couples-institute-blog

[couples-institute-blog]

When you are working with a conflict-avoiding couple, it is especially difficult to create positive forward moving momentum. These couples merge boundaries often and it can be a challenge to disrupt the status quo. If you search for openings in the issues they present, you will find choice points that enable you to disrupt their symbiosis.

First, start by supporting their interactions that are truly positive and that are part of a healthy relationship. This is important because, once you start disrupting their symbiosis, it will be scary for them. So, the more they sense that you’re in their corner — with them as a couple and as individuals — the safer they’re going to feel, and the more able they will be able to risk new behavior.

Look for openings to encourage an increase in differentiation. When partners organize their relationships symbiotically, their own desires get obscured. When they disagree with one another, they don’t know how to express their desires and live in the tension of exploring the unknown. So, when one partner expresses a different opinion or a conflicting desire, that is a place where it’s possible for you to push the differentiation farther.

What you are looking for are openings where a partner has begun tiptoeing into some differentiation. These openings will allow you to stretch and support their changes.

Let’s look at how this unfolded with Joe and Sally. They are discussing their process of buying a house and choosing where to live. Historically Sally has not defined her desires. She avoids discussions because she does not want to upset her husband.

This is such a poignant expression of symbiosis, because she over accommodates without any discussion with him.

Let’s drop into their session:

Ellyn: I’m going to go slowly so you learn how to make a good decision together. Sally, go back and see if you can say what you’d like in the house you buy.

Sally: It’s hard for me to trust what I like and to even believe I like what I like.

Ellyn: I know. You rarely state your desires. You filter your wishes through what others want. It’s hard for you to trust that you like what you like because your likes have implications.

Sally: I’m not used to looking at things through a filter of “do I like this or not.” I look at things through a filter of “how does this function for everybody else,” and then “what are the repercussions of living here or choosing this or liking this.” So, it is very hard for me to even focus and trust that what I like is okay. And to know that I do actually like that and then express it.

Ellyn: Sally, try this out with Joe. Just experiment to see what you feel. “Joe, it would feel amazing to me if I could really identify what I like and then trust what I like. I’d like to trust you to like what you like and then figure out how we make the decision together. If I liked it and you were all in, that would be amazing.

Sally: Yeah, if I liked it and you were all in and you didn’t change your mind, that would be very good and make me very happy. I’d feel so much safer in the decision like we made a choice together. It wasn’t all you and it wasn’t all me.

Ellyn: What are you feeling as you’re saying that to him?

Sally: It feels nice. Feels calm. Part of me is like, why is this so hard for me?

Ellyn: There are a lot of reasons why. It isn’t just one reason. But a big one is you have not been able to trust yourself to know what you desire and stand behind it. Being open with your desires makes you more exposed. You’ve made a lot of decisions in the past where you give much more credibility to what the other person wants. I think you are scared that Joe will do the same and you’ll both end up unhappy and in a house that neither of you really wants.

Sally: If I could trust you not to do what I do that that would be amazing. If I could trust you not to fool me that would be really positive.

Ellyn: (to Joe) Joe, she’s scared that you will do what she does, and then you’ll have an excuse to be unhappy later.

Joe: I make decisions really fast, especially if I think I am giving her what she wants. I’ll put something out and it sounds definite.

Sally: I can see where I’ve been feeding off of your wants. I blend in and I’m lost in the shuffle. I pretend this is a decision we made together but it’s not.

Ellyn: Sally, I love what you are seeing today. And how you are noticing the repercussions. Let me say it in my words. A coping mechanism for a lot of kids is over accommodating. It sounds like this, “I’ll take care of everybody else before I pay attention to myself. I feel anxious about wanting something different than you, so I give myself up to agree with you.”

Kids can be very vigilant about accommodating other people so they feel safe or secure; but in the process of doing that, the child doesn’t grow. The child doesn’t know what’s important to her, what matters to her, what she wants, what she hopes for. It’s all smooshed down in that vigilance of over accommodating other people in hopes of indirectly being loved and cared for. It never ends up being genuine self-care because it’s all filtered through that lens of someone else’s desires.

As adults it stifles both people when that continues. What would it be like, if you really made this decision in a different way?

Sally: It would be an enormous relief.

Differentiation begins when a partner learns to internally self-reflect and define what they want — what their desires, thoughts, or feelings are. Next, they develop the ability to articulate those desires clearly to the spouse without collapsing or abandoning themselves in the process.

Keep your focus on strengthening their differentiation at home as well as in your sessions. We wrapped up this session with Joe and Sally agreeing to go together to see four open houses. After visiting each open house, they would independently write down what they liked and did not like about each house. Then they would share their lists with each other.

I wanted to give them homework that would ask each to focus internally. I wanted to disrupt the usual process between them.

Ideally you want to further each partner’s development. A homework assignment like this one will be very diagnostic. Start the next session asking how the homework unfolded and what each partner experienced. This will give you clarity about how their differentiation is evolving and where to focus.

It takes ongoing interventions to strengthen each partner and prevent them from returning to their familiar coping strategies.

Please share your comments below. Did anything stand out to you in this session? Would you like to read more as the work with this couple evolves?

To learn more, click here.

[couples-institute-blog]

Couples who marry young often establish enmeshed relationships that inhibit individual growth. They have not had the opportunity to mature and do much differentiation work prior to getting married.

When partners organize their relationships in an enmeshed way, their own desires are usually obscured and are often presented in terms of: “We are alike in so many ways.”

There’s very little self-definition or ability to articulate individual desires. Everything is framed in terms of “we” or “us.”

When they arrive for therapy, they may have one partner still trying very hard to maintain symbiosis, and the other partner making tentative forays out of it. The relationship is unbalanced for the first time, and the symbiotic partner may feel as though the whole world is falling apart.

And when a couple has been interacting in one predictable way for a very long time, the developmental tension of change can terrify them, signaling the potential for major rupture or even separation or divorce.

Differentiation begins as clients learn to internally self-reflect and define what they want, think and feel. Next, they develop the ability to articulate those desires clearly to somebody else without collapsing or abandoning themselves in the process.

But sometimes, especially in relationships that are highly merged, partners may have trouble identifying or defining their own desires.

So when you ask a client to focus on one desire that really matters to him or her, you may get a response such as, “I want our relationship to be good. I’m looking for happiness. I don’t want to walk around stressed or anxious because we’re on totally different pages.” These statements do not include an individual desire.

I like to normalize their fears and how difficult this process is. I might say something like, “Of course you don’t want to walk around stressed and anxious, and yet it’s taking you a while to be comfortable with your husband having different desires than you have. You can get there, but one important goal is for you to become comfortable with him being different than you.”

