Relationship therapy is a tool that singles, couples, and parents can utilize to help them repair broken relationships. It can also be used as a preventative tool. In other words, people involved in healthy relationships can still utilize therapy to help them identify and address pitfalls before these create serious problems.
The counselors at Rye NY’s Relationships & More explain that relationship therapy is a talking therapy. Counselors and clients plan as many sessions as necessary to talk things out and accomplish their goals. A big part of the conversation are the leading and open-ended questions counselors ask.
Questions are designed to facilitate conversations. They are designed to help clients think things through to their logical conclusions. If you plan to undergo relationship therapy, plan to answer a lot of questions. Below are five you are likely to be asked.
1. Where do you see your relationship right now?
Successful relationship therapy begins with an assessment of the relationship in question. That being the case, it is almost guaranteed that the counselor will ask you where you see your relationship at the current time. Whether it’s a marriage, a romantic relationship, a relationship with friends, or the parent-child relationship, the counselor needs to know your thoughts before any plan of action can be developed.
How you perceive the relationship in question goes a long way toward helping the counselor understand where the issues with that relationship lie. That makes this particular question one of the first that therapists tend to ask.
2. What do you hope to get out of counseling?
Hand-in-hand with your views on the relationship in question are your expectations of counseling. What do you hope to get out of relationship therapy? Your therapist needs to know this early on just in case you have unrealistic expectations. Your counselor may have to take some time to explain what they can do for you.
3. What are your goals for your relationship?
This next question – asking what your goals are – is often confused with the second question. They are not the same thing. You may have goals for your relationship that you do not believe can be accomplished in therapy. Your counselor needs to know that. Your counselor also needs to know where you want to see the relationship go in both the short and long terms. Relationship therapy is designed to put you on that track. You take it from there.
4. Is there anything you want to work on?
There are times when people go to relationship counseling wanting to work on something specific. Maybe a client knows that they have trouble communicating with their spouse. They have chosen relationship therapy specifically to work on that. Counselors ask the question because they need to know. They cannot help clients work on something specific if they do not know what that something is.
5. Is there something you want to talk about during this session?
The previous four questions all relate to overall goals. But a good counselor works from one session to the next. That’s why counselors often ask, at the beginning of each session, if there is something specific the client wants to talk about. Maybe something difficult happened that week. Perhaps the client has a new question in need of an answer.
By its nature, relationship therapy is a talking therapy. Though it is ultimately defined by conversation, therapists ask questions to get the conversation started. The five discussed in this post are fairly common to relationship therapy. Expect to hear them if you choose relationship therapy for yourself.
