Manchester Psychotherapy

Counselling in Manchester

Imago Relationship Therapy – Validation

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gay affirmative therapy in ManchesterThis is the fifth article in a series of posts I am writing about the Imago dialogue process. The Imago dialogue process is the core of Imago relationship therapy. It is the trunk of the Imago tree! I use Imago Relationship Therapy for counselling couples in Manchester because it works. If you are prepared to put in the effort to do things differently then Imago dialogue can give you a fantastic framework to connect with your partner instead of slipping into argument.

As a quick recap, I have already talked about the roles each partner takes in the dialogue process. One is the receiver and the other the sender. This means that one partner gets to talk and the other listens carefully using mirroring. The sender sends thoughts and feelings in chunks to the receiver and the receiver mirrors these back carefully checking that the mirroring is accurate with “did I get you?”. The receiver is then invited to say more with “is there more?”

Once the sender has finished talking about a topic then the receiver will summarize what (s)he heard endeavoring to capture the essence of what they heard. You can read more about any of those stages by checking out the relevant article.

The next stage of the process is validation. This may sound like

“you make sense, and what makes sense is…….”

A variation of this may be “I understand that you …given that….”. Let’s have a look at why validation is important in a relationship.

Go back to your childhood and think about how many times you were invalidated as you grew up. Since training in Imago Relationship therapy how I validate my own children has come into my awareness very clearly and I have a great example of what happens to kids on an almost daily basis. Let me set the scene. I’m at home on a winter’s day, the heating is blasting out and I’m feeling rather toasty warm. My five year old daughter turns round to me and says “Daddy, I’m going to put my jumper on, I’m cold”. My brain starts to work and parent mode clicks in. My thought process lines up the next sentence that I need to send to my daughter. I’m warm, in fact I’m rather hot so she must be hot too – it’s obvious, she has got how she feels completely wrong! The sentence is all lined up….”you’re not cold, you’re hot and so you’re not putting your jumper on”.

Fortunately I’m now more aware of validation and I’m starting to realise that I am me and other people are other people. This means that it’s perfectly possible for my daughter to be cold when I am hot…go figure! I say “Ok darling if that’s what you want to do” and she is validated. This all happens in a tenth of a second and it shows how we naturally dismiss the feelings of our children and were dismissed by our parents when we were kids.

We also do this with our partners. Your partner is annoyed when you have the TV on loudly? How can they be, that’s how you like the TV so they must like it too! Your partner hates the dishes piling up around the kitchen? Impossible! You like it just fine!! I’m sure you’re getting the drift.

We are separate from our partners and so when they are expressing their feelings in the dialogue process about something they don’t like then by validating it you are recognizing that their frustration is legitimate and makes perfect sense.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that when we validate our partner it is not the same as agreeing with them. It’s about sending the message to them that they see the world differently from you and you get why they see it as they do.

If you want to read the original book, Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix, just click on the link to be taken to Amazon.

Imago Relationship Therapy – The Receiver

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couples therapy in didsburyWhen couples come for marriage counselling with me they are often struck by how different Imago Dialogue is to the way we normally speak to our partner. In this series of articles I intend to take each part of the Imago dialogue process and explain why it’s done in this way and how it can transform your relationship. Before I start the articles I want to acknowledge both Harville Hendrix, the founder of Imago Relationship Therapy and my trainer Sophie Slade, who has provided me with many of the metaphors that are included in these articles. Thanks to both of them for such brilliance.

What is Imago Dialogue?

Imago dialogue is a different way of communicating with your partner. It involves three steps and two roles. In this article I will talk about the role of the receiver.

The Receiver.

One of the great metaphors in Imago is that of the two Islands. Imagine that you are on one Island and your partner is on another. There are no mobile phones, no computers with skype, no way to communicate with each other apart from that rowing boat you see pulled up on the beach (perish the thought eh!!). If you want to talk to your partner then you have to get in your boat and row over to their Island.

Now their Island looks very different to yours. They see things from a different perspective and they have had different experiences to you. It’s your job when you are over on their island to fully understand how things look for them. We call this role in the dialogue the receiver. The receiver is the one who is doing the listening.

As the receiver you are paying attention completely to what the sender is saying. The aim is for you to be really curious. What’s it like on their island? How do they see things?

What’s the reason for doing dialogue this way?

Think about how we usually communicate with our partner. We assume so much. We assume they see things just like we do and often that we know what they are thinking and feeling. We also assume that we know why they are doing things and often that they are doing it in that way just to annoy us, right?!

The dialogue process takes us away from that position. It allows us to separate ourselves from our partner. You are you and they are themselves – different and equally valid. Immediately this gives us permission to be ourselves and takes a huge amount of pressure off the relationship. You no longer have to expend energy attempting to understand why your partner has made their decisions and how you can get them to make a different one. They made the decision they made because they thought it was the best one at the time and they are not you!!