As her husband is becoming more authentic and vocal about his desires, she will hear requests

she’s never heard before. And when she doesn’t recognize these, she feels anxious and wonders, “Where did that come from?”

Every step that her husband takes out of the symbiosis may be experienced as, “He doesn’t want to be with me. I’m not a priority. He doesn’t love me. I’m not enough.”

It’s like a reflex. That’s where she’s goes with her thoughts and feelings.

Here it can be helpful to support the husband to express his intentions, if he is not leaving. Hejust doesn’t want to be in the old relationship, the way it was between the two of them. He doesn’t want that anymore. He wants something new and different.

So now let’s focus on the partner who seems stuck in trying to maintain the symbiosis, in this example the wife. She may say “I want honesty and I want consistency. I want our relationship to come first. I don’t have huge expectations. I just want us to be together often for coffee in the mornings or go to bed together.”

Now on one hand, she seems to be saying she wants honesty from her husband. At the same time, she’s describing a lot of togetherness without leaving much room for his individual desires. And, she is framing what is important to her in terms of what she wants from her husband.

As therapists, our challenge is continuing to bring clients back to this: “Right now, I want to ask you to focus on your own desires – learning how to express them, and learning how to listen to his desires, which are different from yours.”

This is something you’ll need to emphasize a lot as you move forward with a couple like this.

Sometimes with this type of couple, I’ve found it useful to say something like, “When you want to go to bed together and your husband isn’t ready or he isn’t coming to bed, what do you do or say? Could you play that conversation out in front of me right now? I’d like to see what actually happens and how you navigate this difference.”

This gives you something concrete to work with immediately in the room to help them navigate and learn how their conversation might go in a different direction. You’ll get to see the moments where differentiation completely collapses. You can support them continuing. Your challenge is helping them stay in the tension that will create change.

Your goal as their therapist is to strengthen each partner’s differentiation while structuring dialogue in a way that’s not too scary for them.

One of the resources I highly recommend for therapists when working with early differentiating couples is our Stepping Stones Brochure. It’s something we developed at The Couples Institute to give to your clients to help them understand why their relationship is changing. It helps them see their positive momentum toward a deeper, growing relationship.

[couples-institute-blog]

Couples Therapy Training that Works!

I can still remember how embarrassing it felt to present myself as a couples therapist when my training and skills were shaky.

I worried about a couple’s marriage hanging by a thread when they were depending on me, not realizing how few couples I had successfully helped. And I felt like a fraud waiting for the next couple referral when I lacked confidence.

If you’ve ever felt like that, you’re not alone.

You might have experienced the following scenario:

Your intuition guides you to make thoughtful, steady interventions. Everything looks great. Then unexpectedly, something you say makes the whole session fall apart. They end up blaming, you end up flooded. And you wonder what went wrong, or how you could prevent it from happening again.

Or maybe you feel like you’re doing a great job being empathic with a couple. You’re right there with them in their pain. You think they feel really understood. It seems like things are going well. And suddenly they call you up to say “we’re not going to come because we don’t feel like we’re getting anywhere.”

Without thoughtful mentoring and training, you could go your whole career wondering when things will fall apart.

And your work in the world is too important to let intuition alone guide you.

I’ve seen almost every well-intentioned therapist make mistakes that undo all their careful work.

It’s more common than you think, and it’s affecting marriages all over the world. It’s a big reason the divorce rate is so high, and climbs higher every day.

But I believe I can help you develop a confident understanding of what to do, when to do it, and why you’re doing it, so that you can work with the types of couples who used to make you shudder.

I know this is a tall order.

Here’s why I believe I can make such a promise

                                                                 ...

I have done the work — so you don’t have to — by integrating recent findings in neuroscience, attachment theory and differentiation into this training program!

The Developmental Model of Couples Therapyprovides an unprecedented training program that can teach you to:

Help couples understand the underlying cause of relationship distress.

Apply practical techniques to get healing results.

Motivate unmotivated partners to take action.

Create progress so your couples don’t get discouraged and give up.

And it’s training without travel! You can get all of this anywhere you have internet access.

You can register for an early access pass to get 2 free months, a reduced training rate, and a mystery bonus from your trainer, Dr. Ellyn Bader here.

Originally published at https://couplesinstitute.com.

[couples-institute-blog]

In a recent blog post I outlined some of the ways I work with couples who are caught in patternsof externalization and blame in their relationships.

If you missed it, you can check it out here.

In that blog post I presented some ideas for pushing the growth edge in these partners. I ended with the question, “But what if you’re beginning to sense that one of the partners isn’t as invested in this process as the other?”

If you’ve been working with couples for any length of time, you’ve likely seen instances where one partner doesn’t seem as invested in the relationship as the other.

For example, let’s say that you’ve been working with a couple and given them an assignment to come up with a plan for spending more time together.

When they come back to see you, perhaps the male partner says, “Well, I tried to check in with her, but she went right back to her email and spreadsheets.” He doesn’t acknowledge that he really made no effort to do the assignment.

At this point, you can see he’s being evasive and trying to sidetrack your efforts at helping the couple connect.

He’s shifted the focus away from himself and returned to an all-too-familiar pattern of blame.

So how can you help a couple like this move forward?

Acknowledge and draw attention to the avoidance, an aspect of externalization and blame that I introduced in my previous blog post. Ask why it was so difficult to make the plan you assigned.

Now this can be a real pivotal moment because you may be on the brink of exposing the other partner’s worst fear – that he may not be as committed to the relationship as she is.

But as painful as this conversation could be, bear in mind that the couple has been living with this reality, and reacting from it probably for years. Unless you can assist them in

bringing it out into the open, they’re going to continue to live with a kind of quiet disconnection or subtle pattern of rejection.

So you might say to him, “Well, instead of shifting to her right now, let's go back. It sounds like a big part of you didn't actually want to work on a plan for spending more time together. So we have a part of you that wanted to be with her a little bit more, and for right now, a bigger part that didn't want to. Let’s take more time to learn about your evasive part.”

Explore the obstacles that are getting in the way of deeper connection and intimacy.

You may find that he or even both partners never witnessed intimacy when they were growing up.

In addition, each partner likely has other issues that you’ll want to help them face and work through separately. You may encounter unresolved trauma or insecure attachment issues that may be present.

This is where it becomes crucial that you’ve laid the groundwork for each partner to begin making the shift from an external to an internal locus of control.

As you help both partners grapple with their own history, each will start to see and acknowledge the parts of themselves that actually do want connection.

