What is Relationship Counselling?

 

Our counsellors can provide therapeutic interventions with a supportive and caring environment to help couples overcome difficulties and problems they are facing, find a way to move forward or build healthy prospective relationships for the future. 

 

What can I expect in Relationship Counselling?

 

We can offer various forms of counselling to fit your lifestyle.  Face-to-face counselling is available together with telephone and online (webcam) options.

 

The initial assessment is carried out with a trained and qualified counsellor asking some questions about you and your partner, your relationship and what you would like to get out of counselling, perhaps explore some short and long term goals. The assessment does not normally take more than an hour allowing couples to have their individual input too. During this stage, we will discuss session times and dates that are suitable and available to meet your needs, we can also look at the cost of counselling.

 

We work in a holistic and client-focused way and enable clients to take lead in how they wish to work.  Therefore, you may decide the initial appointment/assessment, you want to come to counselling by yourself or your partner and/or choose to have a combination of solo and couple sessions.  

 

We would like to make your experience of relationship counselling as pleasant as possible and try to accommodate couples needs where able.  However the experience, you can feel reassured counselling will be confidential and non-judgemental.

 

How can Relationship Counselling help me?

 

This is completely an individual outcome and depends on what you want from counselling.  It is unlikely you will feel you have gained nothing from it,  clients often explore why they feel they need counselling and establish what they need from it in early sessions, most often they feel a positive change.  Couples can decide if relationship counselling isn’t for them at the assessment or later, we do say to allow a few sessions to give the therapeutic process a fair chance, enable clients to understand if it is something they would like to continue with.  

 

For some, relationship counselling can help transform their relationship and lives; for others, we can support them to address and solve specific problems within the relationship or establish how to move forward with more confidence, reduce stress and anxiety.

 

Each session is approximately 45 – 60 minutes, the initial session is usually an assessment which helps your counsellor what is going on for you and how you feel by asking a range of questions that may be quiet direct. Individual assessments may be carried out to understand the issues clients want to bring to counselling, how they feel, what they want from their relationship before counselling together as a couple. 

Perhaps talking is not what you are most comfortable with, therefore, we can look at other ways to communicate and try different things such as mapping your thoughts on paper, drawing etc. depending what is right for you.

 

We are not saying relationship counselling will work for every couple,  if things do not change or progress, counselling may help you look at things differently or make informed decisions that are right for you to move forward.  Being able to talk to someone who is non-judgemental and not involved in the relationship can help you.

 

Even if things don’t change, counselling may help you to see things in a different way or make the decision that’s right for you to move forward. Just talking to someone who isn’t involved in the relationship can help you.

 

Clients often feel nervous or apprehensive approaching counselling but have been very surprised how we do not tell them what to do, we work at the pace clients are comfortable with. It is a big step counselling, and we make every effort to facilitate the needs of clients.  It is brave for clients to acknowledge they want help with their relationship; therefore, confidentiality is important to us as it is our clients, and we respect this.  

 

For most clients, despite the mixed emotions, they feel it was the best decision they made by going to counselling as they can see the small differences once they get started.