Conor Cunningham

Faith-Integrated Couples Specialist | Associate Professional Clinical Counselor

At a Glance

A Bible believer who walks his life by faith and understands faith-based recovery from lived experience, not theory
My own journey through addiction, brokenness, homelessness, and incarceration was restored through surrender to God's grace and redemption
I work at the intersection of clinical expertise and faith — bringing both evidence-based therapy and a deep understanding of God's design for covenant relationships
I understand that couples healing requires both practical skills and spiritual alignment — truth AND grace, accountability AND compassion
Trained in CBT, DBT, trauma-informed care, and evidence-based couples therapy approaches
I've navigated long-term cohabitation, co-parenting, and relationship complexity as both a man and a parent — I know marriage isn't simple
I'm comfortable with couples whose faith traditions differ from my own and understand that God's grace is bigger than our theology

Grace and Truth: What I Bring to Your Marriage

If you're here, your marriage is struggling. Maybe there's been infidelity. Maybe you've drifted. Maybe you're in conflict and can't find your way back to each other. Maybe you're wrestling with how faith and the real, messy complexity of marriage fit together.

Or maybe you know you're not where you need to be spiritually as a couple, and you want help getting back to God's design for your relationship.

What I want you to know at the start is this: I don't believe your marriage is beyond redemption.

I believe that God's design for marriage — for covenant, for faithfulness, for sacrificial love — is real and powerful and worth fighting for. And I also believe that getting there requires both truth and grace: honest naming of what's broken, and compassionate understanding of how you both ended up here.

I'm a clinician, so I bring evidence-based tools for couples healing. But I'm also a believer who has experienced God's redemptive power directly in his own life.

That's not separate from my clinical work — it informs it. I understand that true healing in marriage requires the spiritual dimension as much as it requires communication skills and conflict resolution.

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My Own Encounter With Grace

I need to tell you where I'm coming from, because it shapes everything I bring to couples work.

I grew up in Southern California. I was a bright kid who never quite fit — diagnosed eventually as autistic, ADHD, and OCD, though nobody named it when I was young. I masked heavily. I performed who I thought I needed to be. And I never told anyone the truth about how hard it all was.

That dishonesty shaped my path. In my late teens and into adulthood, I turned to alcohol to manage the weight of undiagnosed neurodivergence, unprocessed trauma, and the relentless exhaustion of masking.

Alcohol wasn't just a drug for me — it was how I numbed the pain of not fitting, how I managed social anxiety, how I tried to escape a reality that felt unbearable.

My addiction cost me everything. It destroyed relationships. It landed me on the street. I experienced homelessness. I went through psychiatric hospitalization. I was incarcerated. I hit absolute rock bottom.

And at that bottom, when I had nothing left to control and nowhere left to hide, I encountered God's grace. Not as a concept, but as a lived reality. I got sober. I entered 12-step recovery. I found that surrender to a Higher Power — what faith taught me was surrender to God — was the only thing that actually healed me.

"Getting sober was the beginning of my recovery journey, and my faith has been the keystone of that process. It remains foundational in how I understand myself, my work, and my relationships."

Faith rebuilt my life. It gave me structure, community, accountability, and — most importantly — a framework for understanding grace. That's not separate theology for me. That's lived reality. And it completely changes how I show up in couples work.

Understanding God's Design for Marriage

One of the things that faith taught me is that God's design for marriage isn't arbitrary. It's built for covenant — for a commitment that goes beyond feeling, that includes sacrifice, vulnerability, and mutual submission.

It's built for fidelity not as a rule you follow out of obligation, but as an expression of your commitment to each other and to God.

When that design is violated — through infidelity, through disconnection, through living as roommates instead of partners — the pain runs deep because you're not just experiencing relationship hurt. You're experiencing a violation of a sacred design.

But here's what I also know: that same sacred design includes redemption. God's grace is available for infidelity, for brokenness, for the ways we've failed each other and ourselves.

Healing is possible. Restoration is possible. You can move from brokenness back to covenant.

What that requires is both truth and grace. It requires naming what actually happened, understanding how you both contributed to where you are, owning your part, and extending forgiveness. It requires practical skills: learning to communicate safely, to repair ruptures, to build trust back. And it requires spiritual alignment: both of you moving toward God and toward each other with surrender and vulnerability.

