​My work with couples primarily uses Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), developed by Dr Sue Johnson, a collaborative, structured therapy approach that fosters the creation or recreation of secure and supportive relationship bonds.

My role with you is to be a process consultant – I am here to help you to identify the negative cycles you find yourselves in time and time again and work towards understanding and breaking these negative cycles. EFT seeks to understand what is going on underneath these repetitive cycles and to help you to rebuild supportive and loving bonds within your relationship. EFT aims to help you to develop new ways to understand one other and to better your communication when the needs of the relationship aren’t being met. With an impressive evidence base, EFT works to promote secure, resilient individuals and successful relationships between partners and within families.

How do sessions work?

For the first session, you will jointly attend an assessment session together so that I can hear more about what is currently happening and get a sense of how you relate to one another. Each person will then have one or two separate sessions to explore more about you individually, including the history of your relationships, your upbringing, culture and your current well being. Following this, we will come back together and I can suggest that type of intervention is needed. I may suggest other therapies if I feel they would be more suited to your needs. If you’d like to hear more about EFT, we can speak on the phone but as it’s a little more complicated with two people and the therapy itself takes a little more time to be explained properly, I would suggest booking an initial consultation appointment which can double as an assessment session should you wish.

Couples sessions are conducted via Zoom and run for 50-55 minutes and work through three phases of treatment. Longer sessions (80 minutes) are available at request.

You may wish to read Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson which is a great companion guide and introduction to EFT.

Discernment Counselling

Some couples will have reached a place where they’re unsure if they want to move forward with the relationship. This is understandably, a really tough time and for some people, it can feel like jumping into reparative couples therapy might not be what’s best for you both. At this point, what would be better is a process of discernment where you come together to think about whether you want to continue the relationship. I can offer the space to do some time-limited sessions where the focus is on making space for where you’re at, perhaps understanding how you came to be in this place as a couple and thinking about whether your paths align moving forward or whether you would like to end the relationship. This work usually takes place over the course of 5 or 6 sessions, with the aim for you to get to the end with an answer on whether separating or continuing the relationship is the best course for you, and what that requires for you to move forward healthily both as individuals and as a couple.