LCT™ LOVE-CENTERED THERAPY

A more relational world
is possible.

Love-Centered
Therapy™

A relational process model for understanding what happens between people when protection takes over.

Love-Centered Therapy™ (LCT) is a dyadic process model that helps therapists work with the moment-to-moment cycle through which implicit relational learning, autonomic protection, and connection become organized between partners.

Published in the
Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy
Two overlapping relational fields: a blush field on the left and a stone field on the right, meeting at a shared center marked by nested rings and a dark point.
“The goal is not to eliminate protection.
The goal is to restore the capacity to choose how to relate.”

The model at a glance

The Love-Centered Therapy model at a glance

Implicit relational learning

Past experiences shape what we expect and how we protect.

Body response

The nervous system responds before we have words.

First Story

A meaning forms in the moment.

Protection

We do what we’ve learned to feel safe and connected.

Partner response

Our protection triggers a response in our partner.

Relational field

Together, a shared emotional and autonomic environment is created - and the cycle continues.

A framework for a more relational world

LCT brings together clinical observations from couples work with insights from attachment, trauma-informed and somatic psychology, interpersonal neurobiology, and decolonial scholarship.