Working with couples can feel very different from working with individual clients. There are two people in the room, two different perspectives and the added challenge of managing what happens between them.

In this episode of the Good Enough Counsellors podcast, I talk to integrative psychotherapist, couples therapist and clinical supervisor Claire Ratcliffe about how therapists can feel more confident working with couples.

Claire shares that she didn't always enjoy couples work. Despite completing couples therapy training, she initially felt out of her depth and eventually removed couples counselling from her profile altogether. It was only when she found an approach that suited her, alongside specialist training and supervision, that her experience began to change.

Today, couples work is something she loves.

We talk about what makes couples counselling so rewarding, as well as some of the challenges therapists can face when working with more than one client in the room and how to handle them.

Towards the end of our conversation, we return to something that made a huge difference to both Claire's experience and my own reflections on working with couples: supervision. Claire explains why specialist couples supervision matters and how learning alongside other therapists can help you develop your skills and feel less alone when the work feels challenging.

Claire is also developing a group supervision membership for couples and relationship therapists, with opportunities to learn through case discussion and shared experience. You can find out more about Claire and her supervision offer through the links below.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why Claire initially stopped offering couples counselling
• The difference the right training and specialist supervision can make
• What Claire now loves about working with couples
• How childhood experiences and trauma can play out within relationships
• Helping partners listen without immediately reacting or making it about themselves
• Why slowing things down can be so important in couples therapy
• Sex, shame and differences in desire within relationships
• Resentment, contempt and what can happen when couples seek help very late
• Why couples therapists can benefit from learning together in supervision
• What to do if you want to work with couples but don't yet feel confident

If you've ever received an enquiry from a couple and wondered whether you're really equipped to help them, I hope this conversation reassures you that feeling out of your depth doesn't necessarily mean couples work isn't for you. Sometimes it means you need more training, more support and the opportunity to learn alongside people who understand the particular challenges of the work.

About Claire Ratcliffe

Claire Ratcliffe is an integrative psychotherapist, couples therapist and clinical supervisor. She works extensively with relationships, trauma and psychosexual issues and is passionate about helping other therapists develop their confidence in couples work.

Claire also hosts the Healing Relationships: With Ourselves, Others & The World podcast and shares relationship education on TikTok.

You can find out more about Claire and her supervision on her website, HERE

Therapy Growth Group

If this episode has got you thinking about the support you'd like with your own private practice, you can also find details of Therapy Growth Group below.

From the week beginning 12 October, we'll be spending four weeks exploring your niche: who you most want to help, how you uniquely help them, why clients might choose you and how you can communicate that clearly to prospective clients.

Therapy Growth Group includes regular live calls where you can ask questions, get feedback and connect with other therapists building their private practices.

Find out more on Josephine's website, https://josephinehughes.com

You can also find me here:

The Good Enough Counsellors Facebook Group

Josephine Hughes on Facebook

Josephine Hughes on YouTube

My website: josephinehughes.com

Setting up in private practice? Download my free checklist HERE

Need ideas for how to get clients? Download my free handout 21 Ways for Counsellors to Attract New Clients HERE

Keywords: couples counselling, couples therapy, working with couples, couples counsellor, relationship therapy, relationship counselling, therapist confidence, couples therapy training, couples therapy supervision, relationship therapist, clinical supervision, counselling supervision, private practice therapist, couples therapy skills, trauma and relationships, childhood trauma and relationships, psychosexual therapy, sex and relationships, relationship conflict, working with relationship issues, counsellor private practice, psychotherapist private practice, Good Enough Counsellors, Claire Ratcliffe, Josephine Hughes

The information contained in Good Enough Counsellors is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this podcast are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this podcast. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this podcast.

Josephine Hughes disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this podcast.

What I love so much about working with couples is the healing that you get to do for yourself with another person that you might not get to fully embrace with anyone else in your life.

So in that relational dynamic, in the romantic, intimate relationship, it brings up your earlier wounds, it brings up your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs about yourself, about others from your childhood, and you get to heal with your partner.

Welcome to Good Enough Counsellors, the podcast for growing a private practice without the pressure to be perfect. I'm Josephine Hughes, counsellor and creator of Therapy Growth Group, helping you get the clients you want and create the practice of your dreams.

