Auckland PSI^TM  Institute

Relationship counselling offers a safe place where each person can be heard, first by the therapist, and ultimately by each other.  This type of therapy tends to be more efficient than individual therapy because you get to work through your relationship issues together, as a team. It helps to clarify the issues. Sometimes the therapist acts as a translator, but not as a referee. It helps to start by exploring the strengths of the relationship, and what makes for positive mutual experiences.

Sometimes understanding the history of the problem in your relationship and the histories that each individual brings to the relationship can help to uncover familial patterns that may be repeating themselves through the generations. When this is the case, We can use a genogram- an emotional family tree of interactional patterns - to help you understand where some basic assumptions and communication styles may come from. Understanding this will help you see each other more accurately, with less intrusion from past relationships.  You may begin to remember what drew you to each other, and what you have to offer each other over the long run. 

Sometimes understanding the history of the problem in your relationship and the histories that each individual brings to the relationship helps to uncover familial patterns that may be repeating themselves unconsciously. I may help you to draw a genogram- a family tree of interactional patterns, to help you understand where some basic assumptions and communication styles may come from. As you start to see each other more clearly, simpler forms of relating start to take place. You may remember what drew you to each other, and what you have to offer each other.

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists (LMFTs) are uniquely trained to help people deal with their relationships (or lack of) both in individual and in relationship or systems counselling. Training and experience in conflict resolution teaches us how best to intervene in relationships in trouble that are friendship or work based as well. Relationships can bring out the best and the worst in us, cause us heartbreak and ecstasy.  Our romantic relationships, be they heterosexual or gay, within or outside of the institution of marriage, intimate, distant, or from afar, effect all other aspects of our lives.  So too do our relationships with friends, coworkers and other family members.  They are too important to treat lightly. 

Link to: Family Therapy Page, Relationship Issues

10 MYTHS ABOUT "HAPPY COUPLES"

*   * This article does not apply to couples struggling with physical or sexual abuse. Much stronger interventions are required in those cases to first and foremost keep all parties physically safe.  For resources on this topic, please see: http://www.womensrefuge.org.nz