Couples and Marriage Therapy

Sign up for Relationship and Marriage Therapy and Counselling for Couples in Claremont, Cape Town by Psychologist Benita Southgate.

Being a couples’ therapist requires a unique and specific set of skills. There is, as a result, special self-selection involved in becoming a couples’-, marital- or family therapist. Benita Southgate is committed to helping couples understand the dynamics in their relationship, and to find positive ways of relating.

Benefits:

Change the view of the relationship

• Attach meaning to the conflict
• Helps clients to understand that the person they are in relationship with will inevitably cause wounding with the aim that the unconscious forces that cause a repeated pattern of suffering can be resolved
• Develop more adaptive ways of responding to the stressors in the relationship

Modifies dysfunctional behavior

• Therapy intentionally aims to change the way that the partners behave with each other
• Ensure that couples do not engage in a manner that can cause physical, psychological, or economic harm
• Incorporate procedures to stop the escalation of conflict

Decreases emotional avoidance

• Couples often avoid expressing their private feelings for fear that they will be rejected resulting in them becoming emotionally distant and growing apart. As an attachment-based couples therapist, the partners are assisted to feel less afraid in expressing their need for closeness.

Improves communication

• Effective communication is central to the experience of intimacy in relationships. Couples’ therapy assists the clients to communicate more effectively and to avoid forms of communication that is abusive, sarcastic and ridicules the other
• Therapy assists clients to learn how to listen for actively and empathically
• Therapy may involve coaching the couple to learn to speak to each other in more supportive and understanding ways

Promotes strengths

• Reinforces the strengths in the relationship
• Builds resilience or hardiness
• Enables the couple to derive more enjoyment out of their relationship