Couples Therapy

Every kind of couple is welcome. Couples come to seek my help and facilitation in the following situations:

1.     to work on changing and improving their relationship so they can grow and develop as individuals and relationally as a couple;

2.     to make an important decision like for example, whether to stay together or separate, have a baby; get married, take a job promotion, or move location;

3.     to get support to end the relationship amicably and if applicable, to get help with co-parenting.

Why couples therapy?

Sometimes you are contemplating therapy because of a crisis or major life change like

·      an infidelity, 

·      becoming first-time parents, 

·      a death in the family, 

·      an unexpected pregnancy, 

·      a child in crisis, 

·      children leaving the nest, 

·      retirement,

·      issues with aging parents,

·      issues with in-laws/step-children

You may want to work on healing hurts within the relationship in order to strengthen the relationship.  

You may be in constant power struggles, constant states of reactivity or, there may be a lot of tension in the relationship but you avoid conflict.  

Or you might not even be clear what is “wrong”; you’re coasting but feeling unfulfilled and disconnected, distant and withdrawn. 

Your sexual relationship may be unfulfilling.  

How do you resolve your core differences?

How to get the most out of couples therapy

In my work with couples, I support each partner to look at the kind of relationship that they want to create and the kind of partner that they themselves want to be. 

What would each of you have to stop doing and start doing to get there? Together we would explore what patterns of behaviour might be getting in the way of creating the kind of partnership that you want. 

Many of us can be experts at listing all our partner’s shortcomings, flaws and weaknesses and forget about their strengths; this can leave us feeling enormously hopeless. Focusing on what we are waiting on them to change can render us powerless. 

You will get the most from couples therapy if, instead of staying locked on what you want your partner to change, you can also be open to exploring what individual autonomous changes you want to master, particularly those difficult reactions to your partner when under stress. 

If each partner is prepared to invest in looking at their own defensive behaviours and come to a better understanding of how these behaviours get triggered, I can help you find ways to stop the pattern of reactivity. 

Hope and growth

Couples therapy can create significant individual growth, which will impact and ultimately strengthen you as a couple. Each of you, by changing something in yourself individually, can help shift the system; the dance between the two of you needs a different and new step. 

With my support and guidance, negative patterns of relating can be changed and richer, more intimate, honest ways of connection can be cultivated.  

I will endeavour to help you to self-define, to build some emotional muscle to reduce the reactivity, to hold onto yourself and find your voice (in an authentic and non-defensive way) so that you can engage in difficult conversations with each other and stay true to your values and what is important to you. 

I can teach you skills for how to stay steady and explain calmly what is important to you while also being able to listen to what your partner is saying and learn to understand them from their unique perspective. It is difficult to stay curious and not furious, particularly if you are feeling flooded by emotion and the self-protective flight, fight, freeze system is being activated. 

Repair

Long-term relationships are not for the faint-hearted! As you learn and practice engaging in more effective ways, and not running from, or escalating, when you encounter your differences, you will grow to understand yourself and your partner on a deeper level. 

I will support you to be open and heal from pain inflicted on each other in your relationship so that you can avoid re-traumatising each other with old wounds. How we repair after fall-outs is essential for the continuous growth of relationships. 

And together we can look at ways in which you can bring positive energy, zest and true intimacy back into your relationship and learn to give and seek support in an ongoing, loving way.

A team of support

I see my role as therapist with couples as being multi-faceted; at times, I am a teacher, a leader, a coach, a trauma therapist, or an objective observer. I will work with you in a team capacity where I will support and guide you. You will also need to work hard to bring about change and not wait for me to “do therapy to you”! There are no magic wands in my tool-kit.   Effective, long-lasting change in your relationship is going to take work on your side.  To get the most from therapy and your hard-earned money, I will be asking you to experiment in practising different ways of relating at home in between our sessions. This way we can work out what is working and what is not, where you are stuck and how to bring about change.  What you put in will dictate the success of the therapy. I am committed to putting in my maximum and bringing my experience and knowledge to assisting you to grow and deepen your relationship so that it is more vital, connected and intimate.

Training

I am an accredited psychotherapist and counsellor and an accredited EMDR therapist. I also have specific couples training with both the Resnick’s model of Gestalt therapy and also the Developmental Model at the Couples Institute.

Frequency and fees

Sessions will be an hour and a half. My fee is €150 for couples sessions and €100 for any occasional hour and a half individual sessions. Our first few sessions will involve taking a history and also getting a sense of your relationship and stuck points. If available to you, I recommend that you come weekly so that we can get some traction and make progress, and once we have made significant progress we can experiment with you coming every two weeks. It is impossible for me to know how long we will need to work together as it depends on you, the specific difficulties in your relationship, how entrenched your negative patterns of relating are, what you are looking for from therapy and how much you are prepared to dig in and do the work.  In order to make significant progress, it is likely to take a minimum of 10 sessions, and often much longer.

When couples therapy is not recommended

I do not see couples in the following situations:

1.     where there is violence in your relationship and this is a regular feature;

2.     where one or both of you are actively in addiction (it is important to engage in specific addiction treatment first);

3.     where there is an ongoing affair that has not been terminated; 

4.     if there is an undiagnosed, undertreated or untreated mental illness (couples therapy does not fix a psychiatric problem). However, if you or your partner requires medication and you are being correctly treated then couples therapy is the same as it is for any couple. 

In the above situations, I do not feel that couples therapy will progress and develop as it otherwise could, but benefit could be gained from individual therapy.  If you are unsure if you would be a good fit for couples therapy at this time, please do feel free to call me to discuss.