Interracial Couples Counselling
Two practitioners. Making room for different experiences, shared dignity, and the relationship you're creating together.
Every relationship brings together different histories, experiences, and ways of understanding the world. In interracial relationships, these differences can also include the ways race, privilege, identity, and belonging have shaped each person's experience of life.
There may be wonderful opportunities for learning, connection, and discovering ways of being together that neither of you could have imagined on your own. There may also be painful misunderstandings, unspoken assumptions, or moments when one partner's experience feels difficult for the other to fully understand.
Sometimes the challenges arise within the relationship itself. Other times, they come from the world around you, through family expectations, social interactions, discrimination, or the ways you're treated differently as individuals and as a couple.
Alongside my life partner, Kirien, I offer 2:2 couples counselling where we can slow down, make room for these different experiences, and explore your relationship with curiosity, care, and respect for both of you.
We bring our own lived experience of interracial and intercultural partnership, along with different professional backgrounds and ways of understanding the world.
When our experiences of the world are different…
Two people can share a life together while moving through the world in profoundly different ways. One partner may have spent much of their life navigating racial prejudice, exclusion, or the expectation of having to explain their identity and experiences to others. The other may have grown up with fewer reasons to think about race, or may only be beginning to recognize how privilege has shaped their understanding of what is normal, fair, or possible.
Sometimes these differences become visible in everyday moments. Maybe something happens at a family gathering, in a shop, or during an interaction with a stranger. One of you recognizes a familiar pattern of racial prejudice, while the other barely notices what happened or understands the situation differently. One partner may feel hurt, angry, or alone. The other may feel confused, defensive, ashamed, or unsure how to respond.
Over time, these experiences can create distance, particularly when conversations about race become difficult or when one person feels responsible for helping the other understand realities they've never had to navigate themselves. We can make room for these moments without rushing to decide who is right, who is wrong, or what either of you should be feeling.
At the same time, we're mindful that differences in racialized experience aren't simply matters of opinion. Privilege, discrimination, and systemic inequalities are real, and attending to them with care is an important part of our work.
Our intention is to create space where both partners can be met with dignity, while the differences in power and experience between them can be acknowledged honestly.
You might be coming because…
Conversations about race, racism, or privilege have become difficult, painful, or emotionally charged.
One partner feels that their experiences of discrimination or marginalization aren't fully understood or acknowledged.
The other partner wants to understand more deeply but struggles with defensiveness, guilt, shame, or uncertainty about what to say.
You've experienced racism, prejudice, or exclusion from family members, friends, or the wider community.
You're navigating differences in cultural identity, family expectations, traditions, or your relationships with your communities.
One partner feels responsible for continually explaining or educating the other about race.
You find yourselves navigating different experiences of safety, belonging, or acceptance in the places you live and visit.
You're questioning inherited assumptions about relationships, family, gender, identity, or the ways you've been taught to relate to others.
You want to explore how your ancestral histories have shaped you, including the strengths, wounds, and responsibilities you carry.
You love one another deeply and want to create more room to understand and honor each other's experiences.
Your relationship is already meaningful and supportive, and you'd like to explore the unique possibilities that your differences bring.
You don't need to arrive with a clearly defined problem. Sometimes it's enough to recognize that there are experiences within your relationship that deserve more attention, understanding, and care.
Making room for privilege, power, and difficult conversations
We recognize that conversations about race and privilege can bring up some of the most tender and difficult experiences within a relationship. For a partner who experiences racial marginalization, there may be exhaustion, grief, anger, or the pain of feeling unseen by someone they deeply love.
For a partner who holds greater racial privilege, there may be uncomfortable realizations about assumptions they've carried, ways they've unknowingly contributed to harm, or aspects of their partner's experience they've struggled to understand.
These experiences can become particularly difficult when shame, collapse, or defensiveness enters the relationship. One person may feel that their pain is being dismissed or minimized, while the other becomes overwhelmed by the fear of getting something wrong.
