Couples Therapy & Relationship Support
Navigating Conflict Together
Strong relationships are not defined by the absence of conflict but by the ability to repair and reconnect with each other again.
Relationships naturally go through cycles of connection and disconnection. The goal isn’t to remain perfectly connected all the time, but to build the capacity to repair well.
Often, what seems like conflict on the surface is tied to deeper, more vulnerable feelings underneath, such as the need to feel heard and valued. With support, we can take a moment to slow down and examine the cycles you may find yourselves in: what triggers them, how each of you responds, and what underlying feelings may be at play.
Couples therapy provides a space to learn and practice relational skills. This includes communicating more clearly, listening with curiosity, expressing needs more directly, taking responsibility for your impact, navigating differences, and learning how to repair after challenging moments.
Communication Tools for Couples Facing Conflict
If challenging conversations leave you feeling overwhelmed or repeating in the same cycle, consider using this free printable guide. It provides a gentle starting point for understanding conflict, communicating more effectively, and reconnecting with one another.
How Couples Therapy Works
1. Initial Couples Session
We will begin our journey together by exploring your relationship. We’ll discuss what brings you to therapy and what each of you hopes to gain from our sessions.
2. Assessment
Both of you will complete a relationship questionnaire, followed by individual sessions with me. This process will help me gain a deeper understanding of your relationship and each person's unique experience.
3. Coming Back Together
After the assessment, we will reconvene to reflect on the findings. We will identify the key areas to focus on and determine your goals for therapy.
4. Ongoing Couples Therapy
Subsequent sessions will concentrate on practical aspects of your relationship. This includes strengthening your connection and friendship, navigating conflicts, improving communication, developing relational skills, and enhancing your ability to repair and reconnect.
Beyond Anxious and Avoidant
Many individuals enter therapy believing they are “too much,” “too distant,” “too needy,” or otherwise difficult to love.
The discourse around relationships on social media often simplifies complex relational experiences into labels like “anxious” or “avoidant.” Unfortunately, these labels can quickly lead to shame and a sense of being pathologised.
While some classifications can aid our understanding of relationship patterns, it's essential to recognise that people are far more complex than these labels imply. Behind every pattern lies a person with a unique history, context, and ways of relating that have developed to keep them emotionally safe.
These patterns are adaptive responses shaped by our relationships throughout life, and healing can happen within those relationships as well. Therapy offers a space to explore these patterns with compassion and understanding, rather than through blame or self-judgment. Instead of trying to "fix" who you are, therapy encourages a deeper awareness of how your relational strategies developed and what they aim to protect.
Neurodivergent and mixed-neurotype couples
In my work with neurodivergent and mixed-neurotype couples, I do not assume that one person’s way of relating is problematic while the other’s is the norm. I find the concept of the double empathy problem (Milton, 2012) particularly helpful in this context. Difficulties in understanding can occur for both individuals when they experience, communicate, and make sense of the world differently. What may appear as a lack of empathy, emotional availability, or interest can sometimes stem from differences in how connection is expressed or perceived.
I sometimes find it helpful to think about these differences in a way similar to how we approach cross-cultural relationships. When two individuals come from different cultures, the goal of therapy is not to teach one partner to abandon their culture in favor of communicating like the other. Instead, we should become curious about both worlds: What does this mean to you? How do you recognise care? How does your partner interpret the same behavior differently? I approach neurodiversity with the same curiosity. This includes recognising sensory differences. One person may seek more touch, spontaneity, or stimulation, while another may require more space, predictability, quiet, or time to recover from sensory input. Everyday experiences, such as physical affection, background noise, socialising, lighting, or conversations at the end of the day, can, therefore, become significant in our relationships.
Instead of immediately interpreting differences as personal rejections, excessive sensitivity, or indifference, therapy can create space to understand what is occurring for each person and how these differences impact the relationship. This aligns closely with my Gestalt approach, which views experience as relational and contextual rather than placing the difficulty entirely on one individual. Sensory experiences, bodily responses, the environment, communication, and the relationship itself can all be integral to the context in which contact occurs
Instead of asking, "Who is communicating correctly?" I am more interested in exploring what happens between these two people. How does each person experience the interaction? Where do they consistently misunderstand one another? What adjustments could facilitate a better connection for both individuals without automatically positioning one person's approach as the standard?
The goal is not to make partners more alike but to help them become better equipped to engage with one another across differences.
Reference
Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem’. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887.
About Katia
Katia is a PACFA-registered counsellor with a Master’s in Gestalt Therapy. She has additional training in Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFCT) , Gottman Method, Relational Life Therapy (RLT), approaches that inform her relational practice.