The other day, a therapist in my Developmental Model training program asked me the following:
“How do you integrate a couple’s goals for therapy with the specific developmental tasks that a couple needs to accomplish?”

I want to be direct and collaborative about this with the couple.

Once I get a sense of the stage, I want to involve them by giving information, by giving them feedback, by giving them a sense of where I see them stuck and where I believe they could move.

For example, with a couple who are conflict-avoidant, I might talk to them about the cost of lost intimacy that occurs in conflict avoidant relationships. I might suggest that being able to stay with a substantive issue from beginning to end and not disengage from it will challenge them, but it will also be part of the pathway for them to know each other more completely and more deeply.

Successful goals for each partner might include becoming more resilient to tension that occurs when partners are addressing conflict and difference.

Another example might occur with a couple where the husband is clinging and smothering and the wife is recently demanding more independence (a symbiotic practicing couple). Perhaps they were comfortably symbiotic for a long time; but now the wife feels suffocated.

I might say to a couple like that, “It’s truly important in a relationship that grows and changes over time for each person to be able to express their desires to each other and also their fears to one another.”

To the  husband I might say, “I’m guessing that there might be two parts of you, one part of you that is scared about her being out in the world more, about her having a career and unsettling your family. And another part of you wants to support her. Am I accurate?”

In asking if I’m accurate, I’m actually asking for whether he can access both parts of himself.

In fact, he may not have much access to the part that wants to support her, but probably has some and she may not have heard anything about that. It’s also making his fear explicit.

Then I might say, “Let’s have a conversation between these two alter egos, the part that wants to be supportive and the part that’s scared.”

I’m addressing the symbiotic practicing aspect of their relationship and integrating that into some goal setting by taking the developmental stuck point and seeing if he’ll do some dialogue around it. In this way I try to get clear about the root of his fear.

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