Christian Hughes

Couples counselling & Individual Therapy in the West Midlands (and online UK-wide). Evidence-based relationship therapy and one to one psychotherapy to help you reduce distress, change repeating patterns, rebuild trust and communicate more effectively.

You may have reached a point where something in your life, like a relationship, a past experience, anxiety, loss, or a pattern you can't seem to break,  has become too much to carry alone. You want more than just someone to talk to. You want to understand what's keeping you stuck, and to actually move forward.

I'm Christian, a BABCP-accredited psychotherapist substantial experience across the NHS, military mental health, and private practice. I work with individuals and couples using evidence-based approaches (EMDR, CBT, ACT, and CFT) tailored to your specific difficulties, not a generic template.

I offer therapy in person in Stourbridge and online across the UK.

Relationship Therapy

I work with couples across the West-Midlands (Stourbridge, Dudley, Halesowen, Kidderminster, Birmingham, and surrounding areas) and online throughout the UK.

What Happens in Relationship Therapy?
Sometimes couples come to therapy because of a crisis, such as after the discovery of an affair, but most come because they've realised that something between them has stopped working.

You might still care deeply about each other, or be noticing that feelings are fading, or finding yourselves stuck in recurring arguments, or a steady sense of distance. You may feel misunderstood, unseen, or tired of trying to communicate. By the time people reach out for help, they’ve often spent years trying to fix things on their own, through better communication, compromise, or determination, only to find the same issues return.

That’s because most relationship problems aren’t just about communication techniques. They’re about patterns, automatic loops of thought, feeling, and behaviour that pull two people into the same painful place again and again.

How problems develop?
When tension builds, each partner reacts in the way that once kept them safe, such as by withdrawing, defending, pleasing, controlling, or shutting down. These are protective moves, not attacks, but together they form a cycle that leaves both people feeling alone.

Small triggers, a sigh, a look, a delay in reply,  can spark old stories:
“I’m not important.”
“You’ll never understand me.”
“If I show how I feel, it’ll just make things worse.”

Over time, these interpretations become automatic and patterns of responding become habitual keeping us stuck in negative cycles that corrode the relationship.

That’s where therapy helps.

What happens in session?
Couples therapy slows things down. Together we explore not just what you argue about, but how those moments unfold and what they mean to each of you.

We start by mapping the pattern, how one person’s reaction triggers the other’s, and how both end up in familiar roles. Recognising that pattern is often the first step out of blame.

From there, therapy helps you:

Notice the thoughts and assumptions that fuel misunderstanding.
Understand the emotions beneath anger or withdrawal.
Practise expressing needs and fears safely, without attack or retreat.
Try small, realistic steps between sessions to build trust and connection.
Sometimes this means learning to pause before reacting. Sometimes it means sharing something vulnerable rather than rehearsing the same argument. But always, it means learning to make changes towards the kind of relationship you want.

Over time, couples develop new habits of attention, communication, and interaction. They learn to talk to each other rather than at each other and to do more of the things that work for their relationship.

 
What changes?
As patterns shift, many couples describe:

• Less reactivity and more curiosity.
• Fewer circular arguments.
• A stronger sense of being “on the same side.”
• More emotional safety and intimacy.
• Active changes in behaviour.
• The circumstances of life may not change but how you meet them together does.

What therapy isn’t
It’s not about finding who’s right or wrong.
It’s not a place to score points or convince someone to change.
It’s a space to understand what keeps you both stuck, and to practise new ways of relating that align with your values, such as care, honesty, respect, teamwork.

You don’t have to wait until things fall apart to begin.
Therapy can be as much about strengthening relationships as it is about repairing them.If any of this feels familiar, relationship therapy offers a way to make sense of what’s happening between you and to build something more connected, respectful, and alive.

You can learn more about how I work with couples https://www.christiankhughes.com/relationship-therapy

Individual Psychotherapy
Sometimes people come to therapy following a specific event — a trauma, a bereavement, a crisis that has left them struggling to function. But more often, people arrive having lived with something difficult for a long time. Anxiety that never really switches off. A low mood that keeps returning. Memories or experiences that intrude without warning. Patterns of thinking or behaviour that you can see clearly but can't seem to change.

You might have tried to manage it yourself,  through willpower, keeping busy, or waiting for things to improve. You may have had well-meaning advice from people around you that hasn't quite reached the problem. By the time most people reach out for help, they've already spent considerable time and energy trying to fix things on their own.

That's not a failure. It usually means the difficulty runs deeper than the strategies available to you so far.

What keeps problems going?

Most psychological difficulties,  anxiety, trauma responses, low mood, OCD, grief, are maintained by understandable but unhelpful patterns. The way we think about our experiences, the way we respond to difficult feelings, and the things we do (or avoid doing) to cope all play a role in keeping the problem in place, even when we desperately want to move forward.

For example, the person with health anxiety who checks and seeks reassurance, finds brief relief, but the checking itself teaches the mind that there was something to be afraid of in the first place. The person with PTSD who avoids reminders of what happened finds that avoidance keeps the memory charged and intrusive. The person with low mood who withdraws from life finds that the withdrawal deepens the very feelings driving it.

These patterns make complete sense given what you've been through. But understanding what maintains the problem, not just what caused it, is often what makes the difference between talking about difficulties and actually changing them.

How I work

I use a number of evidence-based approaches (CBT, EMDR, ACT, and CFT) and integrate them around your specific difficulties rather than applying a single model to everyone. The approach we use will depend on what you're dealing with and what the evidence suggests works best for it.

What all of these approaches share is a focus on understanding the mechanisms keeping the problem going, and on making targeted changes to those mechanisms. Sessions have structure and direction. We set clear goals early on, track progress as we go, and adjust when needed. The aim is for you to finish therapy not just feeling better, but understanding why you feel better, and having the tools to manage setbacks on your own terms.

This isn't open-ended therapy without a destination. It's a structured, collaborative process with a clear focus on change.

What I can help with

I work with a wide range of difficulties including:

Trauma and PTSD, including complex and relational trauma
All forms of anxiety — OCD, social anxiety, health anxiety, GAD, panic
Depression and low mood
Bereavement and loss
Burnout and stress
Difficulties stemming from military service or high-pressure occupational environments

What changes?

People who engage fully in this kind of therapy commonly describe things like: intrusive memories losing their intensity; anxious thoughts becoming less convincing and less controlling; low mood lifting as behaviour and perspective shift; a renewed sense of what matters to them and confidence in their ability to pursue it.

The circumstances of your life may not change immediately. But how you relate to those circumstances, (i.e., the thoughts, feelings, and memories, that have been driving your responses), can change significantly.

Sessions are available in person in Stourbridge and online across the UK.

NEXT STEPS

Visit my website to book an appointment. We’ll decide together if we’re the right fit and map the first milestone you’d like to reach.

https://www.christiankhughes.com/

Relationship Therapy Assessment – £150 per 90 minutes
Relationship/Couples Therapy – £125 for 60 minute session

EMDR Assessment – £150 for 90 minutes
EMDR Intensive (Whole Day - specific criteria applies) – £1200
EMDR – £150 for 90 minute session 
EMDR – £125 for 60 minute session

Individual Psychotherapy –£125 for 60 minute session