When a long-term relationship breaks down, when hearts and homes are broken, few people are their best selves.

When calm, kindness and rationality are needed more than ever to make sure the situation works out as well as it can for any children involved, most couples are too busy fighting and hurting to make a clear path into their future.

But one relationship coach, Swindon-based Heather Garbutt, is helping support people going through the process of a break-up, using a process called Conscious Uncoupling.

If that phrase rings a bell, that may be because actress Gwyneth Paltrow used it to describe her break-up with Coldplay’s Chris Martin.

But Paltrow did not invent the term: its origins lie in the work of best-selling American writer, and licensed marriage and family therapist, Katherine Woodward Thomas.

Now Heather Garbutt has invited Katherine, author of Conscious Uncoupling: Five Steps to Living Happily Even After, to Swindon, to share her expertise and experience in matters of the heart with an audience at The Place in the Wyvern Theatre on April 24.

While the phrase ‘conscious uncoupling’ may have earned Paltrow some mockery in the media, and might sound, well, perhaps not very down to earth to a British ear, the process itself – as Heather describes it – is eminently practical and meaningful.

“Heartbreak can make us feel completely unbalanced and raw and unsteady, as if you are quite small,” she says. “In this process, we create some emotional safety, then look at the patterns in your relationships, the roots of which lie in childhood.”

She explains that even if you had wonderful parents, perhaps one time they forgot to pick you up from school and you may have made sense of it in a way that affected future relationships.

And, of course, some people have childhoods of abuse and neglect.

“You can better create an extended family that works, with the best you can manage for the children and financially.

“That comes from taking responsibility and being understanding,” she says.

Heather also offers a coaching process called Calling in ‘The One’ – designed for single people seeking love in their lives.

“It operates from the same principles, looking at patterns in past relationships, and looking at relationships that are not beneficial to you, and helping you disentangle from things that bring you down.

“It helps you take responsibility for how you are, and helps you love yourself as you wish to be loved, so you can look for a partner from the best that you are, rather than a needy position,” Heather explains.

“It helps you be discerning when dating.”

Heather took the course herself online, then went to Los Angeles in 2017 to undertake training in the Conscious Uncoupling coaching process with people from all over the world.

She has been working in mental and emotional health for more than 30 years and began working as an art psychotherapist, then as a counsellor and couples therapist. Between 1982 and 1987 she worked with victims of sexual abuse.

The following year, Heather began private practice, working from the Health Hydro before setting up the Counselling and Psychotherapy Centre at 23 Bath Road in Swindon, with co-director Christine Fishlock. This venue offers a space for a variety of therapists to work with clients.

Heather said her experience of the Calling in ‘The One’ coaching process had proved beneficial for her own love life too.

“I started to attract people of a very different calibre,” she smiles.

“People who were able to speak about their feelings and show love, and were able to be generous.”

l “Relationships can go really stale, but even if you are not going to part, you can revive your relationship. You can find out how you have dimmed yourself down to tolerate the situation, but you can clear the air and see the person anew.”

Her private one to one coaching programme is seven weeks long, and can be done in person, on the phone or using Skype.

Katherine Woodward Thomas’s book describes a five-step process on how to end a romantic union in a respectful way and offers a step-by-step road map for how to break up but cause minimal damaged for all involved.

It is a guide for how separating couples can co-operate and create new agreements and structures moving forward. The book began as an on-line course that helped thousands of people to break up better.

Tickets for Katherine’s event, Conscious Uncoupling: A Better Way to Break Up, at the Wyvern Theatre, cost £20. To book, call 01793 524481 or visit swindontheatres.co.uk.

l Heather’s website is heathergarbutt.com and for more information about the Counselling and Psychotherapy Centre, visit tcpc-swindon.co.uk.