It's one of the questions I get most before a first session — sometimes in the first message, sometimes on the first call, sometimes formulated with a doubt underneath: "I don't know if the problem is me or if the problem is us." The question strikes me as very honest. And the answer is almost always more nuanced than people expect.
There's no universal rule. What does exist is a way of thinking about the problem that can help you orient yourself — and a first conversation where we can explore it together.
When individual therapy tends to be the path
There are situations where the discomfort has roots that precede or extend beyond the relationship. A history of trauma, years-long anxiety, a question about identity, a sense of emptiness that has nothing to do with what's happening in the relationship. In those cases, individual therapy isn't the second option — it's the first. Not because the relationship doesn't matter, but because there's something that needs its own space to unfold, without the added complexity of another system in the room.
I also think of individual therapy when a partner isn't available or willing to participate. That doesn't mean the work is incomplete. A person who works in depth on their own system — their attachment patterns, the parts that activate in conflict, how their nervous system responds — can transform a relational dynamic from the inside out. I've seen many times how genuine change in one person shifts something in the entire relationship, even when the other never sets foot in the office.
And sometimes the reason is simpler: someone needs a space for themselves before they can be fully present in the relationship. A place where they don't have to manage the other person's reaction, where they can say what they don't yet know how to say out loud. That's valid too — and it's often what makes the couple's conversation possible further down the line.
When I work individually with someone who's in a relationship, the relational almost always shows up. The dynamics they describe at home are a window into their own internal parts, into the attachment patterns they learned before they even met their partner. The Internal Family Systems approach is especially useful here: understanding which parts activate in conflict, what they protect, what they fear, opens a path that can later carry over into the relationship with much more clarity.
When couples therapy makes more sense
There's suffering that's primarily relational — not because neither person has their own history, but because the knot that needs untangling lives in the space between the two of them. Conflict cycles that repeat without resolving, emotional distance that settled in without either choosing it, a break in trust after a crisis. In those cases, working from only one side has a natural limit: the problem has two authors and needs two people to move.
Couples therapy also makes sense when both people are willing to do the work — not necessarily in agreement about everything, but available for the process. That availability doesn't mean there's no anger or frustration. It means there's a willingness, even a fragile one, to understand what's happening.
I want to clarify something that sometimes causes confusion: couples therapy isn't mediation or arbitration. I'm not there to decide who's right in Tuesday's conflict. I'm there to help you see the system you built together — the cycles that feed themselves, the vulnerabilities underneath the reactivity, the way your two nervous systems affect each other in real time. Stephen Porges called this co-regulation: the capacity of two nervous systems to calm each other. When that co-regulation breaks down, therapy is the space where it can be rebuilt.
Bessel van der Kolk and Peter Levine have documented how trauma lives in the body, not just in the stories we tell — and that applies to relational trauma too. That's why in couples therapy I also work with the somatic: what happens in each person's body during conflict, where the contraction is felt, how each nervous system regulates before it can actually listen to the other. Body-based therapy and Polyvagal Theory are constant references in this work.
The most common answer: both, at different moments
In practice, the question "individual or couples?" often ends up being "both, in some order." Many clients who start in individual therapy reach a point where they invite their partner into the process — or their partner invites them. Others start in couples therapy and at some point each decides to also continue individually, to go deeper into something that needs its own space.
I work with individuals and with couples, and sometimes with both at different moments of the same process. Not because it's a requirement, but because the self-knowledge built in individual therapy nourishes the relationship, and what emerges in couples therapy often points toward something worth exploring alone.
If you're sitting with that question, you can read when it's a good time to start or review what to expect from therapy to get more clarity on the process before taking the step. You can also write to me directly — the first session is precisely the space to explore together what makes the most sense for you right now.
There's no single universal right answer. There's an honest question you're already asking yourself — and that, in my experience, is almost always the best place to start.