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The Couples Programme

Finding the best way forward for each of you

Who is the Couples Programme for?

You're already separated OR you're planning to be soon. You both want to find the way to:

  • minimise trauma, conflict and bad feelings

  • put yourselves in strong positions to build your new lives apart

  • ensure that your dependants are protected, cared for and fully supported

I work with both of you, together if possible, in an independent, completely non-judgmental way.

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What is the Couples Programme?

Breakup is an emotional and a practical crisis. It’s a crisis of relationship, of self, and of lifestyle. It can also be a crisis of parenting and family commitments. Sometimes it’s a spiritual crisis too.

The Couples Programme will help you find your way through the various challenges that separation can present. It will help you find ease, instead of anxiety; clarity instead of uncertainty.

The Programme provides:

  • time together with an experienced, independent professional who will help you navigate through the sometimes turbulent waters of separation
  • support and guidance to help you prepare for and travel through separation in a conscious and realistic way
  • rigour and sensitivity combined, so you can establish agreements over sometimes delicate issues - at a time when you both may be feeling tender in various ways

The outcome of the Couples Programme includes a written Agreement. This contains all the essential arrangements, agreed between the two of you, that will help make life simpler and easier for all concerned. The Agreement can include a Parenting Plan which itemises responsibilities with all the important aspects of childcare and parenting arrangements.

The Programme will help you find the solutions and resolutions you need to make next steps as positive as possible.

What does the Couples Programme contain?

A Programme is simply a series of Consultations. A single Consultation is rarely enough for you to get the depth and effectiveness of help you’re likely to need. The number of sessions in the Programme will vary according to your unique needs and aspirations. We'll discuss and agree this before we start.

What does a Couples Consultation contain?

Each Consultation will involve a meeting with me, either face-to-face at a previously agreed venue, or by Skype or other form of video-link.

Each session has only one agenda item - your challenges and wishes.

Each session is up to 90 minutes in duration

The essential ingredient of each session will be the three of us meeting in conversation. Unlike typical counselling or other forms of talking therapy, sessions with me are interactive and dynamic.

“Although the sessions were at times challenging, they left me feeling encouraged, with a renewed sense of purpose and determination."

Consultations can include:

  • information gathering and giving
  • advice and guidance
  • prompts and suggestions
  • the exploration of alternative perspectives
  • agreeing tasks/exercises/discussion points for you to complete between sessions
  • dealing with emotions
  • drafting written agreements or statements

In order to enable you to get what you need to make the end of relationship as healing and healthy a process as possible, I draw upon the full range of coaching, psychological and therapeutic tools at my disposal.

Alongside the technical interventions, I have a lifetime’s-worth of relationship and post-relationship experience to draw upon, which I’m sometimes called to access in service to my clients. So I will mentor, guide and even advise if it feels right to do so, and if you want it.

The outcomes of all this usually leads to issues and obstacles ‘opening out’ in new ways, rather than staying bound within familiar patterns of thinking and solution-finding.

The Couples Programme usually focuses on practical issues that require your agreement to take forward. But it’s worth bearing in mind that to reach the shared clarity required for deep agreements to happen, sometimes issues from the relationship itself may need to be addressed.

The atmosphere and context of the Couples Programme is, and must always be, one of compassion, positivity and pragmatism. It helps if you can embark on the Programme with that intention firmly in place.

What else?

I back up the sessions with the following complimentary services:

  • Unlimited email communications so that you can access ongoing support as and when you need it
  • A written summary of the key topics and outcomes of each session which gives you a readily-accessible source of guidance and support
  • Free handouts and guidance materials as required, to help you resolve the issues that are most relevant to you
  • Short, supportive phone calls between sessions to help you deal with particularly challenging issues, between sessions. We’ll agree at the start of the Programme exactly how this service can work best for you.

“I have very much appreciated your calm, gentle, focussed approach and your non-judgmental attitude.” 

Cost

1 Couples Consultation (up to 90 minutes: £95

Series of 3 Consultations: £265

Series of 6 Consultations: £480

All payments in advance please. Instalment plans available by agreement.

Please note that the Couples Programme is NOT formal mediation. If you are asked by a court to seek mediation to resolve conflicts, then you need to approach a Registered Mediator who is on the court list in your area. 

My work focuses on achieving conscious, productive ways of separating; the intention is to minimise pain and discomfort for all concerned. This in turn prevents the break-up from becoming a long-lasting emotional scar in the lives of those involved.

The Couples Programme can be powerfully beneficial, short-and long-term, to your experience of separation and divorce. 

However it is NOT a substitute for a legal process, and the outcomes of it have no status in law. 

To enquire and/or book onto the Couples Programme, please fill in the simple form below, and I'll get back to you swiftly (usually within 24 hours)

Derek

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photo by Rafael Libson-Hochenberg