When attending Relationship Counselling in Joondalup, it is important to risk honestly facing what you deeply long for, including the disappointment and feelings of mistrust to change. It is important to be courageous and name the things you want to change. Identifying the core issues and appropriate goals is the first step to improving your relationship. Perspectives on the problem issues can vary greatly between couples. Couples often find that there are ongoing troubling themes related to dominance or passivity in the relational styles that causes conflict. There may be patterns of criticism or an over sensitivity to criticism. There may be defensiveness or reactive anger. There may be life goals and values that need exploring or decisions around money management. Some might be suffering from unrecognized depression or being impacted by childhood hurts. Others might be having a hard time agreeing with each other when it comes to their shared vision for the future. Whatever the issues may be, a commitment to exploring real concerns is a first step to change and improving things.
Conflict is inevitable in our marriages or any relationship for that matter. Healthy functioning couples have learnt to agree and disagree in ways that are not destructive to their partnership, but serve to enhance the resiliency of the relationship. Many couples get into unhelpful fixed, predictable patterns of communication that feels cyclic, or recurring. If this is happening in your marriage relationship it is a good idea to seek the guidance of a professional relationship counsellor. With couples counseling you’re able to safely revisit and revise ways of reaching out to and understanding your partner. With effective communication, problems can be dealt with and old, fixed and unhelpful patterns can be discarded. When you meet with Mark Roussel to do Counselling in Joondalup whether it is individual or relationships counselling he will guide you to address the long terms issues affecting you.
Relationship Counseling in Joondalup with Mark can be the beginning point of learning great ways to effectively and confidently move from long standing unresolved bitterness, to confidence in new found relational skills that deepen emotional connection, develop deeper levels of trust and vulnerability.
Joondalup Marriage Counselling
Married couples are encouraged to seek help to resolve their relationship problems rather than prematurely deciding on separation. Separation and divorce can be devastating for couples and children alike and have a long lasting negative impact. Marriage counselling in Joondalup with Mark Roussel focusses on healing those unresolved issues and transforming brokenness and sadness into hopeful connection.
Behind much conflict in relationships is our deep longing for intimacy and to know your impact is desired. Only will our needs be met in the context of an intimate caring relationship. We all need to be close to someone. Everywhere people long for closeness to someone. It is healthy and appropriate to desire a deep satisfying and lasting relationship. We should not make apologies for desiring this kind of relationship. It is clear from a casual look at human beings, that we are made for the belonging and security of being truly loved and accepted and also to be of significance to another, to be able to impact that person.
Marriage Counseling in Joondalup with Mark Roussel is deeply personal. We are deeply personal beings, more than just physical bodies. We are all people who have capacity to love, be purposeful, thinkers, choosers and emotional. If you asked a group of people what they would really desire most of all, in terms of their deepest longings of their hearts, they would most likely say they wanted acceptance, meaning, love, purpose, value, worth. Some of the greatest fears humans have is that they are unable to love or are unlovable, and when it comes to the end of life most people concern themselves with whether they had loving caring relationships and their impact meant something. Most of us when we look inside can put our fingers on a deep desire to love and be loved, to accept and be accepted. When we sense that another person deeply cares for us or when we have compassion for another person something profound is stirred inside us. These are our deepest longings and defines what it means to be human. Marks focus in Marriage Counselling Joondalup is to promote these core human needs. Marriage and being partnered fulfils core needs not only for love but also to have a sense of being able to influence another, in meaningful ways. To be in a relationship makes people feel there is meaning and in a tangible way experience wholeness and a fullness involved in doing something important that has deep meaning.
Your participation in Marriage Counselling Joondalup requires courage and a decision to be willing to be there and offer a commitment to work on the relationship in active ways. Courage to do something to change things is not something that evolves naturally. Our misguided agendas will automatically not yield results.
