I help self-aware, emotionally literate individuals, as well as couples,

navigate the un-glamorous yet liberating & intimate territory
of emotional maturation & relational adulthood

and what comes after you’ve done all the therapy or spiritual work.

The Work Beneath the Work:

Radical self-ownership.

Courageous, deep adult intimacy.

Living from the simpler, clearer, braver self beneath.

When Healing Becomes the Thing That Keeps Us From Healing

(And the work keeps us from the deeper work.)

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Even the most respected therapy and spiritual approaches can unintentionally keep people chasing the “right” insights, vulnerability, responses, meaning, soothing…

We seek to

Understand more

Communicate “correctly”

Figure out the meaning

Get partners to relate to us the 'right' way

Learn all the skills

Get our needs met

These can be vital parts of our self-discovery. But they can also become ways we unintentionally orient ourselves around getting, fixing, changing, achieving, or trying to secure an outcome.

Without realizing it, we abandon our own lived center and lose contact with ourselves, and the real intimacy we long for.

Self-awareness, depth, emotional intelligence, communication methods...all can be profound capacities.

But they can also become sophisticated defenses, that many of us naturally self-aware, relational, emotionally attuned people unintentionally use.

In fact, if we were born good at these things, we may have learned young to use them to protect ourselves. And without intending to, a lot of both healing and therapy culture can reward that.

So we circle frustrating patterns despite feeling grown in so many ways...only because we weren't shown another way.

Grow An Unshakable Inner OK-ness

Stay rooted, connected & brave

even in the hardest of circumstances

even in the presence of someone else's limitations

Feel secure enough to find curiosity, connection & choice

in the natural pains and twists of deep,

intimate relationship and life.

Feel more safe in yourself

so you can show up as more of yourself,

instead of the modulated, do-it-right, perfectly attuned version...

but the simpler, clearer, braver you beneath.

This is the foundation of real emotional adulthood —

and the kind of deep intimacy (& even grounded spirituality) we know is possible,

yet often need a little support stepping into.

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With a background in therapy, but now exclusively seeing coaching clients and couples worldwide, I have over a decade of client experience working with:

You're good at this kind of work, maybe have done a lot of it. Therapeutically savvy, emotionally sophisticated, can see people, maybe spiritually fluent. You know all your patterns and how to communicate.

You've progressed a ton, but are maybe still a little anxiously attached, or you still emotionally over-function at times or feel unmet or disappointed by others' limitations.

You also know your relationships could be so much more connected or so much less frustrating.

Many of us were born with these gifts of emotional and psychological prowess, and like so many gifts, they also became what helped us protect ourselves.

So we sometimes unknowingly use these tendencies in ways that end up getting in the way of what we deeply want.

And because we are so good at this kind of work, the subtle and sophisticated ways we abandon ourselves or avoid vulnerability and intimacy get easily missed - and sometimes even get rewarded and reinforced in this field.

One reason I call it the work beneath the work, is because it's the work that often gets missed when you are really good at the work!

Without intending to, even when I began seeing clients, I found a vast majority coming to me were therapists, coaches and other healing professions and deep divers. And I love working with them.

I understand intimately, personally and professionally, the patterns many of these individuals struggle with - and I also have had my mind truly blown at how different it feels to relate and live on the other side of it. (So easy to say, so tough to do the incremental inquiry and risk to actually build this capacity...but so worth it.)

"Leyla cuts through the noise, she sees what other professionals often miss. But she does so with tenderness. She holds all the protectors, defenses, the people-pleasing, the sneaky therapeutic or spiritual ways we self-abandon, with compassion and respect...so you can find what's real underneath. Then live from that place with agency and a freeing, reality affirming (not projective) profound intimacy with self and other.

Alison Siggelkow, Psychotherapist

Leyla Aylin Kuntsal

I help self-aware, emotionally literate individuals, as well as couples,

navigate the un-glamorous yet liberating & intimate territory
of emotional maturation & relational adulthood

and what comes after you’ve done all the therapy or spiritual work.

(And the work keeps us from the deeper work.)

With a background in therapy, but now exclusively seeing coaching clients and couples worldwide, I have over a decade of client experience working with:

Relationships + Couples + Dating

Therapists + Coaches + Healing Professionals / Anyone Who Identifies as Self-Aware + Relational

I help self-aware, emotionally literate individuals, as well as couples, navigate the un-glamorous yet liberating & intimate territory of emotional maturation & relational adulthood and what comes after you’ve done all the therapy or spiritual work.

(And the work keeps us from the deeper work.)

With a background in therapy, but now exclusively seeing coaching clients and couples worldwide, I have over a decade of client experience working with:

Relationships + Couples + Dating

Therapists + Coaches + Healing Professionals / Anyone Who Identifies as Self-Aware + Relational

I help self-aware, emotionally literate individuals, as well as couples,

navigate the un-glamorous yet liberating & intimate territory
of emotional maturation & relational adulthood

and what comes after you’ve done all the therapy or spiritual work.