Episode Details

If you’ve searched for “affordable relationship counseling near me,” it’s important to know these five things before you schedule an appointment.

FIVE THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE SCHEDULING AFFORDABLE RELATIONSHIP COUNSELING NEAR ME

1. A RELATIONSHIP COUNSELOR PROBABLY WON’T TELL YOU THEY CAN’T HELP YOU

Most relationship therapists genuinely want to help, and they believe they have the right training and tools to help you. If helping couples overcome issues is their business and livelihood, it’s natural they don’t want to turn people away.

However, many relationship counselors don’t really understand how emotional abuse works and how to screen for it. No matter what they do to help you, it will not help, and that lack of clarity can keep you in harm’s way longer, which benefits the counselor and the abuser…not you.

So it’s really important to learn about emotional abuse first.

2. A RELATIONSHIP COUNSELOR WON’T TAKE SIDES, EVEN IF ONLY ONE PERSON IS THE PROBLEM

A core part of relationship counseling ethics is that the counselor is not supposed to take sides. And that makes sense. But if your husband is abusive then it’s unethical to treat this as a couple problem when it’s not.

 Even if the therapist says, “This is emotional abuse and I can still help you.” That’s not a thing. Because if he’s lying, he’s going to use those couple sessions to continue to lie and manipulate.

3. TALK THERAPY WON’T HELP IF HE HAS A HISTORY OF LYING OR MANIPULATION

If your husband is lying, deflecting, or rewriting reality then, therapy is just gonna be more of that. There’s no way to convince somebody not to lie and manipulate, and you won’t know they’re doing it.

Stay to the end—I’ll show you what the women in our community say they wish they’d known sooner.

4. MANY, MANY WOMEN HAVE BEEN HARMED BY “AFFORDABLE RELATIONSHIP COUNSELING NEAR ME”

After more than a decade of doing this work and hearing from hundreds of women who started by searching “affordable relationship counseling near me” or were referred by a friend, a clear pattern shows up. Many, many women have been extremely harmed by couples therapists who did not know that they witnessed emotional abuse inside their offices.

In some cases, what the women shared in sessions was later used against them at home or in court.

5. PROGRESS CAN BE MEASURED BY YOUR FEELINGS, NOT BY HIS CHANGED BEHAVIOR

 Therapists rely on what they’re witnessing inside of that session. So if your husband says he’s improving, if he says he gets it, if he says he’s sorry, then the therapist is like, “Look, he’s sorry.” They can’t witness his behavior over time, like you do at home.

So you know more about this than they do, and you can trust your instincts about it.

To find out if your husband is using any one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse, take my free emotional abuse test.

In this interview, Aliya shares what it looked like when the “expert” she trusted blurred lines in ways that felt increasingly difficult to make sense of.

TRANSCRIPT: ONE WOMAN’S STORY OF UNETHICAL AFFORDABELE RELATIONSHIP COUNSELING NEAR ME

Anne: We have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’re gonna call her Aliya. A so-called domestic abuse expert exploited her.

Welcome, Aliya.

Aliya: Thank you.

Anne: Let’s start with how you met him.

Aliya: I met him online through his network, taking classes and such.

After I took a couple of classes with him, I started splitting time with him or co-co