"Individual" Couples Therapy

What is “individual” couples therapy and how does it work?

It’s a form of working on a relationship with only one person in the room. This can happen when one person is in treatment and they want to deal with their relationship without the other person. Or, it may be that one person wants couple therapy but the other person does not want to come in at this time. The purpose is to enable the individual to have more influence in their relationship.

For example, what if you feel that you are not heard, and that whatever you’re saying is going to deaf ears, and you’re not getting anywhere? It's really frustrating. 

Often I am able to create a little “script,” not something you memorize, just an example of ways that you can approach your partner. I am usually able to do this once I have an idea about where you’re at and what you tell me about the dynamic with your partner. We talk together to modify this “script” so that it feels natural and right. Theoretically, this can have the effect of making a conversation go in a more effective way, to enable you to you feel heard and to become able to influence your partner. I say “theoretically” for a reason!

There is a goal in couples therapy to “come from love” when speaking to a partner or at the very least remember you’re stuck with still having to live with them!

Sometimes this “script” sounds really good on paper but you feel so hurt and/or angry after years of painful interactions that there is no way you can go back and say lovely, even influential things to your partner. 

In the individual setting, you have the opportunity to vent as well as to unpack all the background  and the reasons why you have no inclination to say nice things at this time to your partner– even if it’s in your best interest. You’re way too overwhelmed with all the feelings and you’d have to gloss over them in order to speak this way. Or worse, you have to swallow them, which maybe has been your coping strategy for a long time. This is not helpful to you! Therefore, in the quiet of the therapy room, you get to say out loud all the things you want and need to be heard, and how you feel about them. Maybe you benefit from  going back and thinking about their origins earlier in life, how this became embedded and is now showing up in the relationship. You get to look dispassionately at what brought you together in the first place. This sets the stage for being able to talk productively in “real life” with your partner. 

This is important in the “individual” couples treatment as people often feel that if they said out loud to their partner, “when you criticize me it brings me back to my dad doing it and how hurt and outraged and helpless I felt,” and saying that leaves them open to the partner saying, “yeah, this is about your dad, not me.” Which would be invalidating and make things worse. So what one chooses to say out loud in real life with the partner has to be thought through carefully in the individual setting.

It’s a process; you try out a new behavior, report back, and if it works, fantastic. If not, we analyze why and make a new plan. I have found this type of ongoing work to be extremely therapeutic for the individual, and ultimately, for the couple— even though it was done indirectly.

WHAT DO BRUCE LEE AND FREUD HAVE IN COMMON? SMARTS ABOUT LIVING THE EVOLVED LIFE

I always knew that Freud had plenty to say about the human condition, but when I found out that Bruce Lee did as well, I thought they were both worth sharing.

Bruce: Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water.

Sigmund: Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

BL: Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own.

SF: From error to error, one discovers the entire truth.

BL: Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

SF: A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes, but to get into accord with them; they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.

BL: The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.

SF: The only person with whom you have to compare yourself is you in the past.

BL: Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

SF: The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.

BL: The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

SF: Thought is action in rehearsal.

BL: If you don’t want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.

SF: In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart.

BL: If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

SF: The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

BL: To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.

SF: The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside.

THE JUBILATION OF MEETING IN PERSON

How freeing and joyous it is to be free to meet in person! At last! We get to be with each other three dimensionally instead of two dimensionally! It makes such a difference. There are two real life people in the room instead of two disembodied heads in each person’s remote room.

It’s true that Zoom, FaceTime, and other such platforms ARE convenient. We’ve all experienced this, and it has been and can be a godsend.

However, the therapy office provides such a restful, relaxed, and opportune space in which to have therapy. It’s decidedly not your car. It’s quiet and private and feels like a sanctuary. It IS a sanctuary. It’s removed from all the normal hustle and bustle. There are no distractions to put away those clothes that were strewn around the room, to straighten the art on the wall, dust the cabinet, respond to texts and emails, etc., etc., etc. It’s really just about you. Having that opportunity to focus only on you magnifies the effect of therapy. 

There’s also the space provided by coming to the office before and by leaving after. There’s a place to transition from the outside world to the internal one: the waiting room. There’s breathing room to digest what went on in the session during the time one leaves and is on their way to get to the next place. That’s important because what gets stirred up in the meeting develops a life of its own which keeps on deepening long after the formal session ends.

