Elle Sidel & Yanni Spiro

Couple Therapists Elle Sidel and Yanni Spiro have teamed up to create a space for thinking together about challenges and ways to support couples relationships during this period of the Covid-19 outbreak. In these testing times, we are all facing already familiar and entirely unprecedented difficulties in our relationships. With personal freedoms curtailed, with children at home and many adults attempting to work from home, it is no wonder that what should be a haven may seem like a powder keg. For others, the interruption to everyday forms of social contact at work, school, and university may feel too lonely a place. There are already reports of an increase in separation and divorce, as well as domestic violence since the onset of the pandemic. 

So how do we cope in this time of social distancing, self isolation and lockdown? When our personal space can feel so circumscribed and our individuality threatened with the shutdown of familiar creative and social outlets, how do we manage this 'new normal' in ways that help safeguard and support our most personal of relationships?

Over the coming weeks, Elle and Yanni will be writing blogs about some of the topics foremost on our minds including: how to work as a team while factoring in much needed alone time, couple time and if relevant family time; how to stay in touch with loved ones; how to interact with the children; how to manage anxiety; how to nurture creativity and how to keep passion alive.

It is inspiring to see how communities and the nation as a whole are coming together to assist one another, sometimes at great personal risk, with extraordinary acts of human kindness and good humour too. Over the coming weeks, Elle and Yanni hope to play a part in offering support, beyond the therapy we offer in the consulting room, to couples and individuals alike.