Help each partner identify and articulate what they want.

When a couple has been stuck in a pattern of externalization and blame for any length of time, they may have become used to expressing their emotions only in the negative – in terms of what they don’t want from each other.

This is where we want to encourage each partner to speak up for themselves with gentleness and vulnerability, rather than criticism and blame.

As each partner grows in the ability to articulate their desires, and hear and respond to the other, they can begin to move toward what they actually do want from their relationship.

And this creates real opportunity for change and transformation – both for each partner, and as a couple.

For more ideas you can use in you work with couples, please check out our resource called Ending Chaos, Mayhem, and Verbal Violence.

Now I’d like to hear from you. How could you use one of these ideas in your work with couples? Please leave a comment below.

[couples-institute-blog]

In spring of 2018 I wrote a blog post about the cycle of externalization and blame. This dynamic is a familiar one for couples therapists because so many of the couples who come to see us organize their relationship issues around external symptoms or problems.

How many times have you heard complaints like these?

“He drinks too much.”

“She spends too much money.”

“He never makes time for me and the kids.”

“She treats her parents like royalty and me like dirt.”

For people in discomfort about their relationship, it’s much easier to deflect responsibility and attention from themselves and blame their partner than it is to self-reflect.

In my original blog post on this topic, I introduced the importance of shifting that focus and I presented three different ones that might help disrupt the gridlock. You can read that blog post here.

One of the reader’s comments after the blog mentioned the loss of intimacy for these couples who are stuck in externalization and blame. And that leads me to today’s post. First, let’s look at some ways of grounding our interventions so we can get the couple’s commitment for growth. Then let’s see how we might explain “intimacy avoidance” to couples and use it as leverage to start working for that needed growth.

Grounding Our Interventions

When we begin working with a couple, it’s important to communicate our commitment to supporting relationship growth.

Both partners need to see that, in order for the relationship to grow, it’s going to take individual change from each of them. It's going to take recognizing what they're each doing that's been getting in the way of relationship growth

Each partner can start to see that they're contributing to the standoff.

When we begin by grounding our work in this way, we start creating the leverage we’ll need to make stronger confrontations.

It’s also crucial to show that we have a lot of compassion for where they've come from and how hard this is for them.

I might approach that in this way:

“Who you are as people, and how you each have coped with your own backgrounds has led to your not knowing how to make intimate connection in your marriage.

If we can establish the fact that there are ways each of you do this, and that you are unaware ofthose ways, we can begin to make it not so much about blaming each other.

Let me help you take a look at how you each run away, because right now you don’t see how you’re doing it. You didn't have good role models.

You haven't had good experiences with each other when one or the other of you has reached out. You don't know how to get moments happening where you can reach out and be met.

You guys have been missing each other for such a long time that it is going to take you letting me help you. It is going to take an openness to looking at how you're getting in your own way.”

Calling Attention to Intimacy Avoidance

Once a couple has agreed to work on both their relationship as well as individual growth, the next step is to help them identify how each one avoids intimacy.

One powerful way to help couples do this is by simply calling attention to it. Acknowledging it. Describing it.

Perhaps you’ve given a homework assignment to a couple. You’ve asked them to make a commitment to spend more time together in the coming week.

Maybe they followed through, or at least tried to. Yet they came back to you having fallen backinto the same pattern of externalization and blame:

“I tried reaching out, but she was on her computer all night. We went to a party together, but he ended up talking to his buddies all night.”

This is where I might say, “I think I'm hearing that there were a lot of times that you were around each other, but neither of you felt together. Did I get that right?”

That's an attempt to at least acknowledge that you're seeing their intimacy avoidance. You're calling it and drawing their attention to it.

But let’s say the couple didn’t follow through at all. Then what?

That’s when I find it useful to say something like this:

“It sounds like a big part of you didn't really want to spend time together. That would've meant one of you walking over to the other and saying, ‘Will you join me?’ Or, ‘I'd like to be with you,’or something that would express vulnerability.”

Again, empathy is so crucial here. It’s important for our clients to know that we appreciate why they feel the way they do – that you can see the loneliness. You see their isolation.

You can equalize their defensiveness by saying, “Each of you has different ways that you're perpetuating this, because you guys don't know how to create intimacy. You've never done it. You don't know how.”

I would look them each in the eye and I might say to her, “Are you going to let me help you with the part of you that runs away, or has trouble seeing him as scared too?”

I'd look at him and I might say, “Are you going to let me work with the part of you that doesn't want to risk more connection? The part that may feel scared, or even vulnerable, or lonely? Are you going to let me help you with that?”

It’s so important that you get their agreement that they're going to let you in. At the same time, you're also spelling out for them the work they have ahead.

But what if you’re beginning to sense that one of the partners isn’t as vested in this process as the other? That he or she isn’t really willing to commit to the work it will take to grow not only in the relationship, but on a personal level as well?

I’ll be writing about that in my next blog post.

In the meantime, I’d like to hear from you – how could you use some of these ideas in your work with couples? Please leave a comment below.

Getting couples to commit to their own individual growth for the sake of their relationship is an important part of getting off to a strong start in your therapy sessions. Rethinking First Sessions shows you how to conduct a first session that delivers relief and creates traction for future growth in your office. Click here for more information on this downloadable 60-minute audio and written summary.

[couples-institute-blog]

The differentiation stage is, by far, the most difficult for many couples. Helping each partner set self-focused autonomous goals is crucial to their growth as individuals and to push the development of the couple.

In my last blog post, I gave you a glimpse into how I work with couples to tease apart individual goals when their issues are highly entangled and enmeshed. If you missed it, you can find it here.

But sometimes, you as the therapist will assess that a couple’s level of differentiation is so low

that you’re going to have to start with them at a very basic, fundamental level.

When a couple operates with each other almost totally out of reactivity, it takes a fair amount of psychoeducation to help them recognize emotions and pay attention to what’s going on in theirbody. You’ll need to support them beginning to articulate what they’re thinking and feeling.

You’ll also want to help the partners understand that without setting autonomous goals their progress will always be hampered by the least motivated partner.

One exercise I’ve found helpful in working with couples like this is to ask them to brainstorm a list of all the things they’ve seen people do that they know that aren’t helpful or functional in a relationship. I do this on a whiteboard in my office, but you can also do it with a tablet or flip chart.

Some of the things that come up might include: seeing people yell, blame, be nasty, or withdraw. You’ll want to solicit a list that’s as complete as they can give you while also adding some things into it yourself.

