Marriage Counselling

What Does Marriage Counselling Look like?

iMentalhealth Counselling Services offers Marriage counselling in the City of Saint Albert, Alberta. We Also offer online appointments. 

Geordy works with couples in person and is Gottman level 2 trained. This is a structure of how sessions are generally set up; however, is not always the case. 

The main framework for marriage counselling the iMentalhealth uses is a Gottman approach which utilizes principles that are evidence based to help couples succeed. The few areas that we like to assess for in the first meetings are the strength of friendship, trust, commitment, conflict management, creating shared meaning and knowing and supporting each others dreams. 

First session: The first part of the session is usually talking about the structure of how things will go in therapy, expectations, boundaries and role of the Psychologist. The first session of couples counselling is really to get to know the couple and assess different strengths and weaknesses in regards to their interactions so we can establish goals and have some things to work towards. This happens through the work you do with your therapist. The Psychologist is looking for many different things including areas of friendship, intimacy, connection, trust, commitment, passion, communication and fondness and admiration. 

The Second Session 

In the second session we do an individual interview with each of you, so we can assess each person individually in terms of history, goals for therapy individual and 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 surpise the couple.  At the end of the second session we recommend that couples do an online assessment tool to assess the relationship strengths and weakness. 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. 

The Third Session

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. 

Subsequent sessions 

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

We are located at 13 Mission Avenue, in Saint Albert, Alberta. We offer online and in person appointments.