Nancy Gardner, Ph.D.

I am Nancy Gardner, a licensed psychologist who practices individual and couple therapy in Westlake Village, CA. I have been a therapist for thirty eight years, and a supervisor and teacher of therapists and health professionals for more than twenty of those thirty eight years. I work with adults in either individual or couple therapy on relationship problems, depression, anxiety, and life transitions.

When a couple comes to me for help with their relationship, I am honored to be invited into this extraordinarily important part of their life. I work collaboratively with couples to help them establish a secure attachment, to avoid negative ways of interacting that pull them apart, and to help each partner find ways to be open to their partner's needs for independence and for loving connection. Often this requires repair of past hurts, taking time to be with each other without distraction, and finding ways to feel appreciation and communicate it to each other.

Along with many others in the field of couple therapy today, I understand a couple relationship to be an adult attachment in which each partner hopes to find a safe haven and to feel loved and secure. My work with couples and my teaching about couple therapy is most influenced by John Gottman's decades of research on what makes marriage work, and the empirically-validated Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy formulated by Susan Johnson. I have attended advanced externships and have consulted on my cases with both the Gottman Institute in Seattle and with Sue Johnson's Couple and Family Institute in Ottawa, Canada. I am a Certified as an Emotionally Focused Couple Therapist and as a Supervisor of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapists.