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Relationship Therapy Is More Than Just Talking

Relationship therapy is at the heart of what we do at Relationships & More. How much do you know about it? Are you aware that relationship therapy is more than just talking? It is a lot more. It is therapy designed around a collaborative effort to both understand why a person is struggling and how to best overcome the struggle.

So many people who need counseling fail to get it because they incorrectly assume that counseling sessions amount to nothing more than clients talking and counselors giving advice. Truth be told, relationship therapy is anything but that.

If what we do amounted to nothing but talking, professional counseling wouldn’t be necessary. People could talk to their friends and get the same results. Yet we know that professional counseling is very much in demand. It is in demand because it goes above and beyond weekly conversations.

Collaborating on Root Causes

Imagine a couple’s marriage counseling session in our Rye, New York location. The couple comes to us believing that their sessions will be 60-minute conversations followed by some quick-fix advice. They soon discover that this is not the case. Within a short time, they realize that addressing their marriage difficulties will be a collaborative effort between them and their counselor.

One of the first things they will collaborate on is determining the root causes of the couples’ struggles. This can take time. Why? Because we human beings have a tendency to habitually practice behaviors we learned at an early age. It takes time to uncover such behaviors.

Do you think about proper grammar and sentence structure when you speak? Of course not. You just speak. The words that come out of your mouth are the result of ingrained habits you learned as a child. It turns out that most of the things we do as adults are the result of ingrained habits.

Marriage counselors collaborate with couples to uncover those ingrained habits. When couples are made aware of how they are behaving and why, they have a starting point from which to address their problems.

Collaborating on Solutions

A second aspect of relationship therapy is collaborating on solutions. Unfortunately, solutions can be as elusive as habits are ingrained. Couples bang their heads against a wall year after year and never figure out how to fix what is broken. That’s normal.

The counselor’s job is to work collaboratively with the couple to come up with real-world solutions. By ‘real-world’ we mean solutions that can be practically applied in daily life. They are concrete, tangible solutions that can be explained in detail. They are not ambiguous suggestions that have no substance.

Tracking the Results

Finally, relationship therapy is most successful when couples and their counselors track the results. So, the very first session might reveal a damaging behavior. To get the ball rolling on changing that behavior, the counselor might recommend some homework. During the next session, the couple reports back as to how things went with the homework. Modifications are made, new homework is given, and the couple reports back during the third session.

Tracking the results of couples counseling from week to week is a lot like tracking the results of a marketing campaign. The idea is to see what is working and what is not. You keep doing the former and either eliminate or modify the latter, gaining improvement over time.

Whether you’re looking for online counseling or hoping to work with a counselor in-person, Relationships & More is here to help. We offer more than just discussions. We offer relationship therapy that utilizes collaboration to address even the most pressing problems.

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