Couples Counselling

Why come for Couples Counselling?

  • You’re in a relationship where the same issues cycle around and the same dynamics play out – and you’d like to explore what’s underneath.
  • You’d like more depth and connection in your relationship.
  • Nothing is ‘wrong’ but you’d value a safe space in which to talk together about some things in the presence of a third person.
  • You want needs met from the other but don’t know how to go about requesting them.
  • You’re becoming more aware as a person and would like that consciousness to be more apparent in your relational space.
  • You’re up for learning new relationship skills.

 

What outcomes can you expect?

Depending on the direction your particular work takes, you can expect to:

  • discuss things with your partner that have been hard to bring up
  • display increased empathy as you learn to identify with your partner’s feelings
  • recognise trigger points earlier and respond differently
  • decide together some relationship goals, going forward
  • feel more at home in your relationship, or reach clarity that it is time to end it

 

What I bring:

  • deep listening and my full presence
  • understanding and empathy
  • an ability to be in the presence of difficult emotions
  • open-mindedness and a non-judgemental attitude
  • a capacity to see the wider situation and to wonder what might be going on in the background, or at a deeper level
  • trust in the process and in your own deepest longings

 

Experience

  • Decades of offering support, guidance, facilitation, mentoring and coaching in a variety of settings
  • Presencing and mediation work in relation to conflicts between and among staff and clients in my ten years as deputy/acting director of a community centre in Porirua East
  • Setting up ‘Embracing Conflict’ in a UK spiritual community where I lived for two years, using Restorative Justice techniques
  • Working with couples as a professional clutter-clearer, helping them move from stalemate to hearing each other and moving forward
  • Using Non-Violent Communication (NVC) techniques to explore what unmet needs might lie behind difficult emotions, and what requests the couple choose to make of each other.
  • Exploring what traumas may have been carried forward from earlier generations to affect the present, through Family Constellations facilitation.
  • Trainings over an eight-year period (and on-going practice in twos and threes) in presencing and subtle energy work with Stephen Busby (UK)

(link to Qualifications page)

 

Space

A room at Park Road Therapies, Miramar, Wellington. This space has a peaceful, friendly ambience, and a grassy area behind it, to step outside and take time for yourself within a session.

Or we can work on Zoom

 

Charges

1 hr $120NZ

1.5hr $160NZ

 

Disclaimer

I am not a registered counsellor or therapist. This work came to me naturally over time. I bring a wide variety of trainings, as mentioned above, and a capacity to assist people to find their truth.

I have supervision with a psychotherapist based in the UK.