Today, I am delighted to introduce you to Clare Ratcliffe, who is an integrative psychotherapist, really experienced couples counsellor and clinical supervisor. She's got a thriving online private practice.

Clare is passionate as you'll be able to tell about couples counselling and especially in helping other therapists to feel more confident as they help couples.

And that's something that she's growing with her supervision membership that is born out of her own clinical experience of working in supervision groups and how that has helped her to grow alongside her therapy practice. Claire has a podcast called Healing Relationships With Ourselves, Others and the World, and she has an enormous following on TikTok.

So well done, Claire. She speaks to thousands of people on TikTok and you can find her there. I'll put her details in the show notes.

What's particularly interested me in Claire's work is I actually tried couples counselling myself and stopped because I found it too difficult. So it's really lovely to hear from someone who genuinely loves the work and I'm really curious to find out how she manages to handle couples.

So over to Clare. So welcome, Clare. It's really lovely to see you.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's so nice to see you. It's been a while.

Yeah, yeah, it has been. So, Claire, let's start by saying I've got something to confess, because I know that you love couples counselling.

I tried couples counseling as a therapist because I kept getting asked, do I do couples counseling? So I went off, I did a couple of weekends training and then I launched as a couples counsellor.

I found it so hard and I in after a while I stopped because I thought, I don't think I can handle this. I wasn't very good with handling the sort of couple interactions, really, and being objective.

But you really love working with couples, so what is it about working with couples that you really love that perhaps I missed when I was trying to.

Work with them, you know, I love it now. I love it now.

I did have it on there. Couples work, couples therapy. And then I thought, I hate this. I don't know what to do. There were couples coming in. I don't know how to support them.

I just felt out of my depth. I did not feel like I had a handle on it. And I thought, you know what? I don't like it. I don't enjoy it. I don't want to do it.

I don't know why I wanted to deleted it all from my profile.

Yeah.

And then I was being drawn to it again and again. I was still reading books about couples therapy. I was doing short courses, like weekend workshops. And then I thought, you know what?

I'm gonna retrain in different couples therapy training and find one that sits well with me.

And what had happened was I was one night really late reading In Quest of the Mythical Mate, which is based on the developmental model of couples therapy with Ellen Bader and Pete Pearson. I read that, and I thought, God, I wish this was actual couples therapy training, because that book was written in the 80s.

That wouldn't be amazing if there was actual couples therapy training now with that. So I just googled it, and there it was. There it was, couples therapy training for that. And I was like, oh, my God.

I feel like I was just so deliriously happy. So I've been on that training for years now. I'm still part of that program, but also then went on to do other couples therapy training.

I was part of couples therapy supervision groups. That was for imago therapy, actually. And then since then, I've done different types of couple therapy training.

I mean, I love training as well, but the relational life therapy with Terry, Real, all different ones. And I love working with couples now. But back then, honestly, when I started, I just thought, this isn't for me.

But now, years later, like, I'm still doing it. I love it. It's different.

So I would say to anyone who's in that position as well, the way that you've just described, like, you wanted to do it, you went on some training, you did it and didn't like it.

It's actually, did you have the right training for you Because I think it's what matches your style and how you like to work as well and then get the right supervision that's really important. At the time, I had a supervisor who didn't work with couples who'd not had couples therapy training. That was very different.

So it's finding the supervisor as well who also works with couples and he's trained in couples, that's gonna support you then so much more with your couples therapy work.

Yeah. Yeah. So what is it about couples work that you really enjoy?

What I love so much about working with couples is the healing that you get to do for yourself with another person that you might not get to fully embrace with anyone else in your life. So I do a lot of work with individuals about working with your inner child, inner children, younger parts.

And there is something about being in a romantic, intimate partnership with somebody that allows you to access some more of that childhood stuff that perhaps you wouldn't do with somebody else.

When you're with a partner, if you're living together, and not all partners do, but in that relational dynamic, in the romantic, intimate relationship, it brings up your earlier wounds, it brings up your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs about yourself, about others from your childhood. And you get to heal with your partner. They get to support you in that. You get to support them.

