A while ago I was thinking about specific challenges that can come up in our work with couples – ones that may require us to go “off script” and take a more nuanced approach to therapy. In particular, I’ve been thinking about cases where at least one partner is entrenched in one personality adaptation.
So I wrote a blog post about the work of Paul Ware, MD, and Vann Joines, PhD, in defining six specific personality adaptations and the 3-door model that allows us to connect with clients according to their personality adaptation type.
With this awareness we want to start connecting with clients through their open door.
Here’s a review of the three doors:
- The open door is the place where a client feels strong and ready to meet us right now.
- The target door is where substantial change comes from and where the client will benefit most from changing after we’ve gained their trust.
- The trap door is the repetitive go nowhere path. This is comfortable for the client but inhibits substantial progress.
Really fits for me, Ellyn. It can be really hard to not push for behaviour change when the behaviour is outrageous – so reassuring to know that it’s not “colluding” but just being tactical
Hi Ellyn,
Thanks for this timely content. Do you have any ideas for how to navigate a paranoid personality, exactly as you mention above, but in a family business situation, where the paranoid person refuses to seek counselling? The crack in the door in that case is not accessible. I would truly value any advise you can offer. Thank you,
Cheyenne
Hi Ellyn,
I have a couple like this. Wife struggles greatly with obsessive paranoid thoughts about husband. Your discussed approach was spot on. She built trust with me very slowly by focusing initially more on her husband’s contribution. Now we’re able to name the obsessive thinking and tame it with mindfulness and self compassion until she is ready for trauma work. Thanks again.
The frightening moment for me with such a couple, both foreign nationals living in the US, was many years ago. I had decided to build that trust by meeting with each individually. The husband, a huge intimidating man, brilliant in his field, responded to my question, “ Is there anything you would like to discuss in our conversation today that has been on your mind?”
He looked at me with those cold blue eyes, silently stood up, walked over to my window, then leaned out, looking slowly up and down the driveway outside my ground floor office. I can see him now – as if in slow motion – as closed the and locked the window. He seemed to be looking for someone eavesdropping. Or making sure no one could hear me call for help? Now Was i Should I tell him I felt vulnerable, trapped? Head for the door? He averted his eyes as he turned back . I had my answer.
He sat down and said, “ I have reasons to believe my wife stopped loving me long ago.” I had earned his trust. Then I had to find a path forward. His warm appealing wife had told me in her own session that she was deep into an affair since moving to Berkeley. I held two secrets. His paranoia was, at least in part, systemic.
Hello Ellyn, can you say more about how to prepare the spouse in the couple with a more paranoid skeptic type to be “going first” or for what might feel to them to be the same kind of pressure they get from their spouse? They are usually the ones coming in exhausted and beaten down from discouraging interactions and are desperate for change with their partner. Is that something I prepare them for? Or is it best just to go with interventions starting with the less paranoid spouse? Thank you.