Often when couples seek counselling it’s because amidst all their responsibilities they’ve lost sight of each other as unique beings. My approach with couples is to use a combination of strategies to help you and your partner to communicate beyond the conflict, and to respect each other again as individuals.
Emotion-focused Couples Therapy (EFCT)
“Intimate relationships are not transactions; they are emotional bonds”
Sue Johnson
EFCT aims to help couples identify their ‘stuck’ cycles of disharmony and/or disengagement. By understanding how each other’s attachment needs get scrambled in dysfunctional communication patterns, couples can learn how to connect to their more vulnerable emotional needs and communicate them safely again.
Thus, secondary emotions like anger, jealousy, resentment etc. can be transformed into primary emotions expressed as sadness, fear, longing, hurt and desire for closeness.
Your relationship will flourish when you can be a safe haven for your partner a good listener to your special person and a supportive team-mate for them on their unique journey.
Partners are helped to recall the original strengths of their relationship and what attracted them to each other in the first place. We then explore how the pattern of distressed communication is unravelling your emotional bond. By externalising the problem in this way, couples don’t have to feel that they are the problem - the dysfunctional cycle is the problem! As your eyes are opened toward each other as individuals, with separate histories and attachment experiences, you discover more about yourself and your partner’s perspective. In this way, both partners are enabled to become less defensive, more understanding, and capable of expressing vulnerable needs and feelings to each other.
Gestalt Couples work
The Gestalt Prayer, by Fritz Perls (1969), states: “I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations. And you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped”.
This prayer exemplifies how Gestalt therapists work with couples. Individuals are encouraged to deal with their own issues, live their own lives, and respect each other in order to meet in a romantic relationship as two wholes who come together.
If you’d like to find out more about couples counselling please click here.
Emotion-focused Couples Therapy (EFCT)
“Intimate relationships are not transactions; they are emotional bonds”
Sue Johnson
EFCT aims to help couples identify their ‘stuck’ cycles of disharmony and/or disengagement. By understanding how each other’s attachment needs get scrambled in dysfunctional communication patterns, couples can learn how to connect to their more vulnerable emotional needs and communicate them safely again.
Thus, secondary emotions like anger, jealousy, resentment etc. can be transformed into primary emotions expressed as sadness, fear, longing, hurt and desire for closeness.
Your relationship will flourish when you can be a safe haven for your partner a good listener to your special person and a supportive team-mate for them on their unique journey.
Partners are helped to recall the original strengths of their relationship and what attracted them to each other in the first place. We then explore how the pattern of distressed communication is unravelling your emotional bond. By externalising the problem in this way, couples don’t have to feel that they are the problem - the dysfunctional cycle is the problem! As your eyes are opened toward each other as individuals, with separate histories and attachment experiences, you discover more about yourself and your partner’s perspective. In this way, both partners are enabled to become less defensive, more understanding, and capable of expressing vulnerable needs and feelings to each other.
Gestalt Couples work
The Gestalt Prayer, by Fritz Perls (1969), states: “I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations. And you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped”.
This prayer exemplifies how Gestalt therapists work with couples. Individuals are encouraged to deal with their own issues, live their own lives, and respect each other in order to meet in a romantic relationship as two wholes who come together.
If you’d like to find out more about couples counselling please click here.