Relationship & Couples Counselling
Relationship & Couples Counselling
Most relationships go through periods where the same disagreements keep returning, and the closeness that once felt easy becomes hard to find. Counselling offers a structured space to slow that pattern down and understand it together.
50-minute sessions · $220 · Parap, Darwin NT or online via Zoom
What brings couples in
Areas we can work on together
People come to relationship counselling at different points: some early, when the strain is new; others after years of the same argument. Both are workable starting points.
Communication
Conversations that escalate, shut down, or go in circles without resolution.
Trust and infidelity
Rebuilding trust after a breach, or deciding what honesty and repair look like now.
Respect and emotional connection
Feeling unseen, criticised or taken for granted, and wanting to feel like a team again.
Misaligned values or beliefs
Differences around money, family, faith, parenting or future plans.
Healthy boundaries
Work, family, technology and outside pressures that leave little room for the relationship.
Openness and understanding
Talking about needs, desires and differences without it becoming a fight.
Re-establishing shared goals
Finding direction again after a demanding season or a long period of drift.
Transitions and separation
New babies, blended families, relocation, or working out how to separate respectfully.
How we work
Understanding the pattern, not just the argument
Relationship counselling here begins with the assumption that most couples are not trying to be difficult — they are caught in a pattern that neither of them chose. Naming that pattern in a calm, structured way is often the first thing that shifts.
Sharon has training in Gottman interventions, which offer practical structure for managing conflict, building friendship and connection, and understanding what happens when people become emotionally flooded.
She also draws on Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), which looks beneath the surface argument to the underlying questions people often ask of each other: Are you there for me? Do I matter to you? Understanding those attachment needs frequently changes how the same disagreement lands.
Where it is relevant, family therapy approaches are used too — particularly where children, blended families, extended family or caregiving are part of the picture.
Who counselling is for
Sessions are open to people in all kinds of relationships, including:
- Married and de facto partners
- Same-sex and gender-diverse couples
- Relationships that are open, non-monogamous or polyamorous
- Family members and co-parents wanting to work on a relationship
- One partner attending alone to think things through
Where there are concerns about safety, this is discussed carefully. Counselling is not suitable as a substitute for crisis or legal support.
The process
What to expect from the first few sessions
- 01
Joint first session
You attend together, and each person describes what has been happening from their own perspective.
- 02
Mapping the pattern
Together you identify the cycle you get stuck in, and what each of you is seeking underneath the conflict.
- 03
Practising differently
Sessions include practical work on how you speak to each other when it matters, including in the moment conflict begins.
- 04
Reviewing direction
At points along the way you review what is changing, and what you both want to keep working on.
Being honest about outcomes. No counsellor can guarantee that a relationship will be repaired, or that it will continue. What counselling can do is help you both understand what is happening more clearly, speak about it more honestly, and make more informed decisions about the future — whichever direction that takes.