Couples Counselling
What Is Couples Counselling?
Couples counselling involves a trained counsellor helping a couple identify, understand, and resolve conflicts within their relationship. The goal is to assist the couple in learning healthier ways to communicate their needs, feelings, perspectives, and boundaries to each other. The counsellor also helps the couple recognise recurring patterns of behaviour hindering their relationship. Couples counselling explores deeper issues, such as past experiences, family dynamics, attachment styles, and personal insecurities that impact the relationship. It promotes connection with each other.
Seek couples counselling if you are experiencing relationship difficulties and want help in rebuilding your relationship – or even just to take preventative measures to protect and improve your current relationship. Couples counselling is helpful at any stage of a relationship, regardless of marital status.
If you and your partner are going through a rough patch, couples counselling can create a space wherein both of you can express your feelings, discuss your issues, improve your communication, set boundaries, and resolve conflicts.
Couples counselling can help increase understanding, respect, affection, and intimacy between you and your partner, which can help you be happier together.
Couples counselling can help clients with a wide range of relationship issues, such as recurring conflicts, feelings of disconnection, an affair, issues related to sex, and difficulties due to external stressors.
Couples counselling provides the couple with an opportunity to honestly discuss and resolve issues related to their relationship, for example:
- Examining and clarifying the roles you and your partner play in the relationship.
- Identifying and improving unhealthy dynamics.
- Addressing differences in expectations.
- Discussing beliefs, values, and religious sentiments, and how these impact your daily lives.
- Promoting open dialogue and transparency around income and spending habits.
- Addressing issues that sabotage the quality of the time you spend together.
- Discussing activities you enjoy doing together and how to make the most of these moments.
- Communicating and creating an understanding about whether or not you want to have children, how you would like to raise them, parenting children from previous relationships with former partners, co-parenting, and dealing with stressors, such as conception difficulties or adoption challenges.
- Working out issues related to conflicts with other family members (e.g. parents, siblings, etc.).
- Sharing your feelings and needs regarding sex and intimacy.
- Dealing with issues of infidelity.
- Dealing with the effect of physical or mental health illnesses on your relationship.
- Dealing with the stress on your relationship caused by external factors, such as work.
The Benefits of Couples Counselling
Couples counselling decreases relationship distress and improves relationship satisfaction. Partners feel more connected to their own feelings and each other. They become more secure, playful, and spontaneous in their relationship. This spills over into other parts of their life, enabling them to become more assertive and adventurous.
- ATTACHMENT: Couples counselling helps partners understand their individual attachment styles and how it impacts their relationship.
- LOVE LANGUAGES: By understanding which love language resonates most with each partner, couples counselling can help the couple deepen and strengthen their relationship.
- UNDERSTANDING: Couples counselling helps partners express their feelings hopes, fears, beliefs, values, and needs – thereby enabling them to understand each other better.
- SELF-AWARENESS: Couples counselling can help the couple become more aware of each other’s needs and feel more self-confident.
- COMMUNICATION: Counselling promotes communication that enables partners to express themselves and ask for what they need without blaming or attacking each other.
- TRUST: Couples counselling can help couples heal trust issues by providing a safe space to discuss their concerns.
- RELATIONSHIP SATISFACTION: Couples counselling can improve the overall quality of the couple’s relationship, leading to greater happiness.
- DYSFUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOUR: The counsellor can help the couple identify and replace dysfunctional behaviour.
- RELATIONSHIP ISSUES: Couples counselling assists partners in identifying issues resulting in recurring conflicts, disconnect, and a lack of trust.
- CONFLICT RESOLUTION: The counsellor can help the couple work through their issues and resolve them.
- COPING SKILLS: Couples counselling equips the couple with the necessary skills to prevent and manage conflicts as they crop up. Couples counselling can help couples learn how to cope with stress and traumatic events.
The Risks of Couples Counselling
Typically, counselling involves little risk. However, partners may sometimes feel emotionally uncomfortable because it can bring up painful feelings and explore traumatic experiences. Couples counselling can create an honest space in which one partner may confess feelings and events that may be painful for the other person to hear. A skilled counsellor who can meet the couple’s needs can help minimise these risks.
During counselling sessions, I will encourage both of you to talk about the thoughts, feelings, and emotions causing you uncertainty or distress. It may be hard for you to open up about your feelings to me and your partner, but in time I can help you feel more confident and comfortable.
Sometimes, counselling involves intense emotional discussions. Consequently, you may find yourself crying, becoming upset, or even having an angry outburst during a counselling session. You may also feel physically and emotionally exhausted after an appointment. However, I can help you regulate and process these emotions and feelings.
Additionally, learning coping skills and practising emotional regulation can help you manage and deal with negative feelings and fears. During counselling, you may experience unexpected changes. For example, recalling past events may trigger unwanted emotions that can be integral to the counselling process but may be challenging. It can also take some time for the counselling process to work and be effective. However, most clients find that the benefits far outweigh the risks.
Couples counselling requires participation and commitment from both partners. If only one partner is open to it and the other is not, it can exacerbate the relationship. Total honesty and transparency are a must! Counselling only works if you do. Even when both partners are fully committed to their relationship and the counselling process, you may feel worse before you feel better.
