About Couple Counselling in Waterlooville.

When the most significant relationship of your life is in trouble.

Though you and your partner may hold the belief “we’ve tried everything”, meeting with Couple Counsellor Dean Richardson often shows the couple-in-conflict what different approaches they didn’t know they could try.

Dean is a fully qualified couples counsellor (Post Graduate Diploma in Psychodynamic / Systemic Couple Counselling, Chichester). Surprisingly, even as a fully qualified, highly experienced couple counsellor, Dean does not take on the role of a “relationship expert”; an “expert” who proffers all the right solutions for your problems, who tells you what you ought to be doing “right”.

How can couple counselling work, unless someone is the “relationship expert”? Dozens of couples have exited Dean’s consultation rooms having improved their relationship. Does this interest you, too?!

When you and your partner are struggling to work things through, Dean Richardson MNCS(Accredited Registrant) will be the counsellor to help tackle the blocks.

NEW! A Counselling Service Exclusively for LGBT Couples.

Hampshire Lesbian and Gay Couple Counselling

A new couple counselling service dedicated to lesbian, gay, bisexual & queer couples.

Couple Counselling Services.

Suitable for…

Suitable for an adult couple relationship: intimate, marital, business or social. When you can’t work out how to change a relationship problem, couple counselling can help you both identify what’s getting in the way of you working it out together.
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Open Ended

Your relationship is not limited by time, so neither is couple counselling. We’ll begin by clearly identifying the relationship problems. Then ~ if you choose ~ you can either work on agreed problems with no further counselling, or can work together with the counsellor in weekly sessions.

Weekly

Effective couple counselling is weekly ~ any more time between sessions can weaken the effectiveness. Weekly sessions can also help with budgeting, arranging baby sitting, and provides a weekly sanctuary where the couple focuses on their relationship.

No Waiting

NHS and charitable counselling services often have a long waiting list. As a private counsellor, Dean Richardson often has appointments so that you can begin as quickly as next week. He also has a limited number of low-fee cases too. You can afford to go private…

Marriage Counselling = Relationship Counselling.

Couple Counselling used to be known as marriage guidance counselling when it was offered by a national service called the Marriage Guidance Counsel (it figures!). As a private therapy service, it is offered in Waterlooville by private couple counsellor: Dean Richardson MNCS(Accredited Registrant).

Couple Counselling is an appropriate therapeutic intervention for marriages, intimate couples, platonic couples, and social couples (e.g. friends, flatmates).

Couple Counselling supports both and your partner together in identifying, addressing and working-through the relationship’s problem(s) and conflict(s) towards a good-enough outcome.

This particular therapeutic approach helps you both not only to put current problems to rest, but also prepares you to manage new relationship conflicts as they occur in the future!

Couple Counselling using effective systemic / psychodynamic therapeutic interventions, without reference to religious or moral codes, encourages a couple to teach themselves, and each other, how to work their relationship through conflicts and on to new places together… without having to go through the process alone.

Counsellor Dean Richardson, Hampshire
Dean Richardson MNCS(Accredited Registrant)

What happens in Couple Counselling?

Every case is different, but generally the first (few) session(s) of couple counselling are known as an assessment.

This is where the couple and Dean work together to discover what the couple’s relationship may need to focus upon during couple counselling.

Without knowing what the focus is to be, we cannot venture forward very well together.

Once the focus is agreed upon by everyone, the couple may decide that they’ve done enough and will work on the relationship’s focus alone. Other couples remain in counselling for assistance in discovering why their relationship struggles being about the focus on their own.

The couple may leave counselling at any time (although giving notice is helpful to bring about the end, rather than suddenly leaving).

The aim of couple counselling is not for the counsellor to resolve the relationship’s ailments, rather it’s a process that invites the couple to learn and discover how they may address their own problems themselves without further need of future therapeutic intervention (basically – the couple develop their own plan for being able to address both current and future problems).

Dean Richardson’s Distinct Approach to Couple Counselling.

