In brief: Feeling out of your depth when working with couples doesn’t necessarily mean couples counselling isn’t for you. The right training, specialist supervision and a clearer framework for managing relationship dynamics can help therapists feel more confident in couples work.
Like many therapists who work with relationships, I was frequently asked if I worked with couples. I decided to do some CPD and advertised that I was now accepting couples.
However, I found the work very difficult and although I tried to vary the type of difficulties I’d accept, soon decided that working with couples was not for me.
Claire Ratcliffe, who I recently interviewed for the Good Enough Counsellors podcast, had a similar experience. However she’s now passionate about relationship therapy and in our interview, described how she became more confident and how she deals with the unique challenges that counselling more than one client at a time can present.
Claire’s experience demonstrates that it is possible to feel more confident working with couples. It may not be about your suitability for the work but other factors that may be missing.
You can listen to her interview in detail here:
If you would like to subscribe to the podcast, click here.
Why Can Working with Couples Feel So Difficult?
Claire described how easy it is for one person to hear another speaking and have an immediate reaction. They may experience what the other person is saying as criticism or rejection.
If they reply straight away it means the original speaker may not feel listened to or may limit what they say in the first place.
Couples may have familiar patterns of relating and unless the therapist is skilled in helping to make these explicit, these patterns may be repeated in the therapy room.
As a therapist, it can leave you feeling as though you’re trying to listen to two people while simultaneously managing what is happening between them.
Couples Counselling Requires Different Skills
In order to help couples to listen to each other, Claire deliberately slows the interaction down. At the start she will ask each person to notice their reaction but wait to express it. She invites the listener to remain curious about their partner’s experience and in this way, helps them to recognise what is going on beneath the surface.
Being able to structure the interaction and slow the conversation down is a skill that couples therapists develop. Without it, you may feel ill-equipped to manage what happens between two people in the therapy room.
You’re Not Just Working with the Relationship in Front of You
The patterns of relating that become evident in therapy may result from childhood experiences and previous relationships.
For example, someone might struggle to recognise and state their needs because as a child it wasn’t safe to do so.
What someone says can be filtered through the lens of previous experiences. Claire used the example of someone coming home and saying “the kitchen’s a mess” meaning nothing more than a statement of fact. The other person may assume they are being criticised because it was always their job to keep the kitchen tidy.
And when there’s another person, different patterns interact. One person may not be able to ask for what they need but another may think they’re responsible for fixing their feelings.
Couples work therefore involves helping people understand these underlying patterns.
And, in fact, this is what Claire loves about the work. She sees couples therapy as uniquely healing because it is in relationships that old patterns emerge. These patterns can be recognised and worked through within the relationship.
Training Can Make a Difference
Claire persisted in her couples work because she found a model for couples therapy that suited the way she wanted to work.
She continued learning through different approaches rather than assuming her initial experience meant she couldn’t do the work.
Her philosophy is not simply to “do more training”. It’s about finding an approach that suits your style and gives you a framework for understanding what is happening between the couple.
Looking back, I’d agree that my initial couples training did not provide me with enough of a framework to support me with the challenges of the work.
Specialist Supervision Can Build Confidence Too
When Claire first worked with couples, her supervisor did not have couples experience or training and it was only later that Claire appreciated the benefit of having specialist supervision.
She also finds group supervision particularly useful because hearing other therapists discuss their cases provides opportunities to learn from situations you may encounter in your own work.
As a result, Claire is setting up her own specialist supervision group for couples and relationship therapists. You can read more about this on her website.
Supervision can also reduce the sense of isolation and the worry that the difficulties you’re experiencing are unique to you. It’s more likely they’re related to the challenge of the work and a specialist supervisor can help you understand and work through them.
Does Feeling Anxious Mean Couples Counselling is Not for You?
Looking back, I can see that I interpreted my difficulties with couples counselling as evidence that the work wasn’t for me. And perhaps it wasn’t. I don’t have any plans to start working with couples again!
But my conversation with Claire has made me look at the experience differently.
If you want to work with couples but find yourself dreading an enquiry or wondering whether you’re capable of helping them, your anxiety doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not suited to the work.
Perhaps you need a therapeutic model that gives you a clearer framework. Perhaps you need more specialist training or supervision. Or perhaps you simply need the reassurance of being alongside other therapists who understand why this work can be challenging.
And of course, you may discover that you genuinely don’t enjoy couples work. That’s okay too.
But if you do want to work with couples, don’t let feeling out of your depth be the thing that makes the decision for you.
You can hear much more about Claire’s experience of developing her confidence as a couples therapist, and what she now loves about the work, in our conversation on the Good Enough Counsellors podcast.
FAQs
Couples counselling can require different skills from individual therapy because you’re working not only with each person but also with the relationship between them. Specialist training can provide a framework for understanding and managing the interactions that happen in the therapy room. Find an approach that suits your own therapeutic style.
Specialist supervision can be particularly helpful when working with couples. A supervisor who understands couples therapy can help you explore relationship dynamics and the challenges of managing more than one client in the room. Group supervision can also provide opportunities to learn from other therapists’ cases.
Working with couples can involve managing strong emotions and reactions between two people while also trying to understand what is happening beneath the immediate conflict. Feeling anxious doesn’t necessarily mean you’re unsuited to couples work. It may indicate that you would benefit from additional training, specialist supervision or more experience.
Slow the interaction down. Rather than allowing one partner to immediately respond to what the other has said, encourage them to notice their own reaction, remain curious and listen to their partner’s experience before responding.
Experiences in childhood can influence how people communicate, express their needs and interpret their partner’s behaviour. Something said in the present may trigger feelings or beliefs learned much earlier. Couples therapy can help partners recognise these patterns and begin responding to each other differently.
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