Relationship Counselling

Relationship Counselling Online Across Australia

Relationship counselling at New Leaf with Nisha is offered online to couples across Australia. I work relationally and attachment-aware, with attention to the emotional and protective patterns that can shape conflict, distance, trust and connection.

“Our brain and nervous system are not isolated, but interconnected and social. At our core, we are social beings who regulate through connection with others.”

- Diane Poole Heller, The Power of Attachment

Culture, Family and the Couple Relationship

For some couples, cultural differences, migration, faith, family expectations, or different ideas about roles, responsibility, marriage, parenting and belonging also shape the relationship. In our work together, these influences are not treated as problems to remove; they are part of the context each person and the relationship may be carrying.

Our work focuses on understanding what happens between you when the relationship becomes difficult, what each of you may be protecting or reaching for, and how you may begin to respond to one another differently without reducing the work to who is right or wrong.

Over time, this can create more room for understanding, connection and ways of relating that take both the relationship and each person's context into account.

What Couples May Bring to Relationship Counselling

• intercultural, mixed-heritage and interfaith relationships, including differing family or cultural expectations

• recurring conflict, withdrawal, emotional distance or patterns that seem difficult to interrupt

• communication difficulties and experiences of feeling misunderstood or unheard

• ruptures in trust and questions about repair

• IVF, fertility experiences, pregnancy loss, involuntary childlessness and reproductive grief

• major life transitions, changing roles, caregiving and parenting pressures

• tension between individual needs, the couple relationship and responsibilities to extended family or community

Is Relationship Counselling the Right Fit? ‍

Relationship counselling is best suited to couples who are willing to engage in reflection, take responsibility for their part in relationship dynamics, and work towards developing new ways of relating.

Where there is significant ongoing escalation, active emotional abuse, coercive control, violence, or concerns regarding safety, relationship counselling may not be appropriate. In these circumstances, specialised support or a different level of intervention may be recommended.