PTSE: Pandemic Trauma and Stress Experience

The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) has come out with a description of the “normal abnormal” stress that the Pandemic has induced. Here’s what they say:

PTSE can be caused by having to adapt to a prolonged “pandemic way of life”, filled with uncertainty, fear, and loss. We see that grief over what’s been lost, concerns about how to navigate pandemic life, and relentless worry about the future can increase our experiences of depression, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, relational conflicts, substance abuse or misuse, and even violence.

“All of us are experiencing some level of PTSE,” said Todd Essig, co-chair of APsaA’s COVID-19 Advisory Task force. “However, our responses can range from subtle to serious and are different for different people. In fact, while features often reflect the harmful consequences of accumulating stress and trauma, some individuals and communities respond with resilience, altruism, creativity, and by building stronger relationships and neighborhoods in the face of such an experience.”

By outlining the various responses to COVID-19, APsaA hopes to distinguish PTSE from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a diagnosable mental disorder for which PTSE is frequently confused.

What PTSE Looks Like:

For individuals:

• Fear of catching COVID and getting sick

• Fear of giving COVID to others

• Worry about scheduling or finding a way to get the vaccine

• Worry the vaccine will cause COVID, won’t work, or won’t last

• Fear for the future, weariness for the present, and grief for a lost past

• Increased frustration and despair

• Increased withdrawal, isolation, and fear of others as a source of infection

• A grinding weariness and decreased attention to personal and public safety

• Loss of focus, both on specific tasks as well as general goals

• Increased mental mistakes, a kind of fuzzy thinking

• Hypervigilance to potential loss, injury, and illness

• Realistic worries about finances

• Disruptions of normal patterns of behavior

• Closer family ties and reliance on friends

• Increased altruism, including worry about others

For individuals with a positive test

• Fear of dying alone

• Fear of infecting loved ones

• Fear of or adaptation to mental or physical long-term effects

• Loss of income

• Fear of being isolated and ostracized

• Enhanced responsibility to protect others by not transmitting COVID-19

For communities

• Increased fear, xenophobia, violence

• Worry the vaccine won’t be distributed fairly across racial, gender, ethnic groups

• Decreased community cohesion for some communities

• Loss of financial and human resources

• Overburdened infrastructure

• Cultural disruptions

• Increased volunteerism and community cohesion

• Expanded entrepreneurial and creative activities

• Growth in political and social engagement

“It is important to understand that PTSE is not a diagnosis or disorder. It is a shared community phenomenon centered on adapting together,” said Jeff Taxman, member of APsaA and the COVID-19 Advisory Task Force. “However, if you are overwhelmed by loneliness, worry, or sadness you should ask for help when needed and accept help when it is offered.”

Fear and confusion about the coronavirus pandemic can be overwhelming and affect our mental health. Learn more about Pandemic Trauma and Stress Experience (PTSE). High levels of stress can also weaken our immune systems, making us more susceptible to physical illnesses. So while it is normal, in fact adaptive, to have some level of anxiety about coronavirus, fear of the unknown, nonstop news coverage, misinformation, physical distancing/isolation, and video footage of empty shelves at grocery stores can increase anxiety to unhealthy levels.

Talking helps, even if it seems like it's "only a first world problem"

You freaked out when you spilled your specially brewed coffee all over the bottom of the fridge. Then you got upset about being upset. Normally, it would have just been spilt coffee; you could get more; it’s only about cleaning it up, no big deal. But you were REALLY upset and felt out of control. What’s going on?!

“I only have first world problems. People are suffering so much more than I am! Who am I to complain!?”

Does this sound familiar? Perhaps you still have a job, friends, an intact relationship.

The weirdness of the silent, undetectable threat of a virus wafting through the air and all the attendant frustration, isolation and restriction of lockdown takes a toll. Now that we’ve got the vaccine, we are in an undefined transitional period.  How long it will last? What will our work life, family life and social life look like as each week, month, and season passes? How do we plan?

This causes stress we experience in possibly unusual ways: fatigue, physical symptoms, disturbances in thinking, concentrating, and remembering; lack of motivation, large reactions to otherwise small annoyances.

How can therapy help?

Carrie says: “When I ranted to you about how I lost it when I was trying to talk to Aaron and he just kept looking at his phone, you didn’t judge me. I had felt like ‘I am just off the wall,’ but then I started to get a lot calmer as I realized how done I am with this whole lifestyle. I think I can approach him now and have a decent conversation. And I’m almost in the mood to get more exercise, haha!”  