Then shift and say, “Now let’s create a list of positive things that you’ve seen. Maybe it’s been in a movie, or on television, or maybe you have a relative who you think is a really great communicator. But what are some of the things that stand out and make you think, ‘Wow, this really helps!’ Or, ‘This is a good way to solve problems in relationships and communication.’ ”

And again, I’ll try to get as many as I can. Some examples are ask questions, be compassionate, don’t take things personally.

For most people the negative list will likely be a lot longer than the positive, but you can feed things into that list as well. In particular, you may want to add to the list some things you think would be good for the two people who are sitting in front of you to work on.

Then after you have the whole list you can say to each partner, “When you look at that list, what's your favorite on the negative list. Like, we all have things that we do, so what's your favorite?”

If the couple seems particularly reticent about owning up to a negative, you might then identify your own favorite. I'll say to people sometimes, “You know, when I'm under stress, I can get really bossy. And so, being bossy would be one for me. What would be true for each of you?”

See if they'll own a negative.

Then give them each a piece of paper and say, “I'm going to be quiet for a couple of minutes and what I want each of you to do is, when you think about yourself – how you aspire to be, or who you want to be as a partner – write down something you'd like to stop doing. And what's something on the positive list that you'd really like to add? It may be something you don't do much of, or you only do a little bit of. What is it you might want to add?”

You’re helping each of them commit to a stop doing and a start doing.

Now your clients may have a hard time making their goals clear and specific. So when they read back to you what they've written, you're still going to have to get clarity about what they’ll each be working toward. You’ll need to be able to see it, and they will need to be able to recognize it when they do it.

An underlying principle to keep in mind is that, if you go into a session to set up individual goals, you will have very little interaction between the two people in that session. It will be you talking to one, and then you to the other. You will be working on circumscribing what makes a difference to each person. Don't feel bad that you're not having them talk to teach other, or that they’re not interacting with one another at this point.

You’re working to help each partner develop clarity and take responsibility for their own personal growth that will, ultimately, contribute toward them flourishing together.

Now I’d like to hear from you.

How much do you focus on specific goals with your couples?

What strategies do you use to break down complex principles into small manageable behaviors for your clients? Please tell me what you’ve found to be useful.

To learn more, visit: https://www.couplesinstitute.com/a-powerful-exercise-to-promote-the-work-of-differentiation-in-couples/

[couples-institute-blog]

When working with couples within The Developmental Model, it’s crucial to help partners set self-focused, individual goals to support the process of differentiation.

This presents more of a challenge with some couples than with others.

I’m thinking in particular about conflict-avoidant couples. These are couples who likely have developed well-established patterns of shying away from conflict. They may have little or no recognition of their differences.

A couple like this can merge and enmesh their issues very quickly and easily. It can be a challenge to tease out what might make a difference if each of them were to get focused on themselves.

For example, let’s say you’re working with a couple where the husband says he feels like he’s been walking on eggshells when he tries to have a conversation with his wife. Your role would be to help him work toward identifying something about himself that he’d like to change within this dynamic.

You might say something like, “So what I hear you saying is that right now you don't feel that there’s space to talk about things in your relationship, and that you're walking on eggshells. What do you think it's going to take from you to bring that about more on your end?”

Here, you’re trying to help him own the difficulty he experiences in raising issues with his wife and being able to articulate those in a straightforward way.

But here’s where things can get really tricky.

Clients can all too easily try to shift the problem back their partner by claiming, “If she would just stop blowing up and getting angry, I wouldn’t be walking on eggshells anymore.”

So how do you help your client tease apart his own personal goals when there’s a strong pattern of blame and reactivity? And how do you keep yourself from getting pulled into that dynamic?

I thought it might be helpful here to sketch out a dialogue of how I would approach a couple like this in a session:

Client: You know, I'd really like to be able to not have to walk on eggshells and be able to say what I think without her getting upset or sensitive about anything I say. Just because I have a different opinion doesn't mean she has to kind of jump all over me. She could just let me have my different opinion without getting so upset when I have that.

Ellyn: So, how about if we do this? Let’s break what you just said into two parts. You realize that you would like to not walk on eggshells. You realize that you would like to bring up more stuff, is that right?

Client: Right, yeah. Absolutely.

Ellyn: And are you aware that when you start to do that, it’s going to create some stress for you?

Client: Well yeah, because it does. When I say what I really think, she gets mad or she gets sensitive about it.

Ellyn: So, that's what she does, and each of you has your own part here. That's what she does. I think a part that's hard for you is to hold steady, to bring something up and just hold steady. It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it?

Client: Yeah. It's hard to do that when she's on top of me about it.

Ellyn: Yes, it's hard to do for anybody when they're not met initially with a really receptive, welcoming openness to whatever it is you are expressing.

Client: Well, isn't it only normal that I want that? And shouldn't she be giving that to me?

Ellyn: It's normal to want it. What's not intuitive for most people is how to get there, and when couples are changing the way that they are with each other, there are going to be some challenges in each of you doing different things. Of course it's real, real easy to focus on how she responds to you and, in fact, it will be good when she doesn't take personally so much of what you bring up. That will be really great. It's going to free the two of you up enormously. But the part that's on your side is to be able to bring something up and not back away – not do it aggressively, but also not back away from it. Because it does matter to you.

It’s likely you’ll experience some pushback from your client, at least initially. He may challenge you by asking, “Why is this on me? Why do I have to be the one to do everything?” This can be especially true when a client’s partner does do outrageous things. It can be so easy to get pulled into the reactivity.

So it’s crucial to support and validate your client’s feelings while ultimately continuing to move him toward owning the responsibility that is his.

Now in this case, the client was able to pinpoint at least the seed of an issue he wanted to address – feeling as though he was walking on eggshells. But what about couples whose level of differentiation is so low they can’t even see it? Most of their daily interactions are in reaction to each other. How do you begin the process of helping each of them identify independent goals then?

I’ll have more to say about that next week.

Meanwhile…

1️⃣ If you’re interested in learning more about Goal Setting with couples, check our DVD here.

2️⃣ And I’d be interested in hearing about what you’ve found to be effective in helping couples set individual goals. Please leave a comment and tell me about your experience below.

[couples-institute-blog]

Managing the Crisis of Infidelity: How to Lead Your Clients from Raw Pain to Constructive Action

Working with infidelity is one of the most challenging issues you will face as a therapist.

What makes it so tough?

You have to contain massive pain and volatility.

It’s tough to not automatically side with the betrayed partner.

You need to get beyond defensiveness and blame to use the hurt in a productive way.

And it’s impossible to know if there’s still deception happening!

What if I told you, you could get into the mind of an infidelity expert, and learn exactly WHY they do what they’re doing?

