I am a couple’s therapist and coach who works with a very solution focused approach, I am committed to finding positive outcomes. My job is to help you reach your goals needing as little sessions as possible.
When working with couples I work in six block sessions, with a check in after every six. I am fully committed to every couple I see, working hard between sessions to bring the most possible help that is needed.
The reason my work is shorter than some therapists is that I incorporate coaching as well, giving clients lots of handouts and work to do between sessions. I do go back into people’s history but only to explore how this might be triggering them within the relationship. I will give you handouts to work on between sessions to help you experience a new deeper level of communication.
When I work with couples, I am focusing on the issues people bring and what solutions will help. If one person within the sessions feels the need to explore in more depth their own issues, I suggest seeing an individual counsellor who can give them space and time to honour this.
- We will have a session together
- We will have a session individually each
- We will look at communication techniques, with worksheets
- we will look for triggers, patterns, and feeling stuck
- We will look at how our past might be fuelling our triggers
- We will look at different ways we show love
I offer my clients a powerful and successful approach to fixing their relationship struggles. I am an experienced couple’s counsellor who has worked with many different couples over the past 6 years. I combine my counselling skills with coaching work in order to facilitate the best possible outcome.
What kind of issues can counselling help with?
I can support couples who have experienced affairs, both emotional and physical. I can help with couples who feel the romance is dead, or who have different sexual needs within the relationship. Sometimes one person’s way of connecting sexually is different from the other individual’s needs, and I can help you to mutually connect on an intimate level.
Couples may row constantly without really knowing why the arguments escalate every time, and my role is to enable them to understand why this is happening and where the dynamic may originate from in their childhood. I also look into the different ways people show love, and how important it is to have space from each other in a relationship.
Couples with children can experience problems when they have opposing views on child-rearing and parenting can trigger significant anger and frustration towards each other.
What outcomes can I expect from counselling?
After embarking on a couples counselling programme, you can expect to come away feeling heard, understood and validated. As a couple, you will learn how to communicate with each other in effective ways and how to express your needs with clarity.
You will also be able to gain insight into each other’s triggers and how to support each other as a team. There will be a healthy balance in the relationship, and a growing ability to show true vulnerability with each other.
Sometimes couples can get stuck communicating ineffectively, by using sarcasm, criticism, sulking, blaming, withdrawing or shaming, and through counselling, you will learn how to express feelings honestly and constructively.
Prior to counselling, you may have worried about bringing up a sensitive subject with your partner, or your conversations may have felt like they were going round and round in circles, with a building sense of frustration, but after attending counselling you will feel that disagreements can be talked through effectively with empathy and understanding.
How long do I need to attend counselling?
Each session is 1 hour long, and we work on 6 session blocks, evaluating how we are doing along the way. You may decide to terminate the counselling at any point, but usually, my work with couples is 6-12 sessions long. We will find out what outcomes you wish to achieve through attending counselling and will work on a plan of action together as a team.
These are some of the issues which I have experience working with:
- Infidelity: lack of trust following an affair
- Different parenting ideals
- Lack of intimacy or conflicting physical needs
- Communication breakdown
- How financial stress impacts the relationship
- Anger issues or aggressive behaviour
- Alcoholism or drug addiction within the relationship
- Drifting apart emotionally or physically
When looking at some of these issues, we may explore the following features which contribute to the unhappiness within the relationship:
- How our childhoods impact our relationships with each other
- How experiences in previous romantic relationships affect our current relationship
- How we may trigger each other unintentionally causing friction between us
- How we may avoid or distance ourselves from our partner to protect ourselves from getting hurt
- How we may use passive-aggressive ways of communicating which may cause the other person to react
- How we may project our past experiences in relationships onto our current partner
- How we may be afraid of expressing our needs
I will work with you on building relationship resilience; this means finding practical methods of overcoming issues within the relationship by using different resources such as communication exercises and conflict resolution.
“We are born in relationship.
We are wounded in relationship.
And we can be healed in relationship“
Harville Hendrix
I offer a free 15-minute phone consultation for you to get a sense of how I work as a therapist and to answer any questions you may have.
Please contact me for more information or to book your first session using the following methods, or visit my contact page
Call/Text: 07846 477726
paul@pauljamescounselling.co.uk
Couples Counselling in: Bradford-on-Avon, Chippenham, Corsham, Keynsham, Saltford