Too often couples are relating from their self-protective walls, possibly with a mood of, “I can handle this”, “I’m together and have control”, “I’m ok and I assume you’re OK”. Confident smiles often mask deep longings for more connection. We deeply desire to be in relationship with someone who knows us as we are, worried, shattered, scared, angry, lustful, and to be accepted anyway. The goal is to vulnerably show myself. Rather than complain about how bad I feel, I am willing to share deep feelings. To be open and vulnerable and reveal myself in non-demanding ways, sharing what I desire and hoping for a caring response. Marriage Counselling in Joondalup with Mark Roussel encourages you to take the courage required, knowing that possibly their partner will continue to not notice or avoid. Some common responses an intimate partner opening up, may be to defend, explain, apologize quickly, go on the attack, advise, express distain, or correct them, when what they really need is help to express their feelings and to know that you accept their feelings and can validate what you hear such as reflecting back to them what you hear them saying, gaining clarification, exploring deeper and extending for example, a simple, “I can see that you feel…”
Mark invites you to engage in Marriage Counselling in Joondalup to help you improve your marriage by assisting you and your partner to express your feelings in a safe and respectful manner and help you explore how to respond to your partner when he or she shares their emotions.
Couples Counselling Joondalup
Couples Counselling Joondalup. Generally to begin with the counsellor will see both people to establish the agreement to work on couples issues and establish goals. There may be an opportunity for both people to have individual sessions to begin with if that is seen as necessary or it is requested by the couple. Some counsellors’ prefer to refer the couple to other counsellors for that purpose and then bring them back together at a later date. Often a counsellor will suggest separate sessions if the couple are too conflictual. Or where couples work is contraindicated in the situation of domestic violence, trauma, mental illness, or substance abuse and a referral may be deemed more appropriate for a specialist service to address these presenting issues prior to couples work proceeding. Mark Roussel the Couples Counsellor in Joondalup will be able to assist you gain the best possible assessment when entering counselling.
In the initial session of counselling the counsellor will direct things and assist the couple relax and feel comfortable. Primarily the counsellor is aiming to establish a trusting quality relationship between himself and the clients, as almost half of successful outcomes in therapy are attributed to the quality of that connection and the trust the client has in the character of the person helping them.
For Couples Counselling Joondalup the first session is about information gathering which is a basic gathering of historical data. The real work of therapy will occur in the second session when the counsellor has a clear understanding of the patterns and themes presenting. Some common directions the counsellor may take to begin with may be to:
Explore each partners experiences of past personal counselling and if it was helpful
How they think change happens, and what it would take to change
How they got together, how they fell in love, what they appreciate about their partners
What issues have arisen in the relationship
How long the problems have existed
An exploration of how they have attempted to deal with the problems
Why they think the attempts to change have not worked
What they expect from couples counselling and the counsellor
What goals each would like to state
Where they would like to see change in themselves and the other
Briefly how they see their past being linked to current patterns and themes
What should you achieve through couples counselling Joondalup
Couples Counselling Joondalup: Reshape and reframe
The effective relationship counsellor works to reshape the perspective of the couple and assist in helping the couple reframe how they view the relationship by raising awareness. Objectivity for both is important, to be able to step back and rethink in an objective way. Turning away from the blame game is essential as it is destructive for the relationship.
The counsellor will study how the couple interacts and reflect back to the couple his impressions. This may include process commentary on how the couple relate both individually and as a couple. It will include developing a deeper awareness around what they are not aware of about themselves and their relationship. This touches on their individual and joint blind spots or their unconscious behaviours and ways of being. An effective couples counsellor will have a skill set to assist a couple with awareness raising around motivations, blind spots, hidden agendas, and styles of relating. Predictably for group and couples settings the here and now and active processing work from the therapist makes interactions come alive and intensely personal.
