Relationships are not always sunshine and lollipop; conflicts are bound to happen, especially in romantic relationships. When partners are faced with stress and daily life problems, they are often left without the tools to deal with them healthily, which further damages their relationship. Fortunately, counselling for couples can improve your connection.
What is Counselling for Couples?
Couples counselling, or couples therapy, is a form of talk therapy that focuses on helping couples improve their relationship. Whether it’s interpersonal or external, problems will always find a way to impair relationships, but with couples counselling, you will learn how to resolve issues healthily, communicate better, and improve both partner’s overall well-being.
Couples can opt for couples counselling at any stage of their relationship. The counsellors will assess your root problems and equip you with the right tools to manage relationship problems and strengthen your bond. Couples counselling is never a solo ride, and if both partners show equal eagerness to work out their relationship, counselling becomes most effective.
Types of Counselling for Couples
Effective couples counselling adapts its approach to each couple’s unique story, resulting in individualised outcomes. Most common form of therapies or counselling for couples are
- Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT)
Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT) focuses on the emotional attachment between the partners in the relationship. The counsellor will help you understand the negative communication and emotional attachment patterns that fuel your decision and lead o feelings of disconnection.
- Gottman Method
This method assesses your area of conflict and tries to find out the cause behind it. You will be equipped with better problem-solving skills to improve your trust and intimacy level between partners.
- Behavioural Therapy
Behavioural Therapy or Behavioural Couple Therapy (BCT) helps partners focus on positive behaviours that strengthen their relationship, while replacing negative and unhealthy behaviours that create instability.
- Ellen Wachtel’s Approach
This method lets couples focus on their strengths rather than their weakness. It aims for couples to focus on the positive aspects of their relationship and use them as a basis for growth.
- Psychodynamic Couple’s Therapy
This therapy explores the deeper aspects of relationships, like their underlying hopes and fears that influence and shape their relationships. It helps couples understand each other better.
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
This form of talk therapy identifies your thought pattern and how that is negatively influencing your behaviours, and it changes into a positive and healthier mode of thinking that supports your relationship.
- Discernment Counselling
Discernment counselling is for conflicting couples struggling with the decision of staying together or splitting up, while one partner is willing to save the relationship and the other one is ending it. It tries to bring all options available for couples before making the ultimate decision.
- Imago Relationship Therapy
According to the Imago method, we unconsciously project our image of love, developed in childhood, onto our romantic partners. The image could be from unfulfilled childhood needs, unhealed wounds, and other conflicts. Imago therapy helps to bring these early images to the surface, allowing you to identify and resolve negative thought patterns.
- Narrative Therapy
In narrative couples therapy, a therapist helps you explore the stories that each of the partner have different narrative of and helps you rewrite the story together. They observe how you see the challenges in your relationship and how they might be affecting your view of each other.
- Solution Focused Therapy
Solution Focused Therapy is for couples having a specific problem to resolve instead of a wide range of conflicts. Couples would approach therapists or counsellors with a well-defined problem and want immediate solutions.
- Reflective Listening
This type of therapy is for couples wanting to improve their communication skills. It allows partners to talk openly in a healthy and safe environment and fosters transparency between them.
- Relationship Life Therapy
Relational life therapy helps couples resolve conflicts, improve communication, and strengthen intimacy, particularly useful when struggling with societal expectations about gender roles. It promotes open and honest expression, create balance and eliminate social myths with no judgement.
Is Couples Counselling Beneficial for Relationship Health?
Counselling for couples has proven to improve the overall quality of a relationship. It has several benefits:
Better Communication & Understanding
Most of the relationship problems stem from a lack of communication. Counselling helps you in expressing better with your partner without hurting each other. By developing good communication skills, you can better understand your partner and foster a healthier relationship.
Strengthened Bond & Trust
A relationship cannot sustain itself without trust. Couples counselling can not only build or rebuild trust between partners, but also strengthen the connection, fostering a stronger foundation for the relationship. It allows couples to work together to improve their relationship.
Identify & Resolve Conflicts
Counseller can help identify your thoughts and behaviours that negatively impact the relationship and resolve relationship conflicts more effectively. This will equip you with better tools to manage your problems healthily, rather than resorting to blame.
Better Relationship Dynamic
When you understand relationship conflicts and adopt better communication skills, your relationship dynamics shift in a more positive direction. Couples counselling also helps you discard or reconstruct negative behaviours that are unhealthy in relationship.
Learn Relationship Skills
Counselling for couples aims to provide couples with better skills to help in managing and preventing relationship problems. Whenever challenges arise, both partners will be able to deal without hurting each other.
Overall Satisfaction
When couples are equipped with better communication skills, conflict management skills, and are discarding dysfunctional behaviours, along with a deeper understanding of each other, it improves emotional attachment and intimacy between partners, leading to an overall happier and more satisfying relationship.
Should You Consider Counselling for Couples?
Couples counselling isn’t restricted to certain relationships. Any couple wanting to improve and resolve their relationship problems can benefit. Because different couples have different backgrounds and stories, their needs and issues might be different. A young premarital couple might have different challenges than older married couples. Therefore, the counselling duration and outcome might vary.
If you are facing relationship issues, seeking a counsellor’s support can help your overall well-being by equipping you with better tools to manage challenges. Couples counselling can help you identify the root causes of your problems and develop a strong foundation for your relationship.
