What Is Relationship Therapy

In this episode we discuss what relationship therapy is and what you can expect during a session. We have a relationship therapist joining us to answer questions and give an insight into relationship therapy and the client experience.

https://www.horizonplymouth.co.uk/counselling/relationships

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

This is Alan and I'm the therapy guy.

And these podcasts are everything about mental health,

all the services that are related to that,

the different therapies you can access, but it's

about informing you, educating you, ask, answering your

questions about mental health.

We really encourage you to send in your

questions, send in your feedback, and we'll answer

them all in different podcasts throughout the series.

We issue one each week, so we're going to cover

lots of subjects that range from young person therapy, CBT,

to just the effects mental health have on us today.

We're going to be talking about

relationship therapy, that's difference between couples,

families, those sorts of things.

And we've got a fantastic relationship

therapist with us tonight from Mark.

He's going to introduce himself in a minute and

then I've got some lovely questions for him that

have been sent in by you guys for him

to answer all about relationship everything.

So, welcome, Mark.

Maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself.

Thank you.

I don't know if I'm going to live up

to the fantastic bit, but thank you for inviting

me into do this with the therapy guy.

My name is Mark and I am a relationship

therapist and have been now for around six years.

That involves all sorts of things, all

types of problems that people might have

and putting them back together again.

And that's basically what I do.

Okay, great.

So we'll sort of get started.

We'll go straight into some questions and then

at the end, we'll have a conversation about

different things, about different things, about your work,

if that's what they want.

But some of the questions that I've been asked,

one of them is, what could I expect?

So if I'm coming to you for relationship counselling,

what can myself and my partner expect from you?

Well, you can expect a caring environment, an environment

which is going to nurture the two of you.

It's going to allow the two of you to have a voice.

Sometimes we end up in a relationship where we

kind of lose our voice, if you like.

So I'm going to create an environment that

the two of you can talk in.

I'm going to create an environment that the

two of you are allowed to talk in.

I'm going to create an environment where you are

very calm and very comfortable to be in.

And that's what hopefully you can expect from me.

Okay, great.

So actually, fantastic.

Just imagine if I'm there and if I'm

obviously coming to you, that might mean that

or indicate that my relationship might be

a bit of trouble, it might be difficult.

At that time, we might have gone through a difficult time.

So what about if one of us gets angry?

What's going to happen then?

Well, when you're in the room, there is tension in the

room, what's going to happen if you both get angry?

Or if one of you get angry.

We expect emotion to be in the room.

We absolutely would have emotion in the

room if you were to get angry.

My role at that point is to try to contain

that and to try to work out what the anger

is all about and sift through it, look through it,

see where it's coming from and shut it down. Really?

And make sure that when we talk,

we actually talk and not shout. Okay.

I know for my work as well, when it crosses

the line, when it becomes too personal, we don't allow

that to happen in the room because we don't want

it getting to that extent, do we?

We don't want it to be coming to a

part where it is getting to that extent. No.

So we will have methods that we will

use to make sure that that doesn't happen.

If it becomes violent, we will have to

make sure that that session stops right there. Okay.

So what do they mean? You're a guy? I'm a guy.

So are you going to side with me in the room?

Because we got to sit together, aren't we?

I have to be as impartial as possible. Good.

I have to actually look direct

at the centre of the line.

I can't be seen to be siding with one or another.

It is a very common occurrence that people think that I'm

going to side with one or if I'm going to hear

an issue that I think it's going to touch my heartstrings

and I'm going to associate with that person.

That is not what I'm there for.

What I'm there for is to make sure that

the both of you get an equal say. Okay.

On that note, you raised it there.

You mentioned what sort of issues

to couples or families or whatever.

What do they bring in when they

come to you for relationship therapy?

When they come in, there are as many different

issues, I suppose, as people walking through the door.

A lot of issues, especially with the relationship

side, they can range from infidelity right through

to the couple actually getting to a point

where they're going to split up the connection.

Also, communication issues might be there.

There could be trust issues and we

have to look at all those.

There might be just something as simple as the couple.

They've been together for a long time and

they can't talk to each other anymore.