And when I'm working with couples and I see the adults in front of me, but also then the children in front of me, and how they get to learn how to be the primary parent for themselves, to look after and heal and support their younger parts, but also, how can you be the secondary parent for your partner and support them in their own healing? And I do say with couples therapy, you are learning more about yourself. You're learning so much about yourself in couples therapy. Yes.

About your partner, and you're going to do this works that you have a thriving, nourishing, fulfilling relationship, but you're learning so much about yourself. And I just now love it.

I love it when couples are coming to me and then they're working, and then they get to a place where they say, like, look at how we handled this conflict. Look at how we manage this. Look at how we feel more connected, more loving, and it's just so healing.

I just love that feeling when they're telling me how well things are and how the handling things differently to what they would have done six months before, a year before. Credible for me.

Yeah.

So do you find that, you know, couples only come to you when they're in crisis, or are you managing to get Couples perhaps at an earlier stage because it often seems to be. I don't know if this is true or not that often people come forward when it's almost.

There's that they're almost got beyond the point of being able to heal together. Or do you find that you're able to intervene at that point?

Yeah, it can happen both ways because sometimes couples will come when they are literally at death's door, like they are about to separate. What's harder with that is the motivation.

Yeah.

Working then with the motivation.

How motivated are you to engage in this work and learn something new about yourself, about your partner and the willingness to do things differently and experience change. The motivation then at that point is hard because sometimes there is one or both, but sometimes it's the one who.

And this is when I'm working with two people. You know, I do work with open relationships, polyamorous relationships. Sometimes it was more than two people.

But in the case of, in couples therapy when there was two people, sometimes one person is on their way out, like they've got one foot out the door, almost two feet out the door, and the other one is saying, come on, let's do this. I really want to stay together.

So you're working with different levels of motivation then sometimes I'll have couples who come to me that are really struggling, they're in a difficult place, but they know they to be together. They say, I know I want to do this work with this person, I want to be in this relationship. But we just don't know what to do.

We don't know how we're going to do this. We've tried everything.

I always want to know what they've tried because sometimes when they say they've tried everything, it's that we've just tried adapting. We tried adapting. I've listened to what they want, I've tried to do it. And that is only going to be really short term anyway.

That isn't going to be the long term internal change that you need to make. So it really varies, but the motivation level is definitely really important.

Do you work so psychosexually as well, Claire? Is that something that you do?

Yeah. So I've had quite. I'm still in ongoing training with sex therapy as well. I've been doing this now for four years. Yeah, four years now.

And what it is with that, because there are certainly not only couples, but individuals who come with different sexual issues. But a lot of what I work with that is that I find many people, individuals and couples where one or Both partners have experienced sexual trauma.

So I work a lot with healing from sexual trauma that they've had historically in childhood or in adulthood, and how it affects the relationship with themselves and their own body and with pleasure and enjoyment, but also how it affects being in a relationship as well. So I will work a lot with couples who are recovering and healing from that and want.

Want to experience all the sensations and everything that you can and healing within yourself and with your partner and enjoy the empowering experience that you can have. Of course, it doesn't feel like that when you've had that stolen from you. Really.

Yeah.

So I work a lot with that. But also when different people are coming with different sexual experiences.

Of course, couples can experience lots of different types of sexual difficulties, but. But they don't talk about it either to each other or even to their own individual therapists.

I work sometimes with couples who have got individual therapists, but they say, no, I don't want to talk about sex. I don't want to mention that they're so embarrassed or so ashamed.

So I do work with that as well, which is a part of my work that I also really enjoy.

Yeah, I was going to say because there must be a lot of shame for people around that given.

Yeah.

Our sort of culture where we so sort of openly talk about sex and it feels like, you know, everybody else is doing it and if you're not the one who is, you can feel a bit self ashamed of yourself, can't you?

So absolutely, the amount of couples who I have who say to me, they'll say, so your other couples who you were with then, like, how often do they have sex? Oh, because they'll think like, oh, well, we must be so abnormal or can we find a way of being normal?

Is it that when we do it once a month, is that the right or wrong thing? It's different for everybody. There is no right or wrong. There's absolutely no amount or frequency or anything like that.

It's what works well for that couple. And sometimes there is a discrepancy between the couple in terms of frequency or how they'd like to do things.

