Couples Therapy: Find Hope and Love in Your Relationship
Bitesized Blog:
Does this feel familiar?
Is there tension or isolation in your relationship. Are you speaking different languages or feeling unheard? Has betrayal broken your relationship? Or, is the safety and trust you need shattered by conflict?
You don’t have to feel alone, isoated, or unsupported in your relationship. Your relationship doesn’t have to be that way.
With the right support you can learn how to build a sense of understanding, value, safety, trust, and connection in your relationship. Build the love and intimacy that you want with each other.
Read on to you can build the relationship that you want.
Feel together in your journey.
Mealsized Blog:
Your Path to a Thriving Relationship
The goals of this blog are:
To offer resources and information to help you in your relationship, and
To illuminate why things can feel stuck. And how couples therapy can be a resource for your relationship, when barriers or obstacles are hard to overcome.
Rather than facing what might seem unsolvable alone, it’s a place to get the understanding, compassion, and support you need to overcome your obstacles.
So you can unpack and un-stick your issues, and get the sense of connection you want.
What is Couples Therapy?
Couples therapy is different to individual therapy because it is centred on your relationship, and the relationship that you want. Whereas individual therapy is focussed more on the individul and their needs. My work with couples makes space for each of you to be together, and be supported, in building the relationship you want together.
And you can have both, even if they are different. You can choose the type of therapy that feels most relevant now, or have couples therapy alongside individual therapy (with another therapist). Giving you the right environment for your relationship, alongside the right specialist individual support you might need to feel available for your relationship. E.g., individual work focussed on trauma, or for issues that stem from outside of your relationship, where you need to be the focus.
Every couple is unique, so I weave together the following approaches, to give couples the welcome, understanding, and support they need find the relationship that feels right for them.
Common Issues in Relationships
Communication
What if you want to reach out, but something keeps you apart, or you both feel unheard and misunderstood. How do you build a bridge accross that divide, to get the understanding and emotional connection that you want?
Communication is so important.
It’s needed for each of you to know where you stand, and to feel valued, respcted, loved, and desired. And needed to figure things out together, and to resolve problems and issues before they escalate into full-blown crisis, conflict, or a sense of un-bridgable distance.
If you still feel like you are on different planets, then think about couples therapy as a way to build the star chart you need to find your way back to each other, and overcome any barriers or obstacles that get in the way. So you can Feel heard and understood.
My lived experience of neurodiversity in relationships, family, and the workplace helps me to connect with, and understand different ways of communicating and making sense. To me - difference is normal, and I begin my work with clients by finding where each person is coming from.
Using that as the right place to start.
Emotional Distance
Do you feel like you’ve grown apart, living parallel lives? Yearning for intimacy and closeness, whilst feeling like you’re drifting apart.
Emotional distance often stems from unmet needs, unspoken resentments, or simply the overwhelming pressures like careers and parenting. While parts of you yearn for connection, there is often an underlying sense of safety in that distance. Keeping you apart. With the right understanding and support, you can feel safe and supported enough to move from the distance, forming a deep and secure connection in your relationship.
If you feel emotionally distant, I will support you in figuring out your communication and processing differences, each of your needs and the and individuality and difference that makes your relationship rich and interesting. Discovering how each of you can be you, and also reach out and be connected with each other.
Crisis
Perhaps you’re caught in a repeating loop of crisis and conflict. Each one leaving you more distant, lonely, hurt, or scared than the last.
Arguments and conflict can feel like shaming attacks. Eroding trust and safety. Leading to withdrawal and reinforcing a profound sense of rejection, misunderstanding, and hurt. A reinforcing cycle where you need to defend yourself in your relationship, you need to be vigilant. You may never have been shown how to resolve and recover from conflict.
Find the safety and containment you need from your therapist to be able to step out of that reinforcing cycle, and be supported in learning for yourselves how to work out differences and restore connection in safety. Knowing that you can work things out together.
Betrayal
Has a betrayal has left you shattered, as if the trust you once shared is destroyed.
Things like infidelity, or breach of trust, can lead to a profound sense of betrayal. Secrecy, shattered trust, and overwhelming shame and anger can feel impossible to overcome. And leave you feeling in crisis.
Find the safety and containment you need to uncover what happened, and why. Have a compassionate space to be supported in working through the issue together. Diffusing any shame and imbalance of power. So you can build the trust you need to feel available, close, and connected in your relationship.
Intersectionality
Culture, neurodivergence, gender, LGBTQ+, and other aspects of individuality and diversity need to be understood and accounted for. Within your relationship, and by your therapist. Because they shape who each of you are: each of your needs, and your communication differences. I think about the people in the relationship, to help you figure out and build the relationship you want.
As a therapist who is also neurodivergent and navigates family life that includes neurodiversity, I bring a lived understanding to the therapy room that goes beyond textbooks. This personal insight, combined with my professional training, allows me to see and understand the nuances of communication, processing, and sensory experiences within your relationship, particularly those involving neurodivergence.
To decode communication styles, bridge gaps, and cultivate safety, trust, and authentic connection, understanding, and depth in your relationship.
Sex, and Desire
It can feel like the brakes are on with intimacy and desire. Like they are missing, and nowhere to be found.
In couples therapy, you can learn more about how your past experiences, or trauma, shape each of your attachment styles. And understand that any defensive behaviours stem from wounding past experiences, defenses that you once needed to feel safe and Ok. Learn about each of your ‘brakes’, and discover your ‘accelerators’! And the environment you both need to feel free to enjoy the intimacy and sex that you want together.
I will creat a space for you to have open dialogue around desires, preferences, and crucially, to understand any sensory or cultural differences that need to be accounted for in your sexual experiences. Helping you to rediscover and establish the joyful, fulfilling intimacy you both long for.
Overcoming Barriers, and Meaningful Change
My training in Transactional Analysis (TA) psychotherapy, and the Bader Pearson Developmental Model, and use of Imago Relationship Therapy means that you are welcome to bring complex and chalenging issues to couples therapy. We'll explore the often unconscious patterns influencing your interactions, understand how your past experiences might be showing up in your present relationship, and equip you with practical tools to shift destructive cycles into pathways for growth and intimacy.
Being trauma-informed, and trained in a range of approached to trauma-focussed therapy, I offer understanding, and account for trauma in my work with you. Transforming crisis into a space where you can make choices, and learn that it’s Ok to disagree, and that you can recover from a sense of rupture by figuring out what you both want and need instead.
Yes I have resources and approaches to facilitate change. And I can give you those tools whilst working at depth. Uncovering and making sense of the underlying barriers to meaningful change.
To unblock what might be leaving you feeling stuck to begin with.
Your Therapist: A Relationship that Matters
It’s important to find the right therapist. Who gives you the containment, support, encouragement, and understanding that you need to build the relationship you want.
That is why I offer a free 30min initial consultation over Zoom to all couples. To help you to find the right therapist for your relationship, for this part of your journey.
Find Hope For Your Relationship
It's common to feel disconnected, unheard, or caught in cycles of conflict. Grappling with communication breakdowns, emotional distance, navigating a crisis, or healing from betrayal. Those experiences are valid and understandable.
Your relationship is a story that is still being written, and you have the power to shape its next chapters. Taking that first step towards support can feel significant, and it’s a powerful investment in the relationship you desire.
When you feel ready, you are welcome to get in touch and book a confidential, no-pressure conversation. You can explore what's possible for your relationship, and discover the right path for you.
