Couples Counselling

Couples and marriage counselling for Abu Dhabi, online

For couples in Abu Dhabi and across the Emirates, Dr Philippe Jacquet offers confidential couples and marriage counselling online by secure video, in English and French. The work is private, it takes place entirely outside the country, and both partners can join from wherever they are.

What Abu Dhabi does to a marriage

Many couples in Abu Dhabi are here because one partner’s work brought them: government, energy, sovereign wealth, diplomacy, healthcare. The posting is often the reason for the move, and the other partner’s career, friendships and family were left behind to make it possible. That arrangement can work for years and then, quite suddenly, not. One person feels the life is theirs; the other feels they are living someone else’s.

Social circles in the capital are small and often professional. Friends are colleagues, colleagues are neighbours, and there is little room to say out loud that the marriage is in difficulty without it becoming known.

What couples work addresses

Couples come for communication that has broken down, the same argument repeating, intimacy that has gone quiet, the aftermath of an affair, or a slow drift into living parallel lives. The work is not about deciding who is to blame. It is about understanding the pattern the two of you are caught in, and finding a way to be heard again.

Where one partner has been betrayed, the hurt often needs attention in its own right before the couple can talk about the future. Betrayal trauma explains why, and how that work is done.

Two languages in one room

Where partners come from different countries, the strain is sometimes in the language itself. One of you may argue well in English and feel things in French, or the other way round. Sessions can be held in English, in French, or in both, so that neither of you has to translate yourself to be understood.

Private, and outside the local community

Working online with a practitioner based in London gives couples in Abu Dhabi a space that is genuinely separate from their professional and social world. There is no clinic visit, no shared waiting room, and no record held locally.

Related services in Abu Dhabi

• Counselling in Abu Dhabi
• EMDR and trauma therapy in Abu Dhabi
• Addiction counselling in Abu Dhabi
• Executive coaching in Abu Dhabi

See all therapy services in Abu Dhabi.

Dr Philippe Jacquet is a UKCP registered psychotherapist, a Jungian analyst and an HCPC registered art psychotherapist, with twenty-five years of clinical practice. His Professional Doctorate in Analytical Psychology at the University of Essex examined male eating disorders from the perspective of analytical psychology. Registration can be checked on either public register.

How the work is delivered from here

All international sessions are by secure video, in English or French. Online therapy is not a reduced version of consulting room work: it is the format that lets weekly work survive living abroad, travelling, or relocating. Sessions run in United Kingdom hours, which suits most regions, and if your time zone makes none of it workable, say so when you enquire rather than assuming it rules you out.

For clinicians and treatment services

Dr Jacquet supervises clinical teams in private residential addiction treatment and in a private psychiatric hospital. For treatment centres, psychiatric units and group practices looking for external clinical supervision, including in places where no supervisor of this seniority is available locally, team supervision is also delivered by video. For individual practitioners, see clinical supervision.

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