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    • Home
    • Therapists
      • Vanessa Rowell
      • Campbell Townsend
    • Services
      • Children and Adolescents
      • Adults
      • Couples
      • Supervision
    • Clients
    • For Referrers
    • Professional Training
Island Psychology
  • Home
  • Therapists
    • Vanessa Rowell
    • Campbell Townsend
  • Services
    • Children and Adolescents
    • Adults
    • Couples
    • Supervision
  • Clients
  • For Referrers
  • Professional Training

Intensive Couples Therapy.

Intensive Couples Therapy for Affairs, Betrayal & Relationship Repair

When trust is broken, weekly therapy often isn’t enough.
I offer focused, high-impact intensives designed to help couples stabilise, understand what’s happened, and begin meaningful repair—quickly and deeply.


I specialise in working with couples navigating affairs, betrayal, and significant relationship ruptures.


These are often moments of crisis—but also moments of possibility. With the right structure and depth of work, couples can move beyond reactivity and confusion into clarity, accountability, and genuine reconnection.


Why Intensive Therapy?

Traditional weekly sessions can feel too slow when you’re in distress.

Intensive therapy offers:

  • A contained space to work through complex issues without interruption 
  • Faster movement through gridlock and repeated conflict patterns 
  • The ability to address both partners’ experiences in depth 
  • A structured pathway toward repair, rather than just “talking about problems”

My Approach

My approach integrates the Gottman Method with ACT, IFS-informed work, somatic awareness, and psychodynamic processes.

Rather than applying techniques in isolation, I draw these approaches together to understand both the surface patterns in your relationship and the deeper emotional and physiological processes that drive them.

This allows us to work not only on communication and behaviour, but on the underlying experiences—such as attachment, meaning, and nervous system responses—that shape how you relate to each other.

The Process

1. Assessment Phase

Before we meet, you and your partner complete a series of structured questionnaires.

This allows me to develop a detailed understanding of:

  • Your individual histories 
  • The relationship dynamic 
  • The specific impact of the betrayal or rupture 
  • Key areas of strength and vulnerability 

We then meet for:

  • A joint session 
  • Individual sessions with each partner 

This phase concludes with a comprehensive feedback session, where I outline:

  • What’s happening in your relationship (clearly and directly) 
  • The key patterns maintaining distress 
  • A targeted plan for repair 


2. Intensive Treatment Phase

This is where the real work happens.

Across one or more extended sessions, we focus on:

  • Processing the impact of past hurts, betrayals or affairs
  • Supporting accountability and emotional expression 
  • Reducing reactivity and defensive patterns 
  • Rebuilding communication and emotional safety 
  • Beginning trust repair in a structured, realistic way 

This work is active, guided, and deeply focused.
It is not just insight—it is change-oriented and experiential.


3. Maintenance & Integration

Following the intensive, I offer structured follow-up sessions to support integration.

These sessions help you:

  • Consolidate gains 
  • Navigate challenges as they arise 
  • Continue rebuilding trust and connection 
  • Strengthen new patterns in real-life situations

Intensive Options

I offer several formats depending on your needs:

  • 2-Day Marathon
    (6 hours per day) 
  • 4-Day Intensive
    (3 hours per day) 
  • 6-Day Intensive
    (2 hours per day) 

We’ll decide together which structure best fits your situation.

Fees


Assessment Phase: $1,000
A comprehensive pre-treatment assessment and feedback process.

Intensive Treatment: $4,500
Includes all therapy sessions within the intensive phase.

Follow-up sessions are available as needed.

Specialisation in Affairs & Betrayal

Affairs and betrayals create a unique kind of relational trauma.

Couples often arrive feeling shocked, overwhelmed, and unsure whether repair is even possible—caught in cycles of questioning, defensiveness, or withdrawal.


The good news is that repair is very possible, even after significant betrayal. With the right structure and guidance, couples can move through this.


My work is grounded in the Gottman Method’s Atone – Attune – Attach model, a research-based framework specifically designed for healing after betrayal.


Atone is about making sense of what has happened and creating a foundation of safety. This includes honest disclosure, meaningful accountability, and beginning to stabilise what often feels chaotic.


Attune involves slowing things down so each partner can feel genuinely understood—not just intellectually, but emotionally. We work with the impact of the rupture at a deeper level, including the patterns and reactions that keep couples stuck.


Attach is where trust begins to be rebuilt. Couples start to develop new ways of relating that feel more secure, responsive, and connected—often with a renewed sense of clarity about what they want their relationship to be.


This process provides a clear pathway through what can otherwise feel overwhelming and disorganising. The intensives are designed to support you through each of these phases in a focused, contained, and effective way.


Many couples are surprised by how much repair is possible when the process is guided well.

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