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Neurodiversity, Marriage, and God's Design

I want to speak to something that doesn't come up in a lot of Christian couples counseling: neurodiversity in marriage.

I'm neurodivergent. I've navigated long-term cohabitation and co-parenting as a neurodivergent man. My daughter is neurodivergent. I know what it's like when your brain works differently than your partner's brain, when you experience emotion and communication differently, when neurotypical assumptions about how marriage "should" work don't actually fit how you actually function.

I also believe deeply that God made brains in all kinds of ways, and neurodivergence isn't a flaw in His design. It's a difference. And that difference requires understanding, accommodation, and sometimes clinical support.

If you're a neurodivergent couple, or if one of you is neurodivergent, I bring specific knowledge about how that affects communication, intimacy, executive function, emotional regulation, and the actual work of marriage.

I won't pathologize neurodivergence. I will help you understand it and work with it, not against it.

Walking With Christian Men

I need to speak directly to the men for a moment.

I know what it's like to sit in a church pew and feel like you're the only one who's struggling. To hear sermons about being the spiritual leader of your household while you're privately drowning — in addiction, in shame, in the weight of a brain that doesn't work the way everyone assumes it should. To be told that faith should be enough, that prayer should fix it, that a real man of God wouldn't be dealing with what you're dealing with.

I've been that man. I've been the one white-knuckling it through Sunday mornings, performing strength I didn't have, hiding the depth of my brokenness because I thought admitting it would disqualify me from God's grace. I masked in the world, and I masked in the church. And it nearly killed me.

Here's what I learned at rock bottom: God doesn't need your performance. He needs your honesty. Surrender isn't weakness — it's the door to everything. And getting help isn't a failure of faith. It's an act of faith.

I work with Christian men who are carrying things they haven't told anyone. Men wrestling with addiction — to substances, to pornography, to patterns they can't seem to break no matter how hard they pray. Men whose marriages are fracturing under the weight of unspoken pain. Men who've been neurodivergent their whole lives without knowing it, wondering why the "normal" Christian life everyone else seems to live feels impossible for them. Men who've been through the justice system, through homelessness, through psychiatric crisis — and who feel like the church doesn't have a category for their story.

I have a category for your story, because I've lived it.

My own journey took me through addiction, incarceration, homelessness, and psychiatric hospitalization before I found sobriety and restoration through faith. I didn't find God in a comfortable season — I found Him at the absolute bottom, when there was nothing left to perform and no one left to impress.

And that's where real faith begins. Not in the performance of righteousness, but in the raw, honest admission that you need grace.

I also understand what it means to be a neurodivergent man of faith. To process the world differently. To struggle with executive function, emotional regulation, sensory overload — and to feel like those struggles somehow mean you're not trying hard enough spiritually. They don't. God made your brain the way it is. Understanding how it works isn't a rejection of faith — it's stewardship of what He gave you.

When I work with Christian men, I bring all of this. I'm direct — I won't coddle you, but I won't shame you either. I'll speak the language of Scripture and the language of clinical reality, because both are true.

We'll talk about accountability, about integrity, about what it actually means to lead your family well — not from a place of performance, but from a place of authenticity and surrender. We'll look at the patterns that keep you stuck and build real strategies for change — grounded in both evidence-based therapy and the transformative power of God's grace.

"There is constant pressure to perform, yet very little support." That's true in the world, and it's often true in the church. I'm here to change that equation — to be the support you haven't had, so you can become the man God actually designed you to be, not the one you've been performing.

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A Note on Faith Diversity

"Spirituality is a very central part of my life, but due to my involvement in 12-Step programs, I am very comfortable with the concepts of higher powers or faith that differ from my own."

I'm a Bible believer. That's foundational to who I am and how I understand the world. But my recovery in 12-step programs taught me something crucial: God's grace is bigger than our theology.

I'm comfortable working with couples whose faith tradition differs from mine. I respect sincere faith wherever it lives.

What matters in this work is that you're both committed to God's design for marriage — to covenant, to sacrifice, to truth, to grace — even if we express that differently theologically. I can honor your faith while bringing my own grounding in Biblical principles of what marriage can be.

