TEACHING

S.no TIME SPECIFIC AV AND

OBJECTIVE CONTENT AIDS LEARNING EVALUATION
METHOD
1. What Is Marital Counselling?
Marital counselling, which is also called ‘marriage
counselling’ or ‘marital therapy’, is a form of
counselling for married couples or couples who are
engaged and are on their path of getting married.
In marriage counselling, the counsellor helps the couple
understand each other’s behaviours and few aspects of
their personality, and most importantly they guide the
couple to accept their spouse as they are. What is
Marriage Counselling?
Marriage counselling is a kind of psychotherapy that
helps resolve conflicts between couples and improves
their relationship. It is often offered by family and
marriage therapists to enable a couple to make decisions
about rebuilding their relationship or going their own
separate ways. It usually includes both partners, but
sometimes one of the partners may choose to work with
a therapist alone. The treatment plan depends on the
situation. While our intentions towards our spouse are
usually good, there are several influences, behaviours
and stresses that can test even the strongest bonding.
Even the happiest couples will tell you that marriage is
not smooth sailing all the time.
The main issues that couples usually bring to therapy
are high levels of conflicts and growing mutual distance.
Major life changes and daily stresses can put pressure
on the relationship too. No matter what the cause, it's
best to tackle relationship issues sooner than later - just
as you would do for any health ailment. Experts say that
on an average, a couple waits for 6 years to get help.
And that’s unfortunate because the sooner you seek
counselling, the better are your chances of saving the
marriage.
Every year, thousands of couples around the world turn
to marriage counselling to work out their issues. One of
the advantages of the therapy is that it can help to
identify patterns within the relationship that lead to
issues. Couples also learn how their actions and
reactions affect the other person.

What Is The Goal Of Marital counselling?

The goal of marital therapy can vary from couple to
couple depending on what issue each couple is facing. If
the couple is facing intimacy issue, then finding its root
cause and working towards creating a plan where the
intimacy issue can be discussed with both the partners
can be the main goal.
Some of the essential goals in marital therapy can be
guiding the couple towards clear communication,
making them empathetic towards each other’s needs,
reducing the defences between them, discovering each
other’s ‘self’, i.e., their individuality etc.
How Does Marital counselling Work?
Marital therapy is no magic. The couple needs to put in
their 100 percent for them to see the results. Most of the
times, what we look at could be the upper layer of the
problem. The cause of any issue can be deep rooted and
uncovering that is what happens in a counselling
session.
In marital counselling sessions, different activities and
talk therapy help the couple to gain insight. Usually, the
biggest issue in the life of a married couple is
‘misunderstandings’, and conflicts arise due to
misunderstandings. In marital counselling sessions, the
counsellor paraphrases whatever the individual says, so
that the exact emotion or feeling reaches to their spouse,
which then reduces the chances of misunderstandings
Marriage counselling helps you to rebuild your
relationships and make your life sound and happy.
Marriage counselling is also called couple counselling
which is done to resolve the problems between couples,
either married or unmarried. Marriage counselling is
mostly provided by the licenced therapists also known
as marriage and family therapists. Different counsellors
handle a situation in different ways, and your situation
will determine how it is treated. Your counsellor might
begin with a set of basic questions, along with the lines
of "What brings you here?" While the question may
seem simple, it is worth spending the time to prepare
answers for questions like these.
The therapist will inquire about your history and expect
both you and your partner to be honest, open and
talkative. Depending on the situation, your counsellor
may want to talk to you both separately and together.
After the initial discussions, your therapist might give
you feedback and recommend a plan for treatment. It is
provided with a tool for better communication,
negotiating the differences and even help to argue in a
better way. But marriage counselling is often short term
process and few sessions are required to solve the
differences.
What Is The Success Rate Of Marital counselling?
The current success rate of marital counselling is around
70-80 percent. All you need to do is take a step and
believe in counselling and give in your 100%.
Marital counselling Techniques:
There are different techniques used in these counselling
sessions. The therapist decides which techniques would
be useful for the couple depending on the concerns they
are facing. Here is a glimpse of some techniques which
might interest you-
1. Emotionally Focused Therapy
Here, the aim of the counsellor is to make the couple
talk about their feelings and make them understand their
underlying emotions behind those thoughts and feelings
and to convey it to their partner.
De-Escalation
The first stage is identifying negative couple interaction
patterns responsible for creating conflicts in the
relationship. Creating a detailed synopsis of negative
emotions allows a more profound knowledge of severe
issues in the relationship.
Reconstructing
In this stage, counselors help couples communicate
better and express their emotions. They also work on
developing a couple’s empathy and compassion towards
each other. This stage is about creating awareness about
a couple’s needs and reconstructing their bond and
attachment style.
Consolidation
After restructuring, therapists or counselors focus on
developing new skills and techniques that provide better
understanding. Practicing new strategies helps in
preventing f

2. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

The core of this therapy is to make one understand how
thoughts influences one’s behaviour. This helps the
individual understand how their thoughts control their
actions and how this must happen with their spouse too.
Here, the therapist focuses on thought reversal.
3. Imago Relationship Therapy
The theory behind this therapy is that we project our
concept of love, that we developed in our childhood,
onto our partners. The issues can be rooted in that area
of life and that is where the counsellor nudges and
guides the individual to gain insight which can lead to
resolving the issues.
4. Solution-Focused Therapy
At times, the couple is so focused on their problems,
that however simple the solution is, they are unable to
reach to that solution. In such cases, solution-focused
therapy works amazingly. Instead of spending time on
finding the root cause, the counsellor directly works on
guiding the couples to find the solution to their issues.
5. Insight-Gaining Therapy
Insight means deep understanding of someone or
something. It is a ‘Eureka’ or ‘Aha!’ moment for the
couple when a counsellor tries to provide insight to their
issue and then they try to connect dots.
6. Positive Psychology Technique
This technique can be beautifully applied on couples
who feel they have lost the spark in their relationship.
This technique helps them to remember all great
characteristics in their marriage, reminisce their
adventurous days and recreate it all over again!
Attachment therapy
Couples who have been married for an extended period
often experience a loss of romance and passion in their
relationship. The emotional distance between the
couples sometimes grows, making them hesitant about
sharing their personal feelings. They fear that their
intimate feelings will not be validated or rejected by
their partners, they feel ridiculous in admitting those
feelings, and hence they don’t. In such cases, attachment
therapy can be helpful in getting the partners closer to
each other. This therapy encourages partners to speak to
each other about highly personal feelings, even things
that are trivial and don’t matter. This exchange of
emotions helps to rejuvenate romance in the relationship
and strengthens the communication between the couple.
Psychodynamic couples counselling
Conflicts are bound to happen when one or both
partners act somewhat irrationally in a relationship. The
reason behind irrational or dysfunctional behaviour can
be an unpleasant childhood experience or some minor
psychological disorder. Such people have distorted
views about their relationship and are hence incapable
of reacting all the time rationally.
A psychodynamic counsellor can help such people by
identifying their behavioural patterns, deciphering the
reason behind the odd behaviour, and counselling the
affected person and their partner about rectifying that
and having a better marriage.
Gottman method of couples therapy
Misunderstandings also create differences between the
couple, and it’s hard for couples to resolve them
independently. Gottman’s method of couples’s therapy
can be very effective for them. In this method, the
couples are made to map their own and each other’s
happiness, sorrows, worries, anxieties, and hopes.
This helps them understand each other better and erase
the misunderstandings that caused conflicts in their
relationship. This makes couples see each other in a new
light and increases appreciation and respect in their
relationship.
Benefits of Marital Therapy
Marital therapy is not only for the couples who are
having issues in their marriage, but it can also be
beneficial for couples who want to enrich their married
life or want to ensure that they are, indeed, in a happy
marriage.
Few of the most important benefits that the couple can
get after or during the marital counselling sessions are:
Transparency in discussing any issue.
Communicating clearly.
Understanding each other better.
Reaching to a decision collectively.
Helps in achieving personal growth.
Types Of Marital Therapy
Marriage is a very important aspect in one’s life. Some
couples struggle to share their doubts and concerns with
their partner before getting married and some find
themselves not being able to achieve or stay in a happy
marriage. At such times, counselling comes into play.
Marriage counselling has 2 types
Pre-Marital counselling
Pre-marital counselling can be opted by couples who are
in a relationship and want to take their relationship to
next level, i.e., marriage. In cases of arranged marriage,
the couple may not have a chance to discuss their
ideologies with each other or might find themselves at
odd when they realise that their and their partner’s ideas
are not compatible. Here, the counsellor can help the
couple to understand their compatibility, their beliefs
and values and many other aspects which will help them
to understand the partner in a better way.
2. Post-Marital Counselling:
As the name suggests, this type of counselling is for
couples who are already married. There is no bar for
years, which a couple is married for or type of marriage
when it comes to post-marital therapy sessions. There
are many different choices and ways of thinking
between the married couple. Sometimes the couple may
have problem in communicating their emotions or
thoughts to their spouse, sometimes there can be
differences in their parental styles or there can be
intimacy issues. Such concerns are handled in post-
marriage counselling sessions.