- Relationships are an integral part of our lives. This includes our relationship with ourselves as well as with others including partners, family, friends and work colleagues.
- How we make relationships and how we communicate in these relationships is likely to have been learned in childhood and shaped throughout our life experience.
- All relationships face difficulties sometimes and it is how we manage, react and respond to them that is important.
- Relationship therapy focuses on what each partner wants from and can give to each other without losing sight of the individual personality. This may include a variety of issues including understanding each other’s intimacy needs and improving communication; establishing a new relationship with your partner if you decide to end your current relationship and how to co-parent focusing on your children’s needs; and, how to avoid repeating old patterns in new relationships.
- Sometimes how we have learned to communicate and manage conflict in our relations with others is no longer helpful or seems to lead us into a recurring pattern that we would like to change.
- If there is something you would like to change about the way that you relate to others or the way your relationships tend to develop then relationship therapy might be helpful for you either with your partner or on your own.
- In relationship therapy I provide a safe, non-judgemental and confidential place in which we can explore together what realistic and achievable changes you would like to make.
- Sometimes this will include working out what choices you have, what can be changed and what cannot. It may be helpful to discover how you have come to feel and respond in a particular way so that you can make appropriate changes. I may also be able to offer you a different perspective on how you currently see things.
What happens at the Assessment Session (first appointment)?
- At the initial assessment session I will explain my confidentiality and disclosure policy (see confidentiality page) and ask you a few standard questions. Then you will have the opportunity to talk to me about what you feel the problems are and I can discuss with you how I can help you. It is at this session that we can explore what kind of therapy will be most helpful to you.
- For individuals, it will involve one session. For couples, assessment will involve three sessions, one with you and your partner and one with each of you alone. I ask clients to allow up to 50 minutes for their first appointment and each subsequent session.
A note on childcare arrangements
- It is not normally appropriate for children to be present during a therapy session for ethical reasons and because I have a duty of confidentiality to all my clients.
- If you have children please make sure that you have adequate childcare arrangements in place so that your therapy session can proceed.
