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 relationship counsellors have helped hundreds of people to develop and maintain healthy relationships in Perth, Western Australia (WA).
Marriage and Relationship Counselling Perth
Getting help and support from professionals can be the difference between divorce or a fulfilling relationship. Our relationship specialists will address problems using a body-mind psychotherapy approach. If you are experiencing relationship problems or a breakdown, a marriage counsellor will work with you to address relationship concerns and specific issues in your couple dynamic.
Negative Interaction Cycles
Negative interaction cycles can perpetuate destructive patterns within relationships, leading to resentment, disconnection, anxiety, low self esteem and emotional distress for both partners. These cycles often involve repeating behaviours such as criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt, creating a toxic environment that undermines trust and intimacy.
Recognising and addressing these cycles is essential to improve communication, rebuilding trust, and restoring harmony within the relationship. Through counseling and open dialogue, couples can break free from these old patterns and cultivate a more positive and supportive dynamic.
Insecure Attachment
Insecure attachment can lead to difficulties in forming and maintaining healthy relationships, often stemming from childhood experiences and impacting trust and intimacy.
Ego
An unchecked ego can hinder effective communication and compromise empathy, creating barriers to understanding and connection within relationships.
Arrogance
Arrogance can breed resentment and distance between partners, hindering mutual respect and cooperation in resolving conflicts.
Jealousy
Jealousy can erode trust and breed insecurity within a relationship, often stemming from unresolved fears and past experiences.
Anger
Uncontrolled anger can escalate conflicts and damage emotional bonds, making it crucial to address underlying issues and develop healthy coping mechanisms.
Greed
Greed can lead to imbalance and resentment in relationships, emphasising material gain over emotional fulfilment and mutual growth.
Poor Communication/Understanding or Problem-Solving
Lack of effective communication and problem-solving skills can impede conflict resolution and deepen misunderstandings between partners.
Ill Health
Physical or mental health issues can strain relationships, highlighting the importance of support, understanding, and seeking professional help when needed.
Third Parties
Interference from third parties, such as family or friends, can disrupt relationship dynamics and boundaries, necessitating clear communication and assertiveness in preserving the partnership.
Couple Therapy Improves Lives
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 & Relationship Therapy
- A relationship counsellor can educate individuals with strategies to improve your resolve communication issues and relationship difficulties
- Talk and communicate your needs clearly without anger and resentment
- Learn the process of working through unresolved issues
- 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”. These early stages 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. Acknowledging and accepting that your partner has a different personality, set of beliefs, opinions, personal history and values is vital. 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 couples 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 relationship counselling they learn how to communicate effectively so they can resolve any relationship issues and get back to having a fulfilling that is enjoyable.
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, mental health problems and fears 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, you can choose between male or female relationship psychologists for couples therapy in Perth.
The basis of our relationship counselling 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 specific 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 such as anger, addictions, poor boundaries or unrealistic expectations are examples of some patterns that can affect your relationship.
In our couples 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 in order to communicate with your spouse more effectively throughout the therapy.
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, why, and what problems each individual is carrying within the relationship. Mature love is built on trust, permitting both partners the freedom to pursue their friends and individual interests without conditions.
At our relationship counselling services in Perth, we explore whether current issues are the same issues that stem from other relationships or resembles dynamics from your childhood. As a couple, you can effectively explore and express current challenges that exist. During the couples counselling, 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.
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, a marriage counsellor from the Energetics Institute can work with you to address your individual issues and your issues as a couple.
How To Choose Marriage Counsellors
When deciding on marriage counselling, it is important to choose marriage counsellors that not only have clinical experience, but also practice what they preach. Richard and Helena Boyd are both psychotherapists and the owners of the Energetics Institute. A married couple of over 20 years and a parent to a teenage daughter, they have managed to steadily worked through 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 fulfilling relationships in a marriage or defacto relationship over time, involves an investment of love, commitment and perseverance.
Healthy Relationships Require Learning Specific Strategies
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 a 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.
Marriage Counselling Is Worth The Investment
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.
Marriage/Couples Counselling Perth Specialists – Bookings
For more information on our counselling services to book an appointment contact one of our marriage counselling Perth, WA mental health professionals today by Clicking Here or if you would like to make an appointment, reach out to us