Relationships and Family Life

Are you finding your marriage or relationship challenging? Noticing you’re having the same arguments over and over, feeling disconnected, or wondering whether you can find your way back to each other. You may be starting a new relationship and finding that past experiences are affecting how you feel now. Or perhaps you’re separating, ending a relationship or trying to work out what life looks like on your own again.

Sometimes the difficulty is within your family instead. A relationship with your child may have become strained, you may be struggling with your parent, or you may find yourself caught in complicated or longstanding difficulties with a sibling.

Counselling can help you understand what is happening and what you want to do about it. We can look at the patterns, arguments, expectations and boundaries that are affecting your relationships, as well as the impact they are having on you. This might be about repairing a relationship, deciding whether to stay or leave, adjusting to life after a separation, finding your feet in a new relationship, or learning how to manage a difficult family relationship without it taking over your life. You don’t need to know exactly what the answer is before you come to counselling. You just need somewhere to start.

  • Counselling can give you the space you need to reflect and explore your thoughts, feelings and emotions. It might be that you want something in your life to different, or that you need a quiet space to make sense of things. Some of the things people come to counselling about include:

    • Marriage and relationship difficulties
    • Communication and recurring arguments
    • Feeling disconnected from your partner
    • Separation and relationship breakdown
    • Starting again after a relationship ends
    • Difficulties in new relationships
    • Parent and child relationships
    • Difficult relationships with parents
    • Complex sibling relationships
    • Family conflict and longstanding tensions
    • Boundaries within relationships and families, parentification or concern about a parentified child

    • Boarding school syndrome
    • Changes in family roles and dynamics
    • Blended families and step family relationships
    • Resentment, anger, hurt or disappointment
    • Feeling responsible for keeping everyone else happy
    • Working out what you want from a relationship
    • Difficult decisions about staying, leaving or moving forward

  • Yes. Counselling can give you space to work through what you’re feeling and consider what you want, without being told whether you should stay or leave.

    Counselling will not give you opinions, advice or recommendations, but it will allow you time and space to focus on your own thoughts and voice what you feel is the right thing for you.

  • Absolutely. Parent and child relationships, difficulties with parents, in-laws and complicated sibling relationships can all have a significant impact on your wellbeing and your day to day life, and these are things we can explore together.