What To Look For In A Couple Therapist

We believe that it is essential for couples to get the right support for one of their most important relationships. Unfortunately, from our experience and many of our clients, many mental health practitioners offer this service but have not been adequately trained.

So, we want to educate and assist you to ensure you get excellent support for your most important relationship. Therefore, we encourage anyone seeking couples counselling to ask the therapist offering couple therapy the following 4 questions:

Question 1: What are your qualifications in couple therapy?

Response: A qualification in counselling or psychology, as well as a minimum of a graduate diploma in couple therapy (9 months training), but preferably a Masters in Couples Counselling should be the response. Avoid short courses in couple therapy, they are very limiting (a bit like doing a weekend retreat in yoga and calling yourself a yoga teacher).

WHY? Because couple counselling is a very specialist area, therapists are required to do extensive training on being impartial and balanced, and that can become quite tricky when two people are disagreeing and want the practitioner to take their side. We encourage people to think about it as someone who is seeking treatment for cancer and seeing a General Practitioner (someone who has some basic training in the field) instead of seeing an oncologist (who has been specifically trained and deals with cancer daily).

Question 2: How many couples do you see per week?

Response: A minimum of 5 couples per week and a maximum of 20 couples per week.

WHY? Because having a therapist who is practicing their very unique skill set is essential. It means they are regularly applying and maintaining their skill set. Therapists doing more than 20 clinical hours (that means seeing clients face to face) will burn out and will not be spending enough time planning and preparing for their client’s therapy in a comprehensive manner. For every one hour we spend with a client at MSRCC, we spend at least an extra hour planning for their next session.

Question 3: What counselling associations do you belong to?

Response: Ideally you want your therapist to be with a counselling association such as Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA) and the Australian Counselling Association (ACA).

WHY? Because you are seeking a counselling service. Psychologist are trained for diagnosing mental health conditions, whereas counsellors are trained at assisting people explore, understand, review and change (if desired) behaviours that are detrimental to their lives and / or their relationships. That is not a mental health condition.

Question 4: Do you engage in clinical supervision for couple therapy? And if so, how often?

Response: Yes, at least every 3 weeks.

WHY? Because professional supervision is vital for good counsellors and therapists as it sharpen a therapist’s diagnostic skills, provides space to review client care, encourages practitioner self-care, and assists with the enhancements of clinical skills and treatment options. In essence, supervision promotes good practice and helps ensure clients get the best quality care possible.

WHY CALL US?

People Trust Us

We are a group of professional and experienced relationship specialists and psychotherapists offering specialist couples and relationship therapy. We offer the most effective, tailor made approaches for your relationship wellbeing.