Twelve Things You Can Do to Get The Most Out of Couples / Marriage Counseling (part I of IV)
In my next three blogs I will share with you nine ways to help couple’s counseling to be successful. When I think it’s appropriate for a specific couple, I hand these suggestions out to them. I offer three suggestions in each handout, rather than all nine to give couples a chance to digest and practice a manageable number of things between our meetings. Depending on how they do with the previously handout I then add more ideas for them to work with
It is easy to make the mistake that going for counseling is an activity that happens only in the counselor’s office; and once you have gotten there and participated in the sessions there’s nothing else to be done until the next time. Change happens most effectively in counseling when the person get’s actively involved in the process between our meetings. A basic rule in life is the more you put into something the more you get out of it.
I’ve written these blogs to give guidelines as to how to make the most progress in counseling.
1. Come 15 minutes early, so you have time to gather yourself and think about what you want to cover during
the session. Use the “Therapy Update Form” to both focus and to give myself and you a running start about what we want to cover during the session.
2. Do assignments between sessions. It is helpful to practice between meetings what has been learned and suggested during counseling.
3. Before coming to each meeting come up with an agenda of things you would like to talk about. It would be helpful if you would write them out before you come to the session.. Even though things may change during our meeting, it will speed up progress to a have a specific starting point
In my next blog I’ll give you the next three things you can do to make things better for yourself and your relationship
You might also want to purchase my Manual “Relationship Rescue Manual“, as it has many of the techniques I use in couples’ counseling.