Now you can!

In this special webinar with Dr. Ellyn Bader, you’ll get a very unique chance to watch Ellyn and her husband, Dr. Peter Pearson work with an infidelity case. Then, she’ll stop the tape and explain what she did and why she did it.

Learning the rationale behind interventions makes it more likely you’ll integrate them into what you do in the future without getting lost, or hoping you execute the right thing at the right time.

❎ No more wondering where to start.

❎ No more hoping you say or do the right thing when deception is revealed.

❎ No more getting exhausted by the intensity of the couples’ emotions.

❎ No more gritting your teeth and trying to stay objective as details unfold.

In this unique clinical presentation, Ellyn will demonstrate:

How to avoid siding with the betrayed partner

How to get beyond defensiveness and blame so you can use the hurt in a productive way

How you can manage the intensity of the emotions in front of you without getting lost or flooded

Ellyn will also reveal some very important foundational truths about infidelity, like…

⭕ The reasons people cheat

⭕ Why infidelity often occurs in highly enmeshed relationships

⭕ How to untangle and describe what issue belongs to each partner

⭕ What happens for a betrayed partner when they stop personalizing their partner’s infidelity

This clinical demonstration will be helpful whether you work with couples or individuals. Ellyn will teach concepts that aren’t unique just to couples, but ones that fit a lot of infidelity cases.

And you will benefit from this whether you’re new to couples work or have been working with couples for years, since there are very few opportunities to see what goes on in the mind of expert clinicians as they work with couples.

You’ll be seeing the work in action, AND getting the road map of WHY.

Hi, I’m Dr. Ellyn Bader.

I am the co-founder and co-director of The Couples Institute and co-creator of The Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, with my husband, Dr. Peter Pearson.

When we created the Developmental Model over 30 years ago, it helped launched the specialty of couples therapy. It has not only withstood the test of time, but all of the strategies and interventions are built upon the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, which I created with my husband.

But it wasn’t always easy, and I really struggled working with couples when I first started. In fact, I probably wasn’t doing some of the couples any favors, and maybe worse.

I want to give you the tools and strategies I’ve learned so that it won’t take you years to discover them.

After helping thousands of therapists like you, I know I can help you, too.

Because I want to make sure you have the tools to work with infidelity in the most confident and effective way possible, I’m including a special bonus, Deep Empathy: One Partner Suspects an Affair, the Other Denies it.

It’s hard to know how to position yourself when two people in front of you completely disagree about what’s real. With this bonus, you’ll learn how to use deep empathy to get your clients to do the hard work. No more being a detective or a triangulated therapist! But this isn’t available for sale anywhere. The only way to get it is by purchasing Managing the Crisis of Infidelity: How to Lead Your Clients from Raw Pain to Constructive Action.

Add To Cart — $77

What’s Included:

✅ Live Webinar on May 10 at 1pm Pacific Time (you do not need to attend live to see the webinar)

✅ Replay of the Webinar

✅ PDF Transcript of the Webinar

✅ PDF of Deep Empathy: One Partner Suspects an Affair, the Other Denies It

✅ PDF of Guide to Working with Infidelity: Self-Assessment, Evaluation, and the Three Stages of Treatment

Because no two couples are alike, this webinar and bundle of bonuses gives you tools for self-assessment, evaluation, and treatment for infidelity, and the skills to organize what you know into a treatment plan.

Add To Cart — $77

[couples-institute-blog]

This comprehensive collection of material will help you take a stronger leadership role and be more targeted in your interventions with angry partners. With the tools and skills presented here, you might even discover that you enjoy working with these couples who can otherwise be so intimidating.

You will learn to use Attachment and Differentiation Theory to:

Contain Conflict

Disrupt Symbiosis

Repair Relationship Ruptures

Address the Developmental Stalemate

Manage Aggressive Sessions

Require Development

Develop Yourself as a More Effective Therapist.

The USB drive has 2 one-hour audios. The printed book contains 1) written transcripts of the seminars for study or review, 2) Powerpoint slides from the original live seminars, and 3) client handouts for use with your hostile angry couples.

Order now, only $79!

[couples-institute-blog]

Establishing Connection in Early Couples Therapy Sessions

Let’s look at how you establish a strong connection with your clients in the early sessions of couples therapy. Most graduate school courses teach the importance of demonstrating unconditional positive regard for your clients. This is taught as a primary way to make good contact. While it can work well with individual clients, it’s not as simple in the more complex dynamic of couples therapy.

Couples often show us many of their destructive or dysfunctional behaviors in the early sessions. We certainly don’t want to show unconditional positive regard or acceptance for these behaviors. Also, partners watch carefully to see what we accept about the other. If we are too accepting, they may leave believing we are not strong enough to handle them. (And, they may be right!)

Here are some ways to establish positive contact.

1. Start with a feeling-oriented question.

You might begin the first session by asking “How do you feel about being here even though we haven’t done anything yet?” This will give you immediate feedback about the degree of motivation for change in each partner.

The partner who expresses relief or an optimistic feeling about therapy will often be easier for you to establish rapport. Look to this person to make the initial effort to create change. The partner who says, “I didn’t want to come — I only came because my spouse wanted it” or “I don’t believe in therapy” will be testing you and will make it more difficult to establish contact. They are not the person who you ask to make the initial change to improve the interactions.

2. Recognize that couples therapy is more stressful in some ways than individual therapy.

One initial generic bonding statement can be, “Couples often feel some stress about coming to therapy because your initial objectives seem to be incompatible. In individual therapy, the client determines the focus of change but in couples therapy there is often a struggle about where to focus. This is normal for most couples and is part of the process of learning how to become more collaborative and better communicators.

3. Take enough time to hear each partner’s story.

We recommend two hours for the first session. Try to elicit their goals, hopes, dreams, and desires. Help them create an image of how they want the relationship to be and how they aspire to be (individually) in their future relationship. This creates balance to their expressed problems and aids your diagnosis. Sometimes one or both have great trouble describing how they would like their relationship to look. Without some clear aspirations, they will simply regress under tension or stress because they have nothing to pull them forward. This is a great follow up approach to clarifying and understanding their individual frustrations.

4. Work to understand the problem cognitively.

The partners will be checking to be sure you really understand what they are saying and the importance of it. The more you ask helpful and insightful questions, the more you communicate that you are thinking deeply about what they are saying. When you ask a revealing question that enables them to attain a new insight, they will experience some relief and relax into a deeper level of contact with you. It can be reassuring to let them know their struggles are fairly common.

