What is a CoTherapy™ team?? We believe in the success that pairing two therapists with a client couple or family is the best and most effective form of therapy! We have seen it work - time and time again. Couples work through their struggles and challenges more quickly and successfully with two different perspectives and approaches to their relationship from two different, professional counselors!
Our program administrator will work with you to find the perfect pairing of our counselors for your needs, desires, and goals. But you can also provide your own input! So we encourage you to take some time to read about each of our co-therapists before your consultation.
Rick Elgersma and his bride, Monique, founded Real Connections for people who have grown tired of repeating the same conversations, carrying the same frustrations, and hoping insight alone will create lasting change. Couples, families, leaders, and individuals often face challenges that extend far beyond a single issue. Real Connections was built to address those realities through a team-based relational approach that brings multiple perspectives to the work.
Years of working with individuals, couples, families, and organizations convinced Rick of a simple but disruptive truth: relationship problems rarely remain confined to one person. Stress, grief, conflict, trauma, and disconnection affect entire systems. That observation became a conviction that continues to guide Real Connections: divided systems cannot heal divided people. Unity heals, which is why connection remains at the center of everything Real Connections does.
Born with Spina Bifida and living with chronic pain, Rick understands the hidden cost people often pay before anyone else recognizes the struggle. Personal experience and years of clinical work have taught him that pain influences far more than physical health. Relationships, communication, trust, intimacy, grief, and identity often feel its effects as well. Rick helps clients understand how those realities interact and influence the relationships most important to them.
Rick works especially well with power couples, high-capacity men, founders, leaders, and driven professionals who are accustomed to solving problems, making decisions, and performing under pressure. Intelligence, productivity, charisma, achievement, and even spiritual language can become sophisticated forms of protection. Rick helps people recognize those patterns and engage their relationships with greater honesty, responsibility, and courage.
Rick often works in CoTherapy with Monique or Alyssa, combining a team-based relational process with many years of experience working with individuals, couples, and families. Drawing from emotionally focused therapy, narrative therapy, relational life therapy, cognitive behavioral approaches, and the Enneagram, he helps people understand the patterns driving conflict, disconnection, and repeated frustration. His work challenges people to move beyond awareness alone and create meaningful change in the relationships that shape their lives.
Master of Arts, Marriage & Family Therapy, Regis University, (2015)
Enneagram Coach (2021)
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, in the following states: Iowa, Hawaii, Colorado, Illinois
Monique Elgersma, LMFT
Relationship Strategist | Co-Therapy Specialist
A military upbringing taught Monique early that people can experience the same circumstances very differently. That perspective continues to influence her work with individuals and couples today. Many clients seek her help after years of managing responsibilities, adapting to challenges, and doing what needed to be done, only to discover that anxiety, relationship strain, grief, burnout, or unresolved hurts continue to affect their lives. Monique helps clients understand those patterns and create meaningful change that strengthens both personal well-being and relationships.
Growing up in a military family exposed Monique to diverse cultures, communities, and perspectives. Her clinical work helps clients understand how family systems, life experiences, beliefs, and personality patterns influence relationships, communication, and personal growth. Through that process, clients gain greater insight, healthier relational patterns, and practical tools for change.
Few relationship challenges stem from a single conversation. Most develop through hundreds of interactions, disappointments, assumptions, and protective responses that accumulate over time. Monique specializes in helping clients identify those larger relational patterns. Drawing from decades of experience working with individuals, couples, and families, she helps people understand not only what is happening in their relationships, but why it continues to happen. Greater insight creates new options, allowing clients to respond differently, communicate more effectively, and build healthier patterns moving forward.
Human behavior follows patterns. Relationship conflict follows patterns. Anxiety, resentment, avoidance, people-pleasing, overfunctioning, and emotional withdrawal often follow patterns as well. Monique integrates cognitive behavioral therapy, solution-focused therapy, and enneagram-informed work to help clients identify those patterns and understand the forces driving them. Greater awareness creates new choices. New choices create different outcomes. Her clinical focus centers on helping people move beyond insight alone and develop practical ways of relating, communicating, and responding that strengthen their lives and relationships.
Monique works extensively with couples navigating infertility, chronic pain, infidelity, grief and loss, and the strain that develops when life, marriage, or family unfolds differently than expected. Her work with individuals frequently addresses anxiety, grief, relationship loss, spiritual injury, and relational trauma. Boundaries, identity, and personal clarity often become central themes as clients rebuild trust in themselves, strengthen their sense of self, and move forward with greater confidence and purpose.
Many of Monique’s clients have spent years managing responsibility, meeting expectations, and solving problems for others. Over time, those strengths can become associated with burnout, anxiety, resentment, boundary difficulties, and relational disconnection. Monique helps clients recognize those patterns, understand the factors sustaining them, and build healthier ways of relating to themselves and the people closest to them.
Many people who work with Monique seek more than survival. They want healthier relationships, greater clarity, and lasting personal growth. Monique helps clients understand the patterns influencing their lives and develop practical steps toward meaningful change.
Master of Arts Clinical Mental Health, Adams State University (2022)
Licensed Professional Counselor Candidate, State of Colorado
Alyssa Elgersma specializes in grief and loss. People often seek her help when life no longer looks the way they expected and they are left trying to understand what comes next. Death, infertility, chronic illness, relationship loss, family conflict, and major life transitions can affect every part of a person’s world. Alyssa combines specialized grief training with genuine compassion, curiosity, and care, helping clients feel understood, make sense of their experience, and find a path forward while honoring what has been lost.
