Manchester Psychotherapy

Counselling in Manchester

What To Expect From Couples Counselling

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what to expect from couples counselling in ManchesterMany people are unsure of what to expect when they come for couples counselling.  In this post I will outline what you can expect if you work with me at Manchester Psychotherapy.  I use Imago Relationship Therapy in all my sessions.  Imago Relationship Therapy presumes that you are both OK, you both have needs that you are trying to get met, and that you are both well matched to help your partner get their needs met.

One thing I will not be doing is allowing you to come and spend time arguing.  You probably do lots of that at home and there is no point paying me to watch you do it!  The vast majority of the time you will be in dialogue with each other and I will be guiding you.

A typical session will look like this:

Arrival – focusing on getting you grounded and ready to listen to your partner.

Intentions – What do you want to achieve from this session?  How do you need to be to achieve it?

Dialogue – One partner will talk (we call this sending) and the other will listen (we call this receiving).  The receiver will mirror what the sender has said back to them, validate and empathise.  Can you imagine what that feels like?  Your partner will be listening to every word you say and mirroring it back – demonstrating that they really were listening.  Contrast this with the diatribe that usually happens in a relationship where one person talks then the other person talks back, usually invalidating what their partner has just said. Being listened to, validated and understood feels fantastic! Once the sender has finished sending the roles are swapped and the receiver now sends, often responding to what they have just heard from their partner.

When sending the focus is on owning feelings, staying away from blame and keeping your partner safe.  Senders use “I feel” statements or “the story I’m telling myself..” sentences to do this.  It’s my job as the therapist to make sure both partners do not feel attacked or criticised.

Towards the end of the session couples will move into appreciation dialogues – what they like about their partner either during the session or out of it.  This brings the positive into your awareness and reminds the couple of why they are together in the first place.

If you are in couples therapy then about 90% of what you have in your relationship is likely to be working.  The trouble is that we often can only see the 10% that’s not, just like a sore toe can make our whole body feel rotten.  Imago Relationship Therapy aims to bring that 90% back into your awareness.

So how do couples resolve disagreements in Imago Relationship Therapy?  When partners have things they want their other half to change the dialogue process will focus on “behaviour change requests”.  This is a way of dialoguing about something that you want done differently in your relationship and explaining what feelings go on for you when your partner behaves in that way.  These feelings are often linked to childhood and so there is some exploration of that area too.  Once the information about the issue has been sent the sender will also suggest ways in which their partner can do things differently. The receiver gets to choose which ones they may be able to “stretch into”.  If the receiver can’t see any other way of doing things then they couple will dialogue about that.

I’m sure you appreciate that this post can only cover the bare bones of what happens in a session. Imago Relationship Therapy provides an effective way of structuring couples therapy and keeps the process safe for both partners.  It’s about healing the wounds and bringing you together.  There is no sitting around slagging your partner off to the therapist or wallowing in all the bad things that have happened between you.  The aim is for you to be leaving the session feeling more positive about your relationship than when you came.  There will be times when you want to dialogue about painful events in your relationship and this will be done in a way that your partner can really listen, stay safe and avoid defensiveness.  By doing this wounds start to heal and the couple learn that their partner is an essential key to their own growth and happiness.

I’m going to finish this article by stating that I love doing Couples counselling, I feel passionate about it.  I think the Imago Relationship Therapy model I use is beautiful and I love seeing the couples I work with connecting with each other on a deep level whilst using it.  If your relationship is under pressure then I would love to work with you to help you realise the great relationship you could have too.

Imago Relationship Therapy – Empathy

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relationship therapy in ManchesterIn this series of article I have been discussing my view of the Imago Relationship Therapy Dialogue process. This process forms the core of all Imago work and the first thing I will teach when couples counselling. The framework is there to provide safety for both members of the couple. When we feel safe within our relationship we have full access to all parts of our brains land we are less likely to revert back to survival behaviour such as shouting (fight), withdrawing (flight) or stonewalling (freeze).

I have explained each stage of the process in detail in previous articles but as a quick recap they are;

Making an appointment

Sticking to your role, either sender or receiver

When the sender has finished a send, the receiver mirrors and checks the mirror using “I heard you say”, “did I get you?” and “is there more?” questions

When the sender has finished the send the receiver summarises, validates and empathises.

