Couples Counselling

Couples Counselling

Having a great relationship is the dream of every couple but unfortunately, there are many reasons why couples experience problems.

If you experiencing relationship problems or conflict with your partner you may want to get some support and advice from the couples counselling team at the Energetics Institute. Since 2005, our experienced and trained team have helped hundreds of people to develop and maintain healthy relationships in Perth, Western Australia (WA).

Marriage and Relationship Counselling Perth

Our relationship specialist team address mental health problems using a body-mind psychotherapy approach. At the Energetics Institute, our relationship counselling Perth services provide information, support and education to couples so they can have a more fulfilling relationship. If you are experiencing relationship problems or a breakdown, our marriage counsellors will work with you to address the specific issues in your couple dynamic. Issues such as betrayal and hurt, reconnection or intimacy, communication or any other ongoing long-term problems you may be experiencing within your relationship will be addressed.

Through our sessions, the goal of the counsellor is to show you what is healthy and what is not, teach new skills, beliefs and actions that transform relationships to vibrancy, communication, happiness, and sustainability. If you are currently thinking about separation, we can assist and guide individuals through the emotional minefield that divorce is, even if there are children or extended family involved.

Benefits of Marriage, Couples and Relationship Therapy

• A relationship counsellor can teach you effective strategies to improve your communication issues and relationship difficulties
• Ability to talk and communicate your needs clearly without anger and resentment
• Discuss sexual issues and resolve them with sex therapy techniques
• Develop a deeper understanding of yourself and your loved one
• Address issues around managing differences and providing conflict resolution
• Get greater emotional and physical intimacy
• Obtain increased awareness of your feelings and behaviours
• Reinvigorate emotional connection and strengthen bonds
• Re-establish commitments and resolve problems or relationship difficulties
• Resolve depression, anxiety and low self-esteem issues
• Learn skills and approaches to strengthen areas in your relationship
• Provide a safe space where difficulties and conflict can be resolved

Difference Between Romantic and Mature Love

When you meet and “fall in love”, you enter into “the honeymoon period”. This early stage can last a varying amount of time, typically it lasts a maximum of 2 years for most people. This formative stage is what you and your partner experienced when you were initially dating, which solidified a good foundation of genuine intimacy. You were both originally romantically attracted and because of this, you decided to commit long term.

If you really love each other, you will want the best and will allow each other to develop your own individual strengths. You will learn to respect your partner and have a strong commitment to keeping your relationship stable and secure.

Couples who have a mature approach, love and accept each other, without condition. This allows both people to have their own friends and follow their own hobbies or interests. This type of mature love enables you both to come closer together and follow your unique passions. This is one of our primary objectives for couples who commit to counselling at the Energetics Institute.

What our Relationship Counselling and Interventions Involve

Typically, a counsellor will give assistance to both people during a session. However, individual counselling sessions are sometimes recommended to uncover individual problems and explore the implications to determine the impact they have on your relationship. Most people find that after being involved in couples therapy, they learn how to communicate effectively, so they can resolve their relationship issues and get back to having a fulfilling and enjoyable connection.

We often find one or both of you are unaware that you unconsciously project unresolved childhood issues onto your partner. Likewise, you may fall or regress into a child to parent dynamic where you “make” your partner your parent and make infantile demands to meet needs and wants that as adults you should attend to yourself. The counsellor will analyse and make you conscious of these dynamics, so you can work to resolve them. During couples counselling, we have each person express non-judgementally, if they can receive their partner with acceptance, tolerance, forgiveness and compassion.

Relationship Stressors

In relationships, there are many stressors that can occur, such as the arrival of a new baby, or difficulties related to in-laws, step, blended or cross-cultural families. You may find that the original lust, sexuality and eros may be gone from your dynamic. Over the years, you may have grown apart from your partner which may lead you both to separation. Maybe you have underlying resentment or distrust their partner because of affairs or infidelity. When you are in a relationship, you have your own issues to consider, which can mean each of your own unresolved hurts, distortions and fears, which play out over time. You may communicate with your partner in a defensive or aggressive fashion, which eventually may lead to a breakdown.

Couples Counselling

As Couples Counsellors, we can help you resolve your differences, express your needs and communicate more effectively as a couple. During couples therapy, our aim is to help you and your spouse find what you need long-term to live in a stable and healthy relationship. As we are a family team at the Energetics Institute, either a male or female psychotherapist can see you for Couples Counselling in Perth.

