Motivating Couples to Stay in Tr...
The theoretical foundations, structure and techniques of Neurodynamic Couples Therapy provide built-in motivators that enhance a couple’s desire to stay in treatment. Those primary motivators are hope, respect and mutual understanding. Most people who seek mental health treatment are experiencing some level of hopelessness, so it logically follows that all good treatment should provide hope for improvement. […]
Exploring the Wish to Flee
Fleeing treatment is an understandable wish. Effective Neurodynamic Couples Therapy is often frightening and painful–sometimes horribly painful. Metabolizing historical feelings requires that they be relived precisely as intensely as they were originally experienced when first stored, along with the perceived sense of danger that was present in the original experience. It makes sense to be […]
Sticking With It–Part 2
There is no doubt that treating couples is often quite difficult. This is a primary reason that many therapists decide to not treat couples at all. In fact, statistics say that the rate of failure for couple therapy is higher than for individual therapy. Sticking with couple therapy requires knowing how to deal with moments […]
Sticking With It
Frequently in my consultation groups, I hear from therapists, “They just aren’t getting it.” They are referring to the couples they are treating who feel particularly frustrating to the therapist. “We’ve talked about the same things over and over again, and nothing is changing,” exclaims the exasperated therapist. I gently explain to the therapist that […]
Growth and Development as Byprod...
What is it that creates human psychological growth and development? To borrow from Winnicott, it takes “good enough” relationships, the type that all therapists strive to have with their clients. Children must feel sufficiently mentally and physically safe in the relationships with their caretakers for their brains to proceed with a natural flow towards useful […]
Dealing With The Right Pain
I recently attended a conference on what to do when psychotherapy feels stuck–when it feels like you are talking about the same material over and over again and partners keep presenting the same subjective distress. I was sitting in the audience thinking that therapy gets stuck when the therapist and clients are not dealing with the […]
The “Sameness” of In...
Some forms of couple therapy have emphasized the importance of helping couples differentiate–helping them see each other as two separate individuals, instead of succumbing to a type of “twinning” where only alikeness is tolerated. There are certainly benefits to helping couples resist the draw to substitute being alike for being close. However, ignoring the nonconscious “sameness” […]
Exploring Feelings
Many types of mental health treatment include some form of exploring feelings. In Neurodynamic Couples Therapy, exploring feelings is the pathway to metabolizing and integrating them into a cohesive sense of self and relationships and creating a bond of empathy and understanding between partners. The primary technique we use to explore feelings is what we call “following […]
Understanding vs. Succumbing to ...
Couples have a nonconscious, intersubjective system between the two partners that has been existent and developing in complexity since they first met each other. It has been well-established in recent years that this type of system gestates during childhood and becomes the template that dictates who we will be attracted to and commit to as […]
Couple Frame vs. Individual Fram...
I have written many times about the radical intersubjective stance that Neurodynamic Couples Therapy takes regarding the treatment of couple relationships. In essence, we are treating what happens between the partners–not individual psychologies. The theory holds that it takes two brains in each other’s presence to access the affective material that has been generating the couple’s conflicts […]