In the previous post, we looked at the patterns of couples’ interactions that we most commonly see when the partners are in conflict. Now we turn to how we address their patterns therapeutically.
In Neurodynamic Couples Therapy, our treatment is not focused on directly resolving their conflicts. In fact, tolerating the unresolved state of the conflicts provides in real time a perfect opportunity for both partners’ brains to experience and give voice to unmetabolized emotions from the past. We are more interested in exposing the healing power of couple patterns than in relieving the tension of the moment by determining how the couple should resolve a current dispute. When the healing power of a particular pattern is actualized, the conflict that provided the pathway for its exposure disappears.
How does a therapist expose the healing power of couple patterns?
1-We stay “out of the weeds.” Exploration of who did what to whom is only useful in the context of discovering how each partner experiences the conflict pattern. We are facilitating not only their understanding of each other, but their understanding of themselves. We are creating an open and safe space for both partners’ brains to speak thoughts and feelings previously unformulated and unspoken.
2-We use a technique that we call “following threads” to stay what some forms of psychotherapy name “experience near” to each partner’s story. We repeat their precise wording to search for an expanded meaning of their triggering words and help them accurately express the fullness of historical pain. Again, this is not only to produce mutual understanding between the partners. It is about utilizing the process that couples are already presenting in their conflict patterns to help their brains download historical material in a form that is newly metabolizable. We help them find their words from their brains that hold the healing power.
3-We take advantage of the intersubjective system that the couple has been using to create their conflict patterns to cultivate the natural healing power of their system. Much of the material that gets talked about in Neurodynamic Couples Therapy can sound a lot like what is talked about in individual therapy, but it is accessible earlier in the treatment process and from a deeper level of consciousness. Couples’ patterns of conflict are system enactments of the most traumatized spaces within themselves, which is why their conflict patterns can appear so regressed and dangerous. The therapist must stay with the partners in this regressed and dangerous place–that their system serves up–to fully realize the healing power of their relationship.
4-We are the guardians of safety within the therapeutic system in order to make “dwelling” (Stolorow) in regressed and dangerous places manageable. We hold the healing frame so that the partners can experience the relief of speaking the words their brains have not let them know before, releasing the joy of being fully known for the first time in their lives.
Next post: Another look at safety