Therapy for Couples and Relationships
​Our relationships can carry a significant weight in our lives. With so much on the line in our important relationships, getting it right matters. Doing therapy together can bring a new perspective, new skills, and can help your relationship mature and evolve along with you.
Why You Might be Considering Couples or Relationship Therapy
No matter what it looks like from the outside, all couples and relationships have their challenges. Nobody has a perfect relationship. People often start to think about seeking therapy when they are facing these kinds of challenges:
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Having the same conflict over and over
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Feeling distant and detached from your partner
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Struggling to feel understood or appreciated
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Difficulty expressing how you feel or communicating clearly with each other
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One (or both) of you have ADHD and it expresses in ways that are challenging for your relationship
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One of you is considering leaving the relationship
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Challenges working together on shared goals or integrating different values in life
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Facing a big decision together
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Working through past hurt or betrayal
While many people notice these challenges coming up in their primary intimate or romantic partnership, we may face these challenges in other relationships too, such as between siblings, adult children and parents, business partners or colleagues, or close friendships. All of these relationships can benefit from therapy.
How Couples Therapy can Help
Couples counselling offers a place to talk things through with a third party present, which can help us slow things down, stop fights from turning into trainwrecks, and gives us an opportunity to listen and be heard in new ways. We can also begin to see the patterns that happen between us, giving us a bit more perspective on what’s happening in the relationship itself as well as what is our individual part of the pattern.
Therapy can help couples and relationships:
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Learn tools and skills to improve communication
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Get more clarity about what’s happening between you
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Feel safer and more connected with each other
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Develop healthy boundaries
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Recognize both each person’s needs and the needs of the relationship
Seeking couples counselling is a sign that you want to have a better relationship with someone who matters to you. It’s not about finding fault or laying blame, but about bringing some curiosity and care to understanding the dance that’s happening between you so that you can begin to take some new steps together.
What to Expect in Couples Counselling
Your first couples or relationship session is usually scheduled for 90 minutes so that we can take our time hearing from each person and getting a clear picture of what’s happening between you, as well as hearing about your goals for therapy.
Subsequent sessions are shorter, although some couples do prefer a slightly longer 75 minute session for ongoing sessions.
Throughout our work, my focus is on ensuring that it’s a safe space for everyone to speak and be heard. I will bring respect, curiosity and compassion to whatever is coming up between you. I may invite you to try out some exercises or skills in session or between sessions, and everything is optional. I bring both a trauma-informed and neurodiversity-affirming lens to my couples work, and you will not be expected to participate in ways that feel unsafe or overwhelming.