After her higher professional education, Hilde (1969) studied at the ITP for three years. In addition, she took several international ITP masterclasses and educated herself in systemic working.
After having focused on a broader target group first, she fully concentrated on working with couples as of 2007. She mainly counsels couples during programmes lasting several days. On an annual basis she sees to more than 40 three-day Relationship Therapy Retreats.
She organises relationship weeks at the Schiermonnikoog, a beautiful island. For one week a couple gets seven two-hour sessions in an oasis of space, peace and quiet. In these programmes she combines Voice Dialogue and working with bonding patterns using EFT: Emotional Focus Couple Therapy.
With her life partner Ruud Zuurman, she developed a successful relationship therapy practice, called Open Venster (open window). In the past few years she contributed to various newspapers and journals such as Het Parool, Libelle, Flair and Psyche & Kids. In the RTL-4 TV programme ‘Altijd Jong’ she talked about the Psychology of Selves and relationship dynamics.
Below are several examples of couples counselled by Hilde:
After two relationship interviews I found out that I was definitely in a serious midlife transition. I wouldn’t call it a midlife crisis, but I did run away from my feelings. I felt that I had achieved little in my life. The main cause of the problems in our relationship was my dissatisfaction. I’m very glad that Hilde saw this. After this, I had some Voice Dialogue talks to process my disappointments. What was really nice was that my husband was again involved at the end of my pathway. I had blamed him for a variety of things for years. I asked him for forgiveness during the final talk. This is heavy for both of us, but very healing.
Harm and Tess
“How can a few talks help us?”, my wife and I wondered. Well, an awful lot it seems, with many new insights and unique experiences! It was also hard work. Hilde’s direct, empathic and confrontational way of working soon led to the heart of the matter. From the first session we already let our emotions show. This made the talks loving and well worth it. Naturally, this is only the beginning of learning to fight for our relationship. At home we continued working with the tools Hilde gave us. We regard each other as fully fledged partners and can see a future in our relationship again, together with our children.
Love from B&L, Den Bosch
In spite of the fact that I still feel very sad, my wife and I are glad about how we managed to conclude our relationship with Hilde’s help. Expressing our hurt feelings was good. Arguments had created an even larger gap between us. There was little respect for each other and we only got in each others’ way. We reminisced, cried together and laughed…. Now we can discuss how we are going to arrange the divorce as adults.
H and V, Schiedam
The retreat gave us the boost we needed. We can now see the good sides of each other again. Talking about feelings is extremely important, we lived separate lives for too long, thinking that the other understood us, which was wrong. We’ll get there, we’re on the right track. We want to thank you very much for your effort Hilde, it was truly a great weekend!
Big hugs, Joep and Linda, Lisse
With the help of Hilde & Ruud we were capable of letting go of our personal pain and worries and be completely open to each other. When we managed this we could alternately see each other’s pain, sadness and powerlessness, which led to a huge amount of mutual understanding. Through this understanding we wanted to know more about each other, instead of filling it in ourselves. We are now a year-and-a-half later and our relationship has matured. The times we bickered like children is thankfully behind us.
Albert and Carolien Hendriks, Huissen
