“There is Nothing Wrong Wi...
In previous blog posts, I have written about the importance of understanding a couple’s persistence in seeing one partner as the identified patient. Quite often, couples will enter treatment with both partners having decided that there is something wrong with the other, and that they themselves are in fact “normal” or “innocent.” Here, our curiosity […]
Curiosity
A major goal of Neurodynamic Couples Therapy is to help partners complete the metabolizing of troublesome emotions, which they have already been nonconsciously attempting to accomplish through their conflicts. Some forms of therapy purport that this metabolizing can be done nonverbally, but we believe that it takes the translation of right-brain experiences into words in […]
Simple–not easy
As I was growing up, I remember one of the mantras that I heard from some of the adults in my world. They would say one of the best approaches to difficult situations is encapsulated in the acronym KISS–Keep It Simple, (warning! pejorative word coming up) Stupid. I found this to be quite helpful as […]
Understanding Resistance
The New Oxford American Dictionary defines resistance as “the refusal to accept or comply with something”; and “the ability not to be affected by something, especially adversely.” Our training histories as therapists have unfortunately tended to focus more on the first definition. I would like to challenge us to think more about the second one. […]
Utilizing Present Feelings
In the previous blog post, I addressed the importance of using the present-day conflicts that couples bring to therapy to access historical wounds, traumas and losses. But often couples don’t want to talk about their pasts. They have usually come to deal with current conflicts–not their family histories. Therapists in my consultation groups often ask, […]
How Couple Therapy Creates Growt...
Couples come to see us to help them resolve their conflicts — not to create growth. But if we stop at attempting to help them resolve their present-day conflicts without moving on to creating growth, we have cheated our clients out of at least half of the potential of couple treatment. Neurodynamic Couples Therapy is […]
Unsafe Partners
In 2009, the South Carolina governor reportedly “disappeared” for a few days. It was later discovered that he had been with his mistress in Argentina. In one of his former wife’s interviews on a news talk show, she described their therapy together after his return. She said that she could recall the moment in their […]
Avoiding the Identified Patient ...
Early in the development of family therapy theory, authors used the term “identified patient” to describe the family member whose behavior brings a family into treatment. This is usually one of the children, but not always. It is the person who has acted out enough to cause the parents to seek help or to get […]
Reframing Repetition Compulsion
As students, those of us who were pursuing a career as psychodynamic psychotherapists learned about the repetition compulsion. The Oxford Reference (www.oxfordreference.com) defines this phenomenon as “a tendency to place oneself in dangerous or distressing situations that repeat similar experiences from the past.” Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary describes a compulsion as “an irresistible impulse […]
The Perfect Language of Couples ...
All psychotherapists know the importance of language. We pay close attention to exactly what our clients say and how they say it. In this post, I will share a case that illustrates how the perfect language of couples’ complaints provide the roadmap for their treatment. The wife begins a session: “I can’t stop being angry at him. […]