Counselling for couples
Counselling for couples
Being in a relationship can be very challenging at times, and you have the ability to solve relationship problems together and get through difficulties, given the right support and help. In counselling, we will explore what is working and what isn’t working between you and your partner, encouraging you to recognise your own needs and being able to express these in a way that is helpful, so that you can bring stability and joy into your relationship.
I believe that the reason people are attracted to each other and engage in relationship is because we recognise in the other, intuitively the opportunity for our healing and growth. The recognition of this potential can be unconscious. This leads to falling in love, often seeing each other as the “perfect” partner. It is not usually until the romantic phase has passed, which it inevitably does, that we start to feel challenged by each other.
My practice centres around open exploration and sensitivity through Imago Relationship Therapy, developed by Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt.
This is a form of relationship and couples therapy that focuses on transforming conflict into healing and growth through relational connection and communication. My professional training in the Imago approach allows me to use it as the framework for working with you as a couple. It is an interactive process that uses dialogues which focus on allowing you to understand each other’s feelings on a more empathic level. It also helps you to consciously understand your relationship and move on from where you feel stuck, towards healing and renewal.
What it means to love
Poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke contemplated the meaning of love. His words were written with great sense and sensibility. He wrote that for one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult of all tasks; love is a tender emotion, and you can make it blossom with a smile. Love requires great communication with another. Often it is not what you give, but what you are willing to give, that determines the quality of love. It is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
Some of the concerns couples come along with…
- How to talk to each other more effectively
- Lacking understanding of each other’s needs
- Discovering a secret held
- Discovering an affair, infidelity, deceit, or indiscretion
- Finding ways to talk about sex easily
- How to talk about difficult emotions and frustrations
- Dealing together dislocation: home, trauma, and resilience
- Coping together with a diagnosed terminal illness
- Grieving together, dealing with loss
- Finding your own voice
- Changes in lifestyle or work affecting each other
- Building trust again
- Talking about commitment
- Dealing with anger and rage
- Becoming parents or consensus parenting
- Questioning or finding a better way to end a relationship