What Couples Work Looks Like

I bring evidence-based couples therapy approaches alongside spiritual guidance. That means we'll do practical work: looking at your communication patterns, understanding conflict cycles, building skills for repair and reconnection.

We'll also do deeper work: exploring the wounds each of you carries, understanding how you show up in relationship from your past, working on vulnerability and authentic presence.

And we'll integrate faith. That might mean talking about forgiveness not as a feeling, but as a decision.

It might mean exploring what covenant actually means for you. It might mean praying together. It might mean examining how you're each living out your faith in the marriage. It might mean understanding that healing requires both psychological work and spiritual surrender.

I'll be direct with you. I won't pretend that infidelity is easily overcome, or that disconnection heals quickly. But I also won't accept that your marriage is beyond restoration.

My job is to help you move from wherever you are — brokenness, grief, anger, disconnection — toward healing. And that's possible.

Who I Work With

Christian couples committed to their faith and to marriage as a covenant
Couples navigating infidelity and rebuilding trust
Couples who have drifted and want to reconnect spiritually and relationally
Couples struggling with communication, conflict, or intimacy
Couples with neurodivergent partners seeking understanding and support
Couples where one or both have struggled with addiction and are in recovery
Couples of faith traditions that differ but who share a commitment to faith-integrated therapy
Couples preparing for marriage or going through significant transitions
Couples grieving loss, trauma, or major life changes and wanting faith-grounded support

What to Expect in Session

I create a space where you can be honest about where you actually are — not where you think you should be or where you wish you were. Sessions are confidential.

Both of you will be heard. I won't take sides, but I will challenge you both toward growth and toward God.

We'll do practical work and spiritual work. I'll teach you skills if you need them. I'll ask hard questions about patterns, about your faith, about your commitments. I'll hold you both accountable to the marriage you say you want to build.

Couples work isn't always comfortable. Sometimes healing requires naming things that hurt. But discomfort isn't the goal — transformation is. Moving from brokenness toward healing, from disconnection toward covenant, from shame toward grace.

My job is to help you get there. And I believe, deeply, that you can.

Clinical Training and Experience

I'm trained in cognitive-behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, motivational interviewing, and evidence-based couples therapy approaches. I have specific training in trauma-informed care and addiction issues in relationships.

Before becoming a clinician, I worked directly in community mental health, crisis intervention, and recovery services, which gave me extensive experience with couples navigating addiction, mental health challenges, and the hard work of rebuilding.

But my primary credential in couples work is this: I've lived marriage. I've navigated long-term cohabitation, co-parenting, and relationship complexity from the inside. I've experienced brokenness. I've experienced grace. And I understand that moving toward God's design for marriage requires both clinical skill and spiritual authenticity.

License, Training, & More

Credentials: I hold an Associate Professional Clinical Counselor (APCC) license, BBS #19221. I earned my Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Walden University and my Bachelor of Arts in Human Services from Columbia College.

I'm also trained in specialized therapeutic approaches: LIGHT Certification from UC San Diego (Light-Induced Guided Healing Therapy) and Hypnotherapist Certification, also from UCSD.

Supervision: I'm supervised by Dr. Harry Motro, LMFT #53452, ensuring the quality and integrity of my clinical work.

Employment: I work for New Path Family of Therapy Centers, a practice committed to evidence-based, client-centered care.

Professional History: Before my clinical training, I worked as a clinical advocate at Teen Challenge Recovery Center, a faith-based recovery program. I was a behavioral health technician and case manager at Telecare Corporation, working with couples and individuals navigating co-occurring disorders, addiction, and crisis. I continue to volunteer in recovery work, which keeps me grounded in the lived reality of how faith, recovery, and relationship healing actually work together.

My Story: Recovering alcoholic, 5+ years sober. In active faith-based recovery. Neurodivergent. Father of a neurodivergent young woman. Experienced homelessness, psychiatric hospitalization, and incarceration as part of my path to redemption. Witnessed the power of God's grace in my own restoration and deeply committed to helping couples experience that same grace in their marriages.

"I know what it is to love someone whose brain works differently than the world expects. I know what it is to have been broken and to be restored. And I know that God's design for marriage, when lived out authentically with grace and truth, is one of the most powerful experiences available to us."