RELATIONSHIP COUNSELLING
Strengthen your relationship/S
Reconnect and enhance communication and trust
Life as an expat can change the dynamics between partners
Perhaps challenges are straining your relationship and making you unhappy
So you have talked things out, sworn to change and started over again. And again.
But your unhealthy patterns haven’t changed, and arguing may have become a habit.
Or you are drifting further and further apart.
You miss how it used to be.
RESPECTFUL. FUN. LOVING.
You wish you could find a counselling service that would help you reconnect to try and save your relationship/s.
Or to make peace with the fact that the relationship/s isn’t or aren’t going anywhere.
Or to safely explore the type of relationship you want.
You believe talking to a caring therapist would help you gain clarity and improve the situation.
You are not alone
We are here to help you when you are ready
Managing transitions
Life transitions test the strength of your relationship. They can feel like anything from tiny tremors to earthquakes.
Does your partner seem happy with the change whereas you are finding it difficult?
Has the transition made you feel uncertain and vulnerable, and perhaps your partner isn’t as supportive as you would like them to be?
Is being financially dependent on your partner taking a toll on your relationship?
Therapy can help you regard change as an opportunity to re-evaluate your relationship, while offering you guidance on your new path.
Improving communication
Do you feel that both of you are either on defence or attack mode? You tend to constantly argue about the smallest thing.
Are you annoyed because you feel misunderstood? This may be creating a rift between you.
Does an unresolved past issue constantly crop up in your conversations? It feels like it will never be forgotten.
In couples counselling, we will work on empathy, finding ways to compromise and communicate positively, and helping you to understand each other better.
Enhancing physical intimacy and sex
There is no sex life or less than you need in your relationship? Do you feel more like flatmates than a couple?
Do you find it hard to talk about sex with your partner? Is this why you are not completely satisfied?
Is the loss of libido affecting your sex life?
Do you wish your partner understood that your need for intimacy doesn’t always mean you want sex?
Do you need to align degrees of commitment or norms regarding monogamy or non-monogamy?
Maybe you need to explore your sexuality, find out what satisfies you and transmit this to each other.
Navigating same sex relationships - LGTBIQ+
Are you at different levels of comfort with respect to being out of the closet?
Is the negotiation of roles and responsibilities at home creating conflict?
Do you need to align degrees of commitment or norms regarding monogamy or non-monogamy?
Couples counselling can help you navigate personal differences, providing tools for positive communication and strategies for reducing each other’s distress.
Enjoying Motherhood-Fatherhood- Or your Rainbow family
As an expectant mum, you might feel you have drunk a cocktail of excitement, worry and hormones. You are experiencing ups and downs and adjusting to the changes in your body.
As an expectant dad, you might be feeling like a spectator. Or you are trying to support your partner, but you feel at a loss.
If you are a Rainbow Family, you may feel overwhelmed by the need to manage differences day-to-day and negotiate things other families take for granted.
Becoming a parent can be overwhelming.
In therapy, we will help you navigate pregnancy and your new roles after the birth of the baby in a supportive and non-judgemental space.
Enhancing parenting and family life
Does your partner’s job involve a lot of travelling to the point that you are single parenting? This is exhausting you.
Do you and your partner need to align parenting styles? Discrepancies may be putting your relationship to the test.
Have you lost intimacy and spontaneity since parenthood? You may feel you are no longer romantic partners, just parents.
Therapy can help you reconnect to each other and work on a new and changed relationship.
Rebuilding trust
Do you find it hard to trust your partner/s? You may be suspicious and feel they are bound to betray you because you’re not good enough.
Or have they already betrayed you? Although your partner has had an affair, you may be willing to try and save the relationship because you still love them.
Or perhaps you have found out that your partner is lying about something or being secretive? It is making you feel as though you cannot trust their word.
Maybe you have broken the trust? You’ve lied, or been unfaithful and now you need tools to rebuild the trust with your partner/s.
In relationship counselling, we will work on rebuilding broken trust.
Unlearning Unhealthy patterns
Has your partner become enmeshed with you and your interests to the detriment of their own?
Are you keeping your feelings to yourself for the sake of the relationship? They will be bottling up inside you.
Does your partner expect you to know what they are thinking or how they are feeling? When they see that you don’t, perhaps they become annoyed.
