You and your partner(s) want some support and you know it would be helpful to work with a couples and family therapist, but the fees are outside of your budget. There’s a reduced-rate couples counseling option you’ve considered. You booked a session with an “intern”, and even though you’re relieved to have something scheduled, you’re worried an intern might not be able to handle the kind of couples counseling you need.

Couples Counseling with a Marriage and Family Therapy Intern Graduate Student

Counseling with a graduate-level intern means your therapist is currently in school and undergoing intensive training to receive their diploma and licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist. Many graduate school programs focus on symptoms, diagnoses, and symptom management and do not train in couples or relational counseling specifically.

Marriage and Family Therapists, MFTs, require training in systems theory. Marriage and Family Therapists and Interns in training are shown how to conceptualize all cases and see the world from the perspective of a larger system. Our work with clients requires that we see you in the context of your larger family system and notice how your family patterns have been recreated in the patterns you hold today. We take into account your personality and attachment style.

AAMFT Approved Supervisor Requirements

In order for a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist to become a qualified supervisor under our license in this field, we must be mentored and supervised by experienced MFTs who have taken a thirty-hour course and refreshers regularly that specifically teach us how to supervise other MFTs. This course is just as rigorous as graduate school. Other licenses do not require a specialized course for training in their license. MFTs are the only ones who have this type of specialty, and so all our Marriage and Family Therapists have been supervised for 1,500 hours by an American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy Approved Supervisor. As you can see, our MFT Interns are under the wings of highly trained, highly specialized systemic Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists. Our training centers on relational therapy and gives us much more in-depth perspectives for our couples and family work.

How Does Couples Counseling Work When Working with a Graduate-level Couples Therapist?

All MFT graduate students are taught how to create genograms with their clients. A genogram is like a family tree that shows relationships, diagnoses, alliances, cut-offs, tensions, and other relational dynamics in the family tree. We all start all our sessions by creating genograms with our clients. Genograms become important as a foundation when couples begin couples counseling with a Marriage and Family Therapist. Couples bring their entire family tree into counseling with them. Graduate Couples Therapists training to be Marriage and Family therapists use genograms to track systemic family patterns during sessions and use them to inform and mirror the couples in the room.

What You Get with a Graduate-Level Marriage and Family Therapist Intern

When you are working with your graduate-level MFT, you are being counseled by a lineage of MFT elders and all their wisdom. Each intern engages in multiple hours and forms of supervision. Not only is your MFT Intern receiving weekly individual supervision with an MFT professor at school along with group supervision with a professor and fellow MFT ’s-in-training, but they are also receiving multiple hours of weekly individual and group supervision from a seasoned therapist at the practice. Here at Spilove Psychotherapy, our supervisors are also receiving their own supervision of supervision. Most importantly to us, MFTs are required to do what we call “self of the therapist” work. This means that as part of our regular training and maintenance of being a therapist, we look at our own reactions and belief systems as they come up in our work with clients. Self-of-therapist requires that we each remain honest with ourselves and with our supervisors to notice if a client is triggering us or if we have a history of something that is coming up in our sessions. We, as MFTs, find this profoundly important because we want to make sure that our therapeutic container remains “clean” for our clients rather than having our own “stuff” get in the way or get mixed in with our interactions with clients. That’s a whole lot of therapist wisdom we’re bringing to the table here.

A Guide to Affordable and Supportive Relationship Care

If you’re interested in working with an affordable and supportive couples counselor for relationship care, consider the training your counselor has or is going through. You might want to make sure that your counselor is specifically trained in couples and relational therapy. Here are some questions you might want to ask before booking a session in Philadelphia, Bryn Mawr or Online in Pennsylvania

• Is my counselor or intern specifically trained in couples counseling?

• Has my intern or therapist learned about systems theory?

• What models of couples counseling does this therapist use?

• How often does my intern receive supervision?

• Is my intern supervisor trained in systems or couples counseling?

• Does my therapist do their own “self of the therapist” work?

These questions should help you get a sense of the quality and types of training the therapist you’re working with has received or is receiving.

Our Approach At Spilove Psychotherapy

Here at Spilove Psychotherapy, we are excited to work with two Marriage and Family Therapy Interns from Thomas Jefferson University starting in 2025 for 16 months! Antoinette and Blythe have already started their orientation and will be directly supervised by Dr. Gwenn Swift, LMFT for multiple hours per week. As Clinical Director and Owner of Spilove Psychotherapy, I will also be providing oversight and supervision both to the interns and to Gwenn. Furthermore, our highly experienced long-term couples therapist, Yolanda Cucinotta, is also a Marriage and Family therapist. As you can see, our MFT interns hold long legacies of many other MFTs and benefit from our collective wisdom. Quite frankly, there is really never another time that any therapist has this much clinical support as they do during their MFT graduate internship. It's a truly enriching and unique experience for both the client and the intern.

If you’d like to learn more about our internship program or book your free consultation call for couples counseling in Philadelphia, Bryn Mawr or online in Pennsylvania, click the button below.

Discover Affordable, High-Quality Couples Counseling

Finding a couples counselor who fits your needs and budget can be challenging. At Spilove Psychotherapy, our Marriage and Family Therapy Interns offer a unique blend of affordability, rigorous training, and compassionate care. Backed by a team of highly trained supervisors, our interns bring the expertise of systemic therapy into every session, helping you and your partner navigate challenges with confidence.

• Schedule a free consultation here so we can get to know your story.

• Explore more about couples therapy by reading our blogs.

• Start your journey towards a fulfilling relationship with a couples therapist!

Other Therapy Services We Offer in Pennsylvania

In addition to our focus on couples therapy, our skilled therapists offer a variety of other mental health services. These include Ketamine-assisted Psychotherapy, LGBTQIA+ therapy, and treatment for eating disorders. We also provide specialized play therapy for children, EMDR therapy, and trauma intensives.

Our qualified therapists conduct DBT skills groups as well.

If life coaching is more suited to your needs than traditional therapy, we provide in-person life coaching in Pennsylvania and online services across the US.