As I have written before, a major goal of Neurodynamic Couples Therapy is to help couples view their repetitive conflicts as the clues and guideposts through the journey of healing each other’s historical traumas, wounds and losses together. The precise words intimate partners use during their conflicts have been attempting to reach the emotions that have been stored in their right brains since childhood and are waiting to be discovered and metabolized. Usually, they haven’t quite been able to get there on their own, because they have only a conscious understanding of the clues they have been dropping along the way.
A couple’s therapist is there to help them break the “code.” A primary technique for accomplishing this is following threads. Basically, this entails repeating a partner’s precise word or words that have just been used to describe an event or feeling before inviting the exploration of the word in its fullest meaning. Appropriately implementing the technique of following threads means that the therapist does not interject their own words or conceptualizations. They follow the thread of the client’s description of their story wherever it leads.
The threads are what the partners’ right brains want to talk about. Each sentence leads to the next as the therapist seamlessly guides the couple through a fuller and fuller voicing of what it has been like to be them. The threads lead us to the places within both partners that have remained undiscovered and laden with trauma. They guide the in-depth exploration of feared emotions that partners’ right brains have nonconsciously known about since they met.
I’m remembering a session in which a wife described her feelings after a painful incident with her husband as “betrayed.” The single word I said in response to her was “betrayed,” and then I paused before I continued, “Betrayed is a powerful and important word. Have you felt that before?” Following a thread in this manner sends a message to both right brains that the therapist heard an important word, wants to know more about it, and isn’t afraid to speak it.
I have had students ask me, “How do I know when it’s an important word?” The therapist’s right brain tells them; it’s that right brain-to-right brain communication I wrote about two blog posts ago. The therapist feels something that conveys, “Pay attention!” Each therapist has their own clues — maybe a sort of tingling, maybe a twinge in the stomach — this varies, but every therapist needs to know what their own signal feels like.
Another element of following threads is being able to pull one from a prior conversation with a couple that may be many sessions in the past, repeating a word used earlier to apply to a scenario being discussed in the present. Even though these techniques are sometimes applied during individual therapy, I have found that some of the “code” words that are necessary to unlock trauma-laden material are only triggered when both partners’ brains are present.
Next post: Making connections