Marriage and Family Counselling in Australia
How Counselling Works on TYHO
Choose Your Counsellor
Explore TYHO marriage and family counsellors’ profiles to learn about their specialities and therapeutic approaches. Watch their brief videos to get to know them better.
Book a Session
Simply click the ‘Book a Session’ button and select the medium, service, and date of your choice. Create a TYHO account to view the cost and confirm your booking.
Start Counselling
Complete the Intake Form with your therapy and family goals. Begin online counselling through a structured therapy program and a personalised Therapeutic Plan.
Marriage and Family Counselling
in Australia: Introduction
PremaritalCounselling
Marriage Counselling
Family Counselling
PremaritalCounselling
Premarital counselling in Australia can be extremely helpful if you are already in a relationship but are yet to marry your partner.
At TYHO, our marriage counsellors offer expert guidance and support to couples as they navigate new chapters in their lives together.
Some changes you can receive help for include moving in together, marriage, getting to know your partner’s relatives and friends, and thinking about having children.
Our Australian Therapists may use several counselling techniques, such as motivational interviewing (ie validating your emotions, probing into your deep-rooted issues, and empathetic listening), to help you manage any current issues.
Premarital counselling at TYHO also addresses various areas, such as:
- Preparing for the lifelong commitment of marriage
- Learning the significance of financial management within your marriage
- Discussing the decision to start a family
- Exploring and understanding different approaches to parenting
- Creating understanding relationships with extended family members
- Recognising and agreeing on marital duties (ie who is the primary breadwinner and who takes care of the household)
- Accepting each other’s spiritual and political beliefs
- Establishing a foundation of trust and rapport
- Setting shared objectives and dreams for your future together (eg career goals, purchasing property, or celebrating a couple’s achievements)
Marriage Counselling
Marriage counselling in Australia is a type of psychotherapy where spouses talk about and seek solutions for problems in their marriage.
Marriage therapy is unique as it requires your and your partner’s active participation during each counselling session.
Your marriage Therapist may use evidence-based tools such as the Gottman-Rapoport Intervention.
Using this technique, your marriage Therapist may help you during marriage conflicts so that you and your spouse feel seen and understood. The intervention may involve several questions or exercises depending on your problems.
Online marriage counselling can be especially helpful if either of you is resentful towards the other or have the habit of pointing fingers at each other (instead of solving problems effectively).
Some couples have the misconception that seeking therapy can help ‘fix’ their partner or that the Australian counsellor can reprimand their spouse.
However, this is not the true goal of marriage therapy. In fact, counsellors will refuse to ‘take sides’ in the marriage.
In marriage therapy, the true ‘client’ is your ‘marriage,’ and your Therapist will help you and your partner work towards helping your marriage sustain for a long time.
The true goal of online marriage counselling is to help you:
- Identify problems in your marriage
- Address and solve your issues without hurting each other
- Improve the overall quality of your interactions and dynamics
You will learn strategies to:
- Communicate compassionately
- Reduce your fear and apprehensions
- Solve conflicts (ie conflict-resolution skills)
- Solve problems
Seeking couples therapy doesn’t always mean your relationship is ‘beyond saving’ or ‘toxic’.
Proactively engaging in therapy, even when your marriage is stable, can be highly helpful.
Marriage counselling is also an intervention to help you deepen the bond and connection and rekindle your joy and affection for each other.
Family Counselling
Family counselling at TYHO provides a supportive environment where families can engage in therapy together to tackle conflicts and arguments and improve their communication skills.
In this therapeutic approach, your counsellor perceives your family as an interconnected emotional entity.
This perspective implies that your individual challenges are intertwined with your family’s dynamics. Therefore, your emotional reactions influence and get influenced by other family members.
The single family unite concept (ie interconnection) extends to the understanding that your familial interactions shape and are shaped by the collective behaviours, thoughts, and emotions within the family system.
TYHO’s family Therapists in Australia use techniques like systemic therapy to achieve several goals:
- Improve and encourage open and honest dialogue
- Navigate and handle complex scenarios, such as loss, familial changes, or health issues
- Create a healthier family environment
- Deepen the understanding of each other’s emotional and practical needs
Your Therapist may work with various family members, either together or separately, depending on the need.
For example, your sibling can seek support for their strained relationship with their mother, or you can get help to improve your bond with your father.
Our Therapists are rigorously trained and skilled in identifying and addressing harmful patterns that may be affecting your family’s well-being.
Examples include blaming, feelings of hatred, guilt-tripping, narcissism, manipulation, controlling, parental gaslighting etc.
In addition, you can also choose individual counselling in Australia if your family is not yet prepared for family therapy.
Your personal progress can often inspire your family to consider therapy together.
How Can TYHO Counsellors Help You?
At TYHO, you’ll find that family counselling in Australia offers a variety of improvements in several key areas:
Married couples usually face challenges that are unique. For example, married couples may have issues with their extended families or children – however, couples in a romantic relationship may have other problems related to trust and affection.
Do note that couples can also have problems with their partner’s family and vice versa. Some problems can be unique to the type of relationship one is engaged in.
On one side, couples may face issues such as the pressures of parenting or difficulties in their sexual relationship.
