Meet Shira Stutman, BA
Graduate Counseling Intern

EFT Couple, Individual and Family
Counseling in Colorado

You love each other. And yet somehow you keep having the same argument — or sitting in the same quiet distance — wondering, How did we get here?

Those are the people I love working with: couples and individuals who care deeply but feel stuck in patterns they can’t quite shift on their own. If that sounds like you, you’re in the right place.

About Shira

I’m Shira (she/her), and I work with couples, individuals, and families at Thrive — helping people get unstuck from the patterns that keep them from the relationships they actually want.

My path to therapy wasn’t a straight line. For years, I have worked in a deeply people-centered community role, sitting with individuals and families through big transitions, hard conversations, and questions about meaning and belonging. I watched how conflict could feel like a threat — or become a place of real growth — depending on how it was met. I wanted more tools to help people not just talk about change, but actually experience it. That’s what brought me to becoming a therapist.

Counseling Sessions With Me – How I Work

My primary approach is Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) — one of the most well-researched models in couples and family therapy. EFT works by helping you identify the emotional cycles underneath your conflict: the fear, the longing, the moments where one of you reaches out and the other pulls away. Once you can see those patterns clearly, you can start to change them — not just manage them.

In practice, that means our sessions will be real and human, not clinical or detached. You can expect me to be warm, curious, gently honest, and fully on the side of your relationship — and your own sense of wholeness.

Together, we might:

• Slow down a recurring argument to see what’s really happening between you
• Put words to the hurt, fear, or longing underneath sharp comments or shut-down silence
• Identify the emotional cycle you’re caught in — and start to step out of it together
• Support you in talking about the things that might be harder to discuss like sex, in-law relationships and money
• Explore how your families of origin are quietly scripting today’s conflicts
• Help parents and adult children build a more honest, grown-up relationship with each other
• If we’re working individually, help you understand your patterns in love, family, and work — and experiment with new ways of showing up

Who I Work With

I especially enjoy working with:

• Couples navigating big transitions — moves, career changes, new kids, empty nests
• Interfaith, intercultural, and blended couples and families honoring multiple stories and traditions
• Couples with political, financial, or parenting differences that keep creating friction
• Parents and adult children ready for a closer, more honest relationship
• Individuals tired of playing the same role in every relationship who want to understand why
• High-achieving and high-responsibility people who carry a lot for others and need a space where they don’t have to have it together

All Are Welcome

All genders, sexual orientations, relationship structures, faiths, and backgrounds are welcome here. Whether you’re religious, spiritual, secular, agnostic, or healing from religious trauma, you’ll find a supportive and non-judgmental space.

I’m equally comfortable exploring questions of meaning and identity if they matter to you — and setting them completely aside if they don’t. Your counseling experience is yours to shape.

A Bit About My Background

In addition to my therapy training, I’m also a rabbi — a role in which I work daily with people navigating life’s biggest moments. That background gives me a unique window into how people carry meaning, tradition, and belonging, and how those things can either connect us or create conflict in our closest relationships.

I’m currently completing my Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy at Syracuse University. Clinical supervision at Thrive is provided by Certified EFT Supervisors Allison Rimland, LPC and Emma Abel Loach, LMFT — so you get both me and seasoned, EFT-trained clinicians thinking alongside us about your care.

Outside the Office

When I’m not working, you’ll probably find me hiking in the mountains or in ski clinics with 5-year-olds. I listen to an unreasonable number of audiobooks — usually while walking, driving, or avoiding my email. Most of my happiest moments involve good conversation, a great story, and people I love crammed a little too close together around a table.

Schedule a Colorado Counseling Appointment with Shira Stutman, BA

Location: Online video sessions for anyone physically located in Colorado*

Availability: Mondays & Tuesdays 5:30–8:30 PM | Saturdays 2:00–4:00 PM | Sundays 9:00 AM–4:00 PM

Fees: $113 for 75-minute sessions | $75 for 50-minute sessions

Ready to Get Started?

Reaching out is the hardest part, and I’m so glad you’re here. Schedule online below, or call 303-513-8975, X1 with any questions.

*One important note: I do not see clients who live in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley, in order to maintain clear professional boundaries with my work there.