The basis of our couples therapy is that early life mirroring and modelling of your parents, forms your beliefs, attitudes and approaches to relationships and partners. In many cases, these unconsciously transmitted dynamics create unhealthy dynamics in your relationship. Each partner is made accountable for your own issues and we work at the individual and couple level to rework your relationship into a healthy state.

Most couples may have a prior history in their relationships and may have had earlier patterns of behaviour that might be contributing to the problems between both of you. Obstacles like anger, addictions, poor boundaries or unrealistic expectations are examples of some patterns that can affect your relationship. In our Counselling sessions, we work with each person’s unique abilities and differences. Our counsellors encourage the appropriate expression of your hurt feelings, resentments and anger.

Couples counselling will bring your relationship into truth through an honest expression of thoughts, feelings, emotions and fantasies you may hold. By implementing these steps in our couples counselling sessions, your relationship will become a positive and stimulating experience for you and your partner.

Relationship Counselling

Our Relationship Counselling recognises many partners go through various stages in relationships. We start by assessing where you are at, and why, and what problems each individual is carrying within the relationship. Mature love is built on trust, this permits both partners the freedom to pursue their friends and individual interests without conditions.

At our Relationship Counselling services in Perth, we explore issues that exist to establish if it’s part of a pattern that exists in other relationships or resembles dynamics from your childhood. As a couple, you can effectively explore and express current challenges that exist. You will learn how to take responsibility for any negative feelings within yourself.

These may be projected onto your partner through blaming, shaming and manipulation. Any contributing personality factors contributors to the failing relationship are addressed and handled. These may include trauma, abuse, narcissism, criminal behaviour, affairs and addictions. Effective relationship counselling can also address mental health issues using a body-mind psychotherapy approach.

As social creatures, we are by nature naturally attuned to creating relationships and building families, tribes and communities. The growth you will experience in working on yourself with one of our relationship specialist therapists, will typically pay dividends and you may see changes which enhance other key relationships in your life.

Marriage Counselling

Marriage is one of the single biggest commitments that you will make in your life. The Australian divorce statistics make for sober reading that nearly 1 in 2 committed de facto or married couples will separate in the first 20 years. Some marriages hit a crisis that requires an independent set of qualified eyes to assess and resolve differences. If you are experiencing problems in your marriage relationship, and you come to the Energetics Institute for Marriage Counselling with your spouse, your Marriage Counsellor will work with you to address your individual concerns and your issues as a couple.

It is important to choose someone whom has not just clinical experience but who has achieved success in how they provide counsel. Richard and Helena Boyd are both psychotherapists and the owners of the Energetics Institute. We also are a married couple who have been together for 25 years and are parents to a teenage daughter. We have steadily worked through our own issues both individually and together as a couple. We are well equipped to assist married people as we have worked through our own issues and used the tools and ideas that we now share with our clients. We know that maintaining a healthy marriage or defacto relationship over time, involves an investment of love, commitment and perseverance.

A lifelong commitment is hard work but worthwhile and takes a mindset and skillset that we do not naturally all possess to make a marriage or defacto relationship work. The insight and understanding of a skilled marriage counsellor, can often avert or resolve the crisis, and prevent the pain of separation or divorce. In marriages, each person may have their own unresolved feelings. This is likely to have a dramatic effect on the relationship as miscommunication and arguments can occur when one partner doesn’t understand others actions.

If you consider that the trauma of relationship breakdown may expose you to the loss of mental and physical health, a significant share of your assets being split, possibly some restriction on access to your children, loss of quality of lifestyle, and expensive legal fees in an adversarial setting, then the decision to spend some time and money doing some Marriage Counselling in Perth, is money well spent. During our Marriage Counselling in Perth, we are also able to help couples face the reality of a dying relationship when that is in fact the reality of their marriage, and assist in a healthy separation process, and personal grieving that ends the relationship or splitting of a family may trigger. One of our Marriage Therapy Specialists will customise the therapy to your specific needs.

Building Healthy Couples, Relationships and Marriages Through Counselling

It is important to note that a relationship is ever-evolving and changes over time. Through experience, each partner grows and evolves, which not only brings new experiences but new thoughts and challenges.

Conflict is common and can occur for many reasons such as sexual habits, poor communication, money, parenting issues, lack of affection and infidelity. Issues such as these can lead to emotions such as disconnection, unappreciation, anger and resentment. Relationships need to be worked on and continually nurtured and valued. Our team of relationship professionals are trained to give advice and support to people seeking marriage or relationship counselling.

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