These problems can, thus, lead to a lack of excitement and connection in their interactions.
On the flip side, while couples in a marriage might be content together, they could still face hurdles in navigating conflicts, like the challenge of open communication or the difficulty in striking a balance between individual and shared responsibilities in the family.
Navigating these complex challenges in a marriage can be overwhelming and scary when faced alone. You may face relationship problems that are repetitive and persistent.
TYHO marriage Therapists are skilled in a variety of proven approaches, including the Gottman Method and Emotion-focused Couples Therapy (EFCT), among others.
TYHO provides counselling in Australia to help married couples in:
- Identifying the root causes of your disagreements
- Acquiring skills to improve your conversational skills and self-expression
- Building capabilities for resolving conflicts
- Effectively handling and understanding financial disagreements
- Learning strategies for constructively resolving arguments
- Gaining insights into each other’s approaches to parenting and individual contributions to the household
We recommend seeking marriage counselling when you are married and are yet to have children.
Marriage counselling can help you prepare for a family and improve relationships with each other’s extended families.
Through online marriage counselling in Australia, you can:
- Improve your communication and social skills
- Improve your individual self-esteem and confidence
- Learn more about each other through tools like love mapping
- Set and decide on roles and responsibilities in the marriage
- Understand each other’s perspectives on faiths, beliefs, and political views
- Get to know each other’s families
For example, newly married couples usually find it hard to understand marriage roles. Who is the primary breadwinner? Who takes care of the children or any elderly members of the family?
Although the societal stereotypes are for men to earn and women to take care of household chores – individual needs and aspirations may be different.
It is important to acknowledge and respond to your personal beliefs and values. You can do so in a non-judgmental space like therapy.
On the other hand, we recommend family counselling if you already have children or live with each other’s family members.
You may experience a lot of conflicts and arguments in a large family – especially if you live with your in-laws and children.
Your reaction may impact or affect other members and vice versa. Hence, it is important to learn how to:
- Communicate effectively
- Fight in the right way (ie sharing your feelings without hurting anyone)
- Identify and respond to each other’s needs and frustrations
However, at TYHO, both marriage and family counsellors can help with several issues, including:
- Parental stress
- Caregiver stress
- Pregnancy-related issues
- Health-related issues
- Life transitions
- Sex-related issues
- Financial stress
- Academic stress
- Work-related stress
- Family violence or abuse
- Elderly issues
- Family relationships
Frequently Asked Questions
Research shows that nearly 70% of Australian couples in current times have had success with marriage counselling compared to the success rate of marriage therapy in the 1980s, where the percentage was around 50%.
The same research also notes that around 50% of all married couples in Australia seek marriage counselling.
Further statistics show that 70% of Australian couples were satisfied with couples counselling, and around 63% reported that they would return to counselling if needed in the future.
Most people seek marriage counselling for a minimum of 12 weeks. This timeframe gives you a good chance to explore all the issues in your marriage and learn the skills to actually solve and overcome them.
However, how long you need counselling depends on:
- Your presenting problems
- How frequently you and your spouse are willing to attend therapy
- Your marriage and family goals
- Your counsellor’s recommendations
How long you need marriage counselling may also depend on your personal issues.
For example, if you are timid or have social anxiety – you may need more time to open up compared to your spouse.
On the other hand, if your spouse has tight deadlines or work commitments and can only attend counselling twice a month, your marriage’s progress may be a bit slower compared to those who can make it every week.
Both situations are completely okay and normal. Your marriage journey is uniquely yours, and you should try not to compare the pace of your progress to other marriages.
You can also discuss the frequency of therapy with your spouse and your marriage counsellor.
Once you start working on the issues, you may even speed up and find the solution to all your issues in the span of a few months.
It entirely depends on your active participation and your and your spouse’s willingness to attend therapy regularly!
To become a family counsellor in Australia, you may need to complete your bachelor’s and master’s in counselling or psychology.
At TYHO, we require all our family Therapists to have a minimum master’s in counselling.
Furthermore, we also strictly screen mental health professionals to select the best and most qualified Therapists.
Our evaluation includes various aspects, such as:
- Clinical training
- Additional qualifications in their areas of expertise
- Soft skills such as empathy, openness, and sensitivity to diverse cultural backgrounds
- Certifications
Family counselling can help you when:
- You are going through a family transition (eg moving to a new house)
- You are going through a personal transition (eg moving to a new country)
- Want to communicate more openly with your parents
- Wish to improve the relationship with your siblings
- You want to heal your bond with your family members
- You want to understand your loved ones better
- Want to share your personal hardships with your family without hurting them
Yes, online family counselling in Australia is effective!
Through online counselling, you have the option to either attend sessions through audio calls or video calls.
Getting all the family members to decide on a time for in-personal therapy can be extremely hard.
Your spouse may have different work times, and your children may have school/university or may be preoccupied with their academic work.
Yet, participating in sessions online can help you save the time and energy.
In addition, you can also find a space in your house where all of you feel comfortable. TYHO family Therapists in Australia provide online counselling and will keep all your therapy details highly confidential.
Be assured that our Therapists have the skills to conduct and tailor their approaches based on the medium and type of service.
Hence, you will receive the same high-quality and accessible family therapy right from your house!
