Real Connections Counseling

04/01/2026

Chronic pain never travels alone. It gets into a marriage, friendships, sleep, s*x, confidence, identity, and most couples don't even know it's happening, let alone why.

Traditional therapy asks one clinician to sort through all of that in 45 minutes. Real Connections will not short change you like that. Our sessions start at 2 hours and you’ll have plenty of time to work this out.

Chronic pain doesn't stay in one lane. It touches the nervous system, grief, energy, s*xuality, work, and the entire emotional climate of home, all at once.

That's why Real Connections chose a different road: team-based co-therapy for no less than 2 hrs at a time. You can sit back and breathe for a moment …

For help and life changing improvement, call 515-635-1805 or write us through our website at https://realconnectionscounseling.com

ChronicPain

This is a video about Chronic Pain Never Travels AloneChronic pain never travels alone, and neither should you in therapy.Rick from Real Connections explains...

03/27/2026

Most people think therapy is about insight.
We believe it’s about unity.

Real Connections Counseling & Coaching exists to build the relational health of our community through a unified team approach. Unity is not added to the work. Unity is the foundation of it. Unity heals, and that truth drives how we work, how we lead, and how lives change here. Unity creates the conditions where real healing and health takes place.

What does unity look like in your relationships right now?

We invite you to head to our site and make an appointment. Get the help you need.

https://realconnectionscounseling.com

03/26/2026

Real Connections rejects insurance for couples because insurance was never built for the kind of work we believe people actually deserve. Insurance tells all of us what we deserve. We want you to truly experience what you actually deserve.

Our model rises out of unity, teamwork, depth, and extended time, while insurance was built to reward shorter sessions, tighter boxes, simpler categories, faster turnover, and a structure that asks human struggle to fit inside paperwork and a clock.

That is not how marriages break down, that is not how people suffer, and that is not how meaningful repair begins. Couples walk in with years of pain, layers of mistrust, pressure from family and work, exhaustion in the body, disconnection in intimacy, and survival patterns that have been rehearsed for so long they almost feel normal. Forty-some rushed minutes cannot do justice to that kind of reality, especially when part of the session disappears into settling in, catching up, and scheduling.

Real Connections was built on the strength of the team because two clinicians can see more, catch more, and challenge more than one person working alone. Couples spend years protecting themselves through repeated arguments, polished conflict, partial truths, and survival patterns that fire so fast they start to look normal. A team can track that system faster, interrupt it sooner, and help both people stay engaged while the deeper issue comes into view. Extended sessions create enough room for the rehearsed version of the relationship to wear thin, which matters …

Because honesty rarely appears on command and deep repair rarely happens in a rush.

Real Connections was built this way on purpose. Serious relational work asks for more than a clock, more than a code, and more than one set of eyes on a complex human struggle. We become an integrated network, a seamless body working together against the cancer of tough relationships, not two Silos trying to understand each other.

Plenty of systems know how to approve treatment. Real healing asks for something more human, more relational, and more powerful than approval. Real healing asks for enough time to get beneath the rehearsed conversation. Real healing asks for enough structure to see the system clearly. Real healing asks for enough wisdom in the room to challenge old patterns while helping people rediscover each other with honesty, strength, and hope. Insurance does not make room for the model we trust, so we chose the model instead.

This video explains why.

Real Connections exists to move the needle. We are here to build the relational health of our communities, and that means choosing the structure that gives couples, families, and leaders the strongest opportunity for deep repair. Insurance serves a system. Real Connections serves people.

03/24/2026

The same problems keep showing up.

Burnout. Divorce. Disconnection. People sitting in rooms talking about the same pain year after year.

That tells a story.

The issue for counselors is not effort. The issue is structure. Iowa has many excellent counselors doing good work. But they’re doing good work in a model that isn’t designed to move the needle. The stories about marriage, mental health, and relationships in general have been pretty dismal over time. Everyone knows a divorced person. Everyone knows someone who’s broken up. So many know someone who’s been abused … the system has been helpful … but hasn’t moved the needle.

One person. One hour. One room. That model was never built for how people actually live.

