Couples Counselling & Therapy

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Couples come into therapy at different stages of their relationships. Contemporary Gestalt couples counselling sessions are tailored to the couple's unique situation. The therapist is attentive to the aesthetics of the verbal and non-verbal communication of the couple in session. Couplehood is a dance between two separate and identifiable individuals. This dance becomes complicated when we adopt the "two become one" paradigm. Imagine two people dancing with hands and feet tied to each other perpetually! Being fused with each other like this results in us being in a state of "stuckness", and is not the same as having a connection. In Gestalt couple's therapy, we seek to experience connection; to be in a dance where intimacy and separation, cohesion and independence, acceptance and conformity are all possible. Connection is where we find acceptance, love and solace in the relationship.

The therapeutic work thus entails the repetition of following interventions (and not in sequence):

• observing how we, as the couple, interact with each other,
• seeing ourselves and our partner as separate persons (which may entail self-awareness work in the session),
• deliberate practice in communication (sometimes this may be in the form of role-play or experimentation)
• addressing recurring conflictual themes,
• silence 

Regardless of the stage (and state) of our relationships or marriage, couples counselling can help us grow. The critical ingredient in entering a couple's therapy is the openness and intention of the individuals in the couple to let connection happen in the session. My work as a therapist is to facilitate this form of communication. What happens after that depends on how we channel this new learning in our daily lives.