6 Personality Adaptations and 3 Doors: a model for knowing where to connect with your clients
What can we do when partners show resistance to our interventions? This is a question that came up recently in my online training group, when a therapist presented a case with several thorny challenges. Her questions led me to remember a set of concepts I learned early in my career. These ideas came originally from […]
How to prevent teen dating violence
by Dr. Alazne Aizpitarte Psychologist & Family and Couple Therapist. Researcher in Teen Dating Violence. When we hear of “intimate partner violence,” what suddenly comes to mind are beatings, bruises, or rapes. But it is not this type of severe physical or sexual behavior which characterizes the majority of cases of violence in teen couples, […]
6 Steps to Developing Leadership in Couples Therapy
If I could recommend just one skill for you to develop to become a successful couples therapist, it would be leadership. Leadership is the number one skill that gets your work off to a strong start and allows you to manage almost anything in your office. However, you can’t be a strong leader if you […]
A Closer Look at Early Differentiation
What is real developmental progress? How do we recognize and support it? Many couples in therapy are starting to move from the symbiotic stage into early differentiation. It’s not the kind of progress that comes with fanfare and celebration. In fact, the couples might not even recognize their progress. So it’s especially helpful for you […]
A Developmental Model for Healthy Couples
Throughout my experience as a couples therapist, I’ve observed that couples relationships typically progress through 5 normal and predictable stages. In healthy relationships, a couple’s development closely parallels the stages of early childhood development originally conceptualized by Drs. Margaret Mahler and Fred Pine. In what ways are these developmental processes similar? And how does understanding […]
Quotable Moments From Recent Conferences
This spring I presented keynotes and workshops at The Couples Conference in Oakland and at a UCLA conference called Relationships and the Health-Promoting Power of Connection Across the Lifespan. Both events featured faculty that trained, enlightened and entertained participants. I’m still reviewing in my mind some of the great things I heard there. And I […]
Searching for Intimacy and Aliveness
Here is the transcript I promised you in my most recent blog post, “Moving Couples Through Defense and Ambivalence Toward Intimacy.” In that blog post I said that when I hear clients “intellectualizing” a desire for intimacy, it’s an indicator that they’re in the “Adult-ego state,” and probably covering vulnerability and fear. This transcript demonstrates […]
Moving Couples Through Defense and Ambivalence Toward Intimacy
It’s easy for partners to say, “I want more intimacy” while having no idea what they mean and no history of expressing their desires to one another. They may be afraid to pursue what it is they really want. Or perhaps they don’t really know what it is. Clients often mask this ambivalence by talking […]
When Circumstances Complicate Developmental Stages
A trainee in my Developmental Model training class asked me the following question: “Can you speak a little bit about the nature of the stages of development? Do you think of them as true stages? For example, can one regress to an earlier stage?” That’s a great question. When couples come in, usually the developmental […]
Integrating Goals and Growth in Couples Therapy
The other day, a therapist in my Developmental Model training program asked me the following:“How do you integrate a couple’s goals for therapy with the specific developmental tasks that a couple needs to accomplish?” I want to be direct and collaborative about this with the couple. Once I get a sense of the stage, I want to […]
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