The couple may find that one or both of them also need individual counselling to help deal with the personal issues brought up in couples counselling.
As a Specialist Wellness Counsellor, it is outside of my scope of practice to diagnose and treat mental health conditions. However, I can refer you to the appropriate mental health professional.
Testimonials
Visit the Testimonials page to discover what clients who have experienced couples counselling with me have to say about the process.
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does.
James Baldwin
Love is a battle; love is war; love is growing up.
How It Works…
All counselling sessions are held using Google Meet or WhatsApp voice call (emergencies only!). Each counselling session is 50 minutes long.
The First Couples Counselling Session With Both Partners
At the first couples counselling session, where I see you and your partner together, I generally collect information about each of you and your needs. I will create a safe space wherein I can get to know both of you. Together, we will collaborate on helping me understand you and your partner better. Every couple is different, therefore, I will customise my approach to assist you and your partner in resolving your unique challenges.
You may be asked to fill out forms about your physical and mental health. It can take a few sessions for me to fully comprehend your situation and concerns, and design an intervention.
The first counselling session is also a chance for you to interview me. You will be able to see whether my approach and personality are the right fit for both of you. You should make sure to understand and agree with the goals of the counselling process, how long each session will be, how many counselling sessions you will need, and what type of intervention can be used.
Feel free to ask any and as many questions as you want!
Subsequent Individual Counselling Sessions With Each Individual Partner
After seeing a couple together for the first time during a joint couples counselling session, I schedule an individual counselling session with each partner. This enables me to better understand the “me” within the “we”. If necessary, I may suggest having an individual counselling session with each partner again if there are individual issues you need to figure out that have a bearing on your relationship.
Subsequent Couples Counselling Sessions With Both Partners
Most couples meet me weekly, every other week, or monthly for 50 minutes per session.
During subsequent couples counselling sessions, I will help you both acknowledge your feelings and put them into words to one another. I will listen to your concerns and hold a space for you to explore your thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. I may ask questions, provide feedback, psycho-educate, and offer suggestions for coping with and addressing your issues in the relationship.
I will aid you in identifying and addressing underlying issues that contribute to mental health concerns and relationship problems. By talking through your experiences and emotions, you will better understand the root causes of your struggles and develop strategies to address them. You can express your feelings and process difficult experiences in the safe space I create just for you two. I will guide and support you in navigating challenges. Together, we will help you develop coping skills and strategies for regulating your emotions and maintaining your relationship – especially if one or both of you are struggling with complex life events and ongoing stressors.
I will challenge you both to identify and acknowledge unhelpful patterns of thinking and behaviour to aid you in seeing difficulties more clearly from a different point of view. This is achieved by creating a warm, empathic, genuine, and non-judgmental environment with safety, trust, and confidentiality, wherein you can work through your issues. I also borrow and integrate elements, principles, and concepts from various other theories and modalities to create a holistic view of my clients and underpin my interventions.
Couples counselling can also involve exploring each partner’s past to help you better understand your fears, needs, behaviours, and motivations within your relationship. This can assist in addressing unresolved conflicts that you may be experiencing presently.
I will also work with you both to resolve issues, correct negative patterns of interaction, improve your behaviour within the relationship, and focus on the positive qualities of your relationship.
However, probably the biggest part of couples counselling is to teach you and your partner the necessary skills to regulate your emotions, solve problems, resolve conflict, set boundaries, and communicate your feelings. Therefore, the ultimate aim is to equip you with the tools you need to deal with issues as they arise.
After a counselling session, I may ask you to complete specific activities or practice what you learned. Over time, discussing your concerns can help improve your mood and alter the way you think and feel about yourself. It can also improve your ability to regulate your emotions and cope with issues.
Where there is love, there is life.
Mahatma Gandhi
Fees and Rates
I reserve the right to offer discounts on fees and rates to clients at my discretion.
Summary of Fees and Rates for Couples Counselling
| COUPLES COUNSELLING | The First Consultation/Initial Intake Session of 50 Minutes | Subsequent 50-Minute Sessions |
| Adults (ages 18 and older) | ZAR 700.00 | ZAR 600.00 |
Love doesn’t need to be perfect.
Unknown
It just needs to be true.
Interested in Receiving Counselling?
Send an email to thebloomingpractice@gmail.com or a WhatsApp message to +27 71 342 9810 to make an appointment with me or ask any questions.
I will respond in between seeing clients during the following South African business hours (GMT +2):
- Monday: 08h30 – 19h00 (excluding 10h30 to 13h00)
- Tuesday: 08h30 – 19h00 (excluding 10h30 to 13h00)
- Wednesday: 08h30 – 19h00 (excluding 10h30 to 13h00)
- Thursday: 08h30 – 19h00 (excluding 10h30 to 13h00)
- Friday: Closed
- Saturday: Closed
- Sunday: 09h00 – 13h30
In case of an emergency, go to your nearest police station or to the emergency room of your nearest hospital.
Excited to hear from you!
Love by giving and taking.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Give and be given.
The Blooming Practice 