And so what happens then is we

bring that back into the room.

We bring the connection back into the room.

Especially with a long term relationship,

sometimes the connection can get lost. Okay.

Again, you touched on it briefly there.

If there is sort of that maybe need a

flip fidelity, one of those people have done something

that's really upset the other person or betrayed some

of their trust cannot be rebuilt.

Can I rebuild the trust of my partner

through working with you and relationship therapy?

Absolutely.

And when I say absolutely, there is a downside

to that, because sometimes the trust cannot be repaired.

So if we have a trust issue, we have

to look at what the trust issue is.

Can it be repaired?

If the two of you want that to work, then it will work.

You have to find that middle ground.

Where the compromise?

Where the two of you are going to say,

right, okay, this is what we can do.

Trust is a very slow thing to

repair, and I won't emphasise that enough.

It won't happen overnight, but it can

happen if you want it to.

That's great.

All of this sounds great.

And I know I'm digging a little bit deeper here.

Are you saying this is going to save my relationship?

Now, that's a good question.

Is it going to save your relationship?

I can't put my hand on my heart and

say that this is going to save your relationship.

If you want the relationship to be saved, absolutely.

It's the right thing to do.

Sometimes we have people in the room and

we have to be honest with them.

We have to be called congruent if

the relationship is going to fall apart.

Sometimes relationships will fall apart.

It's inevitable.

We can always put them back together.

I always say to a couple in the

room, be careful what you would like, because

sometimes it's not what you're after.

But if we can put this back together and if the two

of you really want to work at it, then yes, it can.

I suppose that's a common

perception I've encountered too.

When people come in, they do assume that

we hold all the answers, don't they? They do presume

that this therapy is about talking to us?

We're going to give them this magic wand.

Yes, it does involve some work, isn't it?

Like anything like any sort of relationship, it

involves a little bit of effort, a lot

of work for both of them, doesn't it?

I always say to people right from the start that

I don't have a magic wand, because if I had

a magic wand, I'd have people beat the door down

and I'd be retired by the end of the week.

I don't have those answers for them.

The answers usually are within them.

We gain them to make sure that

they find the answers that they're after.

I can't give you the answer.

That's the one thing I can't do.

I can point you in the right direction, but

I can't actually tell you what to do.

Okay, so here we are.

We're in this session similar to real life.

I'm sitting there and we're having this maybe family

therapy or relationship therapy with my partner, and I'm

sort of taking a dislike to you.

Maybe one of the people in that room

at that time doesn't like the therapist.

What happens then again, that's a

very common thing to happen.

I don't always connect with everybody.

If you really dislike the therapist, it is

absolutely fine for you to mention that.

I'm not going to get offended by you telling

me you don't like me because I didn't always

connect with everybody that I've ever seen.

In a case like that, what we'll do

is we'll work for your best interest.

I'm not saying that you have to sit in front of me.

What I'm saying is if you do not like me or if

there is a dislike there or you just don't trust me, then

I will do the best I can to make sure that you

get the person that you're going to enjoy sitting in front of.

Because if you don't trust the person in front of

you, then no work is going to get done.

Okay, great.

I totally understand that if we start to look

a bit deeper, maybe after a few sessions or

one of the issues that a lot of couples

bring is definitely based around intimacy, from my experience.

So is it a given?

Do we have to talk about our sex

or intimacy or personal relationship in your room?

You don't have to talk about your intimacy at all.

If what you've come for is an

intimate problem, then yes, of course.

At some point I'm going to ask you

how your intimacy is within the relationship.

If the problem is absolutely unrelated to that, if

it's a trust issue, if it's a boundary issue,

then I'm not going to ask you about your

intimacy because it doesn't actually add anything to the

conversation that we're going to have.

Okay, moving on.

We've had this, we've had our session.

What should we do after?

Should we talk about the session?

Should we wait or keep it inside until

the next session to talk about something?

Again, if I don't want to go home

and have an argument over what was said

in the session, so what should I do?

Right, if you're going to just talk about what you're

going to talk about within the session, I always say

to people, there's 168 hours in a week.

If you're always going to save that up for

1 hour sitting in front of me, you're missing

167 hours where you could be talking about it.

