What is Couples Counseling?

Couples counseling is not your typical sit-in-the-chair-and-how-does-that-make-you-feel type of counseling. Not that there aren’t times to ask “how does that make you feel” , but everyone including the counselor are more involved in a couples session.

Whenever I begin working with a new couple I always ask if either of the couples have ever been to any form of counseling. This helps me understand a little bit about what the expectations of my new clients could be with regards to counseling, and then I help them set new expectations to what we are actually going to do in our first session.

Let’s Dive Deep

From our first session, we are going to dive into deep the relationship. This often becomes emotional as one or both members of the relationship have typically gone through a long ordeal to get to the point that relationship counseling was brought up. None of this is Instagram pretty at this stage.

From there, depending on where the couple is, comes the points where I begin to challenge each individual in the relationship. This sometimes looks like a short one-on-one conversation that is out loud for everyone in the room to hear. The object of this is to get one of the members of the relationship thinking, or listening to the other individual.

Skills Needed

Some couples struggle with communication the most, others struggle with their trust, others struggle with feeling disconnected, or infidelity. Depending on what the couple that I am working with struggles with the most, is what our first session will look like.

Taking What We Learned Home

I like to give the couples that I work with things to do while they are at home ( I refuse to call this homework). My goal for all of my clients, is for them to get to a place where they feel good enough to not have to come back to see me again. In order for that to happen, I actively teach skills in session sometimes, have the couples practice in front of me, and I then can provide feedback.

This is one of the most effective ways that I have found to create sustainable change for couples. Once all of that is completed we say goodbye and you have successfully completed your first couples counseling session.