couples counselling tagged posts

January 30, 2024,  Counselling, Fundamental Human Needs, Life, Love, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

This is why rebound relationships generally do not work. When a relationship ends, you need time to grieve. Even if you were the one who decided to separate, you still need time to heal and to learn your lessons. The lessons are not just about relationships, either, but about yourself. You don’t want to duplicate the mistakes you made that shattered the previous relationship.

I also repeatedly hear stories of couples separating because one partner or the other has “found someone else.” That the new relationship could possibly work out is a fantasy. First, the new relationship is created within a context where one of the former partners (and most often, the new third party as well) is still in a relationship...

December 19, 2023,  Counselling, Family, Life, Love, Relationship  No comments

🙶 Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathless, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being ‘in love’ which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.🙷

Louis d...

September 26, 2019,  Counselling, Family, Games People Play, Life, Script  No comments

Berne, like many others studying human behaviour at the time, suggests that a childlike stance is more likely to occur in a person’s third or fourth decade of life, after the skills to ensure survival have been fully developed.

By then, you have learned from experience that your subconscious mind will take care of many operations: practicing social niceties are now a matter of habit and you know you’re socially safe. You can now enjoy special moments in life without inhibition or fear.

To maintain the autonomous state, however, requires constant vigilance as you move away from the programmed script that influenced your past behaviour patterns.

If we lived in Utopia, we wouldn’t have to learn social survival skills, but we don’t...

November 28, 2017,  Counselling, Family, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

People often wonder whether Couples Counselling works when one partner isn’t present at the counselling session. Absolutely, yes, it works. If one of the partners change, then the other will respond to the changes. Of course, this does not guarantee positive change or that the relationship will work out, but it does start changing the situation from its current, unsatisfying state.

Breaking the zone of comfort is stepping away from a zone of a relationship that is going nowhere and achieving nothing. Staying in what seems to be the comfort zone, you may be surprised to hear, is hard to maintain as it is not comfortable at all. Holding the decisions taken to move away from what is familiar and comfortable can be even harder...