As you spend more time discussing goals and challenges with your Talkspace therapist, you may have questions or are interested in learning more about specific mental health topics and conditions. The Talkspace Bookshelf offers up-to-date mental health information directly from our behavioral health team to provide a better understanding of condition origins, diagnoses, various forms a condition may take, and different treatment options. Feel free to use this resource as a starting point to open up a dialogue and pose questions for your Talkspace therapist.
Relationship concerns are one of the most common reasons people seek out therapy. For many, this may mean concerns about romantic relationships or partnerships, but this is not always the case. Relationships between family members and “chosen” family members may be motivators for seeking out professional support as well.
Some of issues that often come up regarding relationships in therapy are:
- Difficulty forming or maintaining interpersonal relationships (which includes romantic relationships)
- Learning skills to approach strangers and new contacts in personal, work, or school settings
- Learning healthy and appropriate boundaries for current and future relationships
- Identifying signs of emotional, verbal, and/or physical abuse and addressing safety-related issues
- Coping with a recent or impending breakup or disruption in a romantic relationship (or family)
Treatments
Individual Therapy
Individual psychotherapy can be a very helpful tool in working through obstacles in relationships. While it may sound counterintuitive, going to individual therapy may provide you with the focus and insight you need to make significant changes to the ways you navigate relationships.
In individual therapy, a therapist will likely help you identify the problems that you’re having in maintaining personal, work, or familial relationships and help you develop further insight into the root causes of those problems. In addition, a therapist will be able to help you dig deeper to figure out what your underlying assumptions, motivations, and expectations are about those relationships. From there, you may work to problem solve ways in which you can better engage in those relationships and learn new skills to behave differently in the future. A therapist will be able to provide you with alternative perspectives to consider as well as different methods to build and effectively maintain relationships.
A therapist may use cognitive therapy techniques and a wide range of interventions to help you identify assumptions and problematic thoughts patterns causing disruptions in your relationships. A therapist may also use the relational dynamic in the therapy room for interpersonal feedback to help you learn ways in which you may be engaging with others but are not entirely aware of. This can often have a profound impact on building healthier relationships in the future.
Couples Therapy (or Marriage Therapy)
Couples therapy is one of the most well-known forms of therapy outside of individual talk therapy. In couples or marriage therapy, clients meet with a therapist to work on improving relationship issues. There are a wide range of issues that might bring clients into couples therapy such as:
- Dealing with infidelity
- Low relationship satisfaction
- Poor communication skills
- Ongoing and regular arguments
- Coping with abortion or miscarriage
- Concerns related to parenthood
- Death of a child or other family member
- Cultural differences
- Life and family planning
- Sexual difficulties
Premarital Counseling
Many couples may seek out counseling prior to marriage to further cement their union and identify ways to keep the relationship healthy and thriving. For many this is a preventative approach, but some couples may come into premarital counseling with some of the concerns listed above. More specifically, partners may be interested in life planning. These issues may include managing conflict through wedding ceremony planning, but concerns may also may include concerns related to potentially having children (how many, how soon, and fertility or surrogate issues), financial challenges (how to spend money as a unit), and home purchasing, etc.
Premarital counseling may also help partners learn new strategies to address and respond to other family members in the partners’ lives. This can often be a challenging, and complicated, task.
Sex Therapy
Sex therapy is the recommended course of treatment for partners who may be experiencing difficulties in their intimate sexual lives. Presenting concerns may include anything from unsatisfying sex, premature ejaculation, difficulty orgasming, boredom, partner inexperience, infidelity, masturbatory habits, and pornography consumption.
Oftentimes, a sex therapist’s primary role is to provide education on sex, sexual desire, and sexual health. This information will be based on research from both the social sciences and human physiology. Education in these areas is often helpful in eradicating myths about sexual health that may be producing barriers to sexual satisfaction among partners.
A sex therapist will also be able to help couples navigate these difficulties by talking through ways to problem solve concerns and help partners develop greater insight and compassion into each other's desires and sexual needs. While some therapists are comfortable discussing sexual issues in counseling, some are not.
It is important to find a therapist who has experience working with sex and intimacy related issues. Some therapists may even become Certified Sex Therapists who have received significant education on human sexuality and additional supervision as they work with clients specifically on sexual issues. In sex therapy, a therapist may recommend books, videos, and other techniques and strategies to help couples build upon and improve their sexual chemistry or compatibility.
It should be noted that sex therapy does not, and will never, include a therapist engaging sexually with clients or partners. Ethical bodies, such as the American Counseling Association, American Psychological Association and National Association for Social Workers expressly forbid sexual contact between therapists and clients. While therapists may talk openly and frankly with clients about their needs, a sex therapist will not engage sexually with their clients at any time.
Family Therapy
When a family unit experiences relationship distress, family therapy is the recommended course of action. Often, family therapy may be done in conjunction with individual therapy depending on your individual needs and circumstances. While individual therapy, as mentioned previously, will focus on the individual and greater insight into their role in the relationship, family therapy will look at several key stakeholders. These stakeholders may include parents and children, co-parents, stepparents, grandparents and other guardians that may help the unit function more effectively overall.
In family therapy, as the focus is less on an individual’s needs, the drawback is that each person will get less direct attention from the therapist. The work will largely focus on producing better results for the family unit and may not focus intensely on the inner workings of the individual lives of each family member.
As the definition of a “family” has changed over the years, many family systems therapists support a wide range of family structures, therefore those without traditional family structures should not be concerned. More and more therapists practice in helping blended families, non-traditional families, and same sex or queer family structures.
In addition, family therapy can be a profound therapeutic tool to help families cope when a member of the family unit is living with mental health issues. Often, families need education about the condition(s) itself and are unsure how to best support their loved one. Family therapy can help support families to recover from mental health and substance abuse crises, as well as relational issues, and empower family members with the tools to best support their loved one.
Play Therapy
When working with families with young children, therapists may also engage in play therapy with a child if the child is experiencing negative symptoms such as trouble following rules at home or difficulties with school. Sometimes symptoms may have developed in response to an emotionally chaotic home atmosphere. In other instances, play therapy and behavioral analysis will help children with developmental disabilities or autism spectrum conditions cope with symptoms. Play therapy will also help children engage more effectively with their peers and caregivers.
Therapeutic Note
Remember your therapist is here to help you figure out the best way to address your concerns. Therapy works best when it is a collaboration between you and your therapist. It is important to be open, honest, and an active participant in this process. Talk to your therapist about your goals for therapy so that together you can come up with the best plan to achieve your goals.
Questions You Might Have For Your Talkspace Therapist
- Can my individual therapist be my couples therapist too?
- Why would I go to individual therapy when someone else is the problem?
- If the problem is in our relationship, how can it get better if only I am getting help?
- How can I convince my spouse/partner/family member to come to therapy with me or go on their own?
Sources
Sex therapy. (2016, January 15). Retrieved June 08, 2017
Lee, K. (2010, February 12). The Basics of Family Therapy. Retrieved June 08, 2017