iMentalHealth Counselling Services offers Couples counselling in the City of Saint Albert, Alberta. We Also offer online appointments.
You dont have to wait 7 years before you come for a couples counselling session. Too many couples wait far too long before they invest in their relationship.
You may have suggested couples counselling to your partner a long time ago and now they have decided to give it a shot. Perhaps you are more willing to work on things and you are dragging the other person along. It can be so difficult when you feel like you have to force the other person to invest in the relationship, and sometimes it can be because that person does not see them self as the problem. From the interviews we have done with couples, it is often neither one of the partners that says “you know what, I think I am the problem, in fact I really need to work on how I communicate.”
Wouldnt it be easier if your partner were to say that. Sometimes it is hard to see what you are doing wrong or what you could be doing differently, and this is how couples counselling might help.
Gina Senarighi
In the initial sessions we work at assessing the dynamics and multi aspects of your relationship with principles from Gottman couples therapy in which they have been able to predict with 90% accuracy what makes relationships work and what is more likely to cause their dissolve.
The main framework for couples counselling that iMentalHealth uses is a Gottman approach which utilizes principles that are evidence based to help couples succeed.
A lot of couples want to come for therapy and jump right into solving problems and many might have the expectation that the therapist is there to give advice and solve it for you. With Gottman Couples therapy, the first few sessions are to get to know you as a couple and to use assessment as the building blocks for therapy goals that are based on Gottman 7 principles of making marriage work. These principles are what set the masters of relationships apart from the disasters of relationships. I want to be clear that in the first few sessions there may be a lot of assessment of your relationship and also some teaching.
Generally, with addictions we want to start with looking at how your thoughts, feelings and behavior are closely related. We want to help you develop strategies to identify triggers and develop new behaviors that will lead you towards the person you would like to be and create new habits.
In the second session we do an individual interview with each of you, so we can assess each person individually in terms of their perspective, history, goals for therapy, and individual goals and things you would like to see as a couple. It is interesting to have this interview with each person because it allows us to perhaps see some areas of agreement, that may surprise the couple. At the end of the second session we recommend that couples do an online assessment tool to assess the relationship strengths and weaknesses. This is called a Gottman Checkup and will show areas that are really strong in your relationship, and areas that may need work. This really helps us establish goals and have some things that have been proven to be effective to work on.
This session is usually spent going through the results of the assessment, and discussing with the couple about these key areas to really develop goals and begin the work of learning some tools. These results really are a way to see those areas you may really be doing well which can be encouraging to many people. There may also be some areas that you didn’t know were a problem but could be something that could really impact your relationship. Some people find that the assessment helps give language to those specific areas that need work and the research behind why that specific area may be wreaking havoc on your satisfaction or quality of relationship.
This is where we go through different exercises that will help you learn to build your relationship back to where you would like it to be. Usually we like couples to discuss things together and we will interject, and help the process, provide feedback, redirection and expertise on how to connect, engage in healthy dialogue about difficult issues and find your partners dreams behind their complaints.
We can help give you tools that are proven to be effective for many couples
A Few Signs you may need couples counselling
How can Counselling Help?
Are you low in mood and generally in a place of sadness for more than a two-week period?
EMDR is a body based approach that uses Bilateral Stimulation and works with the Adaptive information Processing system.
Building stronger relationships with friends, family, and loved ones
If you are unsure of which service area to book, you can simply book an individual or couples appointment and specify with your therapist in your intake what it is you are wanting to work on. Our categories are a way of helping explain our approach to different presenting issues. It is also not limited to these areas. Also if you are in need of immediate support please call the distress line or 811 to reach someone immediately. Thank you for visiting our site.