STRESS MANAGEMENT · CALIFORNIA
Regulation is the quiet work that holds a marriage together.
Manage stress as a couple — so the world’s hardest days don’t become your hardest fights. Because external pressure is the most underestimated threat to a relationship.Â
IS THIS FOR YOU?
You may be ready for stress management work if…
When the outside world gets harder, the relationship usually does too. The good news: how a couple manages stress together is one of the strongest predictors of long-term connection — and one of the most learnable skills in couples therapy. If any of these sound familiar, this work is for you.
Work stress keeps coming home with you
You’re snapping at each other over small things
One partner carries more of the mental load
You feel like roommates managing logistics, not partners
WHAT TO EXPECT IN THIS THERAPY JOURNEY
How we'll build stress-resilience together
Managing stress as a couple is a skill — not a personality. Here’s how we’ll develop it across the arc of our work together, from understanding the pattern to making the change permanent.
- Identify the specific stressors affecting your relationship
- Map the spillover pattern in your daily life
- Recognize the surface fights vs. the real ones
- Build a shared vocabulary for what's actually happening
- Practice the Stress-Reducing Conversation as a weekly ritual
- Learn to turn toward each other when stress arrives
- Develop personalized rituals that fit your real life
- Repair faster when stress causes a rupture
- External stress no longer dictates the mood of your home
- You face hard seasons as a team, not as opponents
- The marriage becomes the place you recover, not the place you fight
- Connection deepens through the hard times, not despite them
MEET YOUR THERAPIST
Couples Therapist in California
Marina Edelman didn’t always plan on becoming a therapist — and that’s exactly what makes her one.
Before she ever sat across from a client in a therapy room, Marina was sitting across from executives in a boardroom. She began her career as a financial analyst for a Fortune 500 company, working in the kind of high-pressure, high-stakes environment where performance is everything and vulnerability is rarely an option. That world gave her something most clinicians simply don’t have: a firsthand understanding of what it feels like to carry professional stress, navigate complex power dynamics, and still be expected to show up fully every single day.
But Marina wanted to do more than analyze numbers. She wanted to help people.
Driven by a desire to create real, meaningful change in people’s lives, she made the pivotal decision to transition into psychology — earning her Master of Arts in Psychology from Phillips Graduate Institute in Los Angeles. In 2006, she opened her private practice in Westlake Village, California, and she has never looked back.
Nearly two decades later, Marina has built TrueMe® Counseling into a practice defined by the same qualities that have shaped her entire career: rigor, empathy, and a refusal to settle for surface-level solutions.
Marina specializes in couples therapy, affair recovery, and relationship repair, drawing on a carefully integrated set of evidence-based approaches:
- Gottman MethodÂ
- Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)Â
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)Â
- AEDPÂ
Her counseling is best suited for couples and individuals seeking structured, research-backed support for relationship repair, affair recovery, anxiety, communication challenges, and premarital or marriage counseling — in person or via telehealth across California.
THE APPROACH
I draw from the most well-researched approaches in couples therapy — combined and adapted to fit your unique situation.
Gottman Method
Built on more than four decades of research with thousands of couples by Drs. John and Julie Gottman, this method provides the structural backbone for repairing conflict, deepening friendship, and rebuilding trust. We'll use it to map the patterns driving your hardest fights — and replace them with research-backed tools that strengthen connection over time.
Watch a brief overviewEmotionally Focused Therapy
Developed by Dr. Sue Johnson and grounded in attachment science, EFT helps couples decode the cycle that keeps them stuck — and reach the softer, more vulnerable emotions hiding underneath. The goal isn't just to argue less. It's to rebuild a secure, lasting bond where both partners feel safe enough to be fully themselves.
Watch a brief overviewAttachment-Based Therapy
The way you were loved early in life shapes how you reach for love now — often without your awareness. This approach gently traces those early relational blueprints, showing how they're playing out in your relationship today. With awareness comes choice: a chance to move from old, reactive patterns toward a more secure, conscious way of loving.
Watch a brief overviewCognitive Behavioral Therapy
The stories we tell ourselves shape what we feel — and how we react. CBT helps each partner identify the unhelpful thoughts that fuel anxiety, resentment, and disconnection, and replace them with more accurate, compassionate ones. It's practical, structured, and effective for transitions where one or both of you is caught in a mental loop that's making everything harder.