Alyssa understands that grief rarely affects only one part of a person’s life. Loss often influences relationships, identity, decision-making, faith, motivation, and a person’s sense of the future. Her work helps clients recognize those effects, understand their responses, and navigate grief in ways that support both healing and continued connection to the people and experiences that remain important to them.
Alyssa brings both warmth and clinical insight to her work. Specialized training in grief and loss allows her to recognize how grief, trauma, anxiety, life transitions, and relationship experiences often intersect in ways people do not immediately see. She helps clients find language for those experiences, understand their impact, and reconnect with parts of themselves that loss, pain, or change may have obscured.
Alyssa combines clinical mental health training with a genuine interest in people’s stories. Clients often share experiences, losses, questions, and life events they have never fully explored before. Her ability to build trust and listen carefully helps people gain deeper insight into their experiences, their relationships, and the changes they hope to create moving forward.
Alongside her clinical work, Alyssa serves as Program Administrator, helping guide clients into the process and coordinating care across the team. She pays attention to fit, making sure each person or couple connects with the right clinicians for what they are facing.
Alyssa enjoys a good cup of tea, getting into a TV series, traveling, and spending time with the family’s Shelties, Mozzie and Zylie. Those interests often become part of the conversation and reflect something Alyssa values deeply: meaningful connection begins with people feeling seen, known, and welcome exactly as they are.
Alyssa believes people make sense within the context of their relationships, experiences, culture, losses, and story. Her work helps clients understand how those pieces connect, bringing greater clarity to their story, their relationships, and the path ahead. Her client's understanding often becomes the foundation for healing, growth, and renewed connection.
[Accepting New Individual Clients - emphasis on Grief and Loss issues]
Matthew has devoted his career to helping individuals and families pursue recovery, healing, and lasting personal transformation. Although he initially pursued a Master’s degree in Education, his passion for walking alongside people through life’s most difficult challenges led him into the substance abuse and behavioral health field. Throughout his career, he has served as a substance abuse counselor, life coach, Spiritual Director, Director of Health and Wellness, and Director of Treatment Services, gaining extensive experience in addiction recovery, behavioral health, spiritual growth, and whole-person wellness. His work has included counseling, leadership, program development, and supporting individuals and families through the recovery process. In 2025, Matthew received national recognition for his contributions to the substance abuse treatment field and for the impact his work has had on the lives of those pursuing meaningful and lasting change.
Matthew brings extensive experience in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Motivational Interviewing, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Narrative Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, and Person-Centered Therapy. He specializes in helping individuals navigate trauma, PTSD, addiction recovery, behavioral health challenges, life transitions, and personal growth. His own journey has given him a deep appreciation for resilience, healing, and the courage required to create lasting change. Matthew is passionate about helping people uncover hope, overcome obstacles, strengthen relationships, and move toward greater emotional, mental, spiritual, and relational health. He also continues to expand his work with couples and relationship dynamics.
Outside of his professional work, Matthew enjoys spending time with his family and remaining actively involved in his community. He participates in service projects, speaking engagements, church leadership and service opportunities, and volunteers as a firefighter when able. Matthew also serves on the board of the Centurion Program, an organization dedicated to identifying, developing, and supporting emerging community leaders. His commitment to service, leadership, and personal growth extends well beyond the counseling office and reflects the values that guide both his life and his work.
[accepting new clients in mid-January 2026]
Mozzie is a Canine, bi-black Shetland Sheepdog (Sheltie). He was adopted in March of 2020 as a puppy from Honeyhill Shelties in Northwest Iowa and has been with the Elgersma family ever since. He has completed his requirements for a Certified Canine Good Citizen and Certified Community Canine Good Citizen dog. He graduated from the Frederick Family Dog Therapy Program in May 2023. He is a sweet sheltie that loves people but is sometimes skittish around cars and other dogs and has a fear of surprises which will cause him to bark loudly. He is very attuned to when people are upset and will naturally come to ‘help’ by putting his head on their leg or to ask for “pets.”
Zylie is a Canine, standard looking sable Shetland Sheepdog (Sheltie). She was adopted from Geiger Family Shelties as a puppy in late summer of 2014 and has been a part of the Elgersma family ever since. She has attended therapy dog training from the Frederick Family Dog Therapy Program. She lost her littermate sister at 3 years old and has worked diligently to overcome her fears. Shelties have a reputation of being skittish and she is still slightly skittish with people and struggles with a fear of loud noises or surprises. However, as we trained Mozzie, it became clear that Zylie was getting comfortable with people again and she LOVES being pet, especially if there are "treats" involved!
What if your relationship became your greatest investment?
Strong, leadership-minded couples invest.
Seriously, something brought you here.
Betrayal, distance, anger, or a relationship that has settled into something you know it was never meant to be. Living like that doesn’t work for you, and it doesn’t work for us either.
We don’t leave patterns like that untouched.
Our team steps into what’s happening, exposes what keeps breaking down, and rebuilds your relationship with clarity, strength, and connection you can actually live inside of.
Rebuild trust. Restore closeness. Lead your relationship forward.
👉 Contact Real Connections Counseling & Coaching
