Couples & Relationship Counselling Melbourne

For clients facing relationship struggles who are seeking marriage or couples counselling with a psychologist, we have compiled the below information help you know what to expect from couples therapy at our Melbourne CBD and Geelong practice. 

Our Couples’ therapists in Melbourne will seek to work with you as a couple and an individual to improve your relationship. Seeing someone for help shows dedication in itself and a happy resolution is the aim of a relationship counsellor. Melbourne couples get the opportunity to talk openly in a safe environment to resolve underlying issues. Sometimes this involves working out together what has gone wrong, checking that both parties are committed to the relationship, and then teaching skills and tools to improve your relationship. The main aim is to heal past hurts and focus on improving closeness, connection and intimacy.

Our psychologists specialise in couples therapy, relationship counselling and marriage counselling.

Regardless of the type of relationship, our job as relationship specialists is to be more than a mediator. It is to take you through a process. To make sure we’re heading in the right direction we track our progress as we go.

What you can expect in a Couples Therapy session?

We use a range of approaches to relationship therapy in Melbourne including the following:

• Emotions Focussed Therapy (EFT): gets you to focus on the underlying core emotions, rather than the content of conflict. Helps for dealing with and healing past emotional hurts and resentments.
• The Gottman Method is John Gottman’s evidenced-based principles for making happy relationships: gives you tools/skills for communication/conflict, improving intimacy and closeness.
• Overcoming sexual issues: such as lack of intimacy/desire, sexual pressure, incompatibility issues, problems with communication, etc. Sometimes individual therapy is needed at the same time.
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: identifying mutual values to give common future goals, and ultimately direction in your relationship.
• Schema Therapy: identifies each person’s unique life-traps (we all have them!), which usually stem from childhood, and helps the couple to understand why they act the way they do towards one another (e.g., pushing each other’s buttons!)

How can counselling improve the relationship between a couple?

Couples therapy has proven to be very successful at increasing communication within your relationship. Two-way, honest and respectful communication is the centre of any healthy relationship and is the root cause of many issues between partners.

Our qualified psychologists can help you communicate more efficiently by giving you a set of skills, allowing you to explore more rewarding and satisfied interactions with your partner. These skills equip you to interact more openly and honestly with your partner, which will help aid feelings such as anger, frustration or resentment to diminish. As these feelings diminish it is not uncommon to find that look at your partner in a new way – one where appreciation, honesty, respect and admiration are now commonplace. These feelings are vital for any happy marriage or relationship, and there is no reason why they should not be present in your relationship once more.

The Next Step?

The important thing to remember is that, as the research shows, the kind of treatment used is not as important as the relationship between you, the couple and the couples’ counsellor in Melbourne. Considering marriage or relationship counselling in Melbourne is the first step towards a happier and healthier life. Please contact us for more information on sessions.