And it's working with that desire discrepancy which a lot of couples come to couples therapy about. So you're working with that as well of what works for the couple. For each of you, you're both going to want different things.

You're then looking at what's really important in couples work is differentiation. Can I say what I think and feel and want or don't want and express that to you?

And can I as the other, as a partner, listen to what you want and what you like and what you don't want, what you don't like and hold steady in myself and hold my emotional response or reaction while I listen and be curious about your experience? So you're working on self differentiation and other differentiation, which is one of the most difficult things actually with couples.

Couples really struggle with that. And that is what I work with a lot.

Yeah.

So in other words, people might, if someone sort of tells them what they want and how they feel, the other person might take that personally and make it about themselves rather than being able to hold it and hear and learn from it without making it something that it becomes a self criticism, something like that. Would that be what you're saying there?

Exactly. Exactly.

If one partner is saying I really only want to have sex maybe once a month and that really is great for me and the other person, they might take it as, does this mean you don't fancy me? Do you not like me? Is it not good? Do I do something wrong and make it all about them?

And that is what we automatically can go to rather than being curious about the other person's experience. Like I say, there's no right or wrong with this either in what people want and what they don't want is what works for them.

But can I be curious about what's going on for you without making it about me? That's one of the really trickle tricky things that couples experience.

Yeah. So how would you handle that in the moment?

So, you know, because I think this is often a problem, isn't it, with couples work, is that, you know, you've got that reactivity perhaps in the room. That was something that I found difficult to handle. You know, where one person listens to the other and then reacts to it.

How do you sort of handle that.

In the moment when that happens? I will say beforehand.

So I will say beforehand when your partner is answering the question, you might have an urge to say something and there might be a part of you wanting to make it about you. And I really want you to hold off doing that because we're going to be curious about your own internal process when you're listening to your partner.

But I don't want you to just verbalize it. I don't want you to say anything that's going to shut your partner down. So I will say you're going to have an emotional response.

You might have something that you really want to say. But I really want you to hold it. This is a practice. This is a practice.

So then the partner will say something like, this is what I would really like, or this is what I would like to happen going forward. Or something like that. And the partner might have a response. You might be able to see the facial expression or something like that.

Yeah.

I'm not inviting them to start talking about what's going on their face or anything like that. But I will say, can you ask a curious question?

Is there anything that you want to know about what your partner's just said that's not making it about you? And it's not problem solving? I make that really clear as well. We're not here to problem solve right now. We're here to be curious.

You might validate something that they've said. There's some. Because is something changing, like something now makes sense for you as a result of what your partner's just said?

Can you ask a curious question based on that? And I'm really emphasizing. I want you to make this about your partner, not about you.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's really sort of taking the focus off yourself and focusing on the partner.

Yeah.

You can really hear what the partner's saying. Yeah.

And later on the partner might say, I really did initially want to say, well, but what have I done wrong? I thought we were having good sex.

Like, oh, do you see how that would have just made your partner then want to reassure you that you are having that rather than. Actually, you didn't say that. And you've got to be in. You had the opportunity then to be curious about your partner's experience instead.

Yeah. It's really about sort of slowing things down, by the sounds of things.

100 Simple time. Yeah, that's really important. I slow people down a lot so that we're actually processing it.

You're not on autopilot because when you're doing that, then you're just going to be doing the same thing again and again. You're not going to get anywhere.

Yeah.

The other thing I sort of remembered that I wanted to ask you, Clare, was when we were talking about couples and motivation, you know, there's this thing that said that if you lose respect for your partner, that's sort of like the death knell of a partnership. I've read it somewhere. Someone said, you know, seven things, and if you've lost that one, then that's it. Really.

Would you agree with that in your experience? Is respect something that really is the death knell of a relationship?

I think respect is really important in a relationship and what makes us lose that is it's usually things over time where we have built up a lot of resentment and contempt and then we find it hard to even tolerate our partner. And then respect is then something that we don't really have and it's the way in which we respond to our partner.

As a result of that, it might be with complete indifference, like, I'm not bothered about what you think or what you want. Don't care, I couldn't care less. And then where do you go with that?

Because how you've not then got the willingness to shift or change anything to invite more of a relationship with your partner.

