Laurel Darowski, LMFT-Associate

Maybe you love your partner deeply but still feel lonely together. Perhaps you keep having the same argument, have drifted apart, are rebuilding trust, or simply know the way you are relating is no longer working. Things can get better. I offer couples a safe, supportive place to slow down, understand what is happening beneath the conflict, and begin finding their way back to one another.

I became a therapist because relationships have always been at the center of how I understand a meaningful life. As I raised my own family, I began to realize that love alone does not always give us the tools we need to understand one another. Parenting children who experience the world differently stretched my worldview and taught me that families need room for complexity, difference, and change. I wanted to learn how to create that kind of room, how to help the people I love feel safe, connected, and truly seen. That desire is what led me to relational therapy.

Inviting a therapist into the private world of your relationship can feel incredibly vulnerable, and I consider that invitation sacred. My role is not to decide who is right or wrong. It is to help each of you feel seen and understood while we make sense of what keeps happening between you. Beneath anger, criticism, defensiveness, or silence are often deeper questions: Do I matter to you? Do you still choose me? Can you understand me even when we are different? Will you be there when I reach for you?

Using an attachment-based approach informed by Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), I help couples understand what keeps pulling them apart and learn to respond to one another with greater honesty, tenderness, and emotional safety. I believe healthy relationships allow people to deeply belong to one another without requiring either person to disappear. Intimacy does not require sameness. Together, we work toward a relationship where differences are met with curiosity, vulnerability with care, and both partners can remain fully themselves.

I am especially drawn to working with neurodiverse couples and families. Differences in communication, emotional processing, sensory needs, affection, or independence can easily be mistaken for rejection or a lack of caring. I help partners develop a shared relational language and find ways of connecting that honor both people.

My training in Medical Family Therapy at UT Southwestern also shaped my work with couples and families facing illness, grief, caregiving, trauma, and major life transitions. A serious diagnosis can reshape roles, intimacy, identity, and the future a family once imagined. I help families make room for uncertainty and loss while continuing to find connection, meaning, dignity, and moments of life together.

I hold a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from Texas Woman’s University. You do not need to come to therapy with the right words or everything figured out. You can begin exactly where you are.