Encourage new patterns: Joondalup Couples Counselling
Mark Roussel the couples counsellor in Joondalup, will assist the couple change how they relate to each other. He will communicate the nature of the styles of relating and how that impacts himself and others, this processing commentary will work to bring self-awareness, and a cognitive assimilation of what both people do. The counsellor will work to bring about shifts in emotional states that are appropriate and congruent for the person realizing that their behaviours may be hurting their partner. The counsellor may actually ask for an appropriate expression of primary emotions such as sadness as patterns of behavior are challenged and the couple are invited deeper into meaningful change and intimacy. Embracing of emotional states are normalized and encouraged
Normalize once feared emotions: Couples Counselling Joondalup
Effective couples therapy at Couple Counselling Joondalup, involves assisting the couple bring forth their emotions rather than avoiding uncomfortable feelings. Mark Roussel will encourage the expression of appropriate emotions and thoughts and encourage the couple to feel less afraid of fear and sadness as they express their desires for emotional and physical closeness. Couples who have had parents that had limited tolerance for expression of emotions communicate that these are unsafe and to be feared. The effective couples counsellor will counter this narrative with corrective experiences and create an environment to encourage new attachment opportunities and occasions for expression of needs for security. Couples are then able to express needs for touch, and allow themselves to express their fears and anxieties around not getting their needs met in a secure way. Secure emotional attachments are then encouraged and old patterns can be broken down. In this way a positive reinforcement of a once feared experiences is challenged and potential for new levels of intimacy opens up for the couple
Quality of the communication: At Couples Counselling Joondalup
An effective couple’s counsellor will focus the couple on the quality of their communication. This is modelled by the counsellor constantly and a large part of social learning mirroring within therapy sessions. At couples Counselling Joondalup Mark Roussel will direct the focus on not blaming and non-ridiculing, of offering the expression of true feelings, of being supportive, and at times a direct coaching for empathic responses. The couple’s counsellor in Joondalup will set up the couple dialogue as a constant pattern whereby the couple addresses each other instead of speaking through the counsellor to the other person. They are encouraged to build on their strengths, and are encouraged to have soft start-ups to conversations, to offer statements of repair and to allow greater levels of partner influence.
Be Glorious
The couples counsellor at Joondalup entices couples to live out of their best qualities and to build on strengths. Much of couples counselling exposes whats wrong. Couples counselling will also focus strongly on the rich and attractive qualities each person has. Mark Roussel the couples counsellor points out the couples strengths, and builds a narrative around looking ahead to the future in a positive way. Humans are essentially future orientated and are at their best when doing the things that they enjoy the most and expressing gratitude for that. This also builds positive self-concept and promotes mental wellbeing. The main point of encouraging strengths is to assist the couple gain more enjoyment from their partnership.
On a behavioural level the couples counsellor at Joondalup may ask the couple to do certain homework assignments and practice certain behaviour that pleases the other. The counsellor may also encourage the couple to begin to speak positively about the relationship as a corrective narrative. When the couple begin to speak a positive narrative about the person they live with it, changes how they feel about that person and creates positive warm emotions needed for a relationship to thrive. Homework assignments are valuable ‘grist for the mill’ exercises to bring back to sessions for discussion and assist in the real work of therapy. You may be asked what was challenging about certain homework and why there was resistance to doing exercises, and be asked to unpack that experience in session.
The Person who is the Couples Counsellor Joondalup
Often people are wary of Couples Counsellors taking sides and that their true concerns will not be heard and perhaps their will be partner favoured by the couples counsellor. These normal fears will be addressed by the couples counsellor as it surfaces in counselling.
Couples Benefit From Couples Counselling Joondalup
Stronger and confident as couples experience a more secure relational attachment
Couples learn to trust
Develop refined communication skills, to respond and listen, without harsh reactions
Create shared meaning
Understand your partner’s pain, story, struggles, fears, desires
Build a deeper knowing of each other’s loves and hates and to understand their needs
Develop caring, skilled ways of disagreeing and dealing with conflict
Growing a deeper commitment and walking together, sharing goals
Making Plans come true
Reframing things, and seeing your partner in a more positive light
Understanding positive and negative patterns
Valuing strengths rather than deficit in their partner and themselves