Are you sacrificing the time you need alone in order to avoid arguments?
After a disagreement, do you want to remain at a distance, while your partner’s attitude is “let’s talk it over right away”?
You need a therapist if you are starting to feel resentful in your relationship. You will be helped towards an objective point of view of the situation, encouraged to talk things out and guided into healthier patterns.
Recovering after an infidelity
Working through an affair is tough. There will be feelings of vulnerability and tremendous energy and patience are required, because the healing process might be long.
Still, you are willing to give it a try because you love your partner, you want to keep your family together, or perhaps you are not too sure of what you want to do at this point.
In relationship counselling, we will explore the roots of the infidelity and address possible underlying issues.
We will work on improving communication and regaining trust. You may well emerge stronger as a couple or gain the clarity required to move on in another direction.
Facing divorce and separation
Perhaps you need help in deciding whether you should divorce or remain married.
Or maybe you are divorcing and you are looking to establish healthy communication patterns. Your aim is to finish the relationship in peace.
In relationship counselling, you will work on conflict related to co-parenting, financial issues, and other concerns. This can help you minimise the impact on you and/or your children, providing you with tools to move on in a positive way.
Exploring Consensual Non-Monogamous Relationships
There is a growing openness to new types of relationships that resist oppressive structures often found in conventional monogamous relationship models.
Polyamory, Relationship Anarchy (RA), open relationships, non-hierarchical polyamory, ethical non-monogamy to name but a few. These new relationship forms open the way to consensually experiencing multiple intimate relationships at once.
In counselling, we can aid your exploration of what you want or of how to navigate the challenges of different types of relationships.
We can accompany you or you and your partners in managing stigma, and developing the trust, communication, respect, and self-soothing required to make your relationships work.
Whether there is a need for clarity in the making or remaking of relationships, of managing anxiety or jealousy or a renegotiation of parameters of the relationships, we can help.
Therapy in Barcelona has been helping expats since 2011, first as a solo practice and now as a group of English-speaking expat therapists.
Responsibility
We take our clients’ well being very seriously and help with intention.
Psychology-trained therapists
All our therapists are qualified, many have at least 5 years experience and use evidence-based techniques.
Are you wondering whether you really need to go to therapy?
Attending therapy is like going to the gym for an hour, except that you work on other “muscles”, namely your confidence, your sense of a couple and your skills for navigating challenges.
You can choose not to go to the “gym” and your “muscles” will continue functioning. But unless you “work” them, you will not be using them to their full advantage.
Therapy can enhance your well-being and help you be who you want to be.
What to expect of the relationship counselling process
Although we tailor-make every couples counselling process to suit our clients’ unique requirements, we can offer you some general guidelines.
1
It begins by completing the intake form or reserving a discovery call with our Intake Coordinator.
We then either match you to a therapist and book a session or schedule a session with your preferred therapist.
2
First session
We will review the factors that led you into therapy and discuss the details of informed consent to begin to structure therapy.
3
Initial sessions (2-4)
You will build a mutual rapport, explore your skills, identify unhealthy strategies, delve into past and current struggles, and set your therapy goals.
4
Work-change session (5+)
You will analyse and dismantle unhelpful strategies, learn skills and practise methods, as well as reflect on deep insights.
5
Wind down and end
You will probably decrease the frequency of the sessions. You will connect to your natural supports, reinforce your gains and develop a follow-up plan to maintain growth once therapy has ended.
Our fees:
Our collaborators set their own prices, but current fees range between:
€80-115* for a 50-minute couples session
€85-120* for a 90-minute couples session
€150* for a 100-minute couples session
*Including 21% VAT
Prices may be subject to change at the discretion of our collaborators. Not all therapists offer 100 or 90 minute sessions.
Once you are matched to a therapist, we will let you know their preferred payment method.
We do not offer service packs since we believe you should be able to change therapist and service freely.
Do you still have some questions?
Yes, some of our therapists speak two or more languages. Please let us know your languages and we hope to be able to accommodate this.
It is important that both partners want to try and engage in therapy. You can try individual sessions first and later have couples counselling with another therapist from our team.
Yes. Your therapist will send you a link with information on how to join an online session from different locations.
Are you ready to start seeing positive changes in your relationship/s?
To assess what is going on or what is holding you back, to work on it and strengthen your connection?
We will contact you within 24-48 hours.