Now, what I'm going to say to you is quite simple.

If you didn't take that away from the session, if

you can talk within the session, then you can talk

outside of the session sometimes and in everybody.

It absolutely does work this way that the people

that do take information away from that and talk

about it at home, it doesn't have to be

an argument because we're going to give you techniques

to defuse arguments as well.

But if you can talk about all these issues

away from, then when you come to the session,

you're already setting up goals that you can actually

tangibly, touch and see and work towards.

And that's going to help you within the session.

I was talking about obviously outside of

the session, what's going to happen?

Are you going to sort of set us homework today?

Is there a tasks that we're going to do and

we got to sit and talk to each other?

Is there homework or forms that

are going to fill in outside?

What happens?

I'm not going to tell you that.

You have to talk to each other.

What I'm going to say is

communication is absolutely the key here.

But I'm going to set your homework sometimes, yes I am.

I'm going to ask you to do things.

I'm going to ask you to sit

down and have conversations with each other.

Am I going to get you to fill out forms?

Sometimes I will, sometimes I won't.

It depends totally on the people that

you have in front of you.

If you know that that's not going to work

for them, then you don't give it to them.

If some people want homework, then

yes, we're going to find it.

And again you're going to engage within that and

when you bring it back, you're going to present

that and we're going to talk about those things

and those issues and how they rolls. Okay?

More or less going to start winding

up, really start coming to the game.

Because some of the questions you covered, quite a lot of

the questions I've got, but one of the main ones I

have to main on, there are two parts to this really.

Why should somebody come into relationship therapy?

What's their advantages?

Relationship therapy or family therapy?

Why should they contact someone like yourselves?

Sometimes when a relationship or a family start to

break down, we don't know why they're breaking down.

We try everything we can to hold that together.

Sometimes that we're looking for answers and we

can't find them, that puts a lot of

pressure on a relationship coming into someone like

myself, a professional like myself.

We can see that from a different perspective, a different

point of view and we can look from the outside

in and we can give you perspectives that you may

not have actually thought of before and it gives you

a lot of knowledge to take away with as well.

And last thing I try, a bit of a positive yes.

So maybe you could tell us maybe what you

really enjoy about your relationship therapy work and maybe

even just a small slight success story.

Range of what I enjoy about relationship work is

the fact that I watch two people who come

in my room sometimes they feel that there is

absolutely black and it's all over.

What I enjoy about my work is when I watch

those two people reconnect and reconnect to each other again.

Find out what it was that they actually really wanted.

Really liked about themselves to start with.

Really what loved about each other when they

first got together and finding that connection and

bringing it back is an absolute amazing thing

for me to see as a therapist.

Maybe a small success story that just brings to mind.

I had a couple who came in to me once, and it was

a vicar and his wife, and they could not his job actually, is

to talk to people and he could not talk to his wife.

Now, what he did in the end was we would

then reconnect the two of them, they actually started talking.

They actually started actually laughing and being themselves

again because his wife would tell me that

he was caught up on being a vicar

and actually that was his job.

That exactly what he was caught up on.

But first of all, he forgot who he was,

so we got him to actually bring back the

identity that he had before he became a vicar.

This ended up with the couple actually leaving

and actually going on a second onyment.

And it was absolutely brilliant to watch it.

And as a therapist, I was invited to that second day.

They actually redid my vows and I was

invited to it, but unfortunately, I wasn't able

to go because there's a boundary issue there.

But it was really nice to receive the

comments from them to say how well they

reconnected and redone their vows again.

Okay, lovely.

So I'm sure you'd like to join me

saying thank you, Mark, for coming in today.

It's been great to hear your answers in

responses to the questions that have been set.

I really enjoy hearing about your work and

the fantastic stuff that you do every day.

We're going to come to the end now, and if you've

got any questions that you'd like to accept for work in

the future, I'm sure we can invite him back in again.

He's going to be coming in a couple of different

times, telling us about different things that are happening.

Please leave your feedback, comments as usual, and

for today, we're going to sign off now.

So thanks for listening.

It's great to hear you. Thanks.

The Therapy Guide. Bye.