marriage guidance Archives - The Good Therapy Practice

What Happened to Marriage Guidance?

Paula Gardner — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 16:56:49 +0000

The Evolution of Marriage Guidance: From Advice to Couples Therapy

When I was growing up, struggling couples went to “Marriage Guidance.” While some therapy may have been involved, there was probably a lot of advice. That advice, meanwhile, would have been geared towards the traditional family set-up. Times have changed and many people have two marriages, or perhaps don’t even get married at all. There are serial monogomists, those who practise ethical non-monogamy, blended families and more. There is no set recipe for what makes a successful relationship. Indeed, it would be rather smug and even unethical for a therapist to give out advice based on their world point of view and experience.

Marriage Guidance: A Historical Perspective

The roots of marriage guidance trace back to the early 20th century when organizations like the National Marriage Guidance Council (now Relate) were established in the UK. These early initiatives aimed to address rising divorce rates and societal concerns about the breakdown of traditional family structures. Guidance was typically provided by clergy or community leaders, focusing on maintaining the moral and practical aspects of marriage.

This early model was often focused on the preservation of marriage at all costs.

Shifting Perspectives and the Emergence of Couples Therapy

As psychology and the cilt of self-help grew in popularity, things began to shift. Pioneers like Carl Rogers and Virginia Satir introduced more humanistic and systemic approaches, emphasising empathy, communication, and individual growth within relationships. The focus moved away from simply saving the marriage to addressing the underlying dynamics and fostering mutual understanding.

In the 1970s and 1980s, couples therapy evolved further. Therapists began to consider issues such as emotional intimacy, equality, and the impact of external stressors on relationships. Therapy sessions became more inclusive, addressing the needs of diverse relationships, including unmarried couples and LGBTQ+ partnerships.

Modern Couples Therapy: A Holistic Approach

The Human Givens approach draws on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), The Gottman Method and other disciplines to offer tools to help couples navigate their unique challenges. Much of my work with couples is around fostering effective communication, rebuilding trust, and promoting emotional connection. We might be working through a crisis or break in trust. Equally, we may be improving communications or just rebuilding a sense of connection.

Modern couples therapy does not view the end of a relationship as a failure. Instead, it emphasises individual and collective well-being. Sometimes parting ways can be the healthiest option for both parties, and therapy can help people through that.

Why the Shift?

Couples therapy is no longer about enforcing societal expectations but about helping individuals build meaningful connections, whether within a traditional marriage or any other form of partnership.

If you’d like to discuss couples therapy with me, online or in person, please do contact me.

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Human Givens Couples Counselling

Paula Gardner — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 10:08:20 +0000

As a Human Givens relationship counsellor, my approach to Couples Counselling uses the Human Givens model. In short, a lot of it is about your needs. Everyone has fundamental physical and emotional needs—the”givens”—which contribute to emotional well-being and resilience. In couples counselling, I help partners understand these needs, both in themselves and in each other, to foster a healthier and more fulfilling relationship.

In our Human Givens couples counselling we look at:

Understanding Basic Human Needs

In a realtionship, both of you have needs that must be met for you to thrive. These include emotional needs such as security, attention, emotional connection, autonomy, and a sense of meaning or purpose. When these needs go unmet, individuals and relationships can suffer, often leading to anxiety, depression, or tension within the relationship.

Enhancing Communication Skills

Miscommunication is a common problem in relationships. We will look at practical techniques to improve your communication, encouraging you both to express your needs clearly, listen actively, and resolve misunderstandings with empathy and patience.

Focus on Positive Resources and Skills

You as individuals, and as a couple, often already possess the skills you need to succeed but may not be fully aware of them. I help you recognise and use these internal strengths to meet each other’s needs more effectively.

Solution-Focused and Practical

Our sessions are solution-focused, with the aim of helping couples make real, positive changes in their relationship in a relatively short period. Rather than delving into past traumas or conflicts, the approach focuses on practical steps partners can take to resolve issues and improve their connection in the present. Of course, if something comes up from the past that needs addressing, we have the space to do that.

