Do you want to help couples build stronger, longer-lasting relationships? Do you want to support couples in distress? Or maybe you want to better understand intimate relationships for your personal life.

If so, this is the course for you. We will cover the foundations of couples counselling including relationship theory, the process of couples counselling and relationship-specific therapy techniques.

Couples counselling is very different to individual psychotherapy. Rather than helping one person make sense of their thoughts and feelings, we need to help multiple people make sense of the interactions with each other. This requires a different approach, hence we will draw on theory from the school of Systemic Family Therapy.

We will learn:

• How relationships work

• Using systemic family therapy for counselling multiple people

• Core counselling skills

• Step-by-step doing couples counselling

• Relationship-specific therapeutic techniques

While a background in counselling, such as person-centred, may be useful, we will cover core counselling skills in this course, so no background in counselling is required.

Who isn’t this course for:

• We take a wide and inclusive view of relationships, including the LGBT community, so anyone with a highly traditional view of marriage may not be comfortable with the course material

• This course will not focus on sexual dysfunction, so if you are looking to support couples who are having sexual-specific problems, other courses may be better suited.

The course comes with a comprehensive handbook so that you will have everything you need to deliver couples counselling. On completing the course, you will earn a certificate accredited by both the International Association of Therapists and the European Educational Standards Body (EESB).