Therapy and counselling can help with just about any kind of problem. Basically, therapy is about helping people to cope with the challenges that life has given them, and will continue to give them.
The best therapy does not try to provide you with answers, but rather helps you to find your own answers by thinking about things in a different way, becoming responsible for your own emotional reactions and developing new ways of coping with the problems that come along.
Answered yes to any of these questions?
Why not take the opportunity to learn how to resolve issues in your relationships, deal with anger, improve communication and create healthy relationships. Phone or email today and speak with a counsellor.
Almost everyone can benefit from relationship coaching. Why? Because it is better to learn how to prevent problems than to wait until they develop and then try to deal with them. It is also easier to resolve conflicts when they first develop and there is relatively little ill feeling than to address the issue years down the track when the situation has escalated.
Very few of us have any idea what a really harmonious relationship actually looks like because we were not involved in one when we were growing up. If our parents had a bad marriage, we only learned how to do what doesn't work. If our parents never argued or raised their voices, we only learned how to have a conflict avoidance marriage.
Nor were we taught how to have a harmonious loving relationship outside of the home. Our schools gave us intellectual and physical education, but not emotional education.
Very few of us learned to resolve conflict respectfully and lovingly. Very few of us grew up learning that a harmonious loving adult relationship involves two people respecting and trusting each other, being able to communicate clearly and honestly and having equal rights, opportunities and responsibilities. Many of us expect our partners to know instinctively what we want and need. In reality, we must respectfully communicate our wants, needs and expectations in order to increase the probability that they will be met.
Some of us feel that we've had a basically good life but are unexpectedly caught in the anguish of indecision, blame, guilt, fear or grief and want to gain clarity so we can move forward in our lives and/or decide whether to stay in or get out of a painful relationship. Others of us have been so traumatized or abused in our childhood/infancy that nurturing and supportive relationships seem like an impossible dream.
For all the above reasons, most of us could benefit from some relationship training.
Sometimes people don't recognize some of the early warning signs of relationship breakdown until it’s too late. Here are some of these early warning signs:
People often hope that if they ignore a problem that it will go away. Unfortunately the reverse is usually true. Early effective help/education/training can make a big difference to the quality of our relationships.
Five things that you can do that will help both you and your counsellor maximise the benefit of your counselling sessions to you:
1. Be as open and honest in the information you provide about your problem to your counsellor as you can be
2. Be as active in your participation in the counselling process as you can be, including doing your best to undertake agreed tasks between sessions
3. Ask questions to clarify anything you do not understand, and let the counsellor know if there is anything that you don't agree with or like about the counselling process or the impact on you
4. Demonstrate respect and consideration to counsellor and other clients by making an effort to be punctual in your attendance
5. Keep appointments where ever possible and give as much notice as you can if you are unable to attend