Sometimes that, you know, some people who I work with really get to a place where when they arrive, they say, no, I don't respect them because of everything they've done or they've said the way they've behaved. I now don't even like this, this person. And it doesn't mean that that can never change because I do think that it can.

But you're really working from the bottom up. It does take longer. It takes a lot of work.

I really say to people though, and this is what I say on my social media when I'm doing tick tocks and things like that, please don't let it get to that place. Don't let it get to that place. It's harder work then when you get to that place.

If you're thinking, you know what, we're finding things really difficult or I am building up a lot of resentment. There's a lot of things I'm not saying to my partner that I wish I say, but it's really hard. Go and see a therapist and have the support.

Someone who's, you know, trained and works well with couples. See someone who's going to support your relationship to support you to be able to do those things.

So that you're not getting to a place where you're losing respect for the other and you're losing respect for yourself.

Yeah, yeah. Because you're sort of keeping quiet and not saying anything. It's really interesting to hear you say that.

You know, again, it comes back to communicating earlier really.

And perhaps people, and perhaps this is where the relationship, the person needs healing in that, you know, they find it difficult to state what they need. They find it difficult to ask their partner for what they need and then the resentment builds up. Yeah, yeah.

Especially if that's not been safe for them in their history as children. It wasn't safe for them to express their Needs, their wants, what they like, what they didn't like.

If they knew that would create disconnection or punishment or something like that, then we take that into those adult, romantic, intimate relationships. Because our partner then can often represent the family dynamic that we've had as well.

Those old familiar beliefs come up and we play them out with our partner. So if we think it was never safe for me to say something that I really didn't want, how can I say this to my partner?

Because they might respond in this way or that way. It's not always like a conscious thought either. It's something that we can actually feel as a physiological sensation and then we stop ourselves.

Yeah. And I think you sort of work quite a lot with.

You know, obviously you mentioned it with regards to the psychosexual stuff, but you work quite a lot with trauma as well, don't you, and those sort of trauma responses?

Absolutely. Trauma is the one area that I work with so much. And again, actually had quite a bit of training in trauma training I did.

It was a couple of weeks of full days doing trauma work, but then I thought, there's still more to know about this. So then went and embarked on all different kinds of trauma training. Because I work a lot with trauma, historical trauma.

But how it shows up in your relationship, because it absolutely does. It's going to. And it's how we can work with that so that we are using our relationship to help heal those younger parts of us as well. Yeah.

So tell us how it shows up. I mean, you've mentioned, you know, that people might not be able to state what they need.

You know, there might be the historical trauma in terms of, you know, having their being overruled, been sexually assaulted. And what other ways would it sort of show up in. In relationship therapy?

Do you think it could show up in one person really wanting to talk about what it is that they're feeling?

Like they've got some feelings happening for them and they know that they're not talking about it, because historically, in their past, it wasn't safe for them to ever do that. If they expressed sadness or anger, they will be told off. That would be punished.

They would be sent to their room, they would be told not to be silly. And over time, the child then learns, my feelings are not safe for me to have. If I express them, it creates disconnection. Love is withdrawn from me.

I am punished. And then they enter into an adult relationship and they are angry or they are sad, or they've got some kind of feelings happening.

But they cannot express it at all. And then if the partner knows something's not right, like I don't feel very connected to you, like yeah.

Then they're left with their own stuff of what's happening. And they might be a really safe partner.

So this partner might be so safe you can express all of your feelings and this partner would actually be safe. But we don't know that. So we have to then learn how we can gradually express that.

Now also you might have situation where your partner is safe, but they might take it personally. So if you cry, they might if in their history they were over responsible for their parents or their siblings and their feelings.

So if you're sad and you express sadness and your partner is making it about them and how they need to fix it and make it better because that was their history, then these scripts interlock, then interlocking scripts. And that would be like in transactional analysis. Because my main theoretical training is transactional analysis.

Then you're working with how one partner can express their feelings and the other doesn't need to go into fix it mode or anything like that, but they can be there to support. So you're working with two scripts of how they can experience this differently and support each other in that and support themselves.

There are so many different ways in which it can show up because trauma isn't. It doesn't have to be something that's a really big one off event.