We offer a gentle, non-shaming space where these experiences can be explored without diminishing either person's dignity. We believe it's possible to acknowledge privilege, recognize harm, and take responsibility while remaining compassionate toward ourselves and one another.
This doesn't mean overlooking inequalities or asking a marginalized partner to set aside their experiences for the sake of harmony. It means attending to the realities of power and difference while creating conditions where understanding, accountability, and genuine connection have room to grow.
Neither of you needs to be perfect, and neither of you needs to have all the right words. We can slow down and begin with what's actually happening between you.
The strengths we inherit, and the possibilities we create
Interracial relationships can also offer profound opportunities for discovering the richness of our different histories, identities, and ancestral inheritances. Each of us comes into relationship carrying much more than our individual experiences.
We may carry family stories, cultural practices, traditions, values, and ways of understanding life that have been passed down through generations. Alongside these gifts, we may also carry inherited fears, prejudices, grief, or ways of relating that developed under difficult historical conditions.
These inheritances can shape how we understand love, responsibility, safety, family, and belonging, often without our realizing it. There may be opportunities to explore these histories together, recognizing what we want to honor, what we may wish to question, and what wisdom remains available to us.
For some couples, this might mean reconnecting with ancestral traditions, languages, or ways of caring for community and the living world. For others, it may involve acknowledging difficult histories of colonization, racial hierarchy, displacement, or inherited privilege, and exploring what it means to live differently in the present.
We don't assume that every ancestral inheritance is healing, or that every tradition needs to be preserved. We're interested in approaching these histories with curiosity, humility, and respect for the different meanings they hold. Perhaps one of the beautiful possibilities of interracial relationships is the opportunity to create something new together.
A relationship that honors where each of you comes from, while allowing you to question inherited expectations and discover your own ways of loving, relating, and belonging.
We bring our own lived experience
Kirien and I are an interracial and intercultural couple ourselves. Our relationship has continually invited us to encounter differences in how we've experienced the world, including differences shaped by race, culture, identity, family history, and social expectations.
We understand something of how beautiful and challenging these encounters can be. There have been moments when we've discovered assumptions we didn't even realize we carried, or struggled to understand experiences that seem completely natural and familiar to the other.
Our relationship has invited us into ongoing questions about privilege, cultural inheritance, belonging, and the ways our own histories shape how we relate to one another. We've also found that our differences can become sources of deep learning, tenderness, and new possibilities for understanding life.
We don't assume our experiences are the same as yours, or that being an interracial couple gives us special insight into every relationship across racial differences. Every person and every relationship carries its own history.
What we bring is our lived experience, our different perspectives, and a shared commitment to approaching these conversations with humility, care, and curiosity.
A meditative approach to relationship
Our approach is relational, experiential, and deeply meditative in nature. We invite couples to slow down together, bringing a deeper quality of presence to whatever is happening in the moment. This can be particularly meaningful when exploring painful or emotionally charged experiences around race, privilege, and belonging.
Perhaps one partner is describing an experience of discrimination. As they speak, the other begins explaining their intentions, offering reassurance, or becoming uncomfortable.
We might gently invite everyone to pause.
What is happening right now?
What is each person experiencing?
What might be difficult to hear, feel, or acknowledge in this moment?
Rather than moving quickly into explanations or solutions, we create space to notice what is unfolding between you. Sometimes this means attending to hurt that hasn't yet been fully heard. Sometimes it means exploring defensiveness, fear, or shame with enough care that someone can remain present rather than withdrawing. At other times, we may notice small movements toward understanding, tenderness, or connection that might otherwise pass unnoticed.
With two practitioners present, we can offer more attention to each person's experience and to the relationship itself. We're especially interested in creating a space where difficult truths can be approached with compassion, where differences don't need to disappear, and where both people can experience being heard and respected.
Working together and individually
One of the unique possibilities of our 2:2 approach is combining shared relationship sessions with individual sessions for each partner. In interracial relationships, this can offer particularly meaningful opportunities for exploring experiences of race, identity, privilege, and belonging.
