Couples Therapy
Introduction
Relationships are fraught with everything from minor misunderstandings to severe infidelity, trauma, and betrayal.
Couple/partner therapy can help you rediscover the love, concern, and compatibility you once had with your partner. In some cases, couples decide they no longer have a basis for a relationship, and therapy can help them clarify their relationship goals going forward.​​​​​​
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I am a UKCP registered systemic family and couple psychotherapist, qualified since 2005. This was my second professional training following an early career in social work. I worked in the NHS for 20 years as a family therapist specialising in young people’s mental health, including particularly the areas of self-harm and eating disorders.
As a family therapist, I have helped many young people to recover and get on with their lives, working closely with them and their parents/carers. Working with people and those who are most significant to them is something I love best about family therapy. The developments people make in therapy become their new normal, understood, supported and lived by those close to them.
When I left the NHS in 2023 it felt like a natural step to shift from a focus on children and mental health to working with couples. In my personal life, my perspective on couples and intimate relationships was enriched as my children moved into the world of adult relationships and I had a renewed sense of how our pasts, presents and futures live within our couple relationships.
Approach
‘’EFT is a collaborative, structured approach to working with partners, families and individuals that fosters the creation of secure relationship bonds. It is an affirming, caring, supportive way to get out of the 'stuck places' we all get into.
​The emotionally focused relationship therapist develops a strong therapeutic alliance with both individuals and helps couples move beyond fighting and withdrawing into closeness and security.​
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The EFT approach facilitates partners to move from distress to loving reconnection by transforming negative patterns of interaction into safe emotional connection. Based on the science of emotions and attachment theory as well as humanistic and systemic theories, EFT has a high success rate in achieving secure, resilient relationships in couples.
EFT increases partners' ability to deal with conflict, helps them resolve old problems, and creates a deeper sense of emotional, physical and sexual intimacy and safety. Many people have 12-20 sessions but it is not a quick fix for relationship problems.
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Therapy can continue for more than a year where substantial change is wanted and partners have hurts from this relationship and from their childhoods that need healing. EFT can offer consistent and lasting positive change.’’
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There are different approaches to couple work. I have trained in Emotionally Focussed Therapy (EFT) for Couples because it has a high success rate in achieving secure, resilient relationships in couples. Moreover, I love how the process of EFT connects immediately with the core concerns of each partner, within a therapy that creates enough safety to work on what is most important.
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At the start of therapy I meet with the couple jointly and also with each person separately. This allows me to get an early understanding of how things work between partners and to learn about each person's relationship history, perspectives and concerns. The couple gets a sense of whether they (separately and together) feel they want to work with me. I am able to clarify if couple therapy is likely to be helpful or if there are any contraindications to continuing.
People usually come for couple therapy when there is a high level of distress in the relationship; they usually feel stuck, don't know how to move forward and don't want to make things worse. From the start I focus on creating enough emotional safety in the ways we talk in the therapy process so that each person can start to feel safe enough to talk about what is important.​
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This is a description of EFT by Sandra Taylor, Co-Director of the British Emotionally Focused Therapy Centre (BEFT):
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This is a link to the British Emotionally Focussed Therapy website where you can learn more about the approach: www.beftcentre.org
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