Couples consultations and family members or entire families consultations are regular meetings with a psychologist, aimed at improving the quality of relationships and resolving emerging difficulties and conflicts. Sometimes accumulated negative emotions prevent mutual understanding and recovery from a crisis situation. The psychologist helps to move towards change to eliminate behavior supporting problems and works on deepening mutual understanding. The psychologist also helps in conducting a joint dialogue, in resolving conflict and reducing anxiety associated with it, and supports the forces of marriage that restore the emotional health of partners.
Psychologist allows for better understanding of oneself and the relationship, relations with others. He also discovers new horizons for those who live in the belief that nothing will change in their relationship.
If there is a need for a deeper understanding of the causes of existing problems in a relationship or marriage, family genogram analysis is used. This analysis serves to understand intergenerational messages affecting the current functioning of the relationship.
The effects of change are obtained by:
- learning constructive ways of communicating: speaking, listening, expressing emotions and proper interpretation of the content heard
- setting and modifying expectations towards a partner
- analyzing differences in the perception and understanding of specific situations
- reporting needs and learning how to meet them.
The couples and families consultations are addressed to all those who encounter difficulties on their way, negatively affecting their joint functioning and mutual relations. There is no specific age group, seniority or orientation. There can be many reasons for starting the sessions, each relationship is different, just like the people who create it. Often these are people who have experienced the betrayal of a partner; they cannot communicate with each other; they feel that they have burnt out in this relationship; they want to rebuild the feeling that united them; want to improve the quality of life together.
The essence of the meetings for couples and families is mutual respect.
By providing the right conditions to conduct a conversation and support shown to each party, the psychologist helps clients express their emotions, thoughts and beliefs as well as understand the experiences and feelings of the other party. During the session, we try to find the cause of the conflict by analyzing the expectations and behavior of both parties. Most often, it turns out that the turning point of sessions is the discovery of their own distorted beliefs about both themselves and the partner.
Reflective look at yourself, your behavior and thoughts are important. Patterns and beliefs play a big role in the perception of yourself and others. This is an effective form of assistance for people experiencing difficulties in relationships. A prerequisite for successful therapy is the willingness of dialogue from both partners. It can be understood in many ways – the very beginning of dialogue between partners can be a success.
What does marriage, family and couple consultations look like?
The first meeting is always devoted to psychological interviews – the psychologist collects information about the couple, their life together, the past, and also strives to precisely define the purpose of therapy by the partners. During subsequent meetings, using therapeutic techniques, he tries to look at the expectations, standards and beliefs that a couple, relationship, and people live on a daily basis to help find a way to improve their quality of life.
Most often, couples report in cases of conflict or crisis that are difficult to bear by both parties. They want to return to the time when mutual understanding and love gave fulfillment in the relationship and allowed to build the right relationship.
However, there are couples who need help and psychological support for many other reasons.
Couples therapy aims to support in the field of:
- resolving conflicts between spouses and problems affecting them,
- coping with particularly difficult situations, such as treason or divorce,
- joint decision-making and differences in looking at many issues, such as raising children, sexuality or financial issues,
- work on yourself and support for the other half,
- looking for ways to approximate mutual relations in the case of disharmony in a relationship, such as different characters or interference by third parties,
- and other.