Couple Counselling can help you both to:
- Recognise patterns and modes of communication and relating;
- Understand each other;
- Learn to respect each other and re-establish trust and boundaries;
- Communicate in an easier and more constructive way;
- Explore what is keeping you stuck as a couple and discover ways of moving forward;
- Learn how to respond to each others’ needs
- Reflect on how the past operates on the present
Couple counselling is for anyone who is having difficulties in their relationship.
I provide a safe and supportive setting for you to discuss the way you feel and behave towards one another and to explore how your difficulties have arisen. The focus is on the relationship between you. I aim to create with you new ways of dealing with these problems.
The starting point for relationship counselling is that both parties want to attend the counselling and want to work on their issues. The Counselling can be challenging as it will involve being open and honest, this will however be in a supportive environment.
I am happy to work with two people in a romantic relationship or marriage as well as other relationships for example such as family or friendship.
Relationships with others are significant to our sense of happiness; being in a couple is one of the most challenging things we can experience, it can touch our deepest vulnerabilities. Respect in a relationship, often means having an understanding of what is me and what is not me. I have worked with a lot of couples who have thought that their partner has the same characteristics as them and have not recognised individual differences. Boundaries have become blurred and couples can treat each other as an extension of themselves. Counselling in this situation can be about redrawing the boundaries and understanding what differences in relationships means. Some people have believed there is one right way of doing things.
Other Couples have developed defensive patterns of relating, often involved in mutual blaming attack and withdrawal. Constructive communication skills are essential but something we are not always taught.
Sometimes a problem can go deeper. Our early relationship patterns do provide patterning for many of our later relationships. Since most of us did not have a perfect childhood, we develop coping mechanisms, defence patterns or take insecurities into our current relationships. Counselling can be about understanding these deeper patterns and insecurities and to work out the best way for working with them.
To discuss how counselling may benefit you and your relationship please contact Jackie Parkes on tel: 0121 454 2209 or mob: 07796 836739 or email: