Couples Therapy

Is couples therapy right for us?

Couples often come to me when:

• the same argument keeps coming back, however well you both understand it

• you’re recovering from an affair or a breach of trust

• you feel more like flatmates than partners, and want to reconnect

• you’re in an LGBTQ+ or ethically non-monogamous relationship and want a therapist who works with the structure you’ve chosen

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Sound familiar? Send an enquiry

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What it costs

Sessions are 55 minutes and cost $270. The assessment takes three sessions: one with you both, then one with each of you individually ($810 in total). You each also complete the Gottman Relationship Check-Up online, which costs US$39 per couple, paid directly to the Gottman Institute. Therapy then begins with a joint session where I share my understanding and we agree on where to focus. You don't need to commit to all three assessment sessions when you book: start with one joint session, then decide whether to continue.

Medicare doesn't cover couples therapy. If you have private health extras cover, check whether it contributes.

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My approach

I provide relationship therapy through scheduled video appointments with couples anywhere in Australia (except the Blue Mountains region of NSW). My approach is informed by training in evidence-informed approaches to couples therapy, including Level 3 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy and an Externship in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. In addition, I draw on my broader experience as a clinical psychologist to understand each partner's experience, strengths, difficulties, and values. I often use tools from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Solution-Focused Brief Therapy to help partners filter out the noise of unhelpful narratives and align with a shared understanding of 'what really matters to you, me, and us.'​

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Wondering whether it matters that your couples therapist is a psychologist? Read more about seeing a psychologist for couples therapy. Constant doubts about your relationship? Read about relationship OCD.

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Your first session

Every relationship is unique, and each partner's perspective and experience of the relationship is unique also. In our first meeting I talk with both partners together to understand, first of all, what you are struggling with in your relationship and what you are seeking to gain from therapy now. Through this conversation I seek also to discover your similarities and differences, the highs and lows of your shared history, your hopes and fears about your future together, and the situational stresses that most impact your relationship now.

 

The assessment phase

After our first session, I send each of you a link to separately complete the Gottman Relationship Check-Up, a comprehensive, empirically validated online questionnaire. Your responses give me a time-efficient summary of how each of you sees the relationship, and help me identify important issues you might not know how to raise together. After reviewing them, I meet once with each of you individually, so that I can understand who you are and how I can best help you.

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Starting therapy

Therapy begins when the three of us meet together again. I summarise my understanding of your different and shared needs, the patterns of interaction that seem to stand in your way, and the directions I think would be most helpful to explore. Once we agree on which conversations are most needed, we begin that work. Throughout the assessment I also encourage each of you to reflect on what you most appreciate in your partner, and how you yourself might better show up in the relationship, so by this point people often find the mood of the relationship has already improved and much more seems possible again.

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Ready to start with an assessment? Send an enquiry

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How sessions run

During therapy, I aim to facilitate three-way conversations that help both partners move forwards together with insight, connection, and freedom. I spend time before your sessions anticipating which directions might be helpful to meet your goals for therapy. Yet because relationships are dynamic and so much life happens between sessions, I arrive prepared to be surprised. At the beginning of each session we reflect on your progress with therapy goals and set a broad agenda for the session. I keep this agenda in focus while directing (and at times interrupting) you to guide conversation down more promising and less well-travelled avenues, while steering you away from unhelpful patterns of communication that get in the way of your relationship.

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Many of my clients know only too well how they should and would like to respond to their partners, but in the heat of the moment, automatic thoughts trigger emotional reactions and patterns of behaviour that turn each partner against, or away from the other, leaving both feeling alone and powerless to change the story playing out between them. Couples therapy is your opportunity to slow down and together reach a more empathically balanced understanding of your experiences and needs as partners. Often by revisiting regrettable incidents from your past together, we can heal the relationship and learn to relate with more respect, kindness and self-awareness moving forwards.

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Boundaries

​​Throughout this process, as a psychologist I maintain safe, transparent professional boundaries. I only start therapy with a couple if I have not previously engaged in therapy with either partner. And after completing the assessment phase, I only see and communicate with you together, as a couple. I am optimistic, challenging, respectful, and pro-relationship, and I stay in my lane. I don't diagnose individual partners in the context of couples therapy, and as long as no one's safety is endangered I will not suggest to you or your partner that you should separate.

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