Couples Counselling: 4-Day Training

Relationship and intimate partner therapy, grounded in anti-oppressive practice

Dates: October 16th, 23rd, 30th, Nov 3rd, 9:30AM-16:30PM

A four-day training for counsellors and psychotherapists who want to work confidently with couples and relationships.

Working with two people in the room is a different discipline from individual therapy. You are assessing the relationship as the client, reading live relational dynamics as they unfold, often holding two contradictory accounts at once, and screening for risk and coercion before joint work can safely begin. This certificate takes you from first contact and assessment through the major therapeutic models, into complex presentations, and through to working with the full diversity of relationships and identities.

Anti-oppressive practice runs through every day — attending to power, culture, structural context, and safety throughout, rather than treating them as an add-on.

What the four days cover

Day 1 — Assessing Couples
What makes relational assessment distinct from individual work; reading the referral and first contact; a full assessment framework covering history, motivation, attachment patterns and presenting dynamics; the Gottman three-session assessment model and the no-secrets policy; screening for domestic abuse and coercive control as the primary contraindication; contracting for couples work; when individual sessions alongside the couple make sense; and how assessment itself becomes therapeutic. Throughout, we work with positionality, structural power, and the limits of standard risk tools.

Day 2 — Approaches to Couples Counselling
The major models and how they understand relationship difficulty: Emotionally Focused Therapy (Johnson), the Gottman Method, Esther Perel's work on desire and autonomy, systemic and relational approaches, and psychodynamic/object relations. For each, we look at core concepts, what the therapist actually does, and how the wider context can create difficulty inside the couple. 

Day 3 — Complex Presentations
Affairs and betrayal trauma — meaning and responsibility held together (Perel, Brown, Glass, Freyd, Gottman's Trust Revival Method); disclosure that helps versus disclosure that re-injures. Conflict escalation and de-escalation in the room, including flooding and EFT de-escalation. Separation and divorce counselling, including discernment counselling for mixed-agenda couples. Safeguarding responsibilities for children and adults at risk.

Day 4 — Gender, Sexuality and Relationship Diversity (GSRD)
Working with LGBTQ+ and GSRD couples, and why the mainstream frameworks are not sufficient on their own. Minority stress theory (Meyer) as a clinical framework, and how external stress, internalised stigma and vigilance present as relational problems. Consensual non-monogamy and polyamory on their own terms rather than as deviations from a norm; and coming-out and outness asymmetry between partners. 

Who it's for

Counsellors and psychotherapists who want a solid foundation for relationship work. No prior couples training is required; the content assumes core counselling skills and access to supervision.

What you'll leave with

• A Certificate of Completion documenting 28 hours of specialist CPD, countable toward your annual professional development requirements (BACP, NCPS, COSCA and other membership bodies).
• A set of practical resources for immediate use, including a structured couples assessment template, a couples counselling contract, a confidentiality leaflet for couples, and a signposting and referral list.
• Practised clinical language for the hardest moments — interrupting escalation, inviting accountability without humiliation, holding ambivalence, and naming structural pressure in the room.

Details

• Dates: October 16th, 23rd, 30th, Nov 3rd. 
• Times: 9:30–16:30 each day, 7 CPD hours per day
• Format: Zoom
• Cost: £800 (inc VAT)

Secure your place by paying the £150 deposit. We will contact you to arrange payment of the remaining course fee before the course begins. Please note that paying the deposit secures your place on the full course, including all four training dates.