Individual Therapy
Healing after betrayal is not one-size-fits-all. At Ellsworth Family Therapy, individual therapy is tailored to the unique impact betrayal and relational trauma can have on partners, children, and the individual who caused harm. Using a trauma-informed and nervous-system-informed approach, therapy focuses on restoring safety, strengthening emotional awareness, supporting regulation, and creating meaningful, lasting healing.
Our work integrates the Multidimensional Partner Trauma Model (MPTM), Brainspotting, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), somatic practices, and expressive interventions such as art therapy to support healing on emotional, cognitive, relational, and physiological levels.
Individual Therapy for Betrayed Partners
Betrayal trauma can deeply disrupt a person’s sense of safety, identity, trust, and emotional stability. Many partners experience symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress, including hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, emotional flooding, anxiety, grief, sleep disruption, difficulty concentrating, and a profound loss of security within themselves and their relationships.
Using the Multidimensional Partner Trauma Model (MPTM), therapy honors the reality that betrayal trauma is a legitimate trauma response—not a sign of weakness, codependency, or dysfunction. Sessions are designed to help partners stabilize emotionally, reconnect with their intuition, strengthen boundaries, process grief and anger, and rebuild a sense of personal agency and self-trust.
Brainspotting is incorporated to help process unresolved trauma held within the nervous system, while somatic interventions support clients in reconnecting with their bodies, identifying nervous system activation, and developing greater emotional regulation and grounding. IFS work helps clients understand and compassionately care for the different parts of themselves that may carry fear, shame, anger, self-protection, or longing. Expressive and art-based interventions may also be used to help clients process experiences and emotions that can feel difficult to verbalize. SFBT interventions help clients identify strengths, clarify goals, and begin building a future rooted in safety, clarity, and empowerment.
The goal is not simply symptom reduction—it is helping clients reclaim themselves.
Individual Therapy for Betrayed Teens and Young Adults
Children and teens are often deeply impacted by family betrayal, secrecy, emotional disconnection, conflict, or relational instability. Many young people struggle to understand what they are experiencing and may express distress through anxiety, emotional dysregulation, behavioral changes, withdrawal, anger, perfectionism, or difficulty trusting others.
Therapy for children and adolescents is adapted developmentally from the principles of the MPTM, recognizing that children also experience relational trauma and nervous system dysregulation when safety within the family system is disrupted.
Sessions provide a safe, attuned environment where children and teens can process emotions, build emotional literacy, strengthen coping skills, and restore a sense of stability and security. Brainspotting may be incorporated in age-appropriate ways to support trauma processing and nervous system regulation. Somatic practices help children learn to recognize emotions and bodily cues, while art therapy interventions create opportunities for expression, play, creativity, and emotional processing in ways that feel safe and accessible. IFS-informed interventions help children identify and understand different emotional “parts” of themselves with compassion rather than shame. Therapy also supports healthy attachment, communication, and emotional resilience within the family system.
The focus is helping children feel seen, safe, emotionally supported, and empowered to heal.
Individual Therapy for the Betraying Partner
Healing and relational repair require more than behavior management or abstinence. Individual therapy for the betraying partner focuses on developing emotional honesty, accountability, empathy, relational integrity, and deeper self-awareness.
Sessions explore the underlying emotional patterns, attachment wounds, coping mechanisms, and internal systems that may contribute to secrecy, compulsive behaviors, emotional avoidance, or relational disconnection. Therapy is not shame-driven; instead, it creates space for meaningful accountability while helping clients build the emotional capacity necessary for authentic change.
Using IFS, clients learn to identify protective patterns and internal conflicts that may fuel unhealthy behaviors. Brainspotting can support processing unresolved trauma, shame, or emotional activation that interferes with relational presence and regulation. Somatic practices help clients increase awareness of physiological responses, build emotional tolerance, and strengthen nervous system regulation. Art and expressive interventions may also be used to support emotional insight, self-reflection, and deeper connection to internal experiences that are difficult to articulate verbally. SFBT interventions help clients establish concrete goals, recognize progress, and move toward alignment between values and behavior.
Relational repair work may include:
Empathy development
Emotional attunement
Accountability and transparency work
Communication skill building
Nervous system regulation
Attachment-focused healing
Boundary understanding
Restoring integrity and trustworthiness
The goal is to help clients move beyond surface-level behavior change toward deeper emotional growth, relational safety, and sustainable transformation.
Fees for Service: $125