Couple’s Counselling
Renovating the heart for life.
What kind of couples counselling can we expect?
I work with what is called The Developmental Model of couple’s counselling. This model of couple’s counselling was developed by Drs. Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson, themselves a married couple. Ellyn and Peter have been practicing, developing, and training in this model for nearly three decades and have trained hundreds, if not thousands, of therapists worldwide.
The basic premise of this model is that couples experience difficulties in their relationship because of undeveloped skill, ability, strength, and self-knowledge in each of the individuals in the partnership. It is like a couple trying to dance, but with each dancer having one short leg. It’s the short leg of each of the dancers that interferes with the coordination and makes for troublesome dancing! The couple ends up stumbling into and over each other.
In order to dance in a relationship that works and is healthy, each of the dancing partners needs to learn how to grow their short leg. In other words, each partner needs to learn how to be strong in themselves with both feet on the ground. In the developmental model of couple’s counseling this means that each partner needs to learn how to differentiate, probably one of the most difficult developmental stages in a relationship.
Dr. Bader defines differentiation as “the active, ongoing process of defining self, revealing self, clarifying boundaries, and managing the anxiety that comes from risking more intimacy.” This process requires each person in the relationship to become more open and more self-exposed which is the very stuff of growing intimacy. It really takes two well-differentiated individuals to come together in the one dance of relationship.
The goal of The Developmental Model is for each person to develop the capacity:
to tolerate uncertainty and difficult feelings
to express themselves clearly with full disclosure honesty
to express their own thoughts, feelings, and desires about things
to stop blaming their partner and start focusing on themselves
to establish and maintain healthy boundaries
to learn to accept and manage differences
to define responsibilities
to address and change personal self-limiting beliefs and self-defeating behaviours
to learn to fight fair and tolerate conflicts
to learn how to repair breaches in the relationship
to develop caring, compassionate, empathic behaviors, and responses
to work on creating the kind of intimacy you desire: sexual, emotional, spiritual
to learn how to come together as individuals in mutual respect and understanding
The first and foremost questions for each person in the relationship are:
How do you understand what led to this difficulty?
What do you think your role has been In getting to this place of difficulty?
In what ways do you need to develop and grow so that you can have the relationship that you want?
