Counsellor
Therapist
CPD
Couples - Relationship Work - 8 Weeks Dates TBC - Southampton Location
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.”
— commonly attributed to Leo Tolstoy
Who is the course for?
This course is designed for practitioners qualified at Level 5, or those reaching Level 5 within Level 6 training, who are interested in, or beginning to explore, therapeutic work with couples (or more than one person) from a client-centred, relational perspective.
This course supports practitioners to develop greater confidence in working with relationships, deepening their understanding of relational dynamics such as misperception, attachment, power, and communication. It enhances the ability to hold multiple perspectives, facilitate empathic dialogue, and support clearer relational hearing between partners. Alongside this, practitioners build awareness of bias, difference, and meaning-making while maintaining client-centeredness in relational work.
What does the course offer?
This course introduces a client-centred, relational approach to working with relationships, grounded in respect for each individual’s lived experience and meaning-making. In the course, we explore how different perspectives, misperceptions, and relational dynamics shape connection and how shared understanding can emerge through empathic engagement.
Designed for qualified practitioners, the programme supports the development of awareness of relational processes, including communication, power, attachment, and difference, while maintaining a client-centred reflective therapeutic stance.
Programme.
Week 1: Contracting, safety, multiple perspectives, bias awareness
Week 2: Relational empathy – hearing both partners beyond behaviour
Week 3: Individual and relational experience – holding two realities
Week 4: Misperception and protection – how conflict forms
Week 5: Attachment and relational cycles across differences
Week 6: Communication and emotional meaning
Week 7: Power, care, dependency and relational imbalance
Week 8: Integration, shared meaning and endings