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Abstract

Couples typically do not seek counseling resources until a crisis occurs. Many times during an intake interview with a counselor, couples report communication issues as a presenting problem. However to date, no best practices or treatment manuals in correspondence with a therapeutic system to improve interpersonal communication skills exist for helping couples recognize the barriers. This article reviews an approach to helping couples understand and make choices about their communication barriers and challenges. An informed philosophical direction, skills, and tools are needed for counselors to navigate the wants, direction, evaluation, and planning (WDEP) along with promoting positive outcomes in couples counseling. This article further outlines an integration of a communication model with the reality therapy WDEP tenets for use in establishing alliances, processing insights, and maintaining a therapeutic environment with couples. Further, counselors may utilize the WDEP method as a brief intervention framework to aid couples who have communication issues with insight acquisition, catharsis, self-disclosure, and goal setting to promote positive outcomes in counseling.

Keywords

communication couples counseling choice theory reality therapy WDEP

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Applying Reality Therapy’s WDEP Tenets to Assist Couples in Creating New Communication Strategies

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Keywords

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References