Providing relationship/couples counselling in Vancouver. Couples therapy is a journey of understanding, growth, and connection. This process helps you identify negative patterns, improve communication, and build a stronger, healthier relationship together.
01.
We hear from both of you about your difficulties and assess the interactions and patterns you have created with one another. Developing this picture is the first task of relationship counselling so we can understand the way forward together.
We do this by going through the details of your interactions during difficult times. From this picture, we can begin to understand where you are stuck.
02.
There are typical ways that all couples manage the disappointments and differences they encounter with one another. These develop into predictable patterns that you get stuck in. Once we learn the dance you are having, we can work on changing how you respond.
Our reactivity involves our nervous system (emergency system), feelings, behaviours that try to meet our unmet needs from childhood, the story we have developed about our partner and keep reinforcing, and the ways we are trying to control being hurt. All of this serves to try and protect us, but it leads to distance and separation from our partner.
03.
A large part of the difficulties in relationships is communication: being able to get your message across, hear each other, negotiate your differences, and successfully repair breaches that occur.
Once we have gained awareness of how we are reactive in communication, we can learn new skills. This largely involves learning about boundaries and self-esteem and how these interact and create dynamics.
We learn how to interrupt our reactivity, repair effectively, and negotiate what we want from each other.
04.
Our family of origin is where we learn about relationships, boundaries, and self-esteem. We bring these patterns into our adult relationships, where we are challenged to heal unresolved trauma.
Change is hard for you and your partner. Change occurs in small increments. Understanding that you both have difficult habits to change will go a long way. It takes effort to stay conscious and improve your reactions to each other. In other words, a couple of sessions will unlikely make long-lasting changes.
It can be discouraging when our partner reacts in the same patterns. However, when we can keep this big picture and celebrate the times we do make changes, it can bring into the relationship encouragement and compassion.
When we are in conflict we respond from the fight or flight part of our nervous system. So we can approach couples therapy from this perspective where we are looking outwards preparing for danger and looking for danger. Often when people start therapy they react to their partner as a danger.
Even though there may be things we need to express to our partner that bother us it is important to look inwards. Each of you will only become a more effective partner if you can change your reactions and your patterns. When we focus on waiting for our partner to do something it creates a stalemate.
Maintaining emotional safety can cause your relationship to become dull and lack life. No one feels comfortable about facing their fears or taking the risk to speak from the heart when the stakes are high, but it is the time we learn the most.
This is typically in the form of not knowing what you want to work on and being unclear about your goals both individually and together. This can lead to talking about what is most on someone’s mind or going over the last fight you had. Both of these are unproductive. At the beginning of counselling we spend some time identifying your goals. It is useful before each session to reflect on these objectives and the next step.