Two people, two kinds of training, one shared goal.
Dr. Carol Conrad and Alissa Wakefield co-created Healing Together and the Integrative Relational Transformation (IRT) method after seeing the same gap show up again and again in couples work.
Dr. Carol Conrad
The Between side of the work
Dr. Carol Ann Conrad is the co-creator of Healing Together and the IRT method, focused on the relationship itself: the cycle two people get stuck in, and how to build genuine emotional security between them. For nearly 30 years she's helped individuals and couples deepen connection and move out of reactive patterns.
She's a licensed psychologist, a Relationship Coach, and a Certified Emotionally Focused Therapist and Supervisor, grounded in attachment theory and decades of research on adult attachment and the science of love. She's taught marriage and family courses as an adjunct professor and led ethics and continuing-education training for other clinicians.
Her core belief: secure connection is a birthright. She sees relational distress as disconnection, within ourselves and between us, and focuses on creating the kind of corrective moments that restore safety and clarity.
“We came in unsure if anything could really change. Now we are closer and more connected than we thought possible, and it's changed our entire family.”
— Couple
“Understanding the pattern we were caught in changed everything. We finally know how to step out of it and let each other in.”
— Client
“Dr. Conrad is very professional and compassionate. We worked together as a team and she helped me heal in ways I never thought possible. As a result of therapy I am able to enjoy life to its fullest. I highly recommend Dr. Conrad.”
— A Satisfied Client
Alissa Wakefield
The Within side of the work
Alissa Wakefield is the co-creator of Healing Together and the IRT method, focused on what's happening inside each partner: releasing subconscious emotional blocks that interfere with connection, regulation, and relational safety.
She specializes in resolving trauma imprints, attachment injuries, inherited relational beliefs, and protective survival patterns that keep shaping behavior long after the original experience has passed. Many couples can name their negative cycle; Alissa works with the emotional drivers underneath it.
Her work is informed by professional training and by lived experience. As a foster parent and adoptive mother of children with special needs, she's navigated complex trauma, attachment disruption, and long-term relational repair inside her own family.
“After years of trying to work through things, this was the first time I was able to move past patterns I couldn't break before.”
— Kim C., WA
“This work created the kind of deep and lasting change I had been looking for, for years.”
— Eshe Boyette
“When we started, our relationship was in serious trouble. As we addressed the deeper patterns driving our reactions, everything began to change. We are now more connected than we've ever been.”
— Dan Higgs
Why we created Healing Together
We kept seeing the same challenge in relationship work: couples could calm their conflicts and understand their patterns, but they still stayed stuck. Often the deeper issue was relational trauma or unresolved emotional wounds in one or both partners' histories.
In couples work, there's rarely time or space to address those deeper individual issues while also working with the relationship itself. Referring one or both partners out to individual therapy was often difficult to coordinate, and didn't always connect back to what was happening between them. It became clear a unified approach was needed, one that could address both the relationship and the individual work at the same time.
When Carol met Alissa, her approach proved not only compatible with attachment-based couples work, but powerfully effective together. Couples began moving forward faster, because the individual and relational work were happening in coordination. Healing Together: Between and Within grew directly out of that collaboration.
Our shared goal is simple: create connection and transformational healing for both the individuals and the relationship, together, from the inside out.