Growing Apart: How Emotional Distance Builds in Long-Term Relationships
Emotional distance in marriage builds slowly through missed bids, parallel routines, and unspoken needs. Learn how EFT reconnects couples who have drifted apart.
Brian Nuckols
Licensed professional counselor in Pittsburgh, PA. I work with children, adolescents, adults, and couples across seven clinical areas: child and teen therapy (DBT-A), infidelity and betrayal trauma, eating disorders and ARFID, gambling addiction, couples therapy, neurodivergence, and depth psychology. The common thread is patterns that do not resolve with standard approaches, where evidence-based treatment needs to meet the deeper question of why the pattern exists.
If you're here because something is wrong, you're in the right place.
Areas of Practice
Child & Teen Therapy
DBT-A for adolescents struggling with intense emotions, self-harm, and crisis behaviors. Parent psychoeducation and family skills training.
Neurodivergence & Neuro Affinity
Masking, burnout, sensory processing, and rejection sensitivity. RO-DBT for overcontrol, process-based therapy for individual pattern mapping, and depth work that takes neurodivergent experience seriously.
Eating Disorders & ARFID
Specialized treatment for avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder. CBT-AR, sensory approaches, and family-based work.
Gambling Addiction
Evidence-based treatment that takes gambling seriously as both a neurological condition and a psychological one. Understanding what gambling provides is the beginning of recovery.
Couples Therapy
EFT and depth-oriented couples work for relationships where the same fight keeps happening or one partner is changing in ways the relationship can't accommodate.
Infidelity & Betrayal Trauma
Affair recovery that goes beyond stabilization. Gottman and EFT protocols for the crisis, plus the deeper work of understanding what the affair revealed.
Recent Writing
Measurement-Based Care with Adolescents: How Tracking Outcomes Changes Treatment
Therapists detect client deterioration only 4% of the time without measurement. Learn how outcome tracking produces 25% better results in adolescent treatment.
The Affair That Was Already an Ending: When the Behavior Is Saying What You Cannot
Some affairs are not ruptures in the marriage. They are the marriage's first unambiguous communication after years of silence. A clinical framework for the exit-protest affair and why couples therapy is the wrong intervention when this is the configuration.
Why Recovery Feels Like Death: The Identity Grief No One Names
The anorexic who recovers is not the same person who became ill, and the transition between the two is a grief no treatment manual names with precision. This essay describes the identity loss at the center of anorexia recovery through Bruch's clinical phenomenology, Woodman's archetypal reading, and the nondual literature on dissolution, with specific attention to the clinical approaches that make room for the grief instead of arguing with it.
DBT-A vs. Standard DBT: What Makes Adolescent DBT Different
DBT-A adapts standard DBT for adolescents with a shorter duration, family skills training, Walking the Middle Path, and parent phone coaching. 60+ RCTs support it.
Free Courses
Psychoeducation courses written for the people living with these conditions and their families. Evidence-based, clinician-written, no cost.
Common reasons people reach out
- "My partner had an affair and I don't know how to trust again"
- "My child won't eat and our pediatrician mentioned ARFID"
- "I've lost more money than I can admit to anyone"
- "We love each other but feel like roommates"
- "My teenager is cutting and I don't know what to do"
Free Self-Assessments
Clinician-designed tools to help you understand what you're dealing with. Free, private, no account required.
Assessment
View all assessments → GEAR Assessment
Screens for gambling-related harm across four domains: financial, emotional, relational, and behavioral. About 5 minutes.
Take the assessment → AssessmentPersonal Reflection Inventory
Maps your psychological patterns, including stress responses, interpersonal style, and how you relate to control. About 15 minutes.
Take the assessment → AssessmentCognitive Style Inventory
48-item assessment of eight cognitive processes based on Dario Nardi's research. Best-fit personality type and archetypal function stack. About 5 minutes.
Take the CSI → Assessment SuiteAutism & Neurodivergence
AQ-10 quick screen (5 min), CAT-Q masking assessment (10 min), and RAADS-R comprehensive (20 min). Designed for adults, especially women and late-identified individuals.
See the assessments → AssessmentC.A.R.E. Assessment
Measures four dimensions of relational health: Calm, Accepted, Resonant, and Energized. About 5 minutes.
Take the assessment →