5. Work to understand the problem affectively.

What makes most people feel understood is letting them know you understand their dilemma at both the cognitive and emotional level. Once you are certain that you do understand a partner’s feelings, feed the feelings back to them. When you are on target with your feedback, they will give non-verbal cues like head nods or a small smile to communicate you are on target. When you give feedback, describe it as there is a part of them that has this problem. Basically, you are communicating only a part of them has this problem which makes it easier for them to hear what you are saying. It reduces the likelihood of being “yes butted.” For example, “There is a part of you that feels trapped. That part of you feels hopeless to make a dent in these negative patterns on your own.”

Communicating that there is “only” a part of them that feels this way implies you can see other parts of them and they are not completely and totally hopeless.

6. Empathically embellish their feelings.

The more you can empathically embellish the affect from each partner’s perspective, the deeper your level of contact will be. To expand on the statement above, you might add, “There is a part of you that feels trapped. You feel hopeless to make a dent in these negative patterns on your own. That part of you moves to despair. It seems like you have tried everything and that no matter what you say or do, nothing changes, and you are beside yourself with frustration.”

To take this even further, you might add, “It seems like sometimes you try to get out of the trap by approaching Charlie by saying, ‘we need to talk.’ He glazes over or withdraws, and your fear increases. You say to yourself, ‘I’m going to have to live in a barren, empty marriage forever or have to get a divorce.’ Either choice seems horribly painful.”

While you are empathically embellishing the feelings, you are totally immersed in this partner’s world view. At this stage we have no qualms looking like we are taking sides.

The stronger you can communicate that you truly understand their predicament, the more allowance they will give you later when you confront and challenge their dearly held assumptions or favorite defensive responses.

7. Make contact with Partner B by what you say to partner A.

This is a good approach to use when one spouse is not motivated. For this example, let’s say that the wife is frustrated and the husband is not very motivated for therapy. Perhaps the wife was the first to talk. She spent a long time telling you about how he withdraws and gets passive-aggressive. After you have established contact with her, you might ask, “When you feel despair, how might you respond in an ineffective way? This is designed to elicit the part of her that persecutes her partner. Now you make explicit what she does that antagonizes her partner. You can do this before you talk to her partner (particularly if he doesn’t want to be there). You know that nothing that she or you have said so far will increase his motivation to change.

Here’s one way to make good a good connection with Nick while talking to his wife, “When you get frustrated with Nick’s behavior, how do you zap him?” Or you might hypothesize some of Nick’s frustration. “When you explode, sometimes it must feel to Nick like it comes out of left field. He is probably not aware how lonely you’ve been feeling.” If you are empathic and compassionate when hypothesizing about Nick, you let him know that you are not colluding with his wife in seeing him as the bad guy.

In this last scenario, you have described some of the repeating patterns, let each person know you have an idea of their individual distress, and indirectly communicate you know what you are doing.

Another way we establish contact is at the end of the initial session. We give the couple a copy of the brochure “Stepping Stones to Intimacy.” It describes the normal stages that couples go through, and it normalizes many of their problems. It helps partners understand that the challenges they face are part of normal couples’ development. For more information on the brochure, visit our website Therapist Resources - Couples Institute

[couples-institute-blog]

Starting Couples Therapy May Require Some Detective Work

One challenge presented in couples therapy is the partner who says, “I love him but I am not in love with him.” These are not welcome words—for the other partner or the therapist. The first implication is that the semi-motivated partner is staying in the relationship out of a sense of duty and obligation. The troubling implication is that you, the therapist, will have to work very hard to attempt to breathe new life into a dying marriage.

How do you approach this situation? Do you assume the relationship is over? Do you explore the dead feelings? Do you work hard to do the equivalent of starting a fire under water?

We approach this situation by thinking about the concept of differentiation in the couple. We look at the level of differentiation in each partner and whether the relationship has become arrested prior to the differentiation stage. This approach will give you some clues about the magnitude of the problem and whether it’s hopeless or not.

Where do you start? What are the clues to look for? We look first at the original bonding stage of their relationship. What was the quality and length of the attachment? Was there an initial surge of passion and love? How strong was it and how long did it last? This will tell you whether each partner had the developmental capacity to merge boundaries and “fall in love.” It will tell you whether they could sustain it long enough to form a positive base of memories to fall back on during challenging times of conflict. It will also tell you about their ability to emotionally connect in a powerful way. This alone, however won’t mean much if we don’t examine the next set of clues.

The next step involves understanding differentiation. Differentiation is “the active ongoing process of defining self, activating self, expressing self, clarifying boundaries and managing the anxiety that comes from risking greater intimacy or potential loss.” So, when you are doing your detective work, be especially curious about how much they have been able to have difficult conversations where there are strong emotions on substantial issues.

Look for each partner’s willingness and ability to expose and express what is individually important to them. Have they been able to effectively articulate their values, interests, concerns and goals? Have they been able to hold onto these in the face of their partner’s disinterest or disagreement? Then Sherlock, look for the next really big clue. How effective have they been in eliciting their partner’s values, interests, concerns and goals? Having these ongoing dialogues of expressing and eliciting are crucial for the couple to have moved into a successful differentiation process. Without these dialogues, the couple’s relationship will often become arrested at the conflict avoidant symbiotic stage. This often results in “dead” feelings for one or both partners.

Here’s how you can put all these clues together. If one partner has done a poor job of expressing their own wants, desires, thoughts and feelings, this partner will come to view the relationship as the cause for their misery or depression. They will have sacrificed themselves to maintain the relationship, but feel “no love.” The best hope for re-establishing love is for this partner to re-connect first with themselves and then be able to hold onto their desires in the face of conflict or disagreement with their partner.

In fact, differentiation is an evolving process. It develops through all stages after symbiosis and continues throughout life. Here’s how it evolves:

1.  Differentiation begins with internal self reflection. Partners start to identify their own thoughts, feelings, values, and desires.

2.  Next they start developing an increasing ability to express congruently their own thoughts, feelings, values and desires. They begin to more actively expose, “who I am.”

3.  Soon, they start to develop an awareness of their partner as being separate and different from themselves.

4.  This necessitates developing an increasing ability to listen, elicit, hear and then respond effectively to these differences using clear boundaries.

5.  Last, partners develop the ability to create an environment in the relationship that supports desired changes.

Your job is to shine the light and facilitate this process. When one or both partners can reconnect with themselves and then go through some differentiation dialogues, they will begin to know if their feelings are truly dead or only dormant.  As one or both partners move away from self sacrifice and conflict avoidance, they will have the best opportunity for re-discovering passion. We believe that developing stronger self expression, overcoming fear of conflict and strengthening boundaries brings them the best hope of re-stimulating the energy between them.