It's so many little things that happen in the relational experience throughout their childhood and their even adult lives of being in previous relationships before this one. And it's then going to show up. And then when a couple come to me, they say this is what I do and this is what they do.

And what I do is actually invite people to really just look at what do I do, what's going on, going on for me. Because of course couples can come in and say this is what the other person doing and not doing and everything else.

And I invite them to look at themselves a lot.

Yeah. So what's, what's coming up for me is, you know, you mentioned that sometimes they might have their own individual therapist.

But do you find that sort of couples when you're working in this sort of way, they're happy to sort of work on their individual stuff with you. Is that what happens in your couple's counseling or do they tend to go off and have individual therapy as well?

Some couples, when they already come to me, they might have an individual therapist.

When I'm working with a couple we are Working with not just the relationship that's in front of me right now, but we have to look at the history because that is always informing what we're doing and not doing in the relationship now. So although we're not deep diving into individual stuff, we're definitely looking at where did you learn this?

What is it in your history that makes this seem like this is the response to have when your partner is expressing a feeling or something like that. So we will look at where does it come from? Let's find the thread or what's showing up for you.

Because sometimes people will respond from a child place.

Yeah.

The partner might say something like, oh God, this kitchen's a mess. And the other partner thinking, you're saying it's my fault, it's me.

And they're not saying that, they're just saying this kitchen's a mess because it is. They're just stating the odd obvious right now.

Yeah.

But then if the other person's going to that child like plays making it about them, it's my fault. Should I have tidied it before they got home? We're looking at what, what's going on in this thought process and it might be that the same.

Well, when I was at home from after school, I always had to make sure that it was clean and tidy before my parents got back from work, otherwise this, that and the other would happen. And now I'm just scared that I've done something wrong. So we look at that because what they need to do then is tend to that child part.

They need to tend to the part of themselves that's showing up in that moment that could be a 9 year old showing up when their partner is just saying, God, this kitchen's a mess and tend to themselves. But also, can we look at that with our partner?

Because of course what happens is we have ruptures in the relationship with our partner and we need to repair. And part of that repair is looking at what's happening for us and our younger parts.

Because in order to repair a rupture, sometimes it has hit something that is not about now, it is something in relation to our past.

Yeah, yeah. And you have to dig a bit deeper, discover what it is. Yeah. I think we could probably talk for hours. Claire, it's so fascinating.

I could talk about this four hours,.

It's fantastic.

So, you know, I mentioned at the start that, you know, I had quite a lot of anxiety around working with couples and I think, you know, looking back, it's probably because my training wasn't really in depth and, you know, didn't have a lot of supervision in it as well, I think. Do you think that's sort of quite a common experience for people starting out in couples counseling? Is that something you come across?

I didn't really know that would have been so beneficial for me. I just thought, well, I'm staying with the same supervisor.

I then did go on to have all the supervisors, but again, people who were not trained in couples therapy didn't actually occur to me that I could find someone who specialized in that until a bit further down the line. So now when I actually work with therapists in supervision, sometimes they will come to me, and I am their secondary supervisor.

They might have a supervisor who they work with with individual clients, and then they will come to me, and they're just bringing their couples therapy stuff. And I also then have had. And I have three supervisors.

I will have supervisors for individual work, and I will also either be seeing an individual supervisor for couples therapy stuff, or I will join group supervisions. And now I am in the process.

And of course, when I was coming onto your coaching a few months ago, I was looking at setting up, and I am now setting up, and it's being set up group supervision for couples and relationship therapists, smaller groups and a wider group because of the importance of having that supervision for your couple's work.

Yeah. I remember when you talked about it, one of the things you talked about was, it's almost like a learning opportunity, isn't it?

Because I think you're sort of part of different sort of supervisory memberships yourself, where maybe you have a case study or something where you can really learn from other people as well.

And I think that's part of your vision, isn't it, to help people really learn more about couples counselling through the supervision that they do with you.

Would that be right to say, yes, absolutely.

Because there's so much learning to be done, and actually how incredible it is when one person then submits a case of, this is what's going on with my couple, and we can really explore that together.

