Your Couple Therapy

Meet your therapist

“Hi, I’m Karen Higginbottom, your specialised couple retreat therapist. We all need loving, supportive relationships. Yet most couples face challenges along the way, and getting the right help can really turn things around!

I love running retreats because I get to witness wonderful, rapid transformations in relationships – a deeply heart-warming experience for me! I decided to specialise in retreats mainly because of the great outcomes and feedback I was receiving when delivering couple therapy in this format.

My husband Pete and I would love to welcome you to stay in our beautiful rainforest guesthouse, while I help you on the path towards the happy, loving relationship you deserve!”

Therapy location

Your retreat therapy sessions are conducted in a dedicated relationship counselling room just inside the front door of your accommodation.

Therapeutic approach

The main approach used in your couple therapy is Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), a scientifically validated ‘gold standard’ method of relationship counselling and marriage counselling.

EFT has the strongest research evidence for effectiveness in reducing relationship distress of any form of couple therapy.

Occasionally (where relevant), your therapist supplements EFT with methods drawn from behavioural approaches such as Gottman Method Couples Therapy and Behavioural Sex Therapy. Our work is also trauma-informed.

Extensive research over 30 years has shown that, of couples who engage in a full course of EFT with a skilled, certified EFT therapist:

Further research shows that these changes last over time, and some couples even continue to improve their relationship satisfaction.

EFT has been shown to be effective for a huge variety of relationship problems and different kinds of couples. It is effective for ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ (including same sex) couples, and in diverse cultural contexts.

EFT is very different from other approaches to couple therapy that work mainly on communication skills and other behavioural changes, which can sometimes feel like a ‘band-aid’ solution that doesn’t help in the long run.

EFT helps couples move their relationships from distress or disconnection towards security, closeness and connection. It helps you learn how to communicate not by coaching you in ‘skills’, but by helping you develop self-awareness and guiding you to communicate in a way that builds empathy and connection. EFT focuses especially on the emotions that are at the core of relationship success or distress.

EFT provides a clear ‘map‘ of the sequential (but overlapping) steps needed to gradually repair distressed relationships and rebuild love and connection, regardless of the issues that divide you. Your therapist will guide you together through this ‘map’, tailoring it as needed for the particulars of you as individuals and the issues in your relationship.

A simplified idea of this map is as follows:

Set the stage for working together as a team to improve the relationship: identify concerns, agree on common goals, establish emotional safety etc.
Identify repetitive negative patterns of interaction (to which both partners contribute, usually inadvertently) that lead to problems in the relationship, then work as a team to reduce these.
Gradually replace these negative patterns with ‘bonding conversations’ that build understanding, empathy, connection, support and security.
Address unhealed hurts from earlier in the relationship that are still leading to conflict or disconnection.
Along with 3 & 4, build each partner’s awareness of their own and their partner’s deeper emotional and personal ‘raw spots’, and how these influence their behaviour in the relationship. (Over time, these raw spots can often be largely healed in the context of a positive relationship.)
Address any remaining issues, which can now be done constructively in the context of a more secure relationship with effective communication.

EFT has been developed and refined over the last 30 years by multiple award-winning clinical psychologist, Dr Sue Johnson. It builds on a combination of:

adult attachment science* – based on a huge body of work that shows how adult love and bonding works
a humanistic approach – which is collaborative, non-blaming and respects the capacity of clients for individual growth when they feel supported
an experiential approach – which guides clients to have new positive experiences of understanding and communicating about their emotional experience – in session, then at home
a systems approach – which recognises that there is always a two-way interaction that needs both partners to play their part in achieving positive change

* Although almost universally accepted by researchers in the field of human relationships, there is a long time lag in attachment science filtering through into the popular press and even into awareness by therapists