Loving & Respecting Each Other
- Relationship rescue for couples (gay or straight), parent and adult child, boss and employee etc
- Relationship repair following betrayal, affair, infidelity
- De-escalate conflict
- Repairing your bond to feel connected again
- Understanding the repeating patterns that you get stuck in again and again
- Understand your attachment style and use it to work together
- From walled off or boundaryless into a healthy functioning relationship
- From one up grandiosity or one down shame into a healthy functioning relationship
- Recovering your sexual relationship
- Understanding the 5 losing communication strategies and replacing them with the 5 winning communication strategies to get more of what you want out of your relationship
- Learning to set healthy boundaries and to have a healthy self-esteem
- Conscious uncoupling; intentionally separating
- Improving co-parenting relationships
“Thanks for everything Sue! I can understand why you have a 6 month waiting list. Your guidance over our 31 sessions is appreciated and the outcome is I’m a better person, a better father, a better husband, a better son and a better manager, I think that covers it. Thanks to you, we are armed with the necessary tools to support each other, upwards and onwards from here.” Ray L. (Permission granted to reproduce here.)
Training & Expertise
- Presence Oriented Relationship Therapy (PORT) Levels 1 & 2 | Relate Relationship Centre, NZ | 2024
- Relational Life Therapy (Levels 1 & 2) | Terry Real Institute | 2021
- Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) | Dr Sue Johnson | 2018-19
- The Gottman Method of Relationship Therapy | Gottman Institute (Levels 1 & 2) | 2015
- Ph.D (Clinical Psychology) | Edith Cowan University | 2012
- Family & Relationship Therapy Training (Levels 1 & 2) | William Street Family Therapy Centre | 2010-11
My Story
Although I completed two years of training in family and couples therapy at William Street Family Therapy Centre back in 2010, it wasn’t until I experienced my own divorce in 2018 that I really developed a strong passion for working with couples. I ferociously began consuming training material daily because I knew there had to be a better way to do relationship. I’m really pleased to let you know that I have found the holy grail in my advanced relationship counselling studies. I dove deeply into couples’ experts like Sue Johnson (Emotionally Focussed Therapy), Esther Perel (healing infidelity), Terry Real (Relational Life Therapy), and Ian Kerner (sex therapy) amongst others.
As I completed training after training, I would literally cry at times, realising that if only my ex-husband and I had gone to couples counselling, it could’ve saved our marriage. My ex-husband was my soulmate, he was (and still is) a great man, but we couldn’t make it work because we kept putting our big fat fingers into each other raw spots (unhealed childhood wounds), which created conflict and disconnection. In other words, our dysfunctional ways of relating, learnt from our families of origin, kept getting in the way of us connecting in a loving and respectful way.
I don’t want separation or divorce for you. Families belong together. Often couples come and see me when their bond has all but eroded and, what I see is that, when they engage in good quality couples counselling, they turn things around when each person is invested.
Many people are very reluctant to go to couples therapy because they feel vulnerable or they fear being made out be made out to be the bad guy/gal, but when couples come and they realise that there are no bad guys, but two people who have have gotten themselves stuck in a really bad dance/patterns and that they can learn new dance steps, then reluctance becomes willingness.
Perhaps, rather than couples counselling, a better term is relationship counselling because I also work with adult children and their parents, and collegial relationships that have fallen apart etc. I can help you to achieve emotional resolution in your relationship so that you can move forward with greater understanding, deeper compassion and forgiveness toward each other.
One couple that I finished sessions with earlier this year (2021), told me that they were planning a renewal of their vows as a result of our therapy. I felt so delighted and elated with this announcement. I felt deeply honoured when they said they were inviting me to the ceremony. Indeed, your first marriage is dead. It no longer works, it is no longer functional. What we will create together, through therapy, is your second marriage, that is, the same partner, but a completely new dynamic. One that is based on respect and I am excited to be a part of this journey to relationship recovery with you both.
Other times, couples do come to me to consciously uncouple, that is, end their relationship. With both people present, we can consciously process your relationship and it’s ending and help you to work toward a healthy, functioning co-parenting relationship if children are involved.