When we put our upset into words in the presence of an understanding person, the power of the upset diminishes and sometimes even disappears. Regardless of the reality of a situation, there is a sense of mastery. Sometimes solutions just pop to the surface. Other times there is just a feeling of relief, of more stability and balance. 

TALKING HELPS. Your “first world problem” deserves attention. Period. AND, when we feel better, we can make a better contribution to those around us.

Facing the Pandemic

Surreal, nightmarish, bizarre, weird, crazy, grotesque, apocalyptic…… Can there be “opportunity” in this? Are we scraping to find the silver lining in a global crisis? It’s true that the COVID-19 Pandemic is frightening, and for good reason. It is a matter of life and death for all of us. We don’t know who may be at risk because there’s nothing you can see. Our enemy is invisible! We don’t even have a timeline to tell us, at the very least, when we will get some relief. It’s like an indefinite jail sentence. For some, it’s even like solitary confinement.

Other losses are rife--school, jobs, finances, rituals, relationships, a sense of security, and of having one’s place in the world; touching someone else and being touched. The externally imposed isolation from others is terrible for humans; we are inherently social beings. We need each other. Feeling scared, alone and lonely, angry, worried, helpless and shaky is normal. But sometimes it can become too much to cope with-- emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

This is a time when, more than ever, TALKING HELPS! We have the Internet and phones to connect us; these are a much needed blessing right now. People have shown tremendous creativity in creating ways to connect. We applaud essential workers from our windows at 7:00 PM; we share music, jokes, videos, and online games we play with each other. There are endless resources on self care. A day at a time, these methods of dealing can sustain us. In the midst of all the overload, some individuals and couples report new learning and new understanding. They are finding pockets of resilience, and making surprising gains.

However, if your efforts seem to be not enough, or if your particular circumstances threaten to overwhelm you, airing your concerns with someone able to listen with compassion and acceptance can make all the difference. People find in therapy new levels of self knowledge triggered by the shock waves of the crisis. Others have no wish to “plumb the depths” at this time but find that saying thoughts and feelings out loud helps them organize their lives more to their liking. Their usual reliable motivation to go ahead with plans for self care have gone by the wayside but the talking has helped them follow through. They report feeling more grounded, solid, and in control in spite of the rapidly changing and scary landscape we’re surrounded by.  Feel free to reach out to me to have a conversation about working together.

Coping in turbulent times

Connect with nature as much as possible. Feel the earth under your feet. Feel the breeze. Hear the water. That is the only way to regain balance and perspective.
Janet Moran

Why You Need To Try Japanese Forest Bathing
It’s where we belong.
It relieves stress.
You tap into the healing power of nature.
You unplug.
It’s a spiritual practice.
Natural beauty is a source of inspiration.
Trees actually have special healing powers.
We can learn from trees.

Five steps to forest bathing.

See the trees, the plants growing under foot, the fungi, moss and lichen. Look up, down and all around for animals hiding under rocks, in burrows, and on tree branches. Notice the colours, shapes and textures.

Hear the rustling of leaves, the bird songs, or running water. Listen for the subtle sounds.

Feel the ground beneath your feet, the strength of tree trunks, the softness of leaves, or the prickliness of pine cones.

Smell the fresh air and the evergreens. Get close and smell the flowers.

Taste pine needle or gingko leaf tea. (Be sure to accurately identify any plant you are going to taste.)

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/…/why-you-need-to-try-japanes…

How Can a Couple Possibly be Successful?

What does it take to make it as a couple? Being in a couple can seem like an impossible task. Here are two different people, whether same sex or not, from differing backgrounds, cultures, locations, upbringings, sets of life experiences, possible traumas, perhaps religion/values/education.

Best case scenario; the ideal

When a new couple comes in for therapy and both say they are committed to each other and to the work and demonstrate that very thing in the room, I know we’re in business. I know it’s for real when they listen to each other as best they can, validate each other’s feelings, know that each has a unique perspective that is bound to be different from the other, and that’s OK. In the ultimate scenario for success, they can even express admiration, recognition and appreciation for each other even when the going gets tough. A few are even capable of invoking some affectionate humor which always connects everyone in the room--even when things get tense. This is a truly masterful skill in relationships! It’s particularly masterful because it requires an ability to hold very uncomfortable feelings such as tension, fear, and anger while simultaneously moving out of that sphere and bringing in a completely different feeling state. It is a rare quality; some are born with it while some others have cultivated it on their own. However, with practice, it can be learned. Studies have shown that this dynamic is predictive of a couple staying together.