How Can Individual Therapy Help Couples Therapy?

May 13, 2024-By: Eileen Filippone, LPC

It’s entirely normal to face challenges in your relationship with your partner – relationships can be intricate and demanding. However, couples therapy can be a powerful tool to improve your relationship, develop communication skills, and foster intimacy.

By complementing couples therapy with individual therapy, you can further enhance your journey towards a happy and fulfilling relationship.

Working on Your Relationship in a New Light

Couples therapy can be a challenging experience that requires both partners to put in effort. It’s common to feel worse at the beginning of therapy because you’ll be learning new skills that may be frustrating to implement. This is a natural part of the process, and it’s important to stick with it until you start to feel better.

During therapy, it’s possible that long-standing issues that have been ignored or minimized may come to the surface. This is actually a good sign because it shows that both partners are committed to working on their relationship, even when it’s difficult.

The therapist’s focus during couples therapy is primarily on the relationship and the interactions between the partners. However, it’s also important to recognize that both partners have individual needs that may arise during the session. This is where individual therapy can be a useful addition to couples therapy.

A Safe, Progressive Space

In therapy for individuals, you will have a secure and private space that is solely yours. During sessions for couples therapy, you might feel like there are more things you need to process or want to work on improving certain skills on an individual level. By combining individual therapy with couples therapy, you can make progress in both areas faster by focusing on your individual needs.

Moreover, external factors such as stress related to work or burnout from other aspects of your life may have an impact on your relationship. To boost your progress in couples therapy, you can create a space for yourself to deal with and address issues that are outside of your relationship.

If you provide your consent, your individual therapist and couples therapist can work together to form a powerful team of treatment. This can help both therapists gain better insight into what you’re going through and further accelerate progress in both settings.

Individual and Couples Therapy with Wiser Counseling

Seeking therapy can be daunting, but please know that it’s a brave and important step towards a healthier, happier relationship. Contact our friendly, professional team today to discuss whether individual therapy would provide an advantage to your couples therapy.

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