CPD · Headstrong Academy
Couples
Counselling
Training
A rigorous, inclusive 4-day specialist training for qualified counsellors and psychotherapists ready to work with couples and relationships.
About this training
Step Into Relational Work
Individual counselling skills are essential — but working with couples is a fundamentally different clinical task. This training equips you with the theory, practical skills, and reflective framework to hold two people in the room, navigate competing needs, and support real relational change.
Grounded in attachment theory, systemic thinking, and psychodynamic concepts — and delivered with Headstrong's trademark commitment to anti-oppressive, inclusive practice.
Who should attend
This Training Is For You If...
You're a Qualified Counsellor
You hold a Level 4 Diploma or above in counselling or psychotherapy and are registered with a professional body (BACP, NCPS, UKCP or equivalent).
You Want to Work with Couples
You're looking to extend your practice into relational and couples work, or you're already seeing couples and want a deeper theoretical and clinical foundation.
You Value Inclusive Practice
You want training that addresses the full diversity of relationship structures — including LGBTQ+ relationships, different cultural contexts, and non-normative relationship models.
Course Content
The 4-Day Curriculum
- What makes couples counselling distinct from individual work
- Attachment theory applied to adult partnerships
- The internal couple: what each person brings to the relationship
- Intake, assessment, and contracting with two clients
- Introduction to systemic and relational frameworks
- Systemic thinking: circular causality and relational patterns
- Managing split agendas, alliances, and neutrality
- Transference and countertransference in the triad
- Projection, projective identification, and couple fit
- Skills practice through role play and facilitated exercises
- Affairs, betrayal trauma, and rebuilding trust
- Conflict, escalation, and de-escalation in the room
- Separation and divorce counselling
- Domestic abuse: risk assessment and ethical decision-making
- Safeguarding responsibilities in couples work
- Diversity in relationships: LGBTQ+, cultural, religious, and relational structures
- Non-normative relationships and inclusive frameworks
- Supervision needs specific to couples work
- Self-of-therapist: reflexivity and personal impact
- Consolidation, skills review, and next steps
Learning Outcomes
What You'll Leave With
Theoretical Grounding
A solid working knowledge of attachment, systemic, and psychodynamic frameworks as they apply to couples work.
Clinical Confidence
Practical skills for managing two clients in the room — including split agendas, conflict, and therapeutic neutrality.
Ethical Compass
Clear frameworks for navigating domestic abuse, safeguarding, and the unique ethical dilemmas of relational work.
Inclusive Practice
Confidence working with diverse relationship structures, identities, and cultural contexts in an affirmative way.
Reflective Tools
Supervision frameworks and self-of-therapist awareness to support your ongoing development in this specialist area.
CPD Certificate
A Certificate of Completion documenting 28 hours of specialist CPD, countable toward your annual professional development requirements.
Our Approach
Theory That Serves Practice
Every session is experiential and grounded — we don't just teach models, we help you internalise them through skills practice, case discussion, and facilitated reflection.
Headstrong's approach centres anti-oppressive practice throughout. Couples exist within social contexts, and our training takes seriously the impact of race, culture, class, gender, sexuality, and neurodivergence on relational dynamics.
Attachment Theory
Adult attachment styles, how partners activate each other's attachment systems, and working with rupture and repair.
Systemic Thinking
Circular causality, relational patterns, and how to move away from blame toward collaborative understanding.
Psychodynamic Concepts
Transference, countertransference, projection, projective identification, and the couple's unconscious contract.
Anti-Oppressive Practice
Diversity, power, intersectionality, and affirming practice for LGBTQ+ and culturally diverse couples throughout — not as a module, but as a lens.
Entry Requirements
Who Can Apply
Not sure if you qualify?
We welcome enquiries from practitioners who are unsure whether this training is right for them at this stage. Get in touch and we'll help you work out whether this is the right fit — or what might help you get there.
helloacademy@headstrongcounselling.co.uk
CPD · Headstrong Academy
Ready to Work
with Couples?
Register your interest for our next cohort. Places are limited to ensure a small, high-quality learning experience.