In couples therapy, both the clients and the therapist have jobs to do. Your job is to create your own individual objectives for being in therapy. Like a good coach, my job is to help you reach them. I have many, many tools to help you become a more effective partner – and my tools work best when you are clear about how you aspire to be. My goal is to help each of you make better adjustments and responses to each other without violating your core values or deeply-held principles.

Goals of Couples Therapy
Your initial tasks will be to increase your clarity about:

• The kind of life you want to build together
• The kind of partner you aspire to be in order to build the kind of life you want together
• Your individual blocks to becoming the kind of partner you aspire to be
• The skills and knowledge necessary to reach your goals

To create and sustain improvement in your relationship requires:

• A vision of the life you want to build together and individually
• The appropriate attitudes and skills to work as a team
• The motivation to persist
• Sustained effort
• Time to review progress and make adjustments as necessary

Tradeoffs
To create the relationship you really desire, there will be some difficult tradeoffs and tough choices for each of you. Here are a few you can expect.

Time Investment
It simply takes time to create a relationship that flourishes, time to be together, play, coordinate, nurture, relax, hang out, plan, etc.

Discomfort
Expect emotional discomfort, as it is always part of the growth process. In therapy you will try novel ways of thinking and behaving, like listening and being curious instead of interrupting your partner, and speaking up instead of becoming resentfully compliant or withdrawing..

Expending Energy
It simply takes effort to sustain improvement over time.  It will require effort to remember to be more respectful, more giving, more appreciative, etc.

Getting the Most from Your Sessions
By following these suggestions, you can make the best use of your time in therapy.

There are several mistakes couples often make in therapy. The first is showing up without a plan.

The second is the stream-of-consciousness approach. This happens when the focus of the session is on whatever happens to be on your mind at that moment.

The third is discussing the fight of the moment or the fight you had since the last session. Discussing these fights without also discussing what you wish to learn from them is often an exercise in spinning your wheels.

Here is a more useful approach to your sessions. Before every meeting, both of you should:

• Reflect on your goals for being in therapy
• Think about the next step you want to take to get closer to reaching your goals
• Be ready to discuss the outcome of your completed homework
• Give Your Success a Chance

It Takes Two
The blunt reality is that therapy requires time, patience, effort, and commitment from both partners.

Embrace Change
When it comes to improving your relationship, expecting and accepting change will take you far. While change can be scary, it is only through change that you can reach your goals.

Improve Your Relationship by Improving Yourself
It is typical for clients to begin therapy with the goal of changing their partners. You may think “if only she would stop doing ____” or “if only he would start doing ____ then everything would be fine.”  If you want to have a better partner, you need to be a better partner.

Things to Think About
Finally, in this section I’ve included some things for you to think about. These ideas may help you better understand your problem, provide you with language to help you discuss your problem, or help you articulate your goals.

Getting Real
Marriages (and businesses) fail for the same three reasons. A failure to:

• Learn from the past
• Adapt to changing conditions
• Predict probable future problems and take preventative action

Can you legitimately expect your partner to treat you better than you treat him/her?

The hardest part of therapy is accepting you will need to improve your response to a problem (how you think about it, feel about it, or what to do about it).

Communication
The three most important qualities for effective communication are respect, openness and persistence.

It is essential for you to let your partner know what you think, feel and are concerned about. Partners can’t appreciate what they don’t understand, and people cannot read each other’s minds.

Most of the ineffective things we do in relationships fall into just a few categories:

• Blame or attempt to dominate
• Disengage / withdraw
• Become resentfully compliant
• Whine
• Denial or confusion

Effective communication means paying attention to:

• Managing unruly emotions, such as intense anger
• How you are communicating – whining, blaming, being vague, etc.
• What you want from your partner during the discussion
• What the problem symbolizes to you
• The outcome you want from the discussion
• Your partner’s major concerns
• How you can help your partner become more responsive to you
• The beliefs and attitudes you have about the problem

adapted from “How To Get The Most From Couples Therapy” by Ellen Bader, Ph.D. and Peter Pearson, Ph.D. http://www.couplesinstitute.com

Anne Aja, Ed.D.

I use a puzzle metaphor to explain various aspects of the therapeutic process.

What takes place in treatment is similar to putting together a puzzle.  There’s a catch to the whole process though.  It’s as if we have all kinds of puzzle pieces for a puzzle and we don’t have the original picture from the puzzle box to guide us.  There is something very interesting about the mind along these lines.  It has been examined from Gestalt psychology with a process that is called “closure.”  The idea of closure is that the mind fills in the gaps to produce a “unified whole” or a Gestalt.   As we’re putting together the puzzle pieces about how you can become the person you want to become, more of the picture is obtained.  There is a point at which adding just one more puzzle piece allows the mind to form a Gestalt and mentally see the final outcome.  Once that happens, everything becomes clear as to the direction needed.

And this process also takes place on an unconscious level.  The mind has built in self-corrective measures and begins searching for these corrective measures during psychotherapy.  Automatically, while we are asleep and dreaming, or we are staring off into space thinking about nothing in particular, the mind continues this process.

I also use this metaphor to explain why some people are able to change rather rapidly and others take much longer.

Some people’s problems are like a puzzle that a young child might be able to put together.  It may only have 8 pieces, and it only takes putting a couple of pieces together to get the Gestalt of the picture.  Others are like a 1000 piece puzzle.  This type of puzzle takes a great deal more searching, effort, and trial and error.  It takes longer to be able to get that feeling of making progress.  It takes longer to get the Gestalt of the picture.

Each individual has his or her own unique way of changing.  Some patient’s will put most of the puzzle together before they make a single change.  They have to know what the full picture is before they feel comfortable in changing.  Sometimes this process happens completely unconsciously.  Others are very deliberate, and utilize a great deal of conscious effort in placing each piece and make a shift or change with each piece that is connected.

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