What Do Counselors Do? Understanding Their Role In Mental Health Counseling

In the mental health field, the term counselor is often used to describe a variety of licensed professional roles that offer psychotherapy or talk therapy treatment, such as therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, and social or case workers. If you’re researching whether and how therapy works to bolster mental and emotional health, you may wonder what role the counselor plays. Read on to learn more about how your therapist provides professional support and guidance, whether you’re working individually or as a couple.

What is psychotherapy and how do mental health counselors help?

Talk therapy is a branch of psychiatric treatment that mental health counselors provide that helps patients examine the connection between how they think and feel. Your counselor may ask questions about your childhood or past experiences to help you understand how they influence your current thought and behavior patterns. Therapy can teach you how to develop your sense of emotional intelligence, awareness, and literacy. This can allow you to identify what you’re feeling, understand how it affects you, and express your emotions and needs to your partner. 

What is couples counseling?

Couples counseling is a subset of psychotherapy centered on helping partners build solid and healthy relationships through honest communication, practical conflict resolution, and re-establishing the emotional intimacy that brought them together. Relationship therapy often focuses on solutions, providing a productive framework and goal structure for treatment. 

When can couples benefit from working with someone who specializes in counseling?

The issues that cause conflict in your relationship are likely unique to you and your partner, but through decades of study, researchers have compiled some common characteristics that can indicate trouble between partners. 

• You no longer communicate effectively, and many of your conversations may devolve into hostility or arguments. 
• Indifference to the relationship or partner’s needs and feelings
• Keeping secrets and lying or hiding things
• Lack of sex and physical intimacy or only connecting during sex
• Loss of closeness and emotional intimacy
• Trouble connecting after having children or an empty nest
• Infidelity, insecurity, and trust issues
• Repeating the same argument without resolution
• Abusive behavior in any form

How do therapists and counselors work to support healthy relationships?

A counselor or other mental healthcare provider brings experience and guidance to the situation, helping couples build strong, healthy connections while safeguarding and supporting both partners’ mental and emotional well-being.

Creating a safe environment to discuss issues in counseling

Few couples consider counseling when things are going well. Your therapist creates a secure, trusting environment where you and your partner can honestly discuss the issues interfering with your relationship. These conversations may not always be easy, but your counselor can help you both learn how to listen and understand what your partner says and how to meet their needs. 

Helping identify harmful patterns and reshape to healthier habits

As your therapist gets to know you, they can help you recognize maladaptive or negative patterns and help you reshape them to more positive, productive ways to think or act.

Developing conflict-resolution strategies with key strategies from mental health counselors or therapists

Do you and your partner finish fights because you're tired of arguing or because you discussed and resolved the problem together? Your counselor can help you develop effective strategies to approach obstacles side-by-side rather than as adversaries and find solutions together.

Teaching you to communicate emotions and needs in couples therapy

Many people struggle with recognizing and expressing their emotions, let alone their partner's. A licensed counselor can help you learn to understand how you feel and identify the clues that help you comprehend your partner’s behavior. 

Helping you learn to listen to your partner

Your therapist can help you learn to actively listen so you know how to respond to your partner when they’re demonstrating different emotions. Therapy can teach you to validate your significant other’s feelings and make them feel seen, valued, and understood in the relationship as they learn to do the same for you. A qualified counselor can help you learn how to love each other the way you both need to be loved. 

Guiding productive conversations

Couples who don’t have effective communication channels in place often find that tense discussions go nowhere, and the same issues pop up over and over again. Your therapist can help guide the conversations during the sessions, demonstrating practical ways to redirect when you veer off-topic, or things get hostile. 

Improving relationship satisfaction

Working with a counselor can improve relationship satisfaction by helping you work through problems as a united front, teaching healthy ways to communicate needs and emotions to one another, and facilitating critical conversations that reveal and address issues while providing the assistance and advice of a mental health professional. 

Reducing adverse symptoms affecting mental health

While your sessions will focus on the relationship and how partners relate to each other, your therapist is a trained mental healthcare provider. If they notice symptoms of an underlying condition, such as depression, anxiety, or personality disorders, they can offer treatment or refer you to someone with the proper qualifications. It is essential to remember that a psychiatrist is the only counselor who can prescribe medication. 

What do counselors do in couples therapy? What to expect

Couples therapy often covers topics that may leave you feeling exposed and vulnerable, but it is very much a situation in which you need to trust the process. Explore what to expect from couples therapy. 

In your first session

Your counselor will interview you and your partner to learn more about you and the problems that brought you to therapy. Prepare to discuss your history together, family members, childhood experiences, foundational values, and other topics that offer insight into your backgrounds, emotional states, underlying issues, and commitment levels. You may be asked to complete questionnaires to help your therapist understand more about your relationship dynamic. 

How counselors work to develop a treatment plan

After reviewing the information gathered during the first or first few sessions, your counselor will develop a treatment plan for your relationship. You should expect to talk about the issues affecting your shared bond, how to make meaningful changes to work through it, and a therapeutic framework with a treatment timeline. 

During ongoing sessions with a counselor

As you progress through treatments together, you and your partner will learn how to communicate effectively, resolve conflicts with balance and compromise, and rebuild your relationship's lost emotional or physical intimacy. Your counselor will help you reshape your relationship dynamic to meet both partners’ needs and restore your positive views of each other. 

Completing “homework” assignments outside sessions

Your therapist may assign you tasks to complete outside your treatment sessions, such as going on a date without using any electronics, having sex, using coping skills you’ve learned, or making an effort to talk about your days and compliment one another daily. 

Results aren’t instant: consistency in support from someone who specializes in counseling

Talk therapy isn’t usually a fast process where you can work a few hours and instantly enjoy the benefits of a healthy relationship. If you start the process expecting immediate results or little in the way of required effort, you’re likely to be disappointed. 

Different types of couples therapy

When interviewing counselors to find the right fit for you and your partner, ask about their therapeutic approach to couples therapy. When researching the right choice for your situation, start with the following terms.  

• The Gottman Method
• Psychodynamic Couples Therapy
• Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
• PACT Therapy
• Sex Therapy
• Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT)
• Motivational Interviewing
• Solution-Focused Therapy
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Couples counselors can support healthy relationships

Many couples can strengthen their emotional and physical intimacy by speaking with a qualified counselor. If you’ve noticed a decline in the connection between you and your partner or have encountered issues you can’t get past on your own, consider working with a licensed couples therapist online through a virtual therapy platform centered on relationships like Regain. Therapy can help you and your partner learn healthy ways to communicate, resolve conflicts, and manage your expectations so you both feel seen, understood, and loved. 

For several years, versatile approaches to mental healthcare have been of increasing public interest. Studies show that couples therapy is equally effective online and in the traditional in-office setting. Both groups in the study reported increased satisfaction in the relationship and decreased symptoms associated with mental health issues like depression, stress, and anxiety. Virtual treatments offer unique advantages that in-person therapies do not, such as lower costs, shorter wait times, and access to a more comprehensive network of licensed counselors. If you don’t match with a provider who makes you both feel comfortable and blends well with your situation on the first try, connecting with another therapist is simple.