This last article in the series is about empathising with your partner. Once more in the dialogue process you will be doing something the opposite way to how you usually behave in an argument. Usually it’s all about how you feel, how you are angry, sad, disappointed etc. Your partner will also be focusing on how they feel. In Imago terms you are both on your own Island and there is a huge gulf between you. With imago when you empathise with your partner you are going over to their island and checking out how they might be feeling. You are moving over to their world and this encourages connection.

How might this look? Well imagine your partner has just sent that they are annoyed at your constant lateness. You have summarised and validated their feelings. The empathy stage is to simply have a guess at how they might be feeling “I guess you might be feeling frustrated, is that how you feel?” You may or may not choose the correct feeling and as long as you have had a serious attempt at empathising with them it doesn’t really matter whether you have guessed correctly or not.

The sender will then agree or clarify what feelings are happening for them. This stage also encourages you both to talk about your feelings. If I’m going to point the finger I would have to say that us men are pretty rubbish about discussing feelings and that makes sense given that we have covert and sometimes overt messages as we grow up from numerous sources that we should “be strong” and not tell people how we feel. The empathy stage of the dialogue process encourages sharing of feelings and breaks this pattern.

Once all stages have been completed then the couple swap roles, the sender becomes the receiver and vice versa. You may think that this is a slow way to have a conversation but I disagree. If you take into account the several hours of bad feeling, sulking and withdrawing that often results from a badly ending argument done without using the imago dialogue process then the imago way looks positively sprightly. Discuss, move closer, understand each other and built a stronger relationship.

Read the book: Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix explains the Imago relationship theory in full.  It’s an easy read and will help you understand how to move from the power struggle to a conscious relationship.

Imago Relationship Therapy – Mirroring

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Imago Relationship Therapy Manchester MirroringMirroring is a fundamental skill in the Imago dialogue process. In this article, I will explore the why’s and wherefores of mirroring and I hope to give you some insight to its importance in the process. If you have marriage counselling with me then you will have heard much of this before in the session, if not I hope the post helps!

Why mirror?

When you are the receiver in the couple’s dialogue process your role is to mirror back what you have just heard your partner say. The mirror is important because it makes sure that what you heard and what was said are the same. “How could they not be?” I hear you say. Let’s take the following example;

Sender: “I make up in my head that you are interested in another man”

Receiver “So I heard you say that you are accusing me of having an affair”

The receiver put his own spin on what was said by the sender and made the sentence into something that it was not. We do this frequently in conversations with our loved ones, especially if they are becoming heated. The mirror prevents this and encourages us to stay on our partner’s island.

Did I get you?

A better mirror for this sender would be;

Receiver “I hear you say that you make up in your head that I am interested in other men. Did I get you?”

In this example we are staying on our partner’s island and seeing what the world looks like for them. They are different to us. They are separate and they think differently. The last part of the sentence is essential to the process. “Did I get you?” Notice the words. “Did I get you?” means exactly that. It’s more about understanding where your partner is coming from than repeating the words back exactly. It’s asking “am I in tune with you?”

Next steps

Next we go to the sender. The sender will either confirm “yes, you got me” or resend the parts of the send that were missed “you got most of it; I’d like to resend this bit more clearly….”

It’s important that the sender checks that what was sent was mirrored accurately and corrects it if it was not (in the nicest possible way of course, after all, if you are having someone come visit you on your Island you don’t want to sucker punch them in the guts, they’re unlikely to want to come back if you do!)

Once the send is confirmed as correct then the receiver will ask “is there more?”

Is there more?

Ah those beautiful words! “Is there more?” When you say these words to your partner as the receiver you are asking to be taken further into their world. You are giving them an opportunity to explore their thoughts and feelings about the issue to a deeper level. As the dialogue deepens then the connection between you and your partner does too. You get to find out what it’s like being them and empathise with the thoughts and feelings they are having. This puts the frustration they may be having with you in context.

The next two stages of the process of Imago dialogue are validation and empathy. I will talk about them in the next article in this series. Until then, if you have any questions about the Imago process or any thoughts or observations please get in touch using the comment box below and let’s dialogue about it!

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