relationship counselling

 

Difficulties in relationships with partners or spouses, children, family, colleagues, or friends. Issues such as communication, conflict resolution, beginning relationships, dating, relationship breakdown, or difficulty forming or maintaining healthy relationships. Appointments can be undertaken on an individual, couple or family basis. Couple counselling is available for heterosexual and same sex couples, married or defacto, and new or established relationships.

 

WHAT IS COUPLES THERAPY?

·       Couples who are having problems in their relationship may benefit from attending a counselling session that focuses entirely on their relationship.

·       Many couples approach their first session with trepidation and apprehension, but they quickly relax into the process and come to value the experience and the benefits.

·       The first session is primarily an information gathering session where I will ask you to discuss your history and your troubles.

·       I use a variety of modalities and techniques to help you work through your relationship problems. Techniques include: open discussions, role modeling, role playing and analysing negative patterns of behaviour

·       I have training and experience to avoid personal bias when counselling a couple.

Many couples are apprehensive if they have never attended a couples counselling or relationship counselling session before. Very often, couples have questions about how the counsellor will conduct themselves during the interview, whether the counsellor will take sides or what they may have to reveal as part of their couples therapy.

While relationship counselling might seem rather intimidating at first, many couples find that if they attend with an open mind and a willingness to work with their partner and with myself, then their relationship will benefit from at least a few sessions. In many cases, we will be able to narrow down the focus of the therapy in order to identify the primary issues which need addressing.

 

 

HOW CAN A COUPLE BENEFIT FROM COUPLES THERAPY?

Couples benefit from couples therapy in a variety of ways. Very often, the source of our problems as couples is not that we do not love and care about our partners; it is that we do not know how to communicate well about what we want and need. The benefits of couples counselling can include:

·       Learning better communication skills and how to really listen to our partner without jumping to conclusions or starting an argument;

·       Learning how to better understand the struggles, challenges and fears of our partner;

·       Learning how to fight and disagree with each other without destroying each other in the process;

·       Improving intimacy, both sexual and non-sexual

·       Learning how to honor family relationships (particularly in blended families);

·       Learning about personal boundaries and past history that we may not have known before;

·       Deciding whether there is enough of a relationship to salvage;

·       Mediation for a relationship that is ending.