Counselling
Extensive experience working with people facing challenges in their relationships and of facilitating change. We provide relationship counselling for clients coming to counselling as individuals, couples, young people or families. The term relationship counselling covers our work as couple counsellors, family counsellors and counselling with individuals facing relationship challenges.
Couple Counselling
As couple counsellors, our role is to support both partners to be able to hear each other’s perspective in a different way or to reach a shared understanding of the relationship. We will explore the difficulties together in a non –blaming environment so that decisions about the relationship’s future can be made together. Our commitment is to help you make lasting changes.
Couple counselling can enable couples to resolve issues that have been ongoing for some time such as:
- recurring arguments that never find resolution
- one or both partners feeling they have fallen out of love
- communication difficulties
- sexual difficulties
- feeling there is no fun in the relationship.
Couple counselling is also effective in supporting couples whose relationship has reached crisis point such as:
- the discovery of an affair
- or one partner thinking about leaving
Other couples come to couple counselling to manage the impact of a life event or life stage change.These include
- the impact of illness
- family death
- infertility
- ‘empty nest’
- retiring
- work changes
- having a child
- managing changes in family dynamics.
Here the work is often about learning to tackle difficulties together rather than struggle on alone. We also work with couples preparing to move in together / get married who want to ensure they have shared expectations for their future relationship together.
Divorce and Separation
We work with couples to help them manage the process of separation or divorce
- with less hostility
- to minimise the impact on children
Facing the loss as a relationship ends is often an important step in moving forward to think about a new future. Counselling can help
- process the losses. This can be done individually or together
- address issues of confidence and self esteem
Sometimes one partner wants to separate and one wants the relationship to continue. Counselling can help manage these opposing stances.
Family Counselling
Family counselling focuses on relationships within families and values each family member’s knowledge and abilities.
Family counselling has shown itself to be supportive and healing when events or situations causing distress affect the whole family.Only one person may be showing the distress but the difficult feelings are often experienced by other family members, often in different ways. Families meeting together can help resolve this.
Family counselling enables family members who care about each other to:
- express and explore difficult thoughts and emotions safely
- understand each other's experiences and views
- appreciate each other's needs
- make beneficial changes in their relationships and lives.
Families come in different shapes, sizes, ages and from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. You decide who is in your family and it is up to the family to decide who should come along.
Individual Counselling
Individual relationship counselling can provide individuals who feel ‘stuck’ or overwhelmed in, or at the end of a relationship.
In a safe and supportive environment we work to explore and make sense of difficult situations and feelings.
In individual counselling we work with our clients in the following situations:
- struggling to let go of what has happened in the past
- loss of confidence / self esteem
- feeling relationships always go wrong
As relationship counsellors we help individuals to recognise their strengths and resources so that they can move forward. Recognising what is helpful and what is unhelpful can enable people ‘do’ relationships differently.
Young Person's Counselling
Young people may need support when are they finding it difficult to understand or deal with strong emotions or behaviours and when it becomes hard for them to talk to those people close to them.
These difficulties may be related to:
- their own developmental issues
- family
- school
- friendships/ relationships
- parental separation / divorce
- bereavement / loss
- emotional and behavioural issues.
Young person’s counselling offers a safe and confidential place for young people to talk about difficulties without feeling they are being judged or talked down to.They are encouraged to acknowledge and build on their own strengths and resources, and so to feel more able to make decisions about themselves and their relationships. Building self-esteem and self confidence is key to a healthier and happier life.