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Relationship issues are one of the most common causes of emotional distress – and often the reason people seek help. A solid understanding of why difficulties arise, and what can be done about them, is extremely useful for all anyone wanting to help your relationship.
Jeff Sounders’s couples counselling course gives you this important knowledge, along with a range of strategies and proven tips for working effectively and ethically with more than one client. He shares the practical guidelines and skills she has acquired over many years of successfully helping couples using the human givens approach to build and maintain supportive and mutually rewarding relationships.
Presented without psychobabble, and making good use of insightful case histories, Jeff demystifies an area of counselling that many find daunting or fear is complicated.
The most effective ways to help and build rapport with couples in conflicted relationships; the sex differences in processing emotions; non-blame talking styles; the long-term impact of parenting; past conditioning, including psychological traumas, that can give clues about why difficulties arose; and what we can learn from the way successful couples facilitate mutual needs satisfaction.
Course Programme
Curriculum
Upcoming Lectures - Section 1:
1/1. Some Sad Relationship Truths
1/2. Problem Patterns from Childhood
1/3. Attachment Styles
1/4. Empowering Your Sense of Self
1/5. Managing Emotional Reactivity
1/6. Escaping Flawed Thinking & Beliefs
1/7. How Unknown or Unseen Needs Dictate 1/8. Your Conflict Cycle
1/9. Effective Communication
1/10. Self-management Requirements
Curriculum
Upcoming Lectures - Section 2:
2/1. Attachment Style Governs How You Relate 2/2. Managing Power
2/3. Which Emotions Run Me?
2/4. Flawed Beliefs & Perspectives
2/5. How Unknown or Unmet Needs Rule You 2/6. From Poor to Good Communication
2/7. The Communication Slow-Step
2/8. Power Plays in our Conflict Cycle
2/9. Transforming Emotional Reactivity
2/10. Escaping That Conflict Cycle
Curriculum
Upcoming Lectures - Section 3:
Details yet to be announced!
Full20 Lecture Course
$890
LIMITED TIME SPECIAL
A comprehensive 20 lecture course that covers all the main dynamics and details that arise in all couple relationships.
Full20 Lecture Course -Couples Therapy 101
$1,990
A comprehensive 20 lecture course that covers all the main dynamics and details that arise in all couple relationships.
The reasons couples struggle
How is it that those who got together because they loved each other so much now struggle to get on? The answer lies in the invisible dynamics which control relationships.
1. A person’s childhood wounding, emotional and otherwise, gets triggered when stresses of any sort arise in their primary relationship. Thus, most couples relate out of habit, not from knowing how to engage optimally.
2. Most people think that their partner ‘makes’ them feel a certain way. In truth however, most of our reactivity is caused by our inner emotional processes which get triggered by the behaviours of those close to us. The closer they are, the more reactive we tend to be.
3. Thus, we need to better understand both ourselves and our partners if we’re to take full responsibility for our own reactivity, do so non-judgementally, and to similarly support our partners to walk that same journey.
4. Another consequence of our background, is that few people grow up knowing how to communicate optimally, especially when emotionally stressed. I have to teach those skills to EVERY couple I work with.
5. Furthermore, these dysfunctions described above generate very unhelpful mindsets, from “You’re a problems and I don’t like you when you do that”, to “I’m a problem and I don’t like myself.” Negative, distorted beliefs about self, other or the world around us are commonplace. Such distorted mindsets are rarely discovered by their owners, because they are ‘normal’ to them and are usually invisible.
6. Thus, it is VERY challenging for a couple to get to the bottom of their dysfunctions without outside help, because they cannot fix what they cannot see or make sense of. There may be one partner who ‘knows’ their partner is a problem, but rarely do they assess their partner accurately. They are also unlikely to assess themselves accurately.
Getting your relationship back on track
1. Both parties must be committed to looking with curiosity at themselves as well as at their interactive dynamics for progress to be possible. Everyone has something to learn.
2. When a couple embark on this journey with full commitment to learn these unseen dynamics and alter them, their whole life will change. They will not only see themselves differently, but also everyone else in their life. They will have knowledge and insight few others have.
3. Children raised by a couple committed to this path will be a lot less likely to repeat the dysfunctions of their parents. Instead, they will be exposed to modelling that will set them up for better relationships with virtually everyone they meet in their lives. It is rare for children to grow up with optimally functional parents and quality relationship modelling.
4. The relating skills taught in this course must be practised and discussed together repeatedly. After all, everyone is having to break a lifetime of mostly habitual behaviour, so changes won’t happen overnight.
5. Couples Therapy 101 will take you step by step through the skills we must each develop if we’re to relate functionally, let alone optimally. After over thirty years of working with people, I’ve come up with a lot of insights and understandings that were never included in the trainings I received. For that reason, I wrote my book “The Successful Couples Recipe Book” so that the numerous details involved in this work could be studied at length by those wanting to walk this journey.
6. Couples Therapy 101 takes you through these many essential steps required to get your ideal relationship back on track. May you enjoy this journey together, knowing that there’s likely nothing actually wrong with you both. Old habits have simply produced repetitive dysfunctions. You’re just caught up in a drama that affects most of the human race, few of whom are relating optimally.
Course Content Preview
Keen to get learning? Here’s a quick look at the content you can expect from this Counselling Course.
FREE LECTURE: Couples Therapy 101 - 1. Why All Couples Struggle
Being in a relationship is difficult for almost everybody. Most couples have no idea what triggers them.
It's hard to be sitting in front of a counsellor because there's so much shame involved and embarrassment so we don't have the courage to show ourselves vulnerably.
Fundamentally, what happens in childhood is that children are trained to relate in particular ways. We are programmed from very early on to behave as we do.
In this full course, discover and name for yourself how your relationships elicit patterns of unhappiness and learn what you need to do for this to change for the better!
FREE LECTURE: Couples Therapy 101 - 2. Dynamics Driving Relationships
Generally, not always the women are more engaging. They are just better at relating and also at talking and feeling so they can express themselves more often and naturally.
On the other hand, men even as one-year-olds are very happy to play alone. They were quite adept at just choosing something they wanted to do, going off doing it and very often struggle to relate.
So men by having this behaviour, make it more difficult for women to relate to them. As they oppose each other with enclosed feelings versus natural expression.
Watch this video to learn more about relationships and behaviours.
FREE LECTURE: Couples Therapy 101 - 3. Understanding Arguments
In this course, I'm going to teach couples how to improve communication. There are patterns that couples get into so they can't bridge the gap between them.
I'm going to help people understand and teach a range of anxiety and avoidance styles.
Watch this video and understand a little more about it.
FREE LECTURE: Couples Therapy 101 - 4. Attachment Style Clashes
Fundamentally the way you report is caused by the so-called "attachment styles", a term that was coined way back in the 50s and 60s when the popular terms were anxious and secure.
Attachment is an innate motivating force. It will control our relationships unless we control it. Suppressing or ignoring the power of attachment amounts to surrendering to its impact on our relationships.
Watch this video and learn more about style clashes.
FREE LECTURE: Couples Therapy 101 - 5. The 6 Drivers
We mainly have six groups of emotions driving our behaviour and, eventually, our relationships. I'll help you develop skills to harness these emotions so you can thrive and be the master of your own behaviour.
Watch this video and learn more about The 6 Drivers.
