What is an Assessment for Couples Counselling?
Before couples counselling commences, every ethical and professional therapist must perform an assessment with the couple before therapy commences (read about couple counselling).
Initially, the couple meet with Dean Richardson to go through a process called “an assessment”. The couple and Dean must first determine if therapy is an appropriate and helpful choice for the couple, and if it is then the couple and Dean must discover what is the therapy intended to address. The couple is assessing the therapist as well as assessing if they can work together in therapy.
It is not unusual for the couple to find the assessment process therapeutically valuable too as the assessing therapist asks questions of the relationship that, perhaps, the couple have never addressed before.
The Assessment Process.
An assessment for couples counselling takes a minimum of four sessions (and can be experienced by the couple as therapeutically beneficial – although it is not counselling per se):-
- Session 1: all three of us meet to discuss an overview of what is needed from counselling.
- Session 2: one partner meets with Dean separately. This is to discuss their perspective on the couple relationship, and to discuss some personal history.
- Session 3: the other partner meets with Dean separately as in session 2.
- Session 4: all three of us meet again to discuss what we have learned in the previous sessions, and to begin to set a focus about what the couple counselling should address.
Couples therapy cannot successfully proceed with different agendas (ie both partners wanting different things from therapy). If necessary, the assessment process (Session 4) can be repeated for a time to see if the couple can be helped in negotiating and compromising upon what should be the focus of therapy.
By the end of the assessment.
With an agreed focus for therapy, subsequent sessions are lead primarily by the couple themselves. The therapist offers support, listens to the couple’s discussions with occasionally offering observations and therapeutic hypotheses on the relationship intended to help both partners learn what might be going on in their relationship. With new information the couple can learn what is different, and difference is a relationship or a change in the relationship (Selvini et all, 1980) inviting the couple into making more informed choices, change patterns of behaviour and be less held “at ransom” by unhappy behaviour.
A main intention of couples counselling is to help disturb the relationship’s unhappy behaviour patterns by being curious and interested on the relationship system (learning about automatic behaviours occurring within the relationship), learning & finding new information and allowing inspiration to address what is being learned … plus being creative with solutions to alter behaviours … solutions that the couple will gradually come up with themselves.
The process encourages space for thought and inspiration – allowing the couple’s relationship to become unstuck again and leaving the couple no longer in need of further therapeutic intervention.
What to do next.
If you and your partner believe that you would like to meet with Dean to discuss your needs for counselling, make contact to arrange an initial appointment.
Assessment for Learning: Putting it into PracticeBased on a two-year project involving thirty-six teachers, this book contains a review of the research background and of the project itself. It contains chapters describing the practices which teachers found fruitful and the underlying ideas about learning that these developments illustrate.You might also like…
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FAQ: "What is an Assessment for Counselling (Couples)?"
FAQ: What is an Assessment for Counselling (Couples)? Before therapy commences in earnest, a couple is invited to an assessment. An assessment allows the couple to give an overview of their relationship problems to the therapist, allows the therapist offers some helpful, information-gathering questions, and allows all three the opportunity to discuss if they can [...] -
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The choice to come into couples counselling may be a courageous one & choosing Dean Richardson can help you both transform the most important relationship of your life. Ideal for marriages, civil-partnerships and platonic relationships, with lots of helpful therapeutic curiosity we'll learn how your relationship became stuck. We'll learn how to perturb unhappy behaviour by gaining new knowledge. With inspiration & creative ideas from all of us we'll introduce changes. With supportive observation, challenge & systemic hypothesising, Dean will help you both to join in the process until you have no further need of him nor couple counselling. Whether breaking-up or reconciling, you could begin counselling soon... -
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