Needing constant reassurance, shutting down mid-conflict, losing yourself in someone else’s needs: relationship struggles are often mental health struggles wearing a different outfit.
Our closest relationships are where mental health shows up loudest. Anxiety becomes jealousy, reassurance-seeking, or overthinking every text. Depression becomes withdrawal and irritability that a partner reads as coldness. Old family wounds become conflict patterns that repeat with painful precision, no matter how different each new partner seems.
I am not a couples therapist, and I do not treat relationships directly. What I treat is the anxiety, depression, ADHD, or trauma underneath, the conditions that quietly sabotage connection. When the underlying condition improves, patients are often surprised how much their relationships improve with it.
This work matters whether you are partnered, dating, divorcing, or deliberately single. The relationship you have with yourself, and the patterns you carry into every connection, deserve the same clinical attention as any other symptom.
We start by sorting out what is situational and what is clinical: is this relationship distress causing anxiety, or anxiety causing relationship distress? Often it is both, and untangling them changes everything. A thorough evaluation looks at mood, attachment history, and the family blueprint underneath the patterns.
Treatment may include medication for the anxiety or depression that fuels the cycle, along with supportive therapy focused on the patterns themselves. When couples counseling is what you need, I will say so and help you find it, and we can work alongside it. Appointments are available in person in Fairfax or via telehealth across Virginia, in English and Tiếng Việt.
If you are in crisis right now, please do not wait for an appointment.
Call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Free, confidential, available 24/7.
For emergencies, call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
Alice Tran Psychiatric Care does not operate 24/7 and does not provide crisis services. Emails, voicemails, text or portal messages are typically responded to within 24 to 72 business hours.
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