As the receiver your job is just to mirror, validate and empathise (more about these steps in future posts). You are completely over on your partner’s island so it’s all about them and not about you. This gives you permission to concentrate fully on them and not have to sit there trying to work out how you are going to respond. Once more this frees you up to be present for your partner in a completely new way.

There are great advantages for the sender too. The sender will have everything they say mirrored by the receiver and will be able to tell if their partner is listening carefully. This cuts out any chance that you end up in that place where one partner says “I’ve been telling you how I feel but you’ve not heard a word I’m saying!” – (more on the sender in this post)

Don’t Panic!

As the receiver you may well have feelings that come up for you whilst you are listening to your partner speak. You may feel angry about what your partner is saying and feel the need to answer back or defend yourself – so here’s an opportunity for growth! To be able to sit with your feelings and not react is a great skill indeed. John Gottman names defensiveness as one of the four horsemen of divorce. If you can learn that you are not going to die if you don’t give your partner a gob full back when they say something you don’t like then you are one step closer to a conscious relationship.

You can also be aware that you will not stay as the receiver forever. Once the sender has finished sending then it’s your turn to send. You can have your opportunity to express your thoughts and feelings to your partner in a safe, measured way, avoiding all of the other horsemen which have the potential to trample all over your other half!

Want to read the book?  Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix explains Imago Relationship Therapy in full – relationship changing stuff!

5 Reasons To Have Pre-marriage Counselling Before Getting Married

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pre-marriage counselling manchesterI read with great interest last week that Prince William and Kate Middleton are to have premarital counselling before they get married in April. They will receive this counselling from the Bishop of London, Dr. Richard Chartres, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams. This is a couple that will have enormous pressure placed on their marriage.  From having their relationship analysed, dissected and speculated about endlessly in the press and by demanding jobs that require long periods of time away from each other, I guess they are going to need all the help and support they can get.

But what about us ordinary mortals? Why should we bother with marriage counselling before we are even married?  Having worked with couples in crisis it is becoming more and more apparent to me that learning “relationship skills” at the beginning of the journey can save a great deal of pain, upset and distress further down the road.

In this post I will outline five reasons I think all couples, straight or gay, who intend to make a long term commitment to each other should consider premarital counselling.

  1. Pre-marriage counselling can teach you how to talk to each other. The central focus of my work with couples is teaching them how to talk to each other so both can stay safe, both feel heard and both learn to listen. Learning these skills at any stage of the relationship is going to be transformative. Why not learn it at the beginning rather than when things get tough? I teach couples Imago couples dialogue to do this, other therapists may use different techniques.
  2. Pre-marriage counselling can explain why you chose each other in the first place. In Imago Relationship Therapy, the theory is that we choose our partner to allow ourselves to heal childhood wounds. In order to do this we have to choose someone with both good and bad attributes of our parents and key influencers in childhood (read more about this in Dr. Adam Sheck’s post here) .  The down side of this is that once we have made the commitment to stay in a relationship, such as marriage, it’s likely that we are going to start noticing the negative stuff our partner displays more than the positive stuff. If we have had pre-marriage counselling and understand this will happen and why it will happen, it allows us to ride it out and appreciate that it’s at this point in our relationship that we have our best opportunity for growth.
  3. You learn about what events in the journey are likely to test you out as a couple. For straight couples this could be the birth of the first child or a new role as a step-parent, for gay couples it may be dealing with family pressures or how to manage homophobia directed your way as a couple. What ever it is, pre-marriage counselling gives you a “heads up” and creates a space for you to plan some strategies to put in place should the issue come your way.
  4. You will learn about how to resolve disagreements. We all learnt strategies to get our needs met as children. As adults these strategies may not be appropriate any more. Pre-marital counselling teaches how to deal with differences of opinion or even downright disagreements. In Imago Relationship Therapy the technique you would learn to do this is called a “behaviour change request”. It’s a safe way of communicating your needs and desires to your partner and listening in turn to theirs. It gives both partners the information needed to change their behaviour as a gift for their partner.
  5. You get to express your feelings of love and affection for your partner. That’s why you’re making a long term commitment to each other in the first place right? In Imago “appreciation dialogues” give the opportunity to thank your partner for things they have done for you that you’re really liked and just outright tell your partner how great they are! If you can get into that habit at the beginning of your relationship, you’re on the road to success straight away!

Premarital counselling is much more common in the USA than in the UK and I would love to change that. It amazes me that we go into something as important as marriage or civil partnership without preparing in any way for the emotional difficulties that are inevitable in a long term union with another human being. So, for the price of a wedding cake, go invest in a pre-marriage workshop or set of counselling sessions in your local area – it may be the best investment you could ever make.