Maintaining Bonds, Healing Relationship

What is Couples Counselling?

Couples counselling is a type of therapy for couples, this therapy also known as relationship counselling. In simple words, it means to support couples, address their relationship issues and provide ways to strengthen their connection. The main objective of couples therapy is to improve the relationship between two partners. It may focus on developing communication skills, improving conflict resolution skills and creating a sense of well-being in the relationship

At Harbour Counselling, we understand that each and every couple is different. Our experienced therapist provides a safe and non-judgmental place that helps couples to talk about their concerns, express their feelings, explain their needs and through this process they improve their understanding of their loved one and learn effective strategies to deal with all their challenges. Our counsellor’s guidance and personalised counselling services will be beneficial to address concerns like communication issues, lack of intimacy, high conflict, trust issues, or many other relationship problems.

We provide online-based therapy sessions to couples. Our couple counselling service throughout Australia, including Melbourne, Geelong, Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Hobart and surrounding area. Our sessions are accessible and flexible for the couples who require therapeutic support. Every online session will be private and confidential, we will prioritise your relational needs and support you to build a healthier and happier relationship.

Couple Counselling

How Can Couple Counselling Help You?

Couple counselling can support in all ways to help the couple to make their relationship stronger and strengthen their bond, where long-lasting positive change can be made. Couple counselling benefits couples in a variety of ways:

Communication Improvement: Communication is the foundation of any healthy relationship. Through couple counselling, couples can develop their communication skills. Couples will be able to express their feelings and needs in an open and safe manner. For instance, through active listening techniques and effective communication styles.

Conflict Resolution: Couples counselling trains the couple with strategies and tools on how to manage day to day conflicts that naturally arise in relationships—managing them through effective communication skills and maintaining emotional safety. Techniques used by our therapists may include Gottman Method and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy which emphasizes empathy and understanding in the resolution of conflicts.

Enhanced Intimacy: Whether there are some intimacy problems within you or you guys just want a renewal of this passion that once burned, couple counselling is able to help you with this. Counselling helps in creating a deep understanding of each other's needs and desires and developing a stronger relationship on the grounds of emotional connection and loving acceptance.

Transitory Therapeutic Support: Marriage, parenthood, illness, changing careers—these life transitions can strain the relationships. Couples counselling can offer guidance and therapeutic support in navigating the changes together. In other words, it creates resilience and helps to develop healthy coping skills to overcome challenges together as a unit.

Mental Health Benefits: Study shows that overall mental health is enhanced by investing in your relationship through therapy, as it helps in reduction of stress and anxiety associated with relationships. Couples counselling can lead to better communication and helps to solve hidden problems and reach a more positive emotional state for both partners.

Personal growth: Counselling enriches personal growth in any relationship. In couples, it helps to develop self-awareness and empathy toward each other's perceptions. It also allows them to deeply and easily understand themselves and their partners. This kind of personal growth makes relationships more fulfilling, enriching and meaningful.

Evidence-Based Approaches: At Harbour Counselling, the techniques we used are evidence-based that provides long lasting and effective results, especially in our marital relationship counselling. In our techniques we included the Gottman Method, developed by renowned psychologist John Gottman, focused on how to build a strong friendship and greater communications in a positive way. Finally, we borrow some aspects from EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to customize and tailor our approach for each couple's specific needs.

At Harbour Counselling, experienced therapists like Nikita can help you cultivate a stronger, healthier, more rewarding relationship.

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The Impact of Counselling for Relationships

Emotional closeness between partners, trust, intimacy and shared vulnerability, serves as the glue between two partners in a healthy and fulfilling partnership. Here is more information about how couple counseling works to create and deepen intimacy:

Improved Communication Skills: Effective communication fosters intimacy and conveys what your heart wants and needs. Studies have shown time and again that counselling enhances a couple’s communication skills, gaining their confidence to openly share and express their feelings with each other and develop better understanding. Having enhanced communication helps to deepen the emotional connections and strong intimacy bond between couples.

Conflict Resolution and Emotional Safety: Counselling presents effective ways for couples to resolve conflicts and problems constructively. Through couples therapy, partners promote emotional security and trust by understanding each other’s perspective and point of view on issues that can cause hurt and resentment.

Counselling on Intimacy Issues: Couples therapy can address problems related to intimacy, such as sexual desire discrepancy, emotional distance, and unmet intimacy needs. With the full-fledged support from our relationship therapist, couples are able to deal with these issues and enhance intimacy by developing an understanding about each other’s desires and learning ways to reconnect physically and emotionally.

Mutual Understanding and Empathy: Counselling brings in an understanding between couples about the needs, fears, and vulnerabilities. According to research, through fostering empathy and understanding one another, couples can build intimacy, thus creating a stronger emotional bond. It is in doing and living with the habit of supporting each other emotionally that they establish a foundation of trust and closeness.

Long-Term Relationship: Research also shows that couples who engage with couples counselling services are relatively more satisfied with their respective significant other in the long-term relationship. Negotiating through relational challenges and learning the healthy ways of relating to one another puts them in a much better position to sustain intimacy and navigate future life challenges that are yet to be experienced.

Relationship Dynamics and Personal Growth: Couples counselling always encourages personal growth within the relationship, promotes self-awareness and emotional maturity. If an individual seeking therapy starts to grow and evolve, then that change leads to new developments in their relationship and improves couple dynamics, possibly promoting a chance for greater intimacy and connection to take place. Therapists may help couples discover their own love languages and the way each expresses and receives love in order to give and receive it in the right way.

A Turning Point: when a relationship has suffered emotional pain and resentment for several years, couples often consider the route of separation or taking a break. However, counselling can help resolve deep and underlying issues and rediscover that empathy and understanding that reminds them of the strength in their partnership. A therapist can help couples recognize maladaptive habits and tendencies getting in the way of their connection.

The First Step: The thought of counselling intimidates couples. Most of the time, couples are scared and worried of being judged or consider it unhelpful. But literally thousands of people found couples counselling online a helpful experience. Taking the first step, therefore, gives the couples clarity, focus, and tools to create a more compassionate and equal partnership.

As per the research, online relationship counselling is considered as effective as conventional forms of couples therapy.

If you are looking to book online couselling for yourself like an individual counselling or to attend along with your partner, Harbour Counselling is the place to be. In fact, our evidence-based approach helps couples in developing a greater intimacy build a relationship of their dreams. So invest in the happiness of your relationship today. Contact us and get started on resolving your relationship issues and improve satisfaction in your relationship.