Would you like to understand the role communication plays in creating, maintaining, or destroying relationships? This counselling course online is ideal for counsellors, police officers, customs officers, lawyers, managers, and anyone wanting to enhance relationships in their personal or professional life.

The Certificate of Relationships and Communication Counselling is an online program that will provide you with an enhanced capacity to help people experiencing relationship difficulties. You will also gain an understanding of the diversity that exists in relationships, from families to workgroups and social encounters.

You will also discover communication in emerging relationships, signs of relationship breakdown and abuse and violence in relationships, adult psychological development, and Erickson’s psychological stages.

This course also explains the influences on relating behaviour, communication techniques and skills, and how to create and plan a counselling intervention for a couple experiencing relationship difficulties.

There are many learning outcomes when you study counselling courses online, including the development of critical “micro-skills” to help you to interact with clients, colleagues, and others to help them to work through and find resolutions to relationship and other difficulties.

Learning Outcomes

• Explore the establishment of positive communication in emergent relationships and the various factors that influence relational processes
• Examine perceptions of ourselves and how this affects our communication and influences our communication goals
• To identify and examine patterns of interaction in close relationships and consider the functions of thoughts, feelings, and actions and how they inform our communication responses
• Recognise the role of third-party influences when communicating in relationships and the changing needs in a person’s lifetime that affect their communication
• Listen with improved empathy and respond accordingly
• To understand constructive and destructive methods of maintaining relationships
• Determine ways in which we consciously communicate in a relationship, and ways in which we unconsciously communicate
• Understand different negative messages that can damage relationships, and different positive messages that can nurture them
• Comprehend the attitudes or expectations (thoughts and beliefs) that can result in destructive communication, and describe one likely negative outcome for each
• Identify common needs that we want to satisfy through our relationships
• Identify cultural or social influences that affect individual and family attitudes to happiness, self-expression, and relationships
• Explain psychological theories and terms such as attribution theory, implicit personality theory, Gestalt impression formation, inference processes, stereotyping
• List benefits and disadvantages of ‘self-disclosure’ and ‘self-disguise or concealment’ (lying)
• Define effective communication
• Discuss the role that judgment plays in preventing a person from understanding and/or respecting another person’s point of view and feelings
• Discuss strategies for replacing negative communication patterns in relationships for positive patterns

Studying counselling courses online, such as the Certificate of Relationships and Communication Counselling, is ideal for those in counselling roles. It’s also excellent personal development for if you want to improve your own relationships.

 

The Marriage Doctor – Dr John Gottman

World-renowned for his work on what makes marriages endure or end, Dr John Gottman has undertaken 40 years of research with thousands of couples. He is the author of over 200 academic articles and more than 40 books, including The New York Times bestseller The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.

 

Gottman’s 5 Types of Couples 

Dr Gottman has defined five types of couples in his research, including Conflict-Avoiding, Validating, Volatile, Hostile, and Hostile-Detached.

 

1. Conflict Avoiders

Conflict avoiders minimise persuasion attempts and emphasise areas of common ground. They avoid conflict, avoid expressing their needs, and applaud their relationship for being relatively happy. Dr Gottman reports that these couples have a balance between independence and interdependence. They have clear boundaries and are separate people with separate interests.

 

2. Volatile Couples

In contrast to the “conflict avoiders” are the “volatile couples” who are characterised as intensely emotional. During a conflict discussion, they begin persuasion immediately, and they stick to it throughout the debate. Their debating is characterised by laughter, shared amusement, and humour. They seem to love to argue, but they are not disrespectful and insulting.

Dr Gottman reports that while there is a lot of negative affects expressed, including anger and insecurity, there is no contempt. Unlike conflict avoiders, these couples have no clear boundaries around their separate worlds, and there is enormous overlap. While they argue about their roles, they emphasise connection and honesty in their relationship.

 

3. Validating Couples

Validating couple’s interactions exude ease and calm. They are somewhat expressive but mostly neutral. Dr Gottman reports that they seem to be somewhere between avoiders and the volatile couple. They put a lot of emphasis on supporting and understanding their partner’s point of view and are often sympathetic toward their partner’s feelings.

They will confront their differences, but only on some topics. These couples can also be highly competitive on some issues, which can turn into a power struggle. However, they usually calm down and compromise. During the conflict, these couples are only mildly emotionally expressive.

 

4. Hostile Couples

Hostile couples are like validating couples, except there are high levels of defensiveness on the part of both partners.

There was a high incidence of criticism, reports Dr Gottman – using phrases such as “you always” and “you never” and whining. During the conflict, each partner repeated their own perspective and showed no support or understanding for the other person’s point of view. There was lots of contempt. All Four Horsemen were present.

 

5. Hostile-Detached Couples

These couples are pitted against each other on a battlefield with no clear winner. They criticise one another during a conflict – the air is full of emotional detachment and resignation, reports Dr Gottman.

In Dr Gottman’s Lab, he discovered that escalating conflict would occur between two validators, but then one of them will back down. But the volatile will not let the validator withdraw.

Hostile couples (validator-avoider) regulate their negativity, while hostile-detached (validator-volatile) couples do not.

 

Good communication and healthy relationships don’t just happen – they take work. Whether you work in counselling or want to acquire the ‘micro-skills’ to better help friends and colleagues, this counselling course online is for you. Discover our Certificate of Relationship and Communication Counselling today to learn about what makes relationships better.