Couples counselling
Wether you’ve just started dating or have been together for decades, wether you are parents or live by an off-standard relationship model - every kind and phase of relationship comes with its very distinctive bunch of challenges. In your couples’ therapy I can help you sort through your emotions, explore the roots of your issues, gain new perspectives and establish loving, solution-focussed behaviour in order to overcome those challenges. Each partner initially bringing their own respective motivations and their own respective levels of motivation into the therapy is not an obstacle at all, but rather the norm. However, a clear willingness to work on the relationship is obviously a basic requirement.
My methods in couples counselling include elements of systemic therapy, emotion-focussed couples therapy, schema therapy and ego state therapy.
Couples
A genuinely fulfilling relationship is not a given. Everyday life absorbs us, chronic conflicts an malfunctioning communication lead to estrangement, breaches of trust to deep rifts. Movies, TV series and social media convey standards that are in every sense far from real love, real people and real life.
good reasons to have couples therapy
disrupted communication
breach of trust and severe mortification
chronic conflicts (e.g. finance, parenting, mental load)
imbalances bewteen the partners
constant dissatisfaction and displeasure with the relationship
lack of mutual recognition
divergent personality development of the partners
jealousy and fear of loss
sexual issues (lack of desire, boredom, conflicting preferences, genital dysfunction without physical cause and much more)
emotional dependence
alternative forms of relationships and their respective challenges
problematic influences of parents / parents-in-law
separation counselling / mediation
As many people seek couples therapy with unrealistic and sometimes bizarre expectations, let me also be very clear as to what a couples therapy is not and will not do: couples therapy cannot and frankly should not change your partner so that they “convene you better”. Couples therapy (unfortunately) neither is a guarantee for reconciliation. That being said - chances of reconciliation are much higher with couples therapy than without. And so are the chances of coming to terms with a separation that may be inevitable for the better of the partners.
Both paths may be rather painful and exhausting ofcourse, but that is the nature of growth; one way or another.
Friends
Although hardly anyone may doubt that friends are among the most meaningful stabilisers in life, we have come to lose the habit of friendship. Increasingly obstructed seems our ability to perceive them for what they actually are: non-romantic companionships in life. Communication issues, disappointments, frustration, breakups, ghosting - all of that and more doesn‘t only occur in romantic relationships, but likewise in friendships. And all of that is rather difficult to resolve and process without professional help, not only in romantic relationships, but likewise in friendships. They are just as worth fighting for. I can advise and support you in your troubled friendships, too.
