BeTogether Framework
™ 2026 Nicole Ohebshalom. All rights reserved.
The BeTogether Framework is a grounded, sophisticated model for understanding complex human systems — why life, leadership, or relationships can feel off even when everything seems to be working. It is a conceptual framework, not a prescriptive method, giving us a clear, repeatable way to understand what’s happening without locking you into one approach. Based on a careful assessment, we select evidence-based methods to address core wounds and adaptive patterns across life domains, restoring balance and internal security, and building the capacity to respond from presence rather than survival. Therapy to understand disconnection and guide reconnection across your entire life.
It's built on a simple truth: your life isn't made of isolated problems. It's an interconnected system.
Many people arrive with a familiar worry: “What is wrong with me?” They have tried advice, mindset tools, and sometimes earlier therapy, yet still feel tired, disconnected, or like their life no longer fits who they are. The BeTogether Approach offers a different starting point: Not “What is broken here?” but “Where am I out of coherence with myself and my values?” Coherence means your thoughts, feelings, body, choices, and relationships are in honest conversation with each other. It does not mean constant calm or perfect decisions; it means you are no longer endlessly pushing past your limits, silencing your feelings, or living in ways that quietly betray what matters most to you.
The BeTogether Framework is, at its core, a systems-level way of caring for a human life. It respects your capacity to think and make sense of things, and then invites the parts of you that cannot be solved purely through analysis back into the conversation. Coherence—feeling aligned and connected—becomes the measure that makes your efforts not only successful, but sustainable.
BeTogether Framework's Self-to-Connection pillars
SELF
Self represents the foundation of authenticity, and internal security — how present, responsive, and grounded you relate with yourself, your voice, nervous system and sense of identity in everyday life. Self is a way in which a person lives their life. It reflects the degree of wellbeing of aliveness, authenticity, ease, and meaning. It includes your capacity to tolerate stress without collapsing into survival mode, make decisions from clarity rather than fear, rest without guilt, and maintain a sense of worth that isn’t tied solely to achievement.
The wellbeing of Self answers the question: “How is life being inhabited?”
How you relate to yourself and express your authentic self
Where adaptive patterns may no longer serve you
How foundational patterns support presence, love, ease, decision-making, creativity, leadership, and meaning
Wellbeing in Self provides the structure of a lived life - the terrain in which vitality can flourished or become restricted.
Six Domains of Self & Connection
Both pillars—Self and Connection—operate across the same six domains of human experience.
These domains describe where life is lived. Your authenticity and wellbeing reflects their structure and vitality; connection reflects how fully they are engaged and integrated. In order to feel authentic and have a sense of wellbeing, it’s important to express our purpose in the world, these topics can create a supportive structure to allow us to create a life that is authentic and provides us wellbeing.
• Physical: embodiment, sleep, movement, rest, and vitality
• Emotional/Internal: the capacity to feel and integrate emotion and self-compassion
• Relational: community, presence, intimacy, and belonging
• Creativity: art, ideas, learning, curiosity, and culture
• Sexual: desire, aliveness, and embodied intimacy
• Spiritual: meaning, values, connected to something larger than yourself and inner alignment
A person may experience strength in some domains and restriction in others. Therapy focuses on restoring balance and communication across the system, rather than treating domains in isolation.
CONNECTION
Connection describes the process in how a person relates to their life, both moment to moment and over time. It is not a static state, personality trait, or something or either ‘has’ or ‘doesn’t have.’ Connection is dynamic, relational, and practiced. It determines whether wellbeing is felt, embodied, and sustainable. In connection, you experience closeness, responsiveness, and attunement with others. It reflects your ability to maintain trust, safety, and intimacy while navigating complex relationships.
The wellbeing of Connection answers the question: “How fully is life being experienced?”
The quality of your engagement: How you give and receive presence in relationships
Where relational patterns are functional or strained
For couples, how patterns form between partners and affect intimacy, collaboration, and shared purpose
A person may have a full life on paper yet feel disconnected from it. Another may feel deeply connected in one area while others remain
inaccessible - for example, having meaningful relationships while feeling emotionally absent, or intellectual vitality without embodiment. This quality of engagement determines whether life feels alive or managed, authentic or adapted, easeful or effortful.
Qualities for Self & Connection
These qualities can guide self-connection that naturally extends to connection with others and our environments.
Awareness: observation of your inner thoughts, emotions, values, and triggers without distortion or judgment.
Self-Worth: recognition of inherent value, independent of achievements or external validation.
Love: unconditional, mature embrace of your whole self—strengths, shadows, and all—with compassionate strength.
Authentic Presence: embodiment of your true essence, radiating grounded availability and warmth.
Creative Influence: capacity to originate meaningful and creative change that feels empowering
Responsibility: ownership of your thoughts, emotions, choices, and impact—choosing response over reaction.
Common Patterns
The Mind-Body Split: Physical and emotional wellbeing both low. You're disconnected from bodily experience and can't access feelings. Often from trauma or years of pushing through."
The Intimacy Gap: Relational and sexual wellbeing both low. You and your partner feel distant. Sex is infrequent, mechanical, or avoided entirely. Love is still there—connection isn’t.
The Achiever Pattern: Intellectual wellbeing high, everything else low. You've succeeded through cognition while neglecting body, emotions, relationships, desire, and meaning.
The Meaning Void: Emotional and spiritual wellbeing both low. Going through motions but nothing feels meaningful. Success feels hollow.
The Functional Freeze: Physical, emotional, and sexual wellbeing all critically low. Body numb, emotions shut down, sexuality offline. Often trauma-related or severe burnout.
We work across the whole system: As one dimension strengthens, we watch how it affects the others. Physical stabilization might unlock emotional access. Emotional safety might allow relational vulnerability. Relational repair might restore sexual aliveness. We're tracking the whole pattern, not just individual symptoms. Essentially, our entire Self is based on connection within and then relating to our environment. These aren't diagnoses—they're disconnection patterns. And patterns can shift. These patterns reflect how Self and Connection are challenged and where restoring internal security and presence can support sustainable functioning.
The BeTogether Framework allows us to hold complexity without making your experience complicated. It provides a map for understanding patterns, predicting strain, and applying the right interventions — all while respecting your time, intelligence, and ambitions. By organizing human experience into Self, Connection, six domains, and recognizable patterns, and focusing on restoring internal security, presence, and adaptive patterns, the framework helps you stay effective, connected, and aligned across life, leadership, and relationships.
BeTogether Writings
This framework is entirely optional—clients choose whether or how to engage with it. Some find it a valuable lens for clarity and reflection; others prefer to focus directly on targeted therapeutic work.