This process of differentiation is at the heart of our work and is thoroughly described on our 10 hour training set “In Quest of the Mythical Mate:  A Practical Model for Successful Couples Therapy.” For more information on it, visit https://www.couplesinstitute.com/in-quest-of-the-mythical-mate-practice-development-kit/

If you’d like to get on our newsletter list click here.

[couples-institute-blog]

Establishing Goals with Couples

Let’s discuss the slippery concept of goal setting. At first blush, it seems like it should be easy for us to help our couples set goals when they come in. Simply have them state what they want and make a plan, right? No, applying that simple “formula” can create a whole lot of confusion, distress, floundering, and probably a few premature terminations.

There is a lot more to setting goals with couples than meets the eye. Much more.

Goals should be clear and specific. Mushy goals are hard to measure. For example, if a client states that his goals are to increase positive energy, overcome low self esteem, or develop a better relationship with his wife, it’s hard to know when he’s achieved them. There’s no yardstick to measure his progress. And what’s worse, once the literal part of the brain detects a little progress, it simply thinks, “Ok, the job is done.”Clear, specific goals are measurable. For example, “Learn to recognize my wife’s contributions to our family and tell her in words.” Or, “Develop effective negotiation skills that take both of us into account.”

Encourage your couples to make goals that are within their control. These goals can be accomplished without support or cooperation from the environment. For example, “Pick up the clutter at least twice a week,” or “Arrange a dinner/movie date” are both goals that can be accomplished without anyone else’s involvement.

Teach clients the difference between targets and goals.  Targets are like goals, but they’re not completely within one’s control.  For example, “I will make 3 new sales this week, so that I can bring home a larger paycheck.” This is not really under the partner’s control. More effective goals are the steps a partner takes along the way (including how they think) that will enable them to reach the target. Instead they might say, I will be at work by 8am each morning this week and make at least 5 cold calls each day. A partner has no control over getting 3 new sales. They can only control the actions that will increase the likelihood of getting 3 new sales.  If the partner does not get 3 new sales, they often will judge themselves as a failure for not reaching the goal, which just worsens low self esteem and reduces confidence.

Help partners appreciate each other’s stretch goals.  “Stretch goals” are those that take partners significantly outside their comfort zone. Usually these involve personality change, such as a narcisssist’s becoming more giving, or an engineer becoming more emotionally expressive. These goals arouse discomfort because of the required effort and risk involved. When people recognize that their partner is stretching, they will become more supportive. As long as they think the change is easy, they tend to minimize the other’s efforts.

Have couples state their goals positively.  Often partners describe negative goals. These goals describe what someone DOESN’T WANT. For example, “I don’t want to be depressed, I don’t want to be sad, or I don’t want to be poor.”  People who organize their lives around setting goals in the negative put a very low ceiling on creating a life of satisfaction.

Setting negative goals for the partner is even worse. When one partner is asked about goals in therapy she might say, “I don’t want to be criticized by my partner.” This is very diagnostic. Note that it is really a goal for her partner to stop criticizing. If she is allowed to continue to state negative goals that are really for her partner, she will reduce her own emotional resilience and will do little to focus on her own desires. If further questioning about what she wants yields minimal information or vague responses, then her differentiation level is low and primarily reactive. This signals you, the therapist, that there will be challenging work ahead.

Remember, when it comes to goal setting, it’s no time for platitudes. “Aim for the moon, because if you miss, you are still in orbit,” or “feel the fear and do it anyway.” These sayings do nothing but increase the average person’s feeling of failure. He may think, “I felt the fear and didn’t do it, so I’m a bigger failure now.” Or “I felt the fear and tried and failed; now I really don’t want to do that again.” These success platitudes are often poisonous for goal setters.

We hope some of these ideas about the challenges of effective goal setting will be helpful the next time you are working with a new couple.

If you’d like to find out more about how you can be an effective leader with your couples, you might be interested in our Therapists Take Charge resource here

Wishing you success with your own goals, too,

Ellyn Bader, Ph.D. and Peter Pearson, Ph.D.

Founders of The Couples Institute

[couples-institute-blog]

Anxiety, anger, and jealousy are emotions I see often in many of the couples I have worked with over the years, and I’m sure it’s no different in your practice. Untangling the roots of these feelings and helping couples adopt strategies to deal with them becomes a central challenge for you.

Recently my therapists’ online training group discussed a case where insecurity, jealousy, and conflict were quickly taking over a young couple’s relationship.

Partners Jane and Bob had a history of feeling rejected and unloved. Life had handed them interlocking scripts, but each partner dealt with these feelings in a unique way.

Jane tended to act against herself, going back to self-harming habits she thought she’d broken for good. Bob’s insecurities flared into jealous bouts of anger when he sensed Jane wasn’t paying enough attention to him.

Listening and empathy as an essential first step

The therapist had helped Jane and Bob develop a practice of empathetic listening so each could learn what the other was feeling, especially when worry and anxiety spun into open conflict.

Bob reported that when Jane listened to him, he felt calmer right away. He felt Jane’s willingness to hear him out was the key to managing angry, jealous feelings that often overtook him.

In one session, Jane felt courageous enough to disagree.

Sometimes, she said, Bob demanded remorse for things she’d done that triggered his anxious feelings. “And if I don’t say I’m sorry over and over again, he punishes me,” she explained.

Bob reacted angrily to Jane’s statement, and for a few moments, it seemed the couple had reached an impasse.

Whose job is it to manage a partner’s anxiety?

The therapist challenged Bob to think about his responsibility in the situation. If his healing depended entirely on Jane, the burden might be too great for her.

“Jane’s listening may help you for a few moments, Bob, but it may not be serving you,” she said.

She explained that, while empathy and understanding are necessary in all close relationships, one partner’s listening can’t magically erase a lifetime of pain for the other.

Instead of expecting Jane to be his only resource, Bob would benefit from recognizing his power to heal old wounds that sparked new anxieties.

“Unfair as it might seem, the job of healing our childhood hurts always ends up in our own hands,” the therapist said. “Jane’s listening and her apologies can’t possibly make up for everything that happened to you over the years.”

The therapist encouraged Bob to come up with ways he could reach inside himself to soothe his own anxiety when he was feeling threatened and jealous. He was able to come up with two or three strategies, including coming in for individual sessions with her.

The conversation was helpful for Jane, too. She’d been feeling helpless when her caring and attention didn’t seem to resolve things for Bob. Now she could release the guilt she was feeling and step back a bit, trusting Bob to manage his own emotions.

Have you found ways to help clients assume the full measure of their responsibility for anxiety and conflict in their marriage? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

And if you are interested in learning more about working with angry partners, I recommend our resource, The Hostile-Angry Couple. Click here for more information or to order this collection of two one-hour teleseminars in audio and print format, along with the slides and handouts that accompanied the original, live sessions.

[couples-institute-blog]

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.

For a more detailed explanation of the personality adaptation types and doors read the original blog post.

Using the 3-door Model with a Paranoid Adaptation, the “Brilliant Skeptic”

Let’s consider how this framework can be useful with a particular couple – one in which a partner exhibits a paranoid personality. This client will present as highly reactive and prickly. These clients have high levels of mistrust and will frequently bring up breaches of trust, either real or imagined. Old injuries are rarely resolved. And this client may have a significant history of trauma.

When working with a client who exhibits paranoid features, it can be extremely challenging to establish a good, solid alliance. Making contact isn’t easy and it can be hard to sustain.

With this personality adaptation, the place where connection needs to happen is throughthinking. The client fears trusting you. They want to know that your thinking is strong – as good as, or better than theirs.

It is easy to get trapped in trying to change the client’s behavior – behavior that seems so outrageous you may be tempted to focus on it first. This is the trap door. These clients don’t give up their protective defenses easily and especially won’t peek out if they are unsure of your strong, careful leadership.

The target door for substantial change is in the realm of feeling and emotion. It’s going to come when your client experiences a change in their feeling that the world is out to get them, that their partner is sneaky with them – or that you are out to blame them.

The best chance I have found for making an initial connection with this type of client is going slowly in requesting change from them. Defining what is wrong clearly and educating them about the developmental stages can be reassuring.

Next I find it helps when they see you challenge their partner first. Asking the other to change first helps relax a partner with a paranoid adaptation. This means you shift the focus away from the sense that he or she is going to be identified as the problem patient, or the one to blame. When your client sees you take seriously the contribution of the other by challenging their partner in a good way, you create a tiny crack where they may begin to trust that they’ll be okay working with you.

Now I’d like to hear from you. Have you fallen through trap doors of your own? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section.

We have a resource that’s especially helpful with one other type of personality adaptation type. Click Breakthroughs with the Passive Aggressive Spouse for more information or to order this 90-minute audio and transcript of the audio to study and review, plus links to two additional valuable resources.

[couples-institute-blog]

What can we do when partners show resistance to our interventions? This is a question that came up recently in my online training group, when a therapist presented a case with several thorny challenges. Her questions led me to remember a set of concepts I learned early in my career.

These ideas came originally from Dr. Paul Ware, the psychiatrist who first introduced me to Pete! So of course Dr. Ware’s concepts hold special meaning for me!

Later these ideas were explored in Personality Adaptations: A New Guide to Human Understanding in Psychotherapy and Counseling by Vann Joines and Ian Stewart. I believe you’ll find the ideas useful in dealing with resistance, especially in the early stages of building trust with couples.

Understanding the 6 adaptive styles

In their book, the authors outline 6 adaptive coping styles, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

These are not necessarily personality disorders. These are styles and ways we orient to the world. Originally, Ware labeled these styles with terms from the DSM. Later, they have been renamed in a less pathological, more descriptive style as follows:

Creative Daydreamer (formerly Schizoid)

Charming Manipulator (formerly Antisocial)

Brilliant Skeptic (formerly Paranoid)

Playful Resister (formerly Passive-Aggressive)

Responsible Workaholic (formerly Obsessive-Compulsive)

Enthusiastic Overreactor (formerly Histrionic)

Joines and Stewart emphasize that these are not static categories; instead, they are patterns that can change as people move toward the more positive traits within that style. Most of us don’t fit neatly into one adaptive pattern, but instead represent a blend.

Discovering the best way to approach each personality type

This model can be useful in figuring out where to first establish good contact with individuals and couples. The authors explain that we can approach our clients using thinking, feeling or behaving. Knowing this, we can meet them at their most open door.

The open door is the place people feel secure and ready to meet us right now.

The target door is the place where they will benefit most from going after we’ve gained their trust.

The trap door is where they will entice us to go – but ultimately, the place they may make the least progress.

How can we find the open door?

This depends on the personality adaptations we see. For the Responsible Workaholic, thinking is the open door. This person is highly organized and logical, so asking questions that activate thinking responses will ease anxieties and build immediate rapport. These clients usually test us to be sure we are smart enough to work with them.

The target door for the Responsible Workaholic is feeling – reachable as we gain their confidence. Over time, opening up to emotion and vulnerability will greatly change the quality of their relationships. The trap door, meanwhile, is behavior. We may find these clients can change a lot of their behaviors without substantially changing the quality of their lives.

Look below for the open door depending on the personality adaptation:

Creative Daydreamer – Behavior

For the Charming Manipulator – Behavior

For the Brilliant Skeptic – Thinking

For the Playful Resister – Behavior

For the Responsible Workaholic – Thinking

For the Enthusiastic Overreactor – Feeling

You can see more on the location of all 3 doors for each adaptation in this 7-minute video.

A useful concept for minimizing resistance

Meeting new clients at the open door helps them feel supported. It gives them the chance to begin from a place of strength. As you move forward in building trust and cooperation, the client will let you move into the target area and create the most longstanding change for them.

Understanding the 3-door model will help you avoid falling through the trap door early in treatment, causing serious setbacks and often leading to early termination. In fact, when the couple and you are both feeling frustrated, ask yourself if you’ve tumbled through the trap doorby mistake.

Do these ideas seem useful to you? Do any of your clients fit these patterns of personality adaptation? How could you use these 3 doors to connect more effectively?

In my next blog post I’ll write about using the 3-door model with a “Brilliant Skeptic” client so you can see the application of this theory.

If you’re interested in joining our online training program, you can sign up for our waiting list here.

[couples-institute-blog]

Ellyn Bader and Jeff Zeig discuss The NEW Couples Conference 2019!

Relationships can go through stages just like individuals do. Sometimes they get stuck, and there’s a real need to figure out what will help them flourish. But what does that mean? Ellyn Bader will expand more on this very subject in this video interview by Jeffrey Zeig. Together, they will highlight just some of the teachings that will be offered on the Developmental model. Enjoy this snap shot on the topics of symbiotic binds, relationship dynamics, and personality disorders.

Visit at https://www.couplesinstitute.com/ellyn-bader/

[couples-institute-blog]

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.

Visit at https://www.couplesinstitute.com/integrating-goals-and-growth-in-couples-therapy/ to read more