Shannon Duffy
I'm a Licensed Professional Counselor in Colorado specializing in couples therapy, particularly couples caught in the pursue-withdraw cycle — one partner chasing the conversation, the other shutting down. I also work individually with men who go quiet during conflict. My approach is active and coaching-based: you'll practice new skills in session and bring real issues from your week so we can work them live. The goal is change you can actually feel, not just insight. I accept insurance for individuals. I only take private pay for couples counseling is $190 for 50 minute sessions.
First session
We start with an intake — I go through your history together as a couple, and I ask a lot of questions. From there, we do two individual sessions so I can understand each of your backgrounds separately. Then I run an assessment to identify your strengths and weaknesses as a couple. Once that's done, we move into the real work: coaching-heavy sessions where you practice new skills in real time — redos, timeouts, tools for the moments conflict actually happens. You'll bring topics from your week into session, and we'll work through them live, not just talk around them.
Strengths
I work with the pursue-withdraw cycle specifically — the chasing partner and the partner who shuts down — and I treat it as a pattern to interrupt, not a personality flaw to fix. Sessions are hands-on: redos, timeouts, real-time coaching. You leave with tools you've actually used, not just talked about, and you keep bringing live issues into the room so the work stays real instead of theoretical.
Ideal clients
My ideal client is high-functioning and, from the outside, doing fine — nobody around them would guess anything's wrong. But internally, they're struggling: more agitation, more shutdown, more anger or resentment than they know what to do with, and they don't have a name for what's happening or a way to work through it. In couples, it often shows up the same way — one or both partners shutting down or reaching anxiously, communication breaking apart, and an underlying loneliness even when they're together. They come to therapy wanting to actually understand what's going on underneath it, not just manage the symptoms.
Origin story
Before I was a therapist, I was a health and PE teacher. A huge part of that job was helping kids resolve conflict — more than people realize. Turns out the gym was decent training for the therapy room. Couples work is a lot more "teaching" than people expect. There's psychoeducation — naming why you keep getting stuck in the same pattern — and then there's coaching: practicing a new way through it, not just talking about what went wrong. We redo things. We take timeouts. You learn a skill, then you use it, right there in the room. That's the part I actually love — helping two people see the pattern underneath their fight and giving them something real to do differently. I didn't expect gym class to be the training ground for that. But here we are.
Treatment methods
Couples Counseling
I use the Gottman Method, which is built on skills the Gottmans researched and tested, not just theory. In session, it looks a lot like coaching — a lot of it is psychoeducation, where I teach a skill and then we practice it right there. I’ll interrupt in the moment, we take timeouts, we do redos. It functions almost like a classroom: you learn the skill, you try it, you get real-time feedback, and you leave with something you can actually use the next time conflict comes up.
Location
Virtual sessions
Identifies as
Top specialties
Other specialties
Licensed in
- ColoradoLicense LPC.0023955