COUPLES COUNSELLING

Counselling is what these days is commonly known as a ‘talking therapy’.  It gives clients the space, time and opportunity to explore issues, which the couple believe are impacting on them, or their life, in an unhelpful way.  It is aimed and enabling the coupled to reach their own decisions and to make choices. 

A supportive counsellor or therapist can help a couple through a crisis or difficult patch in your life.  Counselling is non-judgmental and confidential.  Sometimes as a couple we have issues, which we may not want to share with family or friends.  This is not necessarily because we don’t trust them but sometimes even a loved ones advice is simply not that helpful.  They may not know what is going to work for you and we may feel uncomfortable sharing ‘couple issues’ with others, as we can feel we are betraying our partner to do so.

Within counselling you explore your feelings and gain insight and understanding.  Bottled-up feeling such as anger, anxiety, grief, shame or embarrassment can become very difficult to manage.  What helps is having the opportunity to express them and talk about them is a safe place.  Talking about the issues can help reduce the pain and may dissolve them.

As a psychodynamic counsellor my aim is to provide conditions where you as a couple can get to the root cause of the problem and help you to deal with this.  As a therapist I am trained to listen and to help you find your own answers, without judging you.

Research has shown that the relationship with the counsellor is important.  It is an essential part of the process that the relationship is such that a couple can begin to build trust in the counsellor and the therapy.  Trust is needed as the counsellor gently encourages the couple to look as aspects within their relationship.  Sometimes difficult aspects have to be explored but a counsellor supports you while you are doing it. 

Things that have happened in our past often govern the way we react within relationships.  So past situations/feelings may be explored to find clarity. Often it is not long before a couple begins to make links and starts realising that there are options and solutions available.