Relationship Counselling
Healthy relationships are an important key to our emotional wellbeing & yet many of us accept unsatisfactory connections & fear sharing our feelings & needs. Synergy Counselling works with couples & families through times of stress & strain to regain harmony.
RELATIONSHIP COUNSELLING
Creating Emotionally
Fit Relationships
There is a huge amount of advice and some excellent tips on the internet and in books about making and sustaining a healthy relationship. Ultimately people will come to Synergy not for advice, but on how to move from being stuck, moving beyond the anger and working on ways forward to a healthy relationship. There are many aspects to work on in a growing relationship and key aspects of a good relationship will no doubt rely on the couple and family. Things like mutual respect, stability, having common interests, trust or a having a commitment to going the distance, being affectionate or tender and establishing a healthy sense of space.
Synergy can provide tailored couples therapy to suit your needs and get your emotional relationships fit again. In person and online sessions are available.
How Healthy is Your Relationship?
Perhaps it is important to acknowledge from the outset that relationships are difficult and incredibly complex and take a huge effort to make them work effectively. Healthy relationships are an important key to our emotional wellbeing and yet many of us accept unsatisfactory connections and fear sharing our feelings and needs.
Relationships are an important key for stability, affection, affirmation and emotional wellbeing and yet, the majority of couples put little energy into relationship building or growth. Couples often end up blaming the other for not meeting their needs without actually telling them what their needs were! With this lack of relational investment most relationships become functional.
People end up putting their energy into the wrong things sometimes to compensate for lack of relationship and instead get busy with their career, work, hobbies, home, holidays and physical fitness and just hope that their relationships will take care of themselves. Being functional can mean that couples may spend hours talking about home improvements, holidays, children and personal goals and yet spend no time discussing the state of their relationship. This is where the problem begins!
components to a healthy relationship
- The ability to communicate which requires good active listening, speaking authentically and honestly.
- Taking responsibility for what and how I talk.
- Talking about things that matter!
- Being affirming and encouraging and expressing your love to each other.
- Touch and affection are massively important in maintaining relational health.
- Equitable patterns of behavior is also incredibly important.
TYPICAL THINGS THAT COUPLES SAY TO COUNSELLORS
- “We have grown apart”
- “We don’t talk anymore”
- “S/He just seems angry all the time”
- “We have fallen out of love”
- “There is no intimacy in the relationship – we are like good friends co-habiting”
HOW EMOTIONALLY FIT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP?
- When was the last time that you spoke to your partner/family about how you feel about your relationship?
- How often do you talk about sexual intimacy?
- Is your relationship developing or has it become functional?
- How much time do you spend developing emotional intimacy?
SHORT COURSE ON RELATIONSHIPS
# Hug More – Yell Less
# Listen More – Criticise Less
# Smile More – Gripe Less
# Touch More – Judge Less
Larry Wright
“James really nailed the core issue which enabled us to re frame and
re-energize our relationship – thank you”
“James really nailed the core issue which enabled us to re frame and
re-energise our relationship.
thank you”
Time to Rebuild
Relational Muscles
If you are going to maintain a healthy relationship you will need to exercise your emotions, employ a relational coach and enter an emotional and relational gym programme. If you don’t work on your relationship it will not provide you with what you desire. There are some key moments of relational stretching creating a tension that provide opportunities for growth.
One of the key stretch times is having children – couples move into survival and the focus naturally goes outward and parents do what has to be done to look after the children, get to work and somehow get personal needs met.
Typically intimacy can falter, even disappear and internal separation occurs with an expectation that personal and sexual needs are shelved. This can often be the start of an internal separation and the beginning of infidelity either psychologically or physically.
Key stretch points in relationships
The end of the ‘Honeymoon’ period where relationships move to the next phase of seeking to love someone ‘not like me’
Having children – most relationships move from intimacy to functionality
Key transitional stages in life including losing or moving jobs, retirement or moving house.
Midlife – typically between the ages of 35-55, which is a transitional stage of life between the first and second halves of life. This can turn into a crisis when the struggle to leave the first half challenges us with the lure of youth, something fresh, a sense of missing out and sexual fantasy. Moving through this as a couple can be complex, but when the work is put in this passage can be navigated successfully.
rebuilding broken relationships
Top 10 Reasons Couples & Families come to Synergy
Communication issues
Infidelity & trust issues
Sex and sexuality issues
Lack of intimacy/affection
Mental health issues
Unhealthy anger expression
Managing children
Midlife transitions (drifting apart)
Struggling with grief, loss, bereavement
Relational emotional growth