This interview is with Charles Davenport Psy.D., Licensed Psychologist, Davenport Psychology.
For Featured readers meeting you for the first time, how do you introduce your work as a Licensed Psychologist at Davenport Psychology and the kinds of clients you most help?
I’m a licensed psychologist with a Psy.D., and I run Davenport Psychology out of Sarasota and Venice, Florida. My practice is pretty broad on purpose. I work with adults, couples, and families dealing with things like anxiety, depression, ADHD, trauma, relationship issues, and life transitions.
I also see a lot of people navigating burnout and workplace stress, which has become its own category at this point. The common thread across most of my clients is that something in their life has stopped working the way it used to, and they’re ready to figure out why.
I take a practical, direct approach. I’m not the therapist who sits quietly and nods for 50 minutes. We’re going to talk about what’s actually happening and what you can do about it, starting now.
What experiences or mentors most shaped your path into couples counseling and psychodynamic work at Davenport Psychology?
The couples work came naturally out of seeing how many individual clients were sitting across from me describing relationship problems. At a certain point, it became clear that bringing both people into the room would get us further than working with just one side of the equation.
I trained in psychodynamic approaches early in my career, and what stuck with me is the emphasis on patterns. People repeat things, often without realizing it, and those patterns usually have roots that go back further than the current problem. That framework applies whether I’m working with one person or two.
I didn’t have a single mentor who pointed me in this direction. It was more of a gradual recognition that the relational dynamics were the most interesting and impactful part of the clinical work I was doing. The couples room is where all of it comes together.
When both partners are managing anxiety or depression, what's the very first at‑home step you coach them to take between sessions to lower reactivity?
The first thing I work on is getting them to recognize the physical signals before the emotional escalation takes over. When both partners are dealing with anxiety or depression, the nervous systems in that house are already running hot. It doesn’t take much to tip things over.
I coach them to start noticing when their body shifts, whether that’s a tightening in the chest, shallow breathing, clenched jaw, or whatever their particular signal is. Once they can catch that, the next step is pausing before responding. This means not walking away and not shutting down, just taking a beat.
I’ll often have them agree on a simple phrase they can use when they notice things heating up—something neutral like “I need a minute” that both partners have agreed to respect. It sounds basic, but when two people are both activated at the same time, even a five-second pause can change the entire trajectory of a conversation.
When trauma triggers show up between partners, what's one concrete ritual you teach that keeps connection alive while nervous systems settle?
One thing I teach couples is what I call the “check-in, not check-out” approach. When a trauma trigger hits, the instinct is usually to either blow up or withdraw completely. Both of those actions break connection. Instead, I have partners practice naming what is happening in the moment without assigning blame. Something as simple as “I’m getting triggered right now and I need to slow down” provides the other person with information without putting them on the defensive.
The ritual part is what comes next. They agree ahead of time on a low-demand way to stay connected while the nervous system settles. For some couples, that’s sitting in the same room quietly. For others, it’s brief physical contact, like a hand on the shoulder, if that feels safe. The key is that neither person disappears. You’re allowed to need space to regulate, but the message has to be “I’m coming back” rather than “I’m leaving.” That distinction makes all the difference.
From a psychodynamic lens, how do you turn insight about attachment or family‑of‑origin into a single practice a couple can try that same week?
Insight without action is just interesting conversation. So when we’ve identified something in session, like one partner’s avoidant attachment style or another’s tendency to over-function because that’s what they learned growing up, I try to bridge that into something concrete before they leave the room.
Usually, it’s a small experiment. For example, if we’ve uncovered that one partner shuts down because vulnerability was punished in their family, I might ask them to practice one moment during the week where they say what they actually need instead of what they think is safe. Just once. The other partner’s job is to receive it without fixing or dismissing it. It’s a tiny assignment, but it directly tests the pattern we identified.
The psychodynamic piece gives us the “why.” The practice gives us the “now what.” If you stay in the insight phase too long without movement, people start to feel like therapy is just talking about their problems without changing anything.
To de‑escalate conflict, what exact wording do you give couples for calling a timeout with a timed return so it doesn't feel like stonewalling?
The wording matters because a timeout that sounds like withdrawal will be interpreted as rejection every single time. What I teach couples is a two-part statement. The first part names the need: “I’m getting flooded, and I need to step away so I can come back and actually hear you.” The second part commits to a return: “Give me 20 minutes, and I’ll come back to this.” That structure does two critical things. It tells the other person that you’re not leaving the conversation permanently, and it provides a specific time frame so they’re not left wondering if you’ll ever bring it up again.
I tell couples to agree on the time frame ahead of time, when things are calm. Twenty minutes works for most people, but some need more. The rule is you must come back at the agreed time, even if it’s just to say, “I need a little more time.” Stonewalling is silence with no return plan. A timeout is a regulated pause with a clear commitment to reconnect.
For couples who are also co‑parenting, what's one conversation structure you recommend to align on a hard decision without venting around the kids?
I recommend what I call a “business meeting” approach. You set a specific time after the kids are in bed or out of the house, and you treat the conversation like a planning session rather than a feelings dump.
The structure is straightforward: one person states the issue and what they think should happen. The other person reflects back what they heard before responding with their own position. Then you work toward a decision or agree on a next step. The reflecting piece is important because most co-parenting arguments go off the rails when one person feels unheard and starts escalating to be understood. If you know your partner has to demonstrate they heard you before they respond, the temperature stays lower.
The hard rule is that this conversation happens away from the kids, with a clear start and end time. Kids are incredibly perceptive; they pick up on tension even when parents think they’re being subtle about it. Protecting that boundary isn’t just good for the couple; it’s good parenting.
As someone trained in assessment, including the Rorschach, what’s one way your assessment lens changes how you set goals or pace treatment with a highly anxious or depressed client?
Having an assessment background changes how I listen from the very first session. When someone comes in with high anxiety or depression, there’s usually more going on underneath than what they’re presenting. The assessment lens helps me think about what’s driving the symptoms rather than just treating the surface.
For example, if I know from assessment data that someone has a very rigid cognitive style or limited psychological resources for managing stress, I’m going to pace treatment differently than I would for someone who has more flexibility. I might slow down and build coping capacity before we start digging into deeper material. Without that understanding, it’s easy to push too fast and overwhelm someone who doesn’t have the internal scaffolding to handle it yet.
Assessment also helps me set more realistic goals. A highly anxious person with limited insight is going to need a different trajectory than someone who’s anxious but psychologically minded. It keeps me from applying a one-size-fits-all treatment plan.
In your work supervising Gen Z therapists and with online‑savvy couples, what's one piece of therapy‑speak you coach partners to stop using in conflict—and the replacement phrase you prefer?
The biggest one I push back on is “you’re being toxic.” That word has been so overused online that it’s lost any clinical meaning and just functions as a conversation-ender. When one partner labels the other as toxic during a conflict, it shuts everything down. There’s nowhere to go from there. It’s a character judgment disguised as psychological insight.
What I coach instead is specificity. Instead of “you’re being toxic,” try “when you raised your voice just now, I felt shut down, and I couldn’t think.” That’s actually useful information. It describes a behavior, names a feeling, and gives the other person something concrete to work with.
A lot of the therapy-speak that’s popular online takes complex relational dynamics and flattens them into labels: boundaries, gaslighting, narcissist. These terms have real clinical meaning, but when they get weaponized in arguments, they become ways to avoid actually engaging with what’s happening between two people. I’d rather my clients be less articulate and more honest than fluent in therapy vocabulary and using it as a shield.