Call Us Now: Welcome to our Therapists’ Blog, where we post insights and innovative techniques for couples therapists. Just scan and click to read the articles below, choose by category on the bottom right, or use the search box above. You can also sign up to receive these by email by providing your name and email address in the boxes to the right.
Therapists’ Blog6 Steps to Developing Leadership in Couples Therapy If I could recommend just one skill for you to develop to become a successful couples therapist, it would be leadership. Leadership is the number one skill that gets your work off to a strong start and allows you to manage almost anything in your office.
However, you can’t be a strong leader if you don’t know where you are going, and you are just reacting to your clients. There are so many things that can go haywire with two clients in the room and so much damage that can be done if things go badly.
Couples therapy requires a different level of leadership than individual therapy so I thought I’d share with you the 6 primary characteristics that the Developmental Model recommends for your leadership right from the beginning.… Read more... A Closer Look at Early Differentiation What is real developmental progress? How do we recognize and support it?
Many couples in therapy are starting to move from the symbiotic stage into early differentiation. It’s not the kind of progress that comes with fanfare and celebration. In fact, the couples might not even recognize their progress.
So it’s especially helpful for you to know exactly what’s happening in this stage.
Let’s examine what is going on during early differentiation and look at how you can support your clients at this stage.
Clients in early differentiation start to express their own thoughts, feelings, and desires more actively.… Read more... Working with Couples Who Are Stuck – How The Developmental Model Helps You
As relationships grow and develop, we often see couples who have gotten stuck in a particular developmental stage.
In a previous blog post, I outlined what I see as the normal, predictable stages of couples relationships development. If you missed it, you can check it out here.
When you approach couples therapy from a developmental framework, you can assess and diagnose each partner’s developmental stage and use stage-specific interventions to help both move into the next stage.
In my experience, I often see couples get stuck in the very first stage of development in one of two ways:
1. Hostile-angry Couples
These are couples whose relationship is characterized by tremendous hostility and competition and, in the worst cases, domestic violence.… Read more... A Developmental Model for Healthy Couples
Throughout my experience as a couples therapist, I’ve observed that couples relationships typically progress through 5 normal and predictable stages. In healthy relationships, a couple’s development closely parallels the stages of early childhood development originally conceptualized by Drs. Margaret Mahler and Fred Pine.
In what ways are these developmental processes similar? And how does understanding the Developmental Model increase your effectiveness working with couples?
The Beginning: Symbiosis
Mahler describes a brief period of time in early childhood development during which a newborn becomes acclimated to being alive.… Read more... What do you say when a couple wants to rehash a huge fight? In our recent mini workshop, “What Do You Say When…?” we looked at what happens when a couple starts a session by dumping the fight of the week on you. They are feeling the raw pain of it.
Here is one example of what you might say.
Before we jump into discussing your fight, think of our time together today not as conflict resolution, but instead as a time to learn. You are here to learn from me and from each other.
You’re here to learn about your emotional triggers. Solving this one fight won’t help you in the future. Instead you’re here to learn about what triggers you and your partner. You’re here to learn how to avoid triggering each other and what to do when you do trigger one another.… Read more... What do you say when a client has been lying to you and their spouse for months?
Finding out that a client has been lying to you and their spouse about ongoing infidelity is very tricky. Suddenly what was already a difficult infidelity repair case gets a whole lot tougher.
For some therapists it is just more grist for the mill. For others, it forces us to think about our role as a therapist in this situation and whether we want to continue seeing the client.
A couple named Sue and Joe initially came to therapy when Sue discovered Joe was sexting another woman.
Joe totally denied anything beyond innocent texting and insisted he had stopped. Several months into therapy he was confronted with indisputable proof that he had been lying to his wife and to Pete.… Read more... Quotable Moments From Recent Conferences This spring I presented keynotes and workshops at The Couples Conference in Oakland and at a UCLA conference called Relationships and the Health-Promoting Power of Connection Across the Lifespan. Both events featured faculty that trained, enlightened and entertained participants.
I’m still reviewing in my mind some of the great things I heard there. And I thought I’d share a few quotable moments. It’s impossible to paint a complete picture using just snippets, but I think you’ll agree that these are some memorable ideas and turns of phrase. I hope you enjoy them – and remember them when they might be helpful!… Read more... Searching for Intimacy and Aliveness Here is the transcript I promised you in my most recent blog post, “Moving Couples Through Defense and Ambivalence Toward Intimacy.” In that blog post I said that when I hear clients “intellectualizing” a desire for intimacy, it’s an indicator that they’re in the “Adult-ego state,” and probably covering vulnerability and fear.
This transcript demonstrates the Gestalt two-chair work that I discussed in that blog post. Two-chair work can be extremely helpful in identifying parts of the self that are blocked.
Notice how difficult it is for Sue, the client, to feel her aliveness. Wanting it and experiencing it are two different things.… Read more... Moving Couples Through Defense and Ambivalence Toward Intimacy It’s easy for partners to say, “I want more intimacy” while having no idea what they mean and no history of expressing their desires to one another.
They may be afraid to pursue what it is they really want. Or perhaps they don’t really know what it is.
Clients often mask this ambivalence by talking intellectually about the issues that are getting in the way of closeness. Or they may complain, “There is never enough time for us.”
To help deepen their connection, we often have to help each partner face their ambivalence and stand behind what they truly desire.
When I sit in a session and hear an intellectual discussion of intimacy, I know the intellectualizing is often covering up something that’s painful or scary.… Read more... Integrating Goals and Growth in Couples Therapy
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.… Read more... |