For example, a white, lighter-skinned, or white-passing partner might appreciate individual sessions with Soren to explore their relationship with power and privilege, including feelings of guilt, shame, defensiveness, or uncertainty about how to support their partner. Having a separate space for this exploration can reduce the pressure on their partner to continually explain, educate, or hold the emotional weight of these conversations.
Meanwhile, a partner who experiences racial marginalization may appreciate individual sessions with Kirien, where there's more room to explore the complexity of their experience, including grief, anger, exhaustion, identity, and belonging. Kirien brings their own lived experience of navigating racial and cultural differences, alongside a deeply grounded, meditative approach to accompanying others.
We each bring different perspectives and lived experiences that may offer a sense of resonance and understanding. At the same time, we recognize that no two people's experiences are the same, and neither of us assumes we fully understand what another person has lived through. We approach each person's experience with curiosity, humility, and a willingness to learn.
These are simply possible arrangements, and we'll explore together what feels most supportive, taking into account each person's experiences, preferences, and the different perspectives we bring. We might alternate between sessions with all four of us and individual sessions with each practitioner, creating opportunities for both personal exploration and shared understanding.
These individual sessions remain part of our relationship work. We're committed to maintaining care and accountability for the relationship as a whole, and we'll establish clear agreements about confidentiality and information-sharing before beginning.
Our intention is to help each partner feel more seen, honored, and supported, while creating greater room for the relationship to hold its differences with care.
Meet Soren & Kirien
We're life partners and practitioners who bring different racial and cultural backgrounds, personal histories, and ways of understanding the world into our work together. Our own relationship continues to teach us about the beauty, difficulty, and responsibility of meeting someone whose experience of life differs from our own. We bring that ongoing learning, alongside our professional experience, into the space we create with couples.
Soren Stone
I'm a US-trained counsellor with a master's degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and more than a decade of experience supporting individuals and relationships.
My work draws from somatic awareness, mindfulness, and experiential relational practices, with particular attention to shame, conflict, identity, and the ways our histories shape how we relate.
My own life has involved significant changes in identity, belonging, and cultural context. I'm especially interested in creating a compassionate space where we can question familiar assumptions, encounter uncomfortable truths, and explore responsibility without losing our dignity or capacity for connection.
Kirien Eyma
Kirien is a somatic and relational practitioner whose work is grounded in lifelong meditation practice, deep listening, Authentic Relating, and present-moment awareness.
Having lived in six countries and navigated different racial, cultural, and linguistic environments, Kirien brings a rich personal understanding of how identity and belonging are shaped through our relationships with the world around us.
Their approach is gentle, spacious, and non-directive, inviting people to explore their experiences without rushing toward interpretation or change. Kirien brings particular sensitivity to the ways culture, ancestry, social expectations, and lived experience influence how we understand ourselves and one another.
What we bring together
Our different experiences and perspectives allow us to attend to different aspects of a relationship, including how privilege, identity, cultural inheritance, and personal history may be shaping what happens between partners. We bring a shared commitment to approaching these experiences with humility, compassion, and respect for each person's dignity, while remaining attentive to differences in power and the realities of the world we're living in.
Support between sessions
Clients in 2-on-2 Couples Counselling also receive access to Tending the Relationship Garden, my self-paced relationship course.
The course is not a programme that our sessions follow. Instead, it offers a collection of practices and reflections around communication, connection, conflict, boundaries, intimacy, and relationship patterns that you can return to when something feels useful.
From time to time, we may suggest a particular practice to experiment with between sessions, or you may explore the course in your own way and at your own pace.
Think of it as an additional resource alongside the relationship work, giving you more ways to keep tending what we are exploring together outside the session.
A dedicated space for your relationship…
We offer ongoing weekly 90-minute sessions with both of us, creating a consistent space to deepen your connection, explore challenges, and discover new ways of being together across distance.
Our sessions are experiential and meditative in nature, giving us time to slow down and practice the kinds of presence and intimacy you might want to bring into your everyday relationship.