Understanding and Changing Unhelpful Patterns

We will uncover any unhelpful patterns in your relationship that prevent needs from being met. This might include dependency issues, cycles of blame, or ineffective conflict resolution. We can work on replacing these patterns with healthier behaviors.

Managing Emotions

I share strategies for managing stress, anxiety, or anger, which can all improve your realtionhsip now and in the future.

I offer online Human Givens couple counselling, as well as in person in Hythe and Folkestone, Kent. Contact me to arrange a call to see if working together might suit you.

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Is Couples Therapy Like the TV Programme?

Paula Gardner — Sun, 20 Oct 2024 09:45:32 +0000

Is Couples Therapy Like the TV Programme?

Many people’s experience of couples therapy is through watching the TV programme on Iplayer. Putting aside the ethical issues around confidentiality for a moment, it’s interesting to consider whether real life couples therapy is like the TV programme?

First off, your own session will be private! Any therapist is bound by rules around confidentiality that keeps you safe. However, just like Dr Orna Guralnik, the show’s therapist, every decent therapist will have supervision. This means that they share your story with their own supervisor. Sometimes this supervisor can offer a different perspective, or suggest an avenue to explore that might be helpful. They are also a check and balance to ensure that the therapist is working with you ethically and safely.

Secondly, the range of issues that couples bring to counselling can be as diverse as those on the show. It’s not always about affairs and betrayals. Our past, especially our childhoods, can instil patterns of behaviour that keep us stuck. These sometimes themselves raise issues and conflicts within a relationship. Likewise, a couple can feel like they’ve grown apart and want to use the therapy session as a place to explore how they can recapture their intimacy.

Working with different types of couples therapy

There are many different approaches out there. For a start, they might be called couples counsellors, couples therapists or even marriage guidance counsellors. Some take your early years as their focus, looking at the impact of childhood on attachment patterns for instance. My apparich is Solution Focused. This means that, while we will look at what’s brought you to where you are now, the attention is on what you can do right now to help things change.

This might involve trying out new ways of communication for instance, or some reflective work to notice when certain behaviors are triggered. Although Dr Orna sometimes gives homework, this is a big part of our work together. I believe real change is only made when we embed it into our lives.

We also do work around getting your needs met. These are needs like security, connection, community, meaning and purpose – how can you get these met so that your relationship becomes more of a choice and a joy?

Is Couples Therapy Like the TV Programme?

Of course one might imagine that the couples on the programme have been chosen because they are able to talk on camera, are comfortable opening up, and even, perhaps, promise a little drama. It can be very different in real life couples counselling sessions. One partner may find it difficult to open up, and I have to help them with that before we can unravel what might be going on. A couple that sounds like they are great communicators may, in fact, be very good at talking about everything except what needs to be brought out into the open. Subject matter meanders: one person’s experience of a stressful job may be impacting the relationship. Another person’s trauma may need to be dealt with.

The show tends to concentrate on a few strands for each couple, so that you can see how they move through the issues. Typically, there are multiple strands that we are dealing with. The good thing about this though, is the domino effect. When you make changes in one place, it impacts other things and momentum builds.

Face to face or online couples therapy?

Dr Orna tends to see people face to face, apart from one season which was filmed during Covid. I see clients both online and face to face. This is simply a practical thing. With our busy lives it can be challenging to find times that both people can make in person, especially if there are children involved.

If we work online, I always suggest that people use the time they would have spent travelling to the session, as a time for reflection or grounding, depending on what they need right then.

The Endings

Of course, the TV show has an end of series deadline. Couples therapy is often not quite so definite. A couple might pop back for top up sessions when life issues threaten to throw them off course, and that’s always fine. However, Solution-Focused work, which is what I do, works on giving you tools and changing behaviours so that, even if you want to come back, you do still have tools and a depth of understanding you can bring to any situation, and this will be with you for life.

Free couples consultation

If you’d like to meet me and see if we would be a good fit to work together, you can book in a free online consultation here. If you can’t see a time that suits, or want an earlier one, contact me and I’ll find a slot for you.

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