Therapy can help individuals or couples with a wide range of issues, from communication difficulties and perceived unfairness in responsibilities, or the impact of dissatisfaction with job or life, to addictive or destructive behaviors, affairs, or family cut-offs and relational hopelessness. Whatever the problems, they are addressed both within the immediate significant relationships and, when it is appropriate, by better understanding the families of origin.
In Couple therapy, understanding the emotional components of their own family systems allows partners to have compassion for themselves and for each other, and provides them the self-knowledge that can lead to individuation and relational health. The therapist's goal is to offer compassionate guidance to both partners as their work pursues areas of fairness, giving and receiving, constructive entitlement, and cultural understanding. Through these means, Contextual Therapy offers couples the possibility of attending to issues at a root level, and of consequent long-term life change.