When helpful, we can also incorporate individual sessions with each of us as part of our ongoing work together. Sessions are available online or in person in Oslo.
90 minutes | 2,500 NOK (€230)
Let's begin with an experience together…
Finding support for your relationship can feel like a big step, especially when you're already navigating the challenges of distance.
Our free introductory session is an opportunity to get to know one another and experience a little of how we work.
We'll make room for what brings you here, slow things down, and explore what happens when we bring our attention to your connection. There will also be time for questions and to see whether ongoing weekly sessions feel right for you.
You don't need to prepare anything or know exactly what you're looking for. We can begin wherever you are.
FAQ
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2-on-2 Couples Counselling means that two practitioners work together with one couple or relationship constellation in the same session.
Our approach is experiential and present-focused. Rather than having two experts analyse your relationship, we use the additional presence to pay close attention to what happens between you in real time.
The work draws from relational mindfulness, Authentic Relating, Gestalt-informed practice, somatic awareness, and Soren's professional background in couples and relational counselling.
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Not at all. We welcome interracial couples who want to deepen their understanding of one another, explore their different histories and experiences, or simply create more space for connection.
You may be navigating challenges that have little to do with race, or you may be curious about how your different backgrounds shape the relationship you're creating.
We can begin with whatever feels meaningful to you.
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These feelings can arise when we begin questioning assumptions we've carried or recognizing ways our experiences of the world differ from those of someone we love.
We offer a compassionate, non-shaming space where these experiences can be approached with curiosity and care.
There is room to acknowledge responsibility, explore difficult truths, and understand the impact of our actions without reducing anyone to their mistakes or inherited privileges.
We're interested in helping people remain present with these conversations, even when they're uncomfortable, so that greater understanding and accountability become possible.
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This is something we take seriously.
It can be painful and exhausting to continually explain experiences of racism or marginalization, particularly when doing so leads to defensiveness, disbelief, or feeling responsible for someone else's emotional response.
Our work can provide space for these experiences to be heard and acknowledged without placing the responsibility for educating a partner entirely on the person who has experienced the harm.
The optional individual sessions may be particularly helpful here, allowing each partner to explore their own experiences and responsibilities with additional support.
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We approach both partners with dignity and respect, while recognizing that racial privilege and systemic inequalities can shape their experiences differently.
We don't assume that every disagreement has two equally situated perspectives, or that understanding requires overlooking experiences of discrimination and harm.
Our intention is to create space where each person can be heard, difficult realities can be acknowledged, and responsibility can be explored without shaming or diminishing anyone.
We're here to support your relationship while remaining attentive to the wider social realities that influence it.
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Absolutely, if that feels meaningful to you.
Our family and ancestral histories can shape how we understand safety, belonging, identity, love, and responsibility. Some of these inheritances may be sources of strength, wisdom, and connection. Others may carry grief, prejudice, displacement, or painful histories that continue to influence our lives.
We can explore these threads with curiosity, honoring the complexity of what has been passed down without assuming that we know what your ancestry means to you.
There's no expectation that you follow a particular spiritual tradition or approach these questions in any prescribed way.
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You're very welcome.
Interracial relationships take many forms, and racial privilege doesn't always follow simple categories. Skin color, ethnicity, nationality, cultural background, social context, and other aspects of identity can all influence how we're perceived and treated.
We won't make assumptions about your experiences or assign either partner a particular role based on appearance or identity.
We'll explore your relationship as you experience it, with attention to the different contexts and realities you each bring.
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We can alternate between shared sessions with all four of us and individual sessions where each partner meets separately with one practitioner.
In some relationships, it may be helpful for a partner with greater racial privilege to meet with Soren, while a partner navigating racial marginalization meets with Kirien. This is simply one possible arrangement, and we'll decide together what feels most supportive.
These sessions offer more room for individual exploration while remaining connected to our shared relationship work.
We establish clear agreements about confidentiality, boundaries, and information-sharing before beginning, so that everyone understands how the process works.