Communication Tools

Depth-oriented couples therapy in Boulder for couples who've tried the tools and are still stuck

(This is part of a series on anxious-avoidant relationship patterns. For a comprehensive overview, see Understanding Anxious-Avoidant Relationship Patterns.)

You've read the books.

Maybe you've done a workshop. Maybe you've practiced the exercises, learned the frameworks, memorized the scripts.

"Use 'I feel' statements." "Validate before responding." "Take a 20-minute break when you're flooded."

And in calm moments, it makes sense. You can see how it's supposed to work.

But then the fight happens. And the tools disappear.

Not because you forgot them. Not because you weren't trying hard enough. But because something else took over — something faster, older, and more powerful than any technique you've learned.

If this sounds familiar, you're not failing at communication. You're experiencing the gap between surface-level tools and the attachment wounds driving the need to use them.

Most couples therapy tools — active listening, reflective responses, time-outs, the "speaker-listener technique" — were developed within a model that assumes the primary problem in relationships is a skills deficit.

The logic goes: if couples learned to communicate better, conflict would decrease and connection would improve.

This isn't wrong exactly. It's incomplete.

Communication skills matter. But they operate on the surface layer of a relationship. They address what couples say to each other, how they say it, when they pause and when they respond.

What they don't address is the architecture underneath — the nervous system states, the attachment injuries, the unconscious protective strategies that determine whether those skills are even accessible in the first place.

Here's the problem with communication-first approaches: they assume both partners are regulated enough to use them.

But in an anxious-avoidant dynamic, the moments that most need careful communication are exactly the moments when regulation has already broken down.

When the anxiously attached partner perceives distance or disconnection, their nervous system activates a threat response. The body floods with urgency. The attachment system moves into protest. In that state, "I feel abandoned when you go quiet" isn't what comes out. What comes out is whatever the nervous system produces under pressure — which rarely resembles the calm, boundaried communication the books describe.

When the avoidantly attached partner feels pursued or emotionally overwhelmed, their nervous system moves toward shutdown. The body protects itself by withdrawing. In that state, "I need 20 minutes to regulate and then I'll come back" isn't accessible. What's accessible is the exit — physical, emotional, or both.

The tools require a window of regulation that closes precisely when the cycle activates.

This is why couples can practice communication skills for months, demonstrate them clearly in session, and still find them completely unavailable during an actual fight at home. It's not a motivation problem. It's a nervous system problem.

Communication-focused approaches tend to treat conflict as the problem. The goal becomes reducing conflict, managing it more skillfully, or resolving it more efficiently.

But in anxious-avoidant relationships, conflict is rarely the actual problem. It's a signal — a visible symptom of something operating below the surface.

That something includes:

Attachment injuries that predate the relationship.The anxious attachment pattern didn't form in this relationship. It formed earlier — in response to caregiving that was inconsistent, unpredictable, or unreliable. The same is true for avoidant attachment, which developed in response to caregiving that was dismissive, intrusive, or emotionally overwhelming.

These patterns arrived at the relationship fully formed. No communication tool changes the wiring that built them.

Unconscious contracts about who holds which role.As described in The Anxious-Avoidant Trap, couples develop unconscious agreements about how the dynamic runs — who pursues, who withdraws, who holds the emotional intensity and who manages the distance. These contracts operate outside awareness and outside the reach of technique.

Protective parts that have good reasons to stay.From an Internal Family Systems perspective, the strategies driving anxious and avoidant behaviors aren't habits to be replaced. They're protective parts that developed for good reason and that won't yield to a better communication framework. They require understanding, not overwriting.

Nervous system states that precede words entirely.The body responds to relational threat before language is involved. What looks like a communication problem is often a co-regulation problem — two nervous systems unable to find safety together, regardless of what words are being used.

This isn't an argument against communication. It's an argument for sequencing.

Communication skills become genuinely useful once the underlying architecture has been addressed. When both partners have developed some capacity to recognize their nervous system states in real time, when the protective strategies have been understood rather than fought, when the unconscious contracts have been made visible — then the tools work. Sometimes they're even unnecessary, because couples have developed something more fundamental: the ability to stay present with each other when it's hard.

The work that creates this foundation looks different from skills training.

