Does Couples Counselling Really Work?
Why should we attend couples counselling?
Couples counselling can be very effective in helping you resolve the difficulties in your relationship, and some couples counselling is more effective than others.
The first factor that affects how effective your couples counselling is, is how well trained your therapist is in couples therapy. Relationship counselling is a very specialised field, and requires specialist training over and beyond individual therapy and psychology training.
Relationship dynamics are often at the core of why you are having problems that you can’t sort out on your own, and we need to be able to give you insight into these (in a non-blaming way) to help both of you see with new eyes the “dance” you may have inadvertently got into. This new perspective alone often clarifies and softens much of the resentment and blame you may have towards each other.
There are a number of schools of methodology in our field, and each couples counsellor will usually have their favourites, but it is always interesting to note that time and time again the research shows that no one type of their methodology always performs better then another.
The next essential ingredient in couples counselling, is the therapeutic relationship you form with your therapist. You both need to feel that your counsellor “gets” you, hears you and understands you for you to trust them and make progress as a couple.
Your therapist also needs to have had at least a few years of experience as a couples counsellor. Having experienced the full range of issues that are possible in a relationship gives your therapist a broad range of experience to help you, both in terms of often normalising what you are experiencing, which can be helpful, and knowing how to resolve your particular issues as a couple.
Good couples therapy also includes help and support for you in communicating your authentic feelings, and just as importantly, how to listen effectively. You’re not going to have a great relationship without learning these fundamentals.
How to make the most out of couples counselling
What do you need to bring to the counselling session to make it as effective as possible?
Firstly, you need to be able to reflect on your own behaviour and own what may be your own contributions. Most dynamics in a couple include two people interacting, so it’s true to say that mostly we all contribute in some way to what’s going on in our relationship dynamic.
Secondly, it can be helpful for you to reflect on what are the actual issues for you in your relationship at this time. Having some clarity about these can speed up the process because your therapist will be asking you about these.
And then thirdly, being willing to commit to some changes for you, to be able to action them, and follow through on them makes a huge difference to relationship improvements, and when both of you have that level of commitment, miracles can and do often happen in many of our couples.
Will my partner change if I bring him/her to relationship counselling?
The question of can people change is always an interesting one. The short answer is yes, we can all change absolutely anything about ourselves, if we have a strong enough desire to.
So the question many people have on their mind when considering whether to come to relationship or marriage counselling is: “If my partner hasn’t already changed the things about himself that I most have problems with, will he or she be able to do it with the help of relationship counselling, and just as importantly, will those changes stay, or just fade away with time?”
To answer this question more fully, it is important to understand that we come into this life pre-wired by way of our personality type. The personality system I find exceptionally helpful in understanding why we do the things we do, without being conscious of it, is the Enneagram. We have written about Enneagram in another blog.
So we each have tendencies towards doing things a certain way. Whether we continue to do things this way or change depends on whether the results of these actions are positive or negative for us. If we are experiencing either positive benefits, or the absence of negative impact on ourself personally, then we will continue to do what comes naturally.
If, however we start to suffer from the impact of these natural tendencies, either as internal difficulties, or as difficulties in interacting with others or the world, then we can do 1 of 2 things:
1. Blame others or the world in general
2. Look at what in us needs to change for us to start getting a more positive outcome or experience.
Now, plenty of people take the first option, but that just makes you feel like a victim or cynical complainer- no chance of happiness there.
The second option is the healthiest way to go. Usually the extent of our pain will determine the extent of our motivation to change. It is usually as simple as that.
That is why often we can get the most stunningly positive changes in relationship counselling when a couple has got to the stage of being so sick of their relationship the way it is that they decide it is either make or break: we either fix it or leave it.
In relationship counselling also, we explain that for a relationship to have deteriorated, there will be contribution from both sides. In counselling many thousands of couples, I have yet to find a couple where it is all one partner’s contribution.
Couples often find it amazing how when we work on both sides together, how improvements can be so radical, so that the whole process can gradually become a joint project, rather than an adversarial one.
When talking about the stickability of changes, it is important to manage these carefully, and to have a check-in process in place to ensure each member of the couple honours their commitment to the other,on an ongoing basis.
What if one partner wants out?
There are occasions where each partner of a couple comes to counselling with differing wants from the process, for example, one partner may want to work on the relationship and the other wants to leave it.
On these occasions, we do our best to honour both needs while also exploring what deeper needs there may be, and encouraging partners to explore all possibilities before ending the relationship.
So, on these occasions, sometimes one partner in the couple may not be as happy with the outcome as the other.
But in the vast majority of cases, couples are very happy with the outcome of their couples counselling, often saying they’re feeling renewed feelings of love for their partner that they thought they had lost forever.
How do we find the right couples counsellor for us?
At the Hart Centre, we specialise in relationship, marriage and couples counselling. We understand that every couple’s dynamic is unique, and our couples counsellors, therapists and psychologists specialise in all aspects of relationship issues that may arise. Our expert couples counsellors are located in Melbourne, Canberra, Perth, Wodonga, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Toowoomba, Hobart, Sunshine Coast, Townsville, Sydney, Adelaide, Wollongong, Mittagong and Central Coast. Contact us today on 1300 830 552 to book today, or fill out our enquiry form online.
Related Articles to Couples Counselling:
Does marriage counselling and relationship counselling really work?
Psychologist Interview With Joe (Relationship Counselling Sydney)
Psychologist Interview with David (Marriage Counselling Perth)