Audrey Schoen, LMFT

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Audrey Schoen, LMFT California Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist. Online video counseling for clients in California.

Helping couples and adults gain insight and clarity to feel more grounded, improve communication and create connection in their relationships.

No one makes you feel anything.If you're anything like me the first time I heard that, you're already feeling something ...
10/14/2026

No one makes you feel anything.

If you're anything like me the first time I heard that, you're already feeling something about it. Stay with me.

A thing happens. A comment. A snappy retort. A dramatic sigh that says everything without actually saying anything. You know the one.

Your nervous system takes it in and starts doing what nervous systems do. Interpreting it. Assigning meaning. Making up a story about what it means and what they meant.

That story is what you end up feeling.

You might be right about what they meant. You might not be. Either way, the story is yours.

Taking radical responsibility for your interpretation doesn't excuse what they did. Their behavior is still theirs to own. It also doesn't ask you to stay quiet or put up with mistreatment.

It gives you your choice back.

If the story is yours, the response is yours too.

Your first chance to choose something different comes the moment you notice the meaning you just gave it. The next time a comment or a sigh gets under your skin, pause and ask yourself, "What am I making this mean?"

Then choose your response from there. "That didn't feel good." "Can we try that again?" "You sound upset."

More on this in my March blog post, No One Makes You Feel Anything (and Why That's Actually Good News).

🔗 https://www.audreylmft.com/blogs/no-one-makes-you-feel-anything-and-why-thats-actually-good-news

The feeling is real. The story underneath it is something you can change.

"I'm not overreacting."I hear this sentence all the time. Usually said with a wince, right after a hard moment.My answer...
10/13/2026

"I'm not overreacting."

I hear this sentence all the time. Usually said with a wince, right after a hard moment.

My answer is the same every time.

There is no such thing as overreacting.

It just might be that you're reacting to what's in front of you and also to what's behind you.

The word I use instead is trigger. Not the pop psych version of it though.

A trigger is when your reaction to something today is also a reaction to something from before.

A rule of thumb worth remembering:

If the response feels too big for the moment, the moment isn't all you're reacting to.

"Overreacting" is a verdict. It judges the size of the reaction and stops there. Nothing changes.

"Trigger" gives you something to look at.

So the next time a reaction feels outsized, try this. Name two things, separately:

✓ What is happening right now.
✓ What this feels familiar to.

Keep them apart. When they're blended together, you end up responding to all of it at once. When you name them separately, a different response becomes possible.

You can use this with a partner or a friend too. Instead of debating whether a reaction was too big, ask each other: what's happening right now, and what does this feel familiar to?

That question opens a very different conversation than "you're overreacting" ever will.

Most men I work with were never taught emotional language at all.Nobody showed them how to talk about their feelings. Or...
10/12/2026

Most men I work with were never taught emotional language at all.

Nobody showed them how to talk about their feelings. Or why it would even matter. Or what they'd do with that information once they had it.

So they learned the one language that was spoken at home. Handle it. Push through. Keep it to yourself.

That's what we usually call stoicism.

For a lot of men, it was the only language available.

If you were sitting across from me, I'd put it this way. If nobody in your house spoke Spanish growing up, you wouldn't expect to be fluent. That says something about your house. It says nothing about your capacity.

Emotional language works the same way.

You can't name what you were never given words for. So when your partner asks what's going on, "I don't know" is often the honest answer. And you fall back on what you do know. Fix it. Go quiet. Change the subject.

Stoicism made sense once. It kept you safe somewhere showing feelings didn't feel safe.

The trouble starts when the strategy hardens into identity.

"I'm just not a feelings guy."

To me, that sounds a lot like "I'm just not a language person." It closes the door before you've tried. And in a relationship, it shuts out the closeness your partner is asking for.

A language can be learned as an adult. So can this.

Start small. The next time you hear yourself reach for that line, pause. Ask yourself what you'd say if you had the words.

Full post on the blog: What It Actually Means to Be a Man

https://www.audreylmft.com/blogs/what-it-actually-means-to-be-a-man

Do you have a couple you've been circling for months and they’re not making progress?Or an individual client that's read...
10/12/2026

Do you have a couple you've been circling for months and they’re not making progress?

Or an individual client that's ready to dive into couples work?
The smart, successful, exhausted ones who have a great life on paper, but can't get through a Tuesday night without the same fight.

I have one spot open for a private couples intensive, December 7-11, in Roseville, CA (online if needed CA or TX). It's Relational Life Therapy, one couple, three days.

I also offer 1-3 day individual intensives including ART and brainspotting.

If someone comes to mind, feel free to DM me if you have questions.

Link to more info in comments.

Marriage forces us to confront parts of ourselves that are buried.I keep coming back to that sentence.On your own, you c...
10/11/2026

Marriage forces us to confront parts of ourselves that are buried.

I keep coming back to that sentence.

On your own, you can go a long time without touching certain things. Old fears. Old ways of protecting yourself. Reactions you learned early and never had a reason to question.

Then you build a life with someone. You share a home, decisions, money, a bed. And living that close to another person brings those things up.

What surfaces between you is often something you never had to face alone.

That can feel alarming. The pain runs deeper than we expected. We blame our partners for causing it and look to them to heal it. Even when they have objectively acted badly, the source of the pain is often more than just your partner. It's also your past. The wound your partner was chosen to recreate.

It's easy to read that as proof the marriage is failing.

I see it differently. Closeness reaches places that distance never touched. When something hard comes up, it often means you've let someone near enough to reach it.

In Relational Life Therapy, Terry Real calls a lot of what surfaces the Adaptive Child. It's the younger part of you that learned how to protect yourself long before you met your partner. It's history showing up in the present.