There is no doubt about it that exploring that couple's case study almost for one of the individuals in the supervision group, that this is without doubt going to benefit you either with a couple that you're currently working with or a couple that you're going to be working with in the future, who you've not met yet, that you're going to then call what we're doing and going, ah, I can apply that. Or that makes sense because of the work that we've done.

So it does help the individual submitting the case, but it also is a learning opportunity for everybody else in the group because it's not just learned about that particular couple, but it's look, learning about the dynamics, the developmental stages that they might be in and how you can support them and support yourself. So it's a lot of learning really to take away with you.

And when you're doing couples therapy work, couples therapy training and even the couples therapy group supervision, it helps you with your individuals because your individuals are bringing relationship stuff all the time.

Yeah, absolutely. That's what a lot of people come about, isn't it? Most exclusively, I should say. It's about relationship, isn't it? One way or another. Yeah.

And the other thing I was sort of thinking about is I think there must be really something to be gained from being in a group as well, because it's. It is very challenging work, isn't it?

And especially if you're not feeling terribly confident with it, to be able to be alongside other people who understand the challenge is a really beneficial thing as well. I think from my experience of working in groups anyway.

Absolutely.

Because it's really when there is somebody there, like there is a therapist working with couples and they're feeling out of the depth, they're not feeling confident, they're anxious.

Every time a couple inquiry comes through or when the couple walks through the door or anything like that, and they feel alone in it, they think, what's wrong with me that I can't do this? Maybe it's just not for me. Maybe I just don't know how to handle this couple. Maybe they'd be better being with somebody else.

And then they go on to their counseling directory or their psychologist today or whatever the website, and they take it off. And I think, don't do that, don't do that. You just need the right support, training and education.

But also know that you're not on your own with this. Loads of therapists feel like this. And I really want to encourage therapists who are working with couples.

You do not need to Take it off your profile or your website. It just means that you need further support.

If you genuinely don't enjoy it, because there are some therapists that say, I don't, I couldn't think of anything worse than working with couples, then obviously don't do it.

But if you do have that desire there and you do want to do it, but you just feel a little bit out of your depth, just know that further support will help you. Please do it. Because there are millions of couples who need support out there. You know, the well is never running dry.

There is work out there for everyone. Sometimes I'll see online people say, like, I'm struggling to get clients or anything like that. You know, I'm not getting as many inquiries.

There is always clients. It's just how we're looking at this, how to put ourselves out there to show people what we can offer so that the right people come to us.

And that is also with your couples therapy. There are loads of couples out there needing your help. So don't give up on this. It's just make sure you've got the support for yourself.

Yeah, yeah. And it's so important and I'm just going to say at this point that we'll put Claire's details into this.

Anybody who's listening would like to know more about Claire's supervision offer. Then it'll be. Her details will be in the show notes as well.

Before I end this episode, I wanted to let you know that Clare and I carried on talking after we'd finished this part of the interview. We moved away from couples counseling and onto another topic that I know many therapists struggle with.

And that's how to advertise your practice and especially how to charge fees. That means your private practice is sustainable in the long term. And I thought there's so much that Claire said that was useful.

I didn't want it to get lost at the end of this episode. So I've made it into a separate episode which you can hear next week. I think you're going to find it really helpful.

Maybe listening to this conversation has got you thinking about the extra support that you could do with for your private practice. And if that's the case, I'd love to invite you to therapy growth group.

I'm on holiday next week, but when I return from October 12th, we're starting a four week program that's all about helping you identify your niche, work out how you uniquely can help people, what it is about you that means that clients will choose you and how to communicate that to prospective clients. If you're listening to this later on.

I rerun this program several times a year, but if you're listening to this as it comes out, now is a really great time to think about joining.

I do regular live calls every week where you can get feedback, ask questions, and just generally meet other therapists who are also in private practice. It's a very supportive place to be. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next week for the second part of my conversation with Claire.

Thanks for listening. Do come and join my Facebook community.

Good enough counsellors and for more information about how I can help you develop your private practice, please Visit my website JosephineHughes.com if you found this episode helpful, I'd love it if you could share it with a fellow therapist or leave a review on your podcast app. And in closing, I'd love to remind you that every single step you make gets you closer to your dream. I really believe believe you can do it.