What is Couples Counselling and who is it for?
- ggiann78
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
As couples counselling is becoming more popular I wonder if couples know what to expect?
From my experience, people come both hopeful and anxious, having watched ‘Couples Therapy ’, which is a stylised albeit excellent version, but it’s still the highlights and it’s impossible to know the longer-term trajectory of these relationships and it's not a full picture of the therapy.
Couples Counselling can be great when you have lost your way and you don’t know how to talk to each other anymore because you got wrapped up in projects, raising children, building careers, looking after parents, and the daily grind. You rub along, but you are not intimate physically and emotionally. You may feel lonely in the relationship. It’s also great when something unexpected happens that derails the relationship, like an affair; you are hurt, and you don’t know where you stand.
It’s a space to talk, led and held by someone who can support you (all of you) to have a voice, to hear and be heard and to take away some ideas for how to reconnect, or help you clarify your feelings and thoughts so you can make decisions.
What does the counsellor do?
The counsellor will hold the space and facilitate conversation, may offer homework, teach you communication skills, give you handouts, invite you to turn towards each other with curiosity, to really listen and to come to some formulation of your recurring patterns of interaction so you can make changes by doing something different should you wish to.
How long does it take?
It’s hard to know how long it will take.
It will take as long as you need so you can feel confident to take the relationship back and hold it between you, or make some decisions about how to move forward. It can be 6 weeks, or it can be 2 years.
Couples often turn to counselling when they have become despairing and have exhausted all they felt they could do; it’s a last-ditch attempt, and in that way they can be impatient and put a lot of pressure on the therapist and themselves to fix it quickly.
What is the frame of Couples Counselling?
The relationship is the client. When as a therapist you feel pulled towards one partner or another it is important to remember this: it’s the both/all and the between.
The therapist will be pulled to be a referee, a magician, a judge or a servant.
As therapists, we need to hold our frame firmly, to know what our role is and what it is not, and to be clear about expectations even when we are not being heard.
If not, we may get caught up in the pressure and expectation that we can fix it and make it our responsibility, let alone take the failure when things don’t go as the couple may have wanted.
It’s also crucial to know each partner’s motivation to stay in the relationship and their motivation to change. A mismatch in motivations works against the counselling process, as there are hidden agendas. Transparency and collaboration build trust. As painful as it may be to know that your partner is there to decide whether they can stay and you are there with 100% comittment, it is also vital that you know this.
Mismatched expectations between partners but also mismatched expectations between clients/couple and therapist can create hurt and disappointment.
Knowing the above, may help you make the most of your couples counselling and use the space and the time you are investing to make a difference. Same as with all aspects of therapy there can be no guaranteed results.
You may leave not having resolved your stuckness, or you may leave still somewhat anxious about the relationship but if you bring your full self to the process you will no doubt leave with heightened awareness of your own contribution and new skills to practice.
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