What Is Discernment Counselling and Who Is It For?

Discernment Counselling is not couples therapy. It is designed for a different moment, a moment when one person is leaning out of the relationship, and the question is not how to improve it, but whether to stay in it at all.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF QUESTION

Most couples therapy assumes both people are committed to working on the relationship. But there are relationships where that assumption cannot be made, where one person has a foot out the door, where ambivalence is the defining feature of the moment.

Discernment Counselling was developed by Bill Doherty at the University of Minnesota specifically for this situation. It is brief, typically three to five sessions, and it is not designed to fix the relationship. It is designed to help both people arrive at a clear sense of which direction makes most sense.

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

In Discernment Counselling, each partner is seen both together and individually within sessions. The person leaning out is helped to understand their own ambivalence. The person who wants to stay is helped to understand their role in the dynamic and what they would be genuinely willing to change.

The three possible outcomes are: deciding to separate, deciding to divorce, or deciding to pursue a period of active couples therapy with both people genuinely committed to it. Discernment Counselling does not advocate for any of these. It creates the conditions for a clearer decision.

A NOTE FROM SABRINA BARBARA

Some of the most important work I do is with couples who do not yet know what they want. Discernment Counselling provides a container for that uncertainty that ordinary therapy does not. Whatever the decision, it is better made with clarity than from panic or exhaustion.