Relationship Counselling
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Relationships are fundamental for our emotional well-being. It is in connection with others that we discover what is most true about ourselves. While relationships can help us find what is most meaningful and good in ourselves, conflicted and broken relationships can be equally devastating in their effect.
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Relationship counselling can be a vital step toward building healthier, more fulfilling connections. Whether you're facing challenges in a relationship or simply wanting to deepen your bond, therapy offers a supportive space to explore and understand your needs and offers tools and ideas to enhance your relationships.
Deciding to Begin or Commit
The decision to start or commit to a relationship is a big step. Counselling can help you understand your needs, fears, and expectations around starting a new relationship. In this supportive environment a counsellor can help you understand your goals and values.
The more you understand about yourself, the more likely it is that you will be able to build healthy relationships with others. Therapy can provide a proactive approach that improves your ability to have quality and long lasting relationships.
Navigating Parenting Challenges
Parenting is one of the most rewarding yet challenging experiences you can face.
Individuals or couples may go to counselling to improve their relationships with their children, or learn how to deal with difficult circumstances with their young or adult children.
Relationship counselling can help you understand your role in conflicts and difficulties and develop new coping skills that reduce conflict and lead to the possibility of healthier relationships.
Longing for Emotional Connection
A lack of emotional connection or intimacy is bound to leave partners feeling distant and disconnected.
This generally happens gradually, but individuals may become aware of this suddenly, usually after some catalyst or burst of insight.
Relationship counselling can help identify the barriers to emotional connection and develop strategies to foster closeness, understanding, and affection.
Considering Separation or Divorce
The thought of separation or divorce is often accompanied by a whirlwind of emotions and uncertainties. Many people feel deep shame at the thought of a failed relationship, especially an intimate one. Counselling offers a space to unpack these feelings openly, consider all options, and, if necessary, navigate the separation process in the healthiest way possible for all involved.
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The end of a relationship, whether by mutual agreement or otherwise, can be devastating. Counselling provides support in processing grief, moving forward, and learning from the relationship to foster personal growth and future relational health.
Addressing Infidelity
Infidelity shakes the very core of an intimate relationship and results in deep mistrust and hurt. Therapy seeks to provide a neutral ground to explore issues and navigate the complex emotions involved.
It can help couples grieve their loss, rebuild trust, communicate more effectively, and heal together. Or therapy may help couples discover that they are no longer able, willing, or desiring, to continue the relationship.
Struggling with Infertility
Infertility can place an immense strain on a couple’s relationship, often leading to feelings of inadequacy, sadness, anger, and isolation.
Therapy can help couples process these emotions, support each other, and explore healthier ways of caring for themselves and their partner, strengthening their bond through the journey.
Therapeutic Approaches
Finding a Good Fit
It is important to find a therapist that you are comfortable with and who you trust to guide you. It may take a few sessions to know for sure that it is a good therapeutic fit. You should feel comfortable to speak candidly and share your desires and needs in counselling, even when, or especially when, you feel your therapist is not understanding you or providing the best support. Sometimes talking to a therapist may make you feel worse as it stirs up feelings or memories you may have ignored, but this can also lead to deeper healing.
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Relationship Counselling: Therapeutic Methods
Often the first step in reducing conflict or misunderstanding in relationships, is learning healthy communication skills such as active listening and speaking from one’s perspective without judgement. To build a healthy relationship you need to be curious about the other and what they feel or think. Relationships and/or love is risky and involves learning healthy communication skills to succeed. Therapists frequently use various therapeutic methods to address the complex and unique challenges people face.
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In couple therapy, the Gottman Method stands out for its research-based strategies aimed at deepening understanding and intimacy. Developed by Drs. John and Julie Gottman, this method emphasizes the construction of a strong relationship foundation through the development of trust, commitment, and effective conflict resolution techniques. It encourages couples to turn towards each other instead of away, fostering an environment of empathy, understanding, and respect.
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Other approaches, such as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Narrative Therapy, also help individuals and couples understand the dynamics at play in relationships. These methods collectively offer a spectrum of tools, from understanding emotional underpinnings to changing interaction patterns and reshaping narratives, ensuring that therapy can be tailored to meet the specific needs of each relationship.