Love is complicated. Consciously loving someone,
is one of the hardest things a human being can do.

I'm Lisa Pisha, a licensed marriage and family therapist (Illinois), relationship coach, writer, and the creator of Create a Conscious Marriage™. For nearly two decades, I've helped couples and individuals move from surviving their relationships to co-creating conscious partnerships, with honesty, depth, and desire. More love, more tenderness, more authenticity, a space where you feel much more seen and held. More of what it looks and feels like to truly create a conscious relationship.

CONNECT WITH LISA

This work is personal.

I've been a couples therapist for nearly two decades, but I've also lived inside the intimacy of relationships as well.

After being married for 22 years, I know what it feels like to build a life with someone, create a family, and still arrive somewhere you never expected to be. I should know, I burnt the house down. My experience of divorce, including the parts that were both devastating and quietly freeing, has made me a better therapist than any training ever could. And I absolutely still believe in love, deeply.

I'm sitting across from you having asked the same hard questions you're asking. Is this fixable? Am I asking for too much? What happens to me, and to us, if this ends?

I built my entire life's work not around the myth of the perfect marriage, but from an ethos of love. What it looks like not just in a story, but the real, complex, often heartbreaking and dismantling work of creating a life full of it.

I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) based in Naperville, Illinois and I work with couples and individuals across the country through online relationship coaching. Whether you're in crisis, feeling disconnected, navigating infidelity, wondering if your marriage is over, or rebuilding yourself after one ends, this is the work I do best.

I also write about the complexities of love, the messy, gorgeous, devastating, ordinary, extraordinary reality of it, in my Substack, Before You Burn the House Down. Because the people I sit with every week deserve someone who isn't afraid to look directly at love, in all its forms, and tell the truth about it.

Who I Work With

The people I see in couples therapy and individual therapy and coaching tend to be self-aware, curious, and honestly, pretty tired. They've tried talking it out. They've tried waiting for things to get better. They've read the books. And they're finally ready to do something different.

They come to me when:

They feel like roommates or at best, friendly neighbors, cordial but a little chilly. Warm greetings and feeling welcome has gone by the wayside and they can't remember the last time they really felt seen by their partner. He or she probably doesn’t know what you like to order at your favorite coffeeshop OR, alternatively…
They’re in patterns of high, heated conflict, completely avoiding one another, or a combination of both. They can’t seem to get beyond constant flare-ups and being triggered by one another. Or, they’ve stopped talking, stopped bringing things to one another, and feel pretty lonely.
Desire has disappeared or hasn’t grown to begin with and they want the intimacy and sexuality in their marriage to feel alive and connected, not like a chore or a source of shame.
Infidelity has shattered the foundation and they don't know whether to rebuild or walk away. They need someone to help them make that decision clearly, and to hold them through it without judgment.
They're doing all the right things on paper, good careers, family, stability, and still feel something essential is missing in themselves and in their relationship.
One person in the relationship feels like they’re constantly pulling the other one along and they need a space to explore what's possible, even if they're not on the same page yet.
They want more but are afraid to ask for it or even what that looks like so they stay quiet, keep the peace, and slowly lose themselves.

You don't have to be in crisis to work with me. Some of my clients are simply ready. Ready to stop settling for a marriage that works and start building one that thrives.

My Approach:
Consciously Aware, Deeply Relational

I don't believe in neutral therapy that leaves couples spinning in circles. I work from a place of warmth, directness, and deep respect for the complexity of being human in a relationship.

My approach integrates:

The Gottman Method I'm a Level 3 Gottman Trained Therapist, one of the most rigorous certifications in evidence-based couples therapy
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Attachment Theory Helping partners understand the cycles that keep them stuck and the deeper needs beneath the conflict
The Daring Way™ I'm a Certified Daring Way Facilitator trained through Brené Brown's organization, bringing shame resilience, vulnerability, and authentic connection into the work
Existential and Transpersonal Psychology As a PhD student in Integral and Transpersonal Psychology at the California Institute for Integral Studies (CIIS), I bring a depth of inquiry into identity, consciousness, and meaning

Integral and Integrative Perspectives Including cultivating and expanding connection with the mind, body, and emotional centers of intelligence and transformation within each of us. Where and when it’s fitting, I like to utilize tools that bring insight and awareness into our self psychology such as the Enneagram.
A warm, real-life perspective — my practice, Tend Therapy (formerly Grow Therapy Boutique, which I founded in 2013), has always been described as the opposite of clinical. Think: comfortable couch, cup of coffee, honest conversation.

I'm here to help you nurture, tend, heal, and then expand.

Create a Conscious Marriage™

In addition to one-on-one therapy and coaching, I created **Create a Conscious Marriage™ (CACM)** — an online course for couples (and the individuals in them) who are ready to do real, lasting work on their relationship.
CACM is rooted in the same evidence-based approaches I use with private clients. It combines the same principles I use in sessions with couples from Gottman, Brené Brown, attachment science, and depth psychology with the radical honesty and warmth that has defined my practice for nearly two decades.
You can do it as a couple or on your own. Because change in a marriage often begins with one person who decides they're ready.

Writing: Before You Burn the House Down

I write for people who are living inside the complexities of love - not the Instagram version of it, but the real one. The one where you love someone and resent them. Where you want to leave and desperately want to stay. Where you're not sure what you feel anymore, or whether what you feel is allowed.
My Substack, ***Before You Burn the House Down***, is where I write about all of it from the perspective of a conscious couples therapist who has seen nearly everything that love can do to a person. It's honest. It's specific. And it's for anyone who wants to understand the relationship they're in, or the one they want to build.
If you're not ready for therapy, start there. And if the writing resonates, you'll know where to find me.

My Credentials

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) — Illinois, since 2010

MS, Marriage and Family Therapy — Northern Illinois University (nationally accredited MFT program)
BS, English — DePaul University
PhD Student — Integral and Transpersonal Psychology, California Institute for Integral Studies (CIIS)
Level 3 Gottman Trained Therapist — one of the highest levels of Gottman certification available
Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator — Brené Brown's organization, since 2015
Clinical Member — American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT)
Founder — Tend Therapy (formerly Grow Therapy Boutique), Naperville, IL, est. 2013
Creator — Create a Conscious Marriage™, online course for couples
Writer — Before You Burn the House Down (Substack)

My Specialties

Couples & Marriage:

Couples therapy | Infidelity and affair recovery | Sexual and emotional intimacy | Desire in long-term relationships | Marriage in crisis | Premarital counseling | Conscious marriage | Reconnection after distance
Individuals:

Relationship coaching for women | Relationship coaching for men | Identity and self-worth in relationships | Anxiety and depression | Life transitions | Postpartum | Parenting | Codependency | Narcissistic and emotionally mis-attuned partners and partnerships | Personal growth and self-discovery
Therapists

MFT Supervision | Continuing education for clinicians | Consciously Aware Couples Therapy training | Consultation for therapists working with couples and individuals

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