Sign up for your FREE e-newsletter

You’ll regularly recieve powerful strategies for personal development, tips to improve the growth of your counselling practice, the latest industry news and much more.

We’ll keep your information private and never sell, rent, trade or share it with any other organisation. And you can cancel anytime.

Relationship & Families

Obstacles to Creating Relationship Healing

Even if you have a desire to create a healing environment, you or the others in the environment may be unable to do so because of an inability to forgive and forget or an unwillingness to accept personal responsibility or to accept the consequences for one’s actions. An unwillingness to admit to personal mistakes, failures, […]

Relationship Healing

It is important to create a healing environment within the relationship even if there is anger, criticism or condemnation, as it is this very environment that may calm the atmosphere and allow clarity and purpose of vision to thrive. You know you have created an environment of healing when you show respect to one another […]

Stages of a Relationship

There are a variety of stages within a relationship, where in the initial stages the mixture of emotional excitement brought the couples together, six or sixteen years later the love that has evolved is very different. The various stages that transpire within a relationship are quite normal, and are necessary for growth and development. Every […]

Warning Signs of a Relationship Breakdown

One of the most useful recent research findings is the work which has identified the early warning signs of deterioration of an intimate relationship. Based on these signs, researchers have been able to predict with a very high degree of accuracy (about 90%) which relationships are likely to end within a few years. This information […]

Series: Coping with Relationship Breakdown

In this series of posts, we’ll explore the elements involved in a relationship breakdown, from its early stages to post-break contact. Hopefully this will be useful to the many couples who are faced with relationship challenges and suffer the emotional consequences derived from it. Follow-Up Posts: Warning Signs Stages of a Relationship Relationship Healing Obstacles […]

New Relationships

On leaving a domestic violent relationship, many victims find themselves in new relationships which are also abusive. This may be due to not giving themselves enough time to fully recover their self esteem and work through the various stages of grieving. Be cautious about new relationships, but remember not to let the experience of abuse […]

Looking After Yourself

Victims of domestic violence describe the experience as exhausting and emotionally draining. Many victims continue to blame themselves for the abuse long after they have left the relationship. For this reason, constructing a new life can take time and energy. The victim needs to gain confidence and get on top of things. Answering the following […]

The Cycle of Domestic Violence

There has been a great deal of research which indicates that there are patterns to violence in abusive relationships and is often referred to as “the cycle of violence”. It has been useful for many women in violent relationships to notice these patterns in order to predict attacks, however it is important to note that […]

Why do Domestic Violence Victims Stay?

Fear is the main reason abused individuals do not seek help or tell anyone about the violence or abused in a relationship. Sometimes this fear is about coping alone if and when they leave and is heightened in cases where the person is either physically or financially dependent on their partner. People with disabilities there […]

A Case of Stressful Life Change

Author: Jane Barry A précis of the sessions is as follows. For ease of writing the Professional Counsellor is abbreviated to “C”. In the first session, “C” asked some open questions to prompt Mary to start discussing her dilemmas. Mary was able to convey the events leading up to her problems clearly, although was reduced […]