Many of the couples who come to see us are stuck organizing their complaints around an external symptom or problem.

It’s easier for them and preserves individual self-esteem when partners deflect the focus away from themselves and place blame on the other partner for problems in their relationship.

Surely you’ve heard examples such as “He drinks too much. She always puts her work before me. His clutter drives me crazy.”

And when externalizing has become entrenched, it can be a challenge for you to shed light on each partner’s role and move them toward increased differentiation.

So how do you disrupt this gridlock and help each partner create more of an internal locus of control?

Early on, be careful to avoid focusing on the actual behavior. You want to communicate strongly that it will take individual growth from each of them for the relationship to develop and flourish. It's going to take openness and willingness to look deeply into what they're each doing that gets in the way of relationship growth.

You might say, You two have gotten so stuck in your struggles that you have been missing each other for a long time. Change is going to come from shifting your focus.

Individual Focus: you will learn to recognize how you are getting in your own way.

Team Focus: you will see how you can support changes you desire by working as a team.

Therapist Focus: I am not a judge or arbitrator. I am going to support you, your partner, and the team at different times. I’ll coach and help you. Some days I'm going to be confronting one of you, and some days I'm going to be confronting the other one. All of those confrontations are in service of both your individual growth and also relationship growth. If you can let me in without feeling like I am picking on you, we will move a lot faster. How does that sound to you?

Structuring the process in this way gives you permission to hone in on each partner’s growing edge – how they collapse and become defensive rather than seeing and understanding one another.

You begin to work towards enabling each partner to express their desires with gentleness and vulnerability, rather than criticism and blame.

Moving forward, you will be reinforcing even the smallest movements that shift your clients from an external to an internal locus of control.

Knowing where to focus lets you facilitate the shift away from a hostile symbiosis that’s been keeping the couple stuck, and towards differentiation with collaboration.

If you’d like other ideas about how to get off to a strong start, check out Strong Start, Better Success.

In the meantime, I’d like to hear from you. How do you disrupt blame? Do you think you can use some of these ideas in your work with couples? Please leave a comment below.