Life shows up layered. Sometimes people’s lives are complicated enough for like 47 layers. Relationships, stress, trauma, the body, all at once, and we keep trying to work through it in silos and then we don’t want to share our issues, our gains, or our growth with others.

So Real Connections stopped following the old model. We’re your team. 2 therapists or coaches starting at 2 hours. A system built for grabbing that needle together and pushing it forward.

Real Connections exists to mold the relational health of our community … because we’re not silos. We’re a body.

Co-therapy and coaching gave us a different structure molded around unity.

Teams instead of isolation.

Because people don’t change alone.

And when the structure finally matches real life, the work starts to reap benefits...

And the needle moves.

03/20/2026

Monique and I jumped on the Shared Voices Podcast with Daniel Defenbaugh and the 10-42 Project and got into something vital to the first responder culture.

After a scene, responders talk. Locker room. Cruiser. After shift. Stories move. Details stick. One person shares, the other answers with their own.

Feels like connection.

After a while, the weight spreads into trauma … trauma swapping.

Same calls. Same images. Adding weight on each other that was already heavy to begin with. Tradition and the way it’s always been isn’t saving first responder lives.

That’s the danger of trauma swapping.

Shared Voices Podcast hi exists for a reason. Real stories. Real weight. A place where first responders don’t have to filter what they’ve lived through, and don’t have to carry it alone. 

Space where the weight actually gets worked through so it stops circulating between partners, coworkers, and friends.

That’s how Real Connections was built.

Two therapists or coaches. One team.

Proud to stand with this community.

We have your six.

Tune in to the “shared voices“ podcast. You’ll be loved, and well served with knowledge you need. 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shared-voice-by-10-42-project-a-first-responder-podcast/id1668591785

First Responders First First Responders 10-42 Project

03/19/2026

Most people think they choose relationships based on the other person.

Attraction. Personality. Chemistry. Status.

That’s not actually what’s happening.

You choose people based on your internal sense of worth.

A person who questions their value will tolerate inconsistency, mixed signals, and emotional distance, because part of them believes that’s what they deserve.

A person who sees themselves as deeply valuable moves differently. They don’t chase. They don’t over-explain. They don’t shrink to fit.

They choose.

And here’s where it gets uncomfortable.

A lot of people don’t choose poorly because they lack intelligence.
They choose poorly because they don’t see themselves clearly.

So the work isn’t just “find a better partner.”
The work is: become someone who recognizes what’s already been placed inside of them.

Because once your sense of worth rises, your standards don’t feel harsh.
They feel honest.

And suddenly your relationships stop being about proving yourself…
and start being about building something real.

03/19/2026

🔥 "Do you remember that argument we had?" "Which one?" 😅

If that hits too close to home, you're not alone. Most couples aren't really fighting about money, they're fighting about how they talk about money.

F.L.A.M.E.S. (For Love & Money Enrichment Series) helps couples ditch the same recycled argument and start building real teamwork around their finances. Less tension. More progress.

🎓 FREE 20-minute F.L.A.M.E.S. class coming soon — tag your partner so they can't say they didn't know! 👀

Flames: For Love and Money Enrichment Series

03/19/2026

Working at Real Connections Counseling & Coaching means stepping into a career that reaches far beyond what most people imagined in graduate school. You’re not entering a practice built around common effort. You’re stepping into a culture of connection, a team-based way of carrying our clients to health, and a philosophy that treats relationship as the DNA of the work itself.

At Real Connections, you work alongside a co-therapist or coach in extended, meaningful work that gives clients more than expertise. They experience visible support, shared leadership, and the kind of unity that changes what people believe is possible in their own homes, partnerships, and lives. Life here reaches beyond the practice too. We build together, learn together, and enjoy being together, because a strong team should feel alive in the community as well as in the work. Our purpose is to strengthen the relational health of the communities around us, and that means we want people who care about connection deeply enough to be an example of it in our community.

And I repeat. We’re all about the fun … floor seats in the VIP section! Great work and a great life should know each other well.

03/17/2026

Watch, follow, and discover more trending content.

03/17/2026