Discernment Counselling

DISCERNMENT COUNSELLING

Discernment counselling is intended for couples in which one person is not sure he or she wants to work on the relationship or even stay together, and the other person wants to solve the problem to make a marriage/relationship better.

The goal of the discernment counselling is to help you arrive at greater clarity and confidence in your decision-making about the future of your marriage based on a deeper understanding of what happened to the marriage/relationship and each person's contribution to the problem.

The goal of the discernment counselling is not to solve your problem but to figure out whether you might be able to solve them. Discernment counselling could be compared to a “Flotation Device”. For example if you are drowning you don’t want swimming lessons, and you want a floating device. When your marriage is in a hard spot it can be hard to sign up for couples counselling and discernment counselling might be a better place to start. Discernment counselling is just determining if what direction you want to go. Discernment counselling is intended to be brief, it involves a limited number of sessions (1-5 sessions) to determine which direction is most appropriate.

THE 3 MAIN COUNSELLING PATHS

Path 1
STAY -  Leaving the marriage/relationship as is, the status quo, choosing to neither divorce, nor working in therapy to improve the relationship.

Path 2
DIVORCE -  Considering if separation or divorce the best option by putting divorce directly on the table.

Path 3
WORK ON THE MARRIAGE - Six-month commitment to couples therapy, taking divorce off the table for the time being and re-evaluation after this time period to determine if enough has taken place to improve the relationship.

Discernment counselling sessions are 90-120 minutes in length and requires both you and your spouse to come to sessions.

Quick stats:

75% of divorced couples at least one partner had regrets about the decision to divorce 1 year after the break-up

30% of spouses in divorce process express interest in reconciliation services, and in 10% of couples, both partners independently express interest.

My discernment counselling work is based on the research and work by William Doherty and Steven Harris.