In Keri Signoracci's depth-oriented couples therapy practice in Boulder, the focus is on the layer beneath communication — the attachment injuries, the protective strategies, the nervous system responses that determine whether connection is possible at all. Drawing on PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy), Internal Family Systems (IFS), somatic therapy, and psychoanalytic approaches, this work addresses the forces that communication tools were never designed to reach.

That includes:

Tracking nervous system states in real time.Learning to recognize activation, shutdown, and protest as they're happening — in the body, before words form. This is the foundation that makes everything else possible.

Working with protective parts, not against them.Understanding the anxious pursuit and the avoidant withdrawal as protective strategies rather than problems to eliminate. When both partners can see their own parts clearly, they stop experiencing each other as the threat.

Exploring the unconscious architecture.The contracts, the injuries, the defenses formed in early relationships. Making them visible changes their grip. This is depth work — slower than skills training, and more lasting.

Building new relational experiences.Moments in which the feared outcome doesn't happen. Where reaching out is met with presence. Where needing space doesn't mean abandonment. These experiences are what rewire attachment patterns over time — not better scripts, but different outcomes.

We've been to couples therapy before and it didn't work. Why would this be different?

Most couples therapy is skills-based and relatively short-term. If the underlying attachment patterns and nervous system responses weren't addressed, the skills either weren't accessible during real conflict or didn't touch the root of what was driving the cycle. Depth-oriented therapy works at a different level — not what you say to each other, but what's driving the need to say it, or to go silent.

Why do we do better when things are calm but fall apart during conflict?

Because the tools you've learned require regulation to use — and regulation breaks down when attachment threat is activated. The cycle lives in the nervous system, not in the thinking mind. Calm moments don't put the attachment system under pressure, so skills are accessible. Real conflict does, and they're not.

My partner says I just need to communicate better. Is that true?

Possibly partly true — but communication skills alone rarely resolve patterns rooted in attachment. If you've tried communicating differently and the same dynamic keeps recurring, the issue is more likely the nervous system responses and protective strategies underneath the communication, not the communication itself.

Why does my partner shut down right when I need them to engage?

Shutdown is a nervous system response to perceived overwhelm or threat — not a choice, and not a reflection of how much your partner cares. For avoidantly attached partners, emotional intensity activates a protective withdrawal that happens faster than conscious decision-making. Understanding this doesn't make it less painful, but it changes what it means. For more on this, see What Is Avoidant Attachment?

Why do I lose control even when I'm trying not to?

Because the attachment system operates faster than the thinking brain. By the time you're aware you're activated, the nervous system has already responded. This isn't a failure of self-control — it's how threat responses work. The shift happens when you develop the capacity to catch the early signals of activation before the full response is engaged. That's a somatic skill, and it develops with practice. For more on why this happens, see The Anxious-Avoidant Trap.

Is our relationship too broken to fix?

The presence of a persistent anxious-avoidant cycle doesn't mean a relationship is beyond repair. It means the repair needs to happen at the level of the attachment system, not the communication layer. Couples who have been in painful cycles for years can and do shift — not by eliminating the pattern, but by developing the awareness and capacity to interrupt it and repair more quickly. What matters most is whether both partners are genuinely invested in doing that work.

How long does it take to see real change?

Meaningful change in attachment patterns typically unfolds over 9-18 months of consistent depth-oriented work. Surface-level change — better conflict management, faster repair — can happen sooner. Deeper shifts in the underlying attachment strategies take longer. There are no shortcuts, but there is a reliable process.

If you've tried the communication tools and still find yourself in the same cycle, the work that's missing probably isn't more technique.

For a full overview of the anxious-avoidant dynamic and how depth-oriented therapy approaches it, see Understanding Anxious-Avoidant Relationship Patterns.

Schedule a free 20-minute consultation to explore whether this approach is the right fit for your relationship.

Text: (303) 641-1514 Or book online: calendly.com/ksignoracci

Serving couples in Boulder, Louisville, Lafayette, Longmont, and throughout Boulder County, Colorado.

About the Author

Keri Signoracci, MA,LPCC is a professional counselor in Boulder, Colorado. She holds advanced training in PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy), Internal Family Systems (IFS), somatic therapy, and psychoanalytic approaches to couples work. Her practice, Coupling From the Core, specializes in depth-oriented therapy for anxious-avoidant dynamics, pursuer-distancer patterns, and attachment injuries in long-term relationships. She sees couples in Boulder, Louisville, Lafayette, Longmont, and throughout Boulder County.