About Shira Hearn, LMFT

So you're here because you want to see if you can trust me.

You want to know what it would be like to sit in a small room with your spouse and me and say the things you have not said to anyone. Whether I would take sides. Whether I would make it worse. Whether I would just nod while the two of you had the fight you could have had at home for free.

Fair. Here it is, out loud.

What It Is Like in the Room

You are there for 100 to 110 minutes, not fifty, because two people cannot get anywhere real in fifty. I am close, I am paying attention, and I talk more than you expect a therapist to. If I see something happening between you — she goes quiet, he gets loud, both of you study the floor — I say so, in front of both of you. I have nothing against the nice chair and "how did that make you feel." I am just not that therapist.

You will also notice that I am not shocked. Whatever it is — the affair, the eight months without sex, the thing you said in the car — I have heard it, or something like it, from a couple I liked very much. You do not have to make it less awkward for me. I was never going to be the awkward one.

Whether I Will Take Sides

No. And yes.

I will not take your side against your spouse, or theirs against you. I take the side of the thing between you, the pattern that keeps grabbing both of you, and I go after that with everything I have. Most couples arrive convinced they have a communication problem. They usually don't. They have a fear problem wearing a communication problem's clothes.

Anger is sometimes just anger. More often it is "do I still matter to you," said badly. Getting underneath the argument to what you are actually fighting about is the whole point of Emotionally Focused Therapy, which is how I work. I also have advanced training in sex therapy in Joplin through the University of Michigan, because desire and rejection are tangled up with everything else, and most couples therapists would rather not go there. I will.

Who You Would Be Trusting

A Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who only sees couples, in person, in Webb City on the Joplin line. I don't take insurance. A session is $180, and the reasons are written out on my questions before booking page, because you should not have to call to find out what something costs.

I did not plan any of this. I grew up in Israel and started out in high-tech telecommunications, a field with a great many meetings and very little crying. After I moved to the United States, my husband asked me what I actually wanted to do with my life. I said "therapist," then spent ten minutes explaining why that was ridiculous. The next morning he handed me a login for an online program and told me to start. That is one argument I am glad I lost. It took me to Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena for a Master of Science in Marriage and Family Therapy, and then to a small office in Webb City.

I'm married to Jimmie. We have triplets. I sing to them every night, and I have no illusions about family life being calm, orderly, or fair. I love summer, swimming, music, and Middle Eastern food that tastes like home. My faith matters to me; Isaiah 61 — beauty from ashes, rebuilding what has been devastated — is close to how I understand this work. That does not mean I think every relationship should be saved. Some shouldn't. It means I have watched hopeless things become surprisingly different.

So, Can You Trust Me?

I can't answer that from a web page, and I would be suspicious of anyone who tried. What I can tell you: I am at my best doing couples therapy in Joplin with people who still care about each other and cannot stop hurting each other. You fight constantly, or you barely speak, or nothing dramatic happened and you are simply lonely inside your own marriage, which is its own specific kind of misery. I also see engaged couples for premarital counseling in Joplin, MO, mostly to have the conversations they have been carefully avoiding.

I am wrong for you if you want someone to gently agree with you about your spouse, or a therapist who lets you set the pace. I set the pace. It is faster than you expect.

You do not need to know what is wrong before you call. That is my job, not your homework.

Text or call 417-768-9089. I answer my own phone, which clients find either reassuring or slightly alarming. Email shira@radicalrelationshiptransformation.com, or book here: