Couples Counselling: When it’s a Bad Idea and Won’t Work
Every week couples come in for Couples Counselling with different issues and different backgrounds. Surprisingly perhaps, there is one key ingredient which defines success for those couples. These Top-Ten Tips are areas to think about to help to make a decision about starting couples counselling.
It is not about the reasons that have brought them in whether that be infidelity, frustration or something else . The central element for all is about a state of mind.
Successful couples have at the start of therapy an attitude that:
- A relationship or marriage is a work in progress.
- A belief that they can change individually
- A preparedness and readiness to make changes.
If you don’t have that attitude on starting therapy, but have an open mind, it is important for you to get there in the first session. The alternative is that therapy is unlikely to be successful or probably very time consuming and costly.
There are other obvious issues which make it hard for therapy to work its “magic” for your relationship:
- Just Going Through the Motions
- Not Being Honest in Therapy
- Not Relating to the Therapist
- Not Prioritising Therapy
- Maintaining a New Relationship whilst in Therapy
- Not Saying or Letting Your Partner do the Talking
- Sense of Humour
Ken McLeish is Principal Therapist at Reflexions Counselling and Therapy in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Reflexions provides counselling and therapy for a range of issues including couples counselling and marital therapy. He can be contacted through the website: https://counselling-newcastle.co.uk .
Information contained in this blog is not a substitute for face-to-face therapy. It can only ever be one view of a situation and may not be applicable to your situation. The work here is a personal view which may change over time and should not be taken as representative of Reflexions Counselling and Psychotherapy.
Resources
More resources can be found on Reflexions Counselling and Psychotherapy Couples page:Couples Counselling Resources
