Can counselling truly help every relationship?

What about the toxic, manipulative, emotionally abusive, covert controlling, narcissistic relationships?

The short answer is NO … well … sort of!

It is more about, for whom it is helpful, and how it is helpful.

I absolutely love the work I do.

Except for one group of clients, thankfully a minority, but they sure consume more than their fair share of my therapeutic focus and energy, when they, or their partner, are in my schedule.

I try my utmost to provide wonderful healing therapy for every client, that books with me.

BUT …

not every client loves me for that!

I may have some wonderful google reviews, but there are also a few clients who absolutely hate on me!

You want to know why? It’s very simple.

I call out their BS – I ask them to be accountable for their toxic behaviours within the relationship.

I am a relationship therapist. My job description is to help people create healthier, happier more fulfilling relationships. The key word here is HEALTHIER.

My job is not to put bandaids on toxic relationships. I go way deeper into the meta dynamics of the relationship to ascertain what is really going on there.

Now my laser therapeutic focus is great for those who don’t want toxic dances, toxic behaviours and toxic personality traits within their relationships and lives.

However, it is not so great for those who regularly employ these toxic ways to get their needs met!

Those clients would like to use therapy as yet another way to manipulate and control their partner.

They begin this process by trying to manipulate and control the therapeutic narrative … and me!

When I draw attention to these meta communication dynamics, these manipulative clients suddenly flip their narrative of how wonderful Tess is, to how dreadful I am.

Predictably, it’s not their behaviours that are the problem. “It’s Tess that is the problem!”

These are also the clients that do not change in relationship therapy.

They actually double down on their toxic, and very often abusive ways, of trying to get their needs met!

I wish it wasn’t so. But relationship therapy is not the place to help these personality styles to evolve. That therapeutic journey would be too cruel a process for their partner, who is already suffering way too much. Such personality disorders require specialist individual therapy over a long duration and even then, with no guarantee that a mature adult, able to engage in a reciprocal relationship, will evolve.

Whilst I can hold empathy for ‘the abuser’ and what may have created their sad and ultimately self sabotaging ways of getting their needs met, I also must hold safe protective boundaries for myself and the other client in the relationship.

I love my work …

but this part of it, is no walk in the park!

No matter how many different ways I gently try to expose such toxicity within a relationship so that the disempowered client can gain a clearer picture of how they are being manipulated, the ending is always the same. The emotionally immature person doesn’t want us to see their toxic ways, that are serving them so well. How inconvenient of Tess and her therapy to shine a spotlight on them!

At this point I cannot truthfully call it a RElationship with REciprocal care and nurture but more a dictatorship where one person is getting their needs met at the expense of the other.

As much as I really, REALLY dislike this part of my job, I also have a passion for it. Because the partners of these clients are in desperate need of therapeutic support to regain their voice.

There are also the innocent children caught up in these toxic dynamics.

Someone has to speak up for them,

and say …  ‘That is not OK!’

If I am not emotionally courageous enough to do this – then should I be a relationship counsellor?

Knowing what is ethically correct to do, does not make it easy to do. Because speaking up for my manipulated clients, inevitably puts a target on my back with their enraged partners! That’s when the smear campaigning and ‘Nasty Narc’ list is rolled out.

Because these people can get really nasty when they can’t get their way in therapy.

Actually … they just get nasty anytime they don’t get their way.

Here is a list of the very predictable things these emotionally immature clients will say when they find they cannot manipulate and control me or the inevitable therapeutic trajectory that highlights their toxic ways.

The very predictable ‘NASTY NARC’ list …

(Initially said to their partner out of session as their ‘behind the back’ smear campaign goes into full action to protect themselves from any more accountability in counselling.)

• She doesn’t like me.
• She’s on your side.
• She is so unprofessional!
• She isn’t even qualified!
• I am going to report her!
• I am going after her!
• She will never practice again!
• I am going to destroy her!
• I told my other therapist and they are aghast that she has done this!

(Said in voice messages sent to me because we know these bullies are actually very scared people who feel absolutely inadequate and they will say and do anything for that not to be seen.)

• I am preparing a law suite against you … and it’s going to be BIG!
• You don’t know who I am … what I do … but you are going to find out!

Sadly, I did already know exactly what they were like. Their own words were simply confirming my initial therapeutic fears, that I wanted so much not to be true. By this stage I have empathically worked so hard to try to help the emotionally immature client to gently embrace the lived reality of their actions, without any shame or guilt, in the hope they might be able to change.

At times like this I really hate being right!

Most new clients are a little surprised by how quickly I can pick up toxic dances, toxic behaviours and toxic personality traits. Often I am seeing red flags in their free 15 minute chat and in their Intake Forms. But the confirmation of those red flags is usually around session 3. It really doesn’t take long for a manipulative abuser to show their true colours when they are held to account in a relationship counselling session.

I run a support group, free of charge, for those leaving emotionally immature, toxic relationships. Because sadly, the abuse does not stop when the person leaves the relationship. It often escalates, and no one understands the brutality of these enraged personality types, quite like those who have experienced it.

So please know … there is support right here … you can book a free 15 minute zoom chat with me to learn more.

Because relationship therapy can help you to create a healthier relationship with yourself.

So that you never tolerate abusive relationships again!