What to expect in Couple Counselling
Making the decision to go to couple therapy can be difficult. If you and your partner are experiencing relationship problems, seeking help is more effective than ignoring your issues or hoping they get better on their own. Still, the thought of coming to relationship counselling may make you and your partner feel stressed or anxious. Knowing what to expect in therapy can make things a little easier.
The First Session
In your first counselling session you can expect your therapist to discuss confidentiality, mandatory reporting circumstances (for example, in situations of child abuse), what methods they use when working with couples on relationship problems, and their policies regarding cancellations. Your counsellor will also ask you and your partner to talk about your views on your relationship and what you feel are the issues with your relationship. All our counsellors will ensure that each member of the couple has a chance to speak and be heard. This first session is mostly about information-gathering, but meaningful and real problems are often talked about and worked on even in this early phase. During the next sessions, when your therapist has a clearer understanding of your relationship and the nature of your issues, you will get to explore more deeply your relationship difficulties and find techniques to improve your relationship that work for you and your partner.
What Happens Next?
Usually both people in a couple will attend couple counselling sessions together because this helps to establish an alliance with the couple therapist that is clearly about the couple and their relationship. Some relationship counsellors will only see their couple clients when they come to sessions together. Other couple therapists will see clients individually, in turn, to discuss their relationship issues separately before meeting them again as a couple. If you are attending couple counselling but you have a specific issue that primarily affects you as an individual, such as an addiction or depression, your therapist may recommend for you to see another counsellor or clinician for individual therapy to attend to that particular problem.
Ordinarily, a couple counselling session is a combination of various tasks. The therapist’s main task is to make you and your partner feel comfortable and safe to discuss problems that may be quite personal and extremely tough to talk about. Relationships Ireland counsellors will try their best to make sure that you and your partner both get to tell your side of the story when discussing the issues that you are struggling with in your relationship.
Your counsellor may use a wide variety of methods to support you and your partner in the therapy process. These might include:
- Examining your patterns of behaviour and the ways you communicate
- Highlighting discrepancies in your and your partner’s behaviour
- Openly talking about difficult matters
- Encouraging you and your partner to share your feelings
- Acting out role plays
- Exploring your childhood and your family history
- Helping you to discover techniques that will improve your communication methods
Your therapist may also ask you to carry out homework like undertaking projects or practicing tasks between sessions to help out with the counselling process. For example, your counsellor may encourage you to plan a date to allow you to spend time together as a couple, or else you may be asked to think back to when you first started your relationship and remember the reasons why you fell for your partner in the first place. These tasks will help you and your partner to learn to appreciate one another and rekindle the love you may have lost.
What about Counsellor Bias?
A common fear for couples is that their counsellor or therapist may side with one member of the couple over the other during counselling sessions. All ethical and professional therapists will ensure that they remain neutral and avoid taking sides. Both partners are encouraged to talk about their views and experiences and are allowed to disagree during this process. One of the ways that couple counsellors avoid bias and allow everyone involved to be heard in the discussion is to give both parties the opportunity to talk. At the start of the appointment, your therapist may ask how the past week has been and whether there are any particular problems that came up from homework assignments or as a result of discussions from the previous session.
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