Watch a brief overviewAccelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)
Developed by Dr. Diana Fosha, AEDP is an experiential, emotion-focused approach that works with what is already healing inside you. Rather than analyzing pain from a distance, we move toward it together — gently and safely — so the emotions that have been stuck can finally move. The result is transformation that's felt in the body, not just understood in the mind. AEDP is especially powerful for couples processing grief, trauma, or the deep relational ruptures that come with major life change.
Explore the AEDP seriesTHE INVESTMENT
The marriage that holds together through stress
Stress management isn’t about avoiding hard times. It’s about building a partnership strong enough that hard times bring you closer — instead of breaking you apart.
The Outcome:
- A way to talk about stress without making it bigger
- The ability to recognize spillover before it lands
- A partner who can be the safest part of your day
- Renewed energy, intimacy, and connection
- Tools that work in 20 minutes, not 20 years
- Shared rituals that hold even when life doesn't
- Conflict that resolves instead of repeats
- A relationship that gets stronger under pressure
FROM PAST CLIENTS
Real couples, real change
To those who shared their experiences here — my deepest and most sincere gratitude. It is the privilege of my professional life to be trusted with your stories, and it is an honor to be even a small part of your journey.
My wife and I sought Marina’s support to help us overcome a serious breach of trust in our marriage.
She helped us move through the anger and betrayal to rediscover that underneath it all there remained deep love and purpose in staying together.
Through his guidance we were able to clear the rubble that was blocking us from continuing together and find a clear path to rebuild trust.
Marina Edelman truly helped save my marriage in a surprisingly short amount of time.
She has an exceptional ability to get straight to the crux of the matter while making both people feel heard and understood. Her insight is sharp, direct, and incredibly effective. With her guidance, my husband and I are learning so much and growing together in ways that would not have been possible otherwise. I’m deeply grateful for her help and highly recommend her.
I cannot recommend Marina Edelman highly enough.
As the best marriage therapist I have ever worked with, she stands out due to her extensive training and experience, which far surpasses that of a typical therapist. Marina’s approach is refreshingly honest and straight to the point, which has been incredibly effective in our sessions. What truly sets Marina apart is her genuine care and dedication to her work. The more you work with her, the more evident it becomes how seriously she takes her role…
In keeping with HIPAA and the ethical standards of the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, all client testimonials are anonymized and shared only with signed authorization. Names, dates, and identifying details have been changed or removed.
FAQs about Stress Management in a Relationship:
Isn't stress just part of being married? Why do we need therapy for it?
Stress is part of every marriage — but how a couple handles stress isn’t natural, it’s learned. Most of us never had it modeled. The Gottman Institute’s research is clear: couples who never develop these skills tend to drift, criticize, and disconnect over time. Couples who do develop them tend to get stronger under the same conditions. Therapy isn’t for the stress itself — it’s for the skills that make the stress survivable.
Can I come alone if my partner isn't ready for a stress management session?
Absolutely. Many couples start with one partner who comes individually for several weeks before the other joins. The work you do alone — learning to manage your own stress responses, recognizing spillover, building healthier patterns — often softens the relationship enough that your partner becomes curious and joins on their own.
How is stress management different from regular couples therapy?
Most couples therapy focuses on the patterns between partners. This work focuses on the patterns around them — the external stressors that fuel almost every fight you’re having. We’ll still work on communication, repair, and connection, but the lens is wider: how do we keep the outside world from running the inside of the marriage?
How long does this stress management typically take?
Most couples notice meaningful shifts within 6–8 sessions — better daily debriefs, less spillover from work, faster repair after rough moments. The deeper work — making stress-resilience your default mode as a couple — typically unfolds over 3–6 months of consistent practice. Couples who stick with it tend to describe it as some of the most valuable work they’ve ever done.
What if we're already in crisis from years of unmanaged stress?
TAKE THE FIRST STEP
Not sure if this is the right fit? Let's talk.Every working relationship begins with a complimentary consultation. It’s an opportunity to share what brings you in, ask questions, and decide together whether this is the right next step. No pressure, no commitment.