotional experience, instead of just either/or. Holding more complexity benefits individual and relationship therapy clients alike to increase empathy and curiosity, appreciate difference to increase shared humanity, value vulnerability, deepen intimacy, have a greater sense of wellbeing, and move our society to become more just.

embrace embodiment

In American culture we tend to be “cut off” from the shoulders down. We prioritize analyzing, rationalizing, and problem solving—all mental processes—above the valuable information that physical sensations and body memory can offer.

Emotions are physical.

Working through traumatic experiences particularly, deep healing can be found in intimately knowing and releasing the pain we hold in our bodies. Using embodiment practices in therapy, we investigate your experience as it occurs moment-to-moment by maintaining curiosity around what is happening in both your mind and body.

By becoming more aware of your physical embodiment—where sensations and emotions show up in your body—we can help you begin to liberate painful or stuck energy and feel more in control of big, vulnerable feelings when they inevitably arise.

play!

Finally, not all therapy sessions must be intense and serious! There is much to be learned from playful, shared moments.

Our therapeutic work will incorporate humor as an entry to building meaningful connection as well as to provide levity and respite from pain and despair. We prioritize holding space for celebrating your joys, highlighting and appreciating your progress and accomplishments, and for valuing the deeply healing quality of fully-embodied laughter.

We firmly believe that humor and play are at the heart of resilience, and we need resilience to survive the twists and turns of being human. Life is not all challenge and suffering, so your therapy shouldn’t be either!

Together we will help you connect to the strengths that you innately possess and build out a more meaningful and enriching life full of nourishing relationships, laughter, and a greater sense of wellbeing.

Learn More about our Therapy Offerings

Whether you're looking for relational therapy in Los Angeles or online therapy throughout California, our goal is to create a space where you can feel genuinely seen and understood.

Frequently Asked Questions About Relational Therapy

  • Relational therapy is an approach to psychotherapy that understands emotional well-being through the lens of relationships. It explores how past and present relationships shape your thoughts, emotions, and patterns while using the therapeutic relationship itself as an opportunity for healing and growth.

  • Your first therapy session is a conversation. We'll start to get to know you, explore what brings you to therapy now, answer your questions, and discuss your hopes for our work together.

    There's no expectation to share everything at once. In fact, we expect that it will take some time to build trust and to feel comfortable sharing vulnerable parts of yourself. We want to move at a place that feels supportive and safe for you.

  • Yes. Relational therapy helps people better understand communication patterns, attachment, conflict, boundaries, and emotional connection. Most people find that the work they do in therapy strengthens their relationships outside the therapy room as well.

  • CBT primarily focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors.

    Relational therapy explores how your relationships have shaped your emotional life, your sense of self, and the ways you connect with others. Rather than seeing thoughts and emotions as symptoms to eliminate, we approach them as meaningful responses to your experiences and ask what they might be communicating about your needs, relationships, and environment.

    Together, we become curious about the patterns that have helped you survive—not to judge or fix them, but to understand how they developed and whether they still serve you.

    Through the therapeutic relationship, you have the opportunity to reconnect with parts of yourself that may have been pushed aside, deepen authenticity, navigate conflict differently, and cultivate relationships and community that feel more secure, supportive, and life-giving.

  • Yes. Research consistently shows that the quality of the therapeutic relationship is one of the strongest predictors of positive therapy outcomes. Relational therapy also draws from well-established research in attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, gestalt therapy, and psychodynamic psychology.

  • At Kindman & Co., we don't organize our practice around collecting therapy modalities. We organize it around a relational philosophy of care.

    Our therapists specialize in relational therapy, which means the therapeutic relationship is the foundation of our work. Rather than relying on a single technique or protocol, we tailor therapy to each person while staying grounded in curiosity, authenticity, and connection.

    For couples and partners, our therapists also integrate PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy) to help build greater security, resilience, and connection within the relationship.

  • Yes. Relational therapy can be effective for anxiety, trauma, depression, relationship concerns, grief, burnout, and life transitions.

    Rather than focusing only on symptom reduction, it also helps you better understand the patterns that contribute to emotional distress and make sense of your emotional responses. Relational therapy supports long-lasting change and helps you discover new possibilities for connection.

  • Relational therapy may be a good fit if you're looking for more than symptom management.

    If you're curious about understanding yourself more deeply, improving relationships, processing difficult experiences, or creating lasting change, a relational approach may feel like a good fit. The best way to know is to schedule a free match call and see whether our approach feels like the right fit.