  • Dean's primary client is the couple's relationship (not the two individuals in the relationship). Inexperienced counsellors - or those untrained in relationship work - miss this important aspect when trying to work with a couple.
  • Dean's primary aim is to become redundant: the couple can end their counselling work without thinking that they've become dependant on a counsellor; nor feeling they will have to come back for 'top up' sessions in the future.
  • The couple stay only for as long as it's helping: meaning they might come to counselling for just a handful of sessions, or may choose to stay longer, until the couple can work on their relationship's needs on their own (again). Dean does not set a compulsory minimum (or maximum) period.
  • The couple work with just the one therapist: and Dean practices "neutrality" which means both members of the couple will be understood by a single therapist (no risk of multiple interpretations by multiple therapists in the room). Plus… the common factors that are underlying the couple's relationship problems can be understood and communicated back to them by a single couple counsellor as a single, consistent, understandable whole.
  • Dean does not solve the couple's current relationship problems.  Dean is not a "Relationship Expert", doesn't promote his services as being so, and doesn't claim to have solutions and answers for the coupleInstead, Dean focuses on assisting the couple to learn and understand their own problems so that they can address and resolve matters using their own solutions.
  • The couple develop their own unique approach that can be helpful for years to come. Looking at the relationship's problems as if they are a symptom of a system that has become faulty (say, like a washing machine that works until it comes time to rinse). Understanding… and then amending… the relationship's behavioural-system can help the couple understand what's at the centre of their problems. With understanding, the couple can learn to manage & resolve not only current problems… but future ones too… for themselves.
  • Dean involves & immerses the couple in the counselling, rather than operating as a pseudo-advice-giving consultant with-all-the-answers.
  • Dean's couple counselling approach integrates effective systemic and psychodynamic approaches. Rather than using whatever is the latest fad in therapy, Dean successfully applies methods that have been tried and tested for a long time (30+ years: systemic, 100+ years: psychodynamic). This helps the couple (through curiosity, hypothesising & modelling) learn what's happening in their relationship and then helps them develop their own 'fault' resolving strategies.
  • Unlike some couple therapists who respond to questions with 'answers' (whether such generic answers can actually apply to the couple's specific relationship), Dean empowers the couple into being able to answer their own questions by understanding & resolving their own relationship-conflicts. This helps the couple become independent of the counsellor.
  • Boundaries are important: the session is contained within 50 (or 90, optional) minutes, weekly, in a safe room, with the same counsellor. For example, the couple always knows that they can open up (difficult) topics but not fear getting swept up into long arguments… because the session's end time is set.
  • Future "top-up" sessions become unnecessary: the couple ends counselling when they don't need the counsellor any longer. Dean doesn't "fix" the relationship for the couple, he assists the couple in learning how to fix their own relationship problems together. Added bonus: the couple uses the same techniques to manage future difficulties.  Once the couple feel that they are more capable at addressing their relationship problems together, they can begin to bring couple counselling to a close without having to come back for "top-up" sessions (as if they'd somehow run out!).

About Counsellor Dean Richardson MNCS(Accredited Registrant)

You could choose any counsellor.

But… when you consider that this is probably the most personal and the most vulnerable that you're going to be with someone, you'd choose someone you'd trust, who demonstrated adept professional skills, who spoke plain English (who's happy to use as much swearing/plain language as you use yourself), and who works in partnership with his clients (he doesn't sit in silence, or just says "Hmm" for 50 minutes)

…then you'd choose to meet with Dean Richardson.

Seems a simple choice, really.

Couple Counselling Session Fees

How my counselling fees work

Unlike NHS services (where you have already paid through NI taxation), private counselling will cost you some money.

Couple counselling sessions last for a standard 50 minutes (although weekly 90 minute sessions can available if we think this would be beneficial).

The fee is per couple, per session and my fees become due on the day of our weekly session.

You may pay for your session fees online (eg bank transfer, credit/debit card payment) or in person (cash, cheque [made out to Dean Richardson], credit/debit card).

In some circumstances, my fees may be negotiable if your income were to make private counselling a struggle to afford, but this is on a case-by-case basis and I may not have any low-fees spaces available. Please ask…

Counselling Appointments.

Generally, I work from 1pm until 9pm (Monday through Friday). Sessions are weekly, usually on the same day & time each week and are of 50 minutes. Once an appointment has been taken up by someone, that day & time stays allocated until the counselling work is completed.

Available appointments are as follows:-

Available Appointments for Counselling
Couples & Individual Video Counselling (Zoom, Skype…)
Click to go to HavantCounselling.com
Monday Appointments:12pm1pm2pm3pm4pm5pm6pm7pm8pm
 Fully booked
Tuesday Appointments:This day is not available for bookings
Wednesday Appointments:12pm1pm2pm3pm4pm5pm6pm7pm8pm
 Fully booked
Thursday Appointments:12pm1pm2pm3pm4pm5pm6pm7pm8pm
 Note: the afternoon appointments are being considered by new clients.
Friday Appointments:This day is not available for bookings
Weekend Appointments:This day is not available for bookings
TIP:
  • The times listed in red are the most popular and fastest to be taken.
Appointments for Counselling
Day of WeekTimes of Day
Couples & Individual Video Counselling (Zoom, Skype…)
Visit HavantCounselling.com
Mon:Fully booked
Tue:Not available
Wed:Fully booked
Thu:3pm-5pm
 Note: the afternoon appointments are being considered by new clients.
Fri:Not available
W/E:Not available

IMPORTANT INFORMATION: Dean is not available from Monday 7th October to Sunday 13th October (inclusive), though he may still be available to respond to enquiries and emails.

Due to a busy time few appointments are currently available. Cases do conclude from time to time and you're welcome to reserve your preferred appointments for when they become available (get in touch…).

Times in red are the most popular, and usually the first to go.

 

Location Image
Within Becvar Health Ltd, 200 London Road (Ground Floor) Waterlooville Hampshire PO7 7AN UK
+442392987487£30-£100
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Got a Question? Don't Hold Back…

If you have a question about Dean Richardson's counselling services in Waterlooville, or just want to ask a question, maybe about making your first appointment, feel free to drop Dean a message any time…