The Different Types of Relationhip Therapy
Finding a counsellor in general is not easy. It’s one thing when you are an individual seeking a counsellor for yourself, but adding another person (or more!) into the mix only further complicates the search. It’s important that both of you feel the counsellor is a good fit, and that you both feel supported in your sessions with your counsellor. A consultation call is a great place to start and I recommend that all parties interested in relationship counselling attend that call.
Many folks might find it helpful to also understand some of the common approaches to relationship therapy that practitioners in Vancouver tend to lean towards. If you are coming to therapy with an idea of what is going to be most supportive to you, understanding the approach that your counsellor takes can ensure that you are all aligned.
For example, some people really want a counsellor who is going to be direct and provide them with tangible skills (e.g. for communication). Whereas other people want to get to the root of what is happening between them, to understand the patterns and cycles they are caught in. Some may come with a specific issue or concern and want to focus on short-term, solution-focused counselling, and others may be looking to explore issues deeply over the course of months.
While most counsellors leverage more than one approach, many. of us tend to lean towards one, or have completed trainings and certifications in specific approaches. Below is a brief description of some of the ones that are commonly practiced by therapists in Vancouver:
Emotion-Focused Therapy for Couples
Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples is an attachment-based approach developed by Sue Johnson and colleagues that helps partners shift away from patterns of disconnection and move toward a secure bond of emotional responsiveness.
Core idea: Couples are helped to recognise their underlying emotional needs (for connection, safety, being seen) and the cycles of blame or withdrawal that block those needs. The therapist helps identify those cycles, access the vulnerable feelings beneath them, and facilitate new, more open emotional interactions.
Link for more info: What is EFT? (ICEEFT)
The Gottman Method
Gottman Method Couples Therapy is a research-informed approach developed by John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman that emphasises building friendship, managing conflict, and creating shared meaning together.
Core idea: Healthy relationships resemble a well-built house (the “Sound Relationship House”): friendship, shared meaning, conflict management, and so forth. The therapist helps the couple assess where things are strong and where they’re weak, and then uses concrete tools and exercises to strengthen areas like turning toward bids for connection, soothing conflict, and deepening emotional connection.
Link for more info: The Gottman Method – About
PACT
PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy) is an integrative approach by Stan Tatkin that emphasises how nervous system arousal, attachment history and moment-to-moment body/voice/face states shape relationships.
Core idea: Rather than only exploring “what happened,” PACT pays attention to how partners show up in the body and in micro-interactions (posture, tone of voice, facial expression) and helps couples build secure-functioning through shared regulation, collaboration, mutual responsibility.
Link for more info: What is PACT? (The PACT Institute)
Imago
Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT) developed by Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt focuses on how our early childhood relational wounding shows up in adult partnerships, and uses a structured dialogue (the Imago Dialogue) to transform conflict into connection.
Core idea: Partners often unconsciously look to their relationship to “heal” old wounds (the “imago” or internal image of familiar love). In IRT you bring awareness to this: how persons are triggered by each other, how the dialogue works, and how conflict becomes an opportunity for growth rather than blame.
Link for more info: Imago Relationship Therapy – Imago Relationships Worldwide
Narrative Couple Therapy
Narrative Therapy (when applied to couples) invites partners to step back from “the problem” and the story they tell about their relationship, and to re-author a more preferred relational story together.
Core idea: Rather than the problem being in the person or the couple as the culprit, the problem is separate (externalised). Partners explore the dominant story (e.g., “we always fight because you’re selfish”) and begin to map alternative stories (“we sometimes clash because we both fear abandonment and shut down”). Then the therapy helps them live into the new story, reclaiming agency, values, and relational possibilities.
Link for more info: Narrative Therapy: definition and techniques
Ecclectic Approach
Eclectic Therapy (sometimes called integrative) reflects a flexible, therapist-led tailoring of interventions, drawing from multiple theories and techniques to meet the unique needs of each couple.
Core idea: No one approach fits every couple. An eclectic therapist assesses what the relationship’s strengths and challenges are (e.g., attachment wounds, communication deficits, trauma, patterns from childhood), and then selects tools from EFT, Gottman, Imago, narrative, PACT (or others) as appropriate. It’s theory-informed but tailor-made.
This is not a comprehensive list of approaches, but rather one to get you started and that you might find up comes up a lot with therapists local to Vancouver. Approaches like Emotion-Focused Therapy was actually developed at UBC in the 1980s. There is also the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy which many local therapists attend for trainings.
You can always ask a prospective counsellor what approaches they take with couples, and what approaches they have formal training in. I am trained in and continue to pursue trainings in Emotion-Focused Therapy, for example, and my clients may find it useful and supportive to their work to read Sue Johnson’s (the creator of EFT) book Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. If your therapist is trained in PACT, you might similarly find it useful to pick up a book by Stan Tatkin.
It takes tremendous courage to reach out for help, and it isn’t easy to open your relationship to outside support. While some people may find it most helpful to just jump into the work with a practitioner who resonates with them, others may find it reassuring to have a bit of background information on the approaches to relationship therapy.
