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How does Restoration Therapy work? | Meet our Restoration Therapists | FAQs
Restoration Therapy in California
A Season of Therapy, Not a Lifetime of It.
Restoration Therapy is a focused, research-informed approach that helps you understand the repeating cycles of pain in your relationships and build new patterns based on self-regulation, love, and trust.
At the start of therapy, we often hear people express the same concerns. When describing conflict, couples share something like “we need help with our communication” which usually leads to “we just keep having the same fight” and “I don’t even know how things got to that point.” Individuals will express “I am sick of feeling this way” and ask “is there something wrong with me?”
Here’s what we believe, and what Restoration Therapy is built on: you’ve been hurt, and you’ve caused hurt. Those are the realities in close relationships, starting from childhood. The question we ask is this: are you ready to do something different? Restoration Therapy is built around that choice and is supported by neuroscience to help you make it.
We use Restoration Therapy in our work with couples, individuals, and families in San Francisco, Pasadena, and online throughout California.
What stuck relationship patterns can feel like
You might recognize some of this:
You have the same argument on a loop, and neither of you can remember how it starts anymore.
You fall into the same ‘roles’ in conflict. You might get loud in order to make sure your point is heard. You might get quiet because you are afraid of messing things up even more. You and your partner might take up the same roles or opposite ones but either way, these old roles are not helping and usually make things worse.
You love this person, or your family, and you’re still exhausted by the pattern you’re stuck in.
You’ve apologized before. You’ve meant it and you’ve sincerely tried to change things and you’re still standing in the same place a few months later.
You’ve started to wonder if the problem is just you, like you’re the common denominator and you can’t figure out how to be different.
None of that automatically means something is permanently wrong or this relationship has to end in cutoff. It usually means old pain is running the show, disabling your ability to make new choices, and nobody’s taught you how to take the wheel back yet.
How Restoration Therapy works
Restoration Therapy was developed by Dr. Terry Hargrave, and it’s built on a simple idea: most relationship pain comes from old hurt getting replayed in new situations, and most people cope with that pain in ways that made sense once but don’t work anymore. While we need to discuss your history to identify the origin of your pain and coping mechanisms, therapy isn’t (and shouldn’t be) about digging through your past forever. It’s about understanding your pattern clearly enough that you can recognize its impact and finally choose something else. In practice, this looks like:
1- Understanding Your Pain Cycle
We help you identify the specific pattern you fall into in relationships, which we call the Pain Cycle. It includes the painful feelings you often have in conflict (e.g., “I am not good enough”), the ways you cope with them (e.g., anger, avoidance, anxiety), and the ways that impacts other people (e.g., creates distance, destroys trust).
2- Building Your Peace Cycle
Next, we help you create and practice alternative ways of responding in relationships, which we call the Peace Cycle. This opens opportunities for you to live into the person you want to be and contribute to the relationships you want to have.
3- Learning Self-Regulation
In order to help you move effectively from your Pain Cycle to your Peace Cycle, you’ll learn the skill (and muscle) of self-regulation so you can manage yourself in the moment instead of reacting out of fight or flight.
4- Practicing New Behavior Together
Rather than continuing to talk about insight, this model puts real weight on doing something different. You can expect this part of our work together to be active and to involve some homework. This is how you learn the skills to not need therapy anymore and to make this change a real part of your daily life.
This isn’t therapy designed to make you dependent on it. It’s designed to give you something you can carry into every relationship you have: with a partner, a parent, a sibling, your friends, an your own kids, long after you’ve stopped coming into our offices.
Restoration Therapists in San Francisco, Los Angeles (Pasadena) & online throughout California
All of our therapists are Level II certified in Restoration Therapy and have trained directly under Dr. Hargrave’s team. You can expect the same grounded, active approach from each of us. The difference in choosing which therapist to work with comes down to personality and relationship fit, which is worth finding.
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I love using Restoration Therapy because it increases your awareness of your past experiences while also empowering you to be actionable in creating real change in your present life. You can read more about my approach here.
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You can read more about my approach here.
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You can read more about my approach here.
Why chose Restoration Therapy at Table Family Therapy?
At Table Family Therapy, we believe every part of your story deserves a seat at the table, the parts you’re proud of and the parts you’re not. Restoration Therapy fits how we think about change: therapy is not something that becomes a permanent fixture in your life, but a focused season that gives you something real to take with you in every part of your life. We offer Restoration Therapy in person in San Francisco and Pasadena, and online throughout California, for teens, adults, couples, and families.
FAQs about Restoration Therapy
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It’s a model developed by Dr. Terry Hargrave that helps people understand the repeating cycles of hurt in their relationships, and build new patterns based on self-regulation, love, and trust.
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No. We use Restoration Therapy with individuals, couples, and families. The model was built for couples originally but applies to any close relationship where the same painful pattern keeps showing up.
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It varies by what you’re working through, but this model is intentionally structured to not require years of ongoing sessions. Your therapist can talk with you about what a realistic timeline looks like for your situation.
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Restoration Therapy can hold both past trauma and current conflict. But if trauma is the central issue, or needs to be properly treated before other issues can be addressed, we may also recommend our trauma therapy and EMDR services as a complementary or alternate approach.
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No. While Dr. Hargrave’s background includes work in faith-integrated settings, Restoration Therapy as we practice it is not faith-based, and works for people of any or no religious background. As with most therapy models, there is space to integrate your faith as a source of support if that is meaningful to you.
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Expect to talk through what’s been happening, but also expect your therapist to help you name the specific pattern at play and to bring in practical practice, not just conversation. The focus is less on simply discussing “what went wrong during this last week” and more on creating new, positive interactions that can be practiced during the upcoming week.
Start Restoration Therapy in San Francisco, Pasadena, or Online
You don’t have to know if this is a good fit for you before reaching out. Our team can help talk you through that during a consultation phone call. What’s true for almost everyone who ends up here is this: you’ve been hurt, you’ve hurt someone else, and some part of you is tired of the loop. That’s enough of a place to start.
Reach out to Table Family Therapy to set up a consultation, in person in San Francisco or Pasadena, or online anywhere in California.
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Restoration Therapy is a research-informed model built on established findings in attachment theory, mindfulness and emotion regulation. Direct empirical research on the model itself is still developing, since it’s a newer model compared to some other couples therapies, but the available study is encouraging. We also linked relevant books below.
Study: Ahlquist, L. R., & Hargrave, T. D. (2022). Effectiveness of Restoration Therapy in an intensive model. The Family Journal, 30(3), 301–306.
Book: Hargrave, T. D., & Pfitzer, F. (2011). Restoration therapy: Understanding and guiding healing in marriage and family therapy. Routledge.
Book: Hargrave, T. D., Zasowski, N. E., & Hammer, M. Y. (2019). Advances and techniques in restoration therapy. Routledge.
Book: Deal, R. L., Deal, N., Hargrave, T. D., & Hargrave, S. (2025). The mindful marriage: Create your best relationship through understanding and managing yourself. Hachette Nashville.