Another year has arrived. I will continue to write blogs and give you thoughts and transcripts. One of my aims for this year is to encourage more involvement on this blog from you, my readers. My online training groups have been using their blogs in stimulating discussions. I’d like you to jump in and do the same. For this first blog of 2011, I’ll make this kind of interaction easy. I'm going to ask you to list attachment based and differentiation based interventions that you frequently use with your couples.

I focus a lot on integrating the best of these two theories.  Couples therapy is most effective when the therapist knows how to use both attachment and differentiation based interventions and conceptualizations.

For so many couples, attachment and connection occurs easily at the beginning of the relationship, when all the endorphins in the brain are supporting the intensity of “falling in love”. However, sustaining love is much more difficult. Primary attachment patterns from early in life become increasingly dominant as partners hurt or disappoint each other.  For example, a woman with an avoidant childhood attachment with her mother may become increasingly avoidant in her marriage as she feels hurt by her husband's deep involvement with his work.  She may shut him out of her social involvements or withdraw into internet chatting. An aloof distance will begin to infect the couple.

In a vibrant, growing marriage, as time passes, partners begin to define their own thoughts, feelings, and desires.  During this stage, too many couples encounter moments of deep disappointment with one another. Sadly, unfolding differentiation frightens many partners because it signals that “we are different”. This often triggers primitive anxiety – fear of being left or cast out. In their attempts to calm this anxiety, partners often try to inhibit growth in one another. They misinterpret their differences and become increasingly self-protective, using unsuccessful coping strategies such as blame, withdrawal and resentful compliance.

This propels them headlong into a developmental dilemma. Their self protective mechanisms result in undermining differentiation in one another, and they devolve into pervasive conflict avoidance or serious angry escalating, hostile-dependent patterns. They are hurt and reeling from the effects of competition, brutal accusations, intermittent accountability, passivity, and too little time together. To overcome this we must be able to help partners develop resilience,  manage their inevitable differences, and find solutions that incorporate both partners' desires.

When we work to help partners strengthen their differentiation, we enable them to be more authentic and open with one another without compromising core values and beliefs. They learn to work effectively with their conflicts and differences, and to negotiate successfully. In this way, differentiation adds to the strengthening of the couple's attachment, and a synergy develops in which the new developmental capacities support ongoing closeness and connection.

And now I turn it back to you. How do you support attachment? How do you support differentiation?  Let’s all create 2 lists together. Look at the next 2 posts and add your comments to each. You will see that I have started each one with ideas from me.

One glorious part of being a couples therapist is the daily opportunity to support loving connection and individual growth at the same time, which brings me back to my opening thought: it is time for our field to begin integrating the best of Attachment and Differentiation theories.