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Couple Counselling

Let’s face it, any relationship can be challenging. Every relationship is unique and at times can face difficulties. Most often a couple attends counselling when the relationship is in a crisis, feeling helpless and uncertain as to how to deal with the issues showing up within the relationship.

Relationships can be rewarding, where we feel safe and comforted and at times they can be deeply challenging where we feel disconnected and confronted. As priorities change in the relationship, such as children, family, friends, work commitments, financial burdens, this can change the balance of the relationship, increasing stress levels and at times, emotionally disconnecting a couple.

Relationship counselling can help you explore the way you relate to your partner within the relationship. Yes, communication is an important factor in any relationship, but we need to look deeper than just the way you communicate.  Healthy conflict resolution is imperative, the way we deal with conflict can either make or break a relationship. YES, there is such a thing as healthy conflict resolution.

Couple counselling can support you in developing important life long skills that can be adapted into your everyday life, that enhance love, communication, intimacy, trust and togetherness. Having a strong and stable relationship allows us to feel more grounded and connected to “self” and to others.

All relationships have the potential to be healthy, loving and fulfilling.  This can only happen when we allow the time and space for self-reflection, where we allow ourselves to look deep within, as we begin to understand who we are, where we came from and what we are hoping for in our here and now and possibly our future. (I am more interested in helping a couple be present in the here and now).

As a couple therapist, I understand how difficult and challenging it is when a couple are faced with a relationship that feels like it is not working anymore. The helplessness can feel overwhelming and stand in the way of finding any kind of resolution. We may begin to push our partner away, creating a distance that we believe feels safe, but really, the distance is creating more hurt, individually and as a couple.

Let me help support you, in understanding yourself and your relationship, as we gently unpack the difficulties, the challenges and also look at the love that bought you together in the first place.

I am also available to help couples separate in a loving and caring way, especially if you have children. We need to understand the impact of separation on children and create as much emotional safety as possible for the children during and after the separation.

My role is to help the couple understand what they bring to their relationship individually or what they may have carried over from previous relationships or inherited family trauma.

Relationship can be challenging, yet when we begin to understanding our “SELF” (more deeply) then the relationship has a chance of surviving. Once we know ourselves more deeply, we stop blaming the other, and we begin to take responsibility for our relationship, so love can finally flow again.

All relationships crave a sense of calmness and connectedness. Counselling can offer some insight into what is possible.

What brings a couple to therapy?

  • Arguments (including fighting over parenting styles)
  • Mismatched Libido
  • Sexual dysfunctions
  • Infidelity
  • Blended families
  • Poor communication
  • Lack of general intimacy
  • Unresolved problems and conflict
  • Personal traumas
  • Domestic violence
  • Insecurity/Lack of Trust/Jealousy
  • Parenting
  • Financial problems
  • Grief and loss
  • Separation/Divorce
  • Illness of one partner
  • When one person decided to work on themselves and out grows their partner
  • Family conflict (in-laws and other family members)
healing ourselves, heals others

I do believe that when we heal ourselves, we heal our relationship and we heal our children. When we heal our self and our relationship, we heal inherited trauma by breaking the cycle. If you would like to know more about inherited trauma, I highly recommend you read “It Didn’t Start With You” by Mark Wolynn. I recommend that every adult on Earth read this book.

Bernadette’s Definition of Counselling

Counselling is so much more than talking, its an opportunity to tune into a language that we don’t often give a voice to and that is our inner world. So many people avoid what they feel inside and try and fix it with solution focused techniques. I want to hear your inner world speak to me as we gently explore all aspects of self, unfolding the layers of life and eventually tapping into the authentic being, the true aspect of self .

COUPLE COUNSELLING APPOINTMENT IS $150.00

Healing yourself, heals others
There is always hope when healing a couple