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.
Meet Dr. Carol and Alissa, and why we built Healing Together.
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 EFT 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
From Dr. Carol’s Coaching Program clients
In their own words.
“This program gave us some tools/language to use to help us heal our relationship. It was a safe space for my spouse to open up and continue our journey into our emotions and our ‘why’.”
— Coaching Program Client
“We were able to recognize the huge impact connection to our spouse has on our well-being. It motivates me to increase my commitment to connect with my wife. To look inside each other and share what we find.”
— Coaching Program Client
“I would love everyone I know to come and experience this workshop with Dr. Conrad!”
— Coaching Program Client
“It was great to gain the tools and hear and address emotions and feelings without being the one to engage it”
— Coaching Program Client
“We feel we have gotten the key to unlock our long-term mis-communication”
— Coaching Program Client
“This program really opened my eyes to what the core of the problems were and how to identify the issue and work it out”
— Coaching Program Client
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“We’ve been married 10.5 years and came to this program at the end of our rope. We’re feeling connected and renewed in a long time! We are hopeful!!”
— Coaching Program Client
“This program helped us to reconnect and finally have real conversations that have helped us to really heal.”
— Coaching Program Client
“We discovered raw moments from the past, some greater than 20 years old, that have been burrowed deep under the many sediment layers of life and yet remain powerful influences in our relationship.”
— Coaching Program Client
“We have been seeing a counselor for over 18 months and while much progress has been made through our weekly visits, it was hard to see the whole picture. The workshop gave us the entire roadmap to our relationship issues and has made a huge difference!”
— Coaching Program Client
“My wife and I have been married 50 years, and still had some huge breakthroughs in understanding and being able to work on the emotions that are the underlying reasons for our fights.”
— Coaching Program Client
“If you are willing to be open, this program will change your relationship for the better!”
— Coaching Program Client
“Finally we got to the core of our devastating cycle, and I have hope!”
— Coaching Program Client
“The workshop really made it easier to have the tough conversations because it was an exercise. The videos really showed how what we are going through is really normal.”
— Coaching Program Client
“I wish my husband and I took this workshop when we were newlyweds!”
— Coaching Program Client
“This program was very helpful in learning how to communicate honestly and openly. Honesty and softness in communicating will be helpful for us!”
— Coaching Program Client
“Regardless if a couple has been married for 35 years or just 3 months, this program opens avenues for healthy communication!”
— Coaching Program Client
“This program opened up the reality of emotions. I realized the importance of emotion as the music in the background of our dance, I thoroughly appreciated the empathetic concern and quality of connection I felt with my boyfriend that the workshop encouraged.”
— Coaching Program Client
“If someone were to attend this program I would say–Hang in there, this is vulnerable, sometimes terrifying work–and you are okay. Going through it is the path to an awesome, beautiful place.”
— Coaching Program Client
“I am confident this is the beginning of a life-changing experience after this program for us as a couple and as individuals.”
— Coaching Program Client
“In order to fix a problem, you have to understand the problem. This program helps you identify and understand the problems so you can fix them!”
— Coaching Program Client
“This program was extremely helpful, and at times painful. We were able to take a lot of content home with us, and we will continue to process and work through it.”
— Coaching Program Client
“I have more tools from this program to address issues, which makes me more hopeful.”
— Coaching Program Client
“My husband and I knew we had a negative cycle we would often fall into. But we lacked the tools and knowledge to change it. This program has given us hope and empowerment with positive models to follow. I feel like we are finally discovering the underlying issues and coming together.”
— Coaching Program Client
“I think this program was an amazing source of tools to help with the broken down line of communication in our marriage.”
— Coaching Program Client
“I feel like so many people I know could benefit from this program. Connection is so important and Dr. Conrad taught us how to work out fears and raw spots to get to connection.”
— Coaching Program Client
“This program is helpful whether you’ve been married for months or many years. If you are on the rocks or looking to enhance your connection and bond, I can’t recommend this program enough!”
— Coaching Program Client
“This isn’t just for one to learn to live with their partner, it’s for couples to learn to be one and set the goal to achieve connection together!”
— Coaching Program Client
“I would encourage others to attend this program even though it is a couple’s workshop you really get in touch with your own personal feelings and needs. That in turn makes your relationship strong. It brings purpose to arguments and conversations rather than wasting time and getting no resolution.”
— Coaching Program Client
“Anytime you put effort and energy into your marriage it is beneficial, but when you are able to truly understand how your emotions speak to you and what you actually need, you’re able to find healthy communication. This program helped us find healthier ways to communicate by understanding in a deeper context.”
— Coaching Program Client
“This program helped me identify things to work on in our ongoing couples therapy. It also helped me see success which gives me hope.”
— Coaching Program Client
“This program made me realize that I need to be more supportive and emotionally involved in our relationship!”
— Coaching Program Client
“I think for me as a man, we tend to act tough–but with all those layers and layers of denial, the truth is we do need love, understanding, and to be heard about our fear and our emotions. I would encourage all couples to try this program, it made a difference!”
— Coaching Program Client
“This program gave us a place to grow from and be more aware of our negative cycle and tools to stop it. It was helpful to identify the signals we send each other.”
— Coaching Program Client
“I have realized that couple relationships are much more complex than I would have imagined! I have a long ways to go and I’m okay with that–thank you for an excellent program to help me!”
— Coaching Program Client
“This program helped me realize and acknowledge my primal driving destructive loop that I continuously loop through with every woman in my life!”
— Coaching Program Client
“This program provided us an opportunity to talk about really important issues that we probably wouldn’t have discussed on our own! It provided us some tools to work through problems in our relationship.”
— Coaching Program Client
“This was the best thing we could have done for our relationship. I wish we had done it years ago. It is a MUST for couples!”
— Coaching Program Client
Alissa Wakefield
Emotional Resolution Coach · 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
“I've carried things from my past for many years. Alissa helped me name what I was feeling and understand that the patterns I'd built could change. I feel significant changes — emotionally, mentally, and physically.”
— Amanda Kemp, Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach
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.
When that deeper work happens somewhere else, with someone who isn't part of the relationship work, a couple ends up carrying two separate processes at once: two schedules, two sets of language, and no thread running 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, the two halves fit together. Alissa's subconscious emotional-resolution work sat naturally alongside attachment-based relationship work rather than pulling against it.
Holding both in one place means the individual and the relational work can reference each other, instead of running on separate tracks. 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.
Ready to start?
Begin with a free masterclass, or go straight into the Connection Breakthrough Experience.
One-time · Camera optional · Your partner can join when ready