Couples Therapy

Do you feel like you and your partner keep ending up in the same place and reacting in the same ways that leave you feeling alone and misunderstood?

Do you feel like you just cannot get through to each other and find yourself caught in a never ending spiral of criticism, defensiveness and blame?

Are you exhausted from having the same arguments over and over that come out of the blue, escalate quickly and leave you feeling more like enemies than friends?

Do you avoid talking about what needs to be talked about and simmer inside instead which leaves you feeling isolated and disconnected?

Are anger and anxiety eroding intimacy, affection and sexual attraction in your relationship? Are you preoccupied with trust and jealousy issues?

COUPLES THERAPY CAN HELP YOU TO:

  • Shift out of defensive and reactive patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving by understanding how our past experiences are impacting on our present relationship.
  • Become receptive and open to one another so you can better communicate and begin to repair and re-build trust and intimacy.
  • Develop ways of resolving conflict so that each person can feel heard, understood, cared for and validated.

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Couples often get entangled in repetitive arguments and emotional exchanges that may have little relevance to the issues they are trying to resolve.  Relationship difficulties that couples are attempting to resolve are often emotionally laden and difficult to address.  They affect our sense of safety and security because our emotional attachment is under threat. Couples’ therapy provides the opportunity for expression of feelings in a protected space.  As experienced couples’ therapists we provide the necessary holding, containment, understanding and respect that couples need in order to explore and make sense of sometimes very painful and confusing difficulties.

Pacific Counselling offers an Integrative Relational approach to couples’ counselling.  Our work is underpinned by attachment theory and neuroscience and influenced by Emotionally Focussed Therapy and research from the Gottman Institute.  We hold a developmental perspective which relates the partners’ histories to their present situation.  We understand that human beings derive certain beliefs about relationships based on their significant relationships from the past.  We carry within us memories – explicit and implicit –  of all our relationship experiences dating back to our primary caregivers.  These experiences influence our expectations of all subsequent relationships.  Building a knowledge and understanding of how our past experiences might be impacting on our current  relationship provides the opportunity for better communication, intimacy, healing and enrichment.

Our fee for couples’ therapy is $145 plus 5% GST for a 60 minute session. Supervision is $150 plus GST.