Paul Cockayne - Relationship Counsellor

Polarisation

In relationships, we sometimes find ourselves caught in “vicious cirles” – patterns of behaviour that are destructive but difficult to change.  For example, suppose one of you tends to be stricter with your children than the other.  The strict parent may see their partner as “too soft” – and become a little stricter to compensate.  The more liberal partner, on the other hand, may well see their partner as being “too hard”, and be inclined to be softer with the kids to make up for it. If this pattern continues, you and your partner can become polarised, one becoming “nice parent” and the other the “nasty parent”.  And this can become difficult to shift because both of you can see the fault as lying with your partner – “I have to be strict because he/she is so soft” – and so this can become an area of conflict between you.

This sort of polarisation can happen in every area of a relationship – financially (spender and saver), socially (introvert and extrovert), in communications (talker/listener), sexually (initiator/responder) and so on. 

Counselling can help with this sort of pattern, firstly by helping you to identify that it is happening.  Once the pattern is identified, you can acknowledge that it is nobody’s fault, but just an unfortunate result of the interactions between you.  And with that comes the ability to change it, by both parties stepping away from their polarised positions to a more central position.  You will always be different, of course, but differences can be a source of great strength in a relationship, not a source of conflict.

One of the most frequent issues couples bring to relationship counselling is that they have difficulty communicating.  Sometimes arguments can flare up very quickly, often over silly things.  Sometimes couples feel that they have nothing to say to each other.  Sometimes communication is dominated by one of the couple to the exclusion of the other. 

Counselling can help to improve communication.  Just the fact that you are in a neutral environment, talking in front of a third person, can improve things considerably.  Sometimes I find I need to direct the conversations, especially in the early stages of counselling, to make sure that both of the couple get enough air-time, and understand each other.  But gradually, couples find it much easier to listen to their partner’s point of view, to respect their right to speak, and hence to understand why they might hold a different opinion.

This is the first step; generally, as counselling progresses, I find myself needing to intervene in the conversations less and less, and couples are able to talk to each other directly in the counselling room without my help.  This new way of communicating is then something that the couple can use outside the counselling room.  And with this respectful two-way communication, working on problems in the relationship can suddenly become much easier to do.

I do not work to a fixed course of counselling, preferring a flexible approach where the number of sessions you attend is up to you.

During the course of counselling we will keep the process under frequent review.  This ensures that we are discussing the most important things and that counselling is proving useful to you.
I practice at the Rodger Duckworth Physiotherapy Centre in Wokingham
I can accept payment by cash or cheque but regret that I do not have the facility to accept credit cards.