A first step you can start this week:

The next time a reaction to your partner feels bigger than the moment, pause and ask yourself "How is this feeling familiar to something I experienced growing up?"

Do that before you confront the problem in the marriage.

You can still look at the marriage. You'll just be looking with clearer eyes.

The standard you hold yourself to at work does not have to be the standard you hold yourself to everywhere else.Somewher...
10/10/2026

The standard you hold yourself to at work does not have to be the standard you hold yourself to everywhere else.

Somewhere along the way, a lot of high-achievers quietly decided that the bar that made them good at their job is the same bar that makes them a good person.

It isn't.

So here is a permission list. Read it slowly.

You are allowed to not know how the conversation is going to go before you start it.

You are allowed to feel proud of something even when it is not finished.

You are allowed to bring something messy to a session and leave without a tidy resolution.

You are allowed to want help with your relationship before things get critical.

You are allowed to need more than one session before anything shifts.

You are allowed to hold high standards at work and still let things be imperfect at home.

The problem was never that you have high standards. The standards have served you. They probably built most of what you're proud of.

The trouble starts when the standard follows you home and sits down at the dinner table.

When your marriage gets graded like a performance review. When you can't ask for help until the situation is already on fire. When "not yet figured out" feels like a personal failure instead of a normal Tuesday.

Perfectionism isn't the problem. Applying it everywhere is.

If you came to couples therapy to learn how to talk to each other, the skills you came for come third.Most people assume...
10/09/2026

If you came to couples therapy to learn how to talk to each other, the skills you came for come third.

Most people assume therapy opens with communication tools. Better phrasing. A script for the next hard conversation.

That assumption is also why so many couples who have tried the scripts and the communication advice wonder why none of it stuck.

The three-phase process I use with couples follows a different order.

Phase 1: Understanding your pattern. We identify your specific conflict dance and set clear goals for what success would look like in your relationship.

Phase 2: Addressing the past. We deal with the past experiences and triggers that block change even when you want it, and connect what happened in your family of origin to how you fight now.

Phase 3: Building skills. Communication tools come in here, along with direct attention to whatever keeps you from actually using them.

Before that point, a new skill runs straight into the old pattern and the old triggers.

After it, those blocks have already been named and worked with. The skill has room to hold.

Something you can try this week:

The next time a fight starts following a familiar script, notice the pattern itself before you reach for a better phrase.

What's the first move? Who says what next? Where does it usually end up?

Seeing the dance clearly comes before changing the steps.

My husband took this picture when our twins were three weeks old.I don’t remember falling asleep. I remember the exhaust...
10/08/2026

My husband took this picture when our twins were three weeks old.

I don’t remember falling asleep. I remember the exhaustion, the feeding schedule that ran my life, and the feeling that everything I knew about myself had been shaken loose.

The puzzle of my life that I had carefully crafted didn’t just change. It shattered. There were new pieces I didn’t recognize, some old ones missing. It felt like I was trying to put together a puzzle I didn’t have a picture for.

Sometimes I felt the most intense love and amazement. Sometimes I wondered if I had ruined my life. Sometimes I felt both at the same time.

Calling those first months hard is a gross understatement. They were hell. I was fortunate to have a career that allowed for time off and a spouse who could support us.

What I learned is that something can be temporary and feel never-ending at the same time. The way through is one moment at a time.

It’s one of my favorite photos. Life was upside down, and there in the chaos we all found a moment of stillness.
Those twins are 8 now. I’m still a therapist, still a wife, and I'm still figuring it out as I go.

The way you love right now made perfect sense once.The shutdown that arrives before you can stop it. The same fight that...
10/08/2026

The way you love right now made perfect sense once.

The shutdown that arrives before you can stop it. The same fight that keeps finding you. The low hum of anxiety underneath everything that never fully rests.

These aren't character flaws.

They were adaptations, written into you long before you chose your partner, your business partner, your closest friend. They kept you safe in a world that felt unsafe. Back then, they were the smartest thing you knew how to do.

Relational trauma doesn't announce itself.

It shows up in the patterns. The ones you've tried to manage, reason your way out of, willpower past.

And it keeps showing up because past experiences and the triggers they leave behind prevent change even when you genuinely want it. That's not weakness. It's unfinished business.

Managing symptoms is not the same as changing them at the source.

Real change means naming your specific conflict pattern, tracing it to where it actually started, and building the skills to change it at the root.

If you've ever wondered why you keep reacting the same way in close relationships, this is where that pattern gets named and changed.

I work with individuals and couples in person in Roseville, CA and online throughout California and Texas.

You hear yourself say something sharp, cold, or completely over the top, and you already know, even as it's coming out, ...
10/07/2026

You hear yourself say something sharp, cold, or completely over the top, and you already know, even as it's coming out, that it's going to start a .

RLT has a name for exactly what just happened.

Adaptive Child (noun): the part of you that learned to survive childhood by adapting, and still shows up, fully intact, inside your closest adult relationships.

High-achievers tend to notice it most at home.

The outsized reaction. The shutdown. The cold logic. The sudden certainty that feels nothing like your usual measured judgment.

That is not a character flaw. It was genuinely useful once.

It got you through something real, back when you had no other options.

In Relational Life Therapy, we treat it as a learned response, something you can recognize, name, and bring under the leadership of your Wise Adult.

But you cannot interrupt what you cannot identify.

Naming the pattern is what creates a gap between the trigger and the reaction. That gap is where you get to choose.

We hold ourselves the way we were held. And we hold our partners that way too.

Full post on how this shows up in daily life, and what shifts when you can finally name it, at https://www.audreylmft.com/blogs/we-hold-ourselves-the-way-we-were-held-and-we-hold-our-partners-that-way-too

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