North Edmonton Counselling Services
Marriage and Couples Counselling
Dr. Olive Okraku’s ultimate goal is to help others to live fulfilling lives. With over 12 years of experience working in different cultures and training in evidence-based modalities, she has worked with many couples seeking to help save or enhance their relationships.
Her goal is to help couples achieve profound and lasting change while supporting each other’s needs and honouring their own.
Creating lasting change — a path to wellness
A healthy relationship with a significant other not only improves our mental, and emotional well-being but has also been proven to contribute to the state of our physical health as well. Couples counselling provides a path to emotional and physical wellness for couples experiencing difficulties or simply allows them to revitalize and reinvigorate their relationship.
Relationships can be a great source of fulfillment but they can also create or bring forward issues related to trust, safety, parenting, cultural differences, religion and faith, extended family problems, intimacy difficulties, and infidelity. It is important to feel emotionally safe in your relationship, but some couples may not have the tools or know-how to tap into their skills or capabilities to achieve the level of honesty and open communication that is required.
In couples counselling, Dr. Okraku works with you on identifying attachment issues, unhelpful negative patterns, how these patterns impact the relationship, and ways to address them.
The goal is to practice conflict resolution, healthy communication, and work on developing deeper intimacy and friendship. Furthermore, to achieve profound and lasting change that will support your partner’s needs while honouring your own.
Restoring your relationship
In couples counselling, Dr. Okraku typically practices Emotions-Focused Therapy (EFT), an empirically-based approach with the goal of providing insight into how actions and emotions impact relationships. This approach helps couples understand their attachment styles, and negative patterns, learn more productive ways of connecting, express emotions in a healthy way so they may strengthen their bond, create emotional safety, learn ways to experience a sense of belonging, and reduce fear and conflict. Other evidence-based approaches are also used as required.
The benefits of committing to change
If you or your partner are not feeling connected, seen or heard, or if you feel lonely, neglected and unloved, counselling can help. The benefits or outcome will depend on your commitment to your partner and to the process, and also on the choices and decisions you make in, and out of, our sessions.
In couples therapy, Dr. Okraku’s focus is on supporting both parties as they learn new skills, become more self-aware, and increase their ability to become more vulnerable with each other. With commitment and new skills, your relationship can become a place of solace and refuge based on mutual respect and love.
Reach out and reclaim your life
Together we can identify, explore, and resolve issues that create barriers to living a fulfilling life. North Edmonton Counselling Services provides comprehensive counselling services to individuals of any age, couples, and families.
Working with compassion, empathy, and without judgement, Dr. Olive Okraku will help you discover your innate strength and resilience to manage difficult life transitions, heal emotional pain, restore balance, and enhance your coping skills.
A process and plan tailored to your needs
Here's what you can expect.
Initial Intake for Couples
We begin the process with an intake meeting with both partners to get to know you, and explore and understand the issues that need to be processed to foster empowerment and transformation in your relationship.
Initial Individual Assessments
As part of couples therapy, each person is seen once separately to learn, understand, and explore the issues that are most concerning to them and to identify their unique needs.
Couples Sessions
Both partners will be seen together and the process of counselling begins. In these sessions, we discuss the goals we hope to accomplish through counselling and Dr. Okraku will share the treatment plan based on the information gathered in the assessments. A collaborative treatment plan is made and tailored to the couple's lifestyle, beliefs, values, and culture. Our sessions will typically focus on issues that need to be processed, skills and coping strategies that can be explored and learned, learning new ways of relating, increasing self-awareness, opening up emotionally with each other, and processing hurtful experiences. Sessions may also focus on what can strengthen the relationship and improve connection and emotional safety.
What is required of you is a commitment to follow through on the work. You must both be willing to take responsibility for the roles you play in your issues, and learn the skills required to recognize and resolve your problems with care and respect.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What happens in couples counselling?
A: In couples counselling, you gain new perspectives about each other and the way you relate to one another, and you learn new ways of being together. Couples counselling includes “skills work” to help you actually do things differently, as well as helping you explore your feelings and thoughts with your partner.
Q: How long does couples counselling take?
A: It depends on how much effort and commitment you are willing to put into repairing the relationship, and also the state the relationship is in. However, when the couple is committed and ready to work, they can move through the process efficiently in 6-10 sessions.
Q: Can counselling fix a broken relationship?
A: While counselling is very effective at repairing even the most broken relationships, there are some fundamental problems that might make repair impossible. One of the partners may have decided they don't wish to repair the relationship. In that case, counselling is unlikely to help.
What Clients Are Saying
Let us know how we can help
If you are feeling unsure or overwhelmed, just know that the very act of seeking out information is the right first step in your journey.
As a trained and experienced psychologist, Dr. Olive Okraku can join you in this journey, and together we can work to explore and address whatever issues are keeping you from living a fulfilling life. Her approach is holistic, which takes into account all the aspects of “You” — not just the mental state you may be experiencing.
