Tag: communication

I’ve heard you mention the 4 Horsemen that rear their ugly heads for couples. Tell me a little bit about that?

That is coined by the Gottman’s and the Gottman’s are therapists who have been studying couples for over 30 years in what they call their “Love Lab.” I’ve done some training in Gottman and basically the 4 Horsemen are ways that couple communicate. Like you said they rear their ugly head in discussions between couples. It’s actually one of the biggest predictors of divorce. The 4 Horsemen are defensiveness, criticism, contempt and stonewalling. Defensiveness is defensiveness, the way that I put it is an inability to accept what the other person is saying for what it is. One person says something and the other person takes it as a personal attack and feels like they have to defend themselves.

Criticism is finding weaknesses in your partner or faults in your partner and really bringing them into light, especially during a discussion or an argument. It could be subtle, it could just be something as simple as, “Are you really going to wear those shoes or are you really going to wear your hair like that?” Where it’s really subtle, but enough of those throughout a relationship and it really tears you down. Contempt is being contemptuous, not very nice. Stonewalling, which I think is the biggest predictor of divorce because when couples get to that it’s going to take a lot of effort to repair. Stonewalling basically they shut down. One person starts wanting to connect, wanting to talk about something. The partner pretty much ignores the situation.

Once it gets to that, like I said the repair is really more challenging because the partner has to, number one accept that they’re doing that. Number 2 have the willingness and motivation to repair it and to catch themselves when they’re doing it. With these 4 Horsemen, when the couples are communicating, they have to be aware of when they’re doing this. Then there’s ways of repairing it. Instead of criticizing they’re going to talk about what it is that’s making them uncomfortable. Instead of doing a personal attack on the partner. Instead of stonewalling they’re going to engage. These are just definitely some of the things I see in couples communication that’s really a big predictor of where their relationship is.

In the Gottman research it’s shown that in order for couples to have healthy conflict, there needs to be 5 positive interactions for every negative interaction. Now that’s a tall order! When I tell a couple that they look at me like I have 3 heads. That’s really key. A lot of this is very conscious work. When a couple comes into therapy to repair is they have to be all in. They’re going to have to do a lot of thinking about their thinking and thinking about their talking.

Can you recommend a technique to help improve communication?

I think active listening is one of the most important techniques. Like I’ve said before that hearing and listening are 2 different things. I could hear the words but not really listen to what they mean. Active listening is a lot of repetition of what the partner is saying, saying things in very short sentences, so not going on for 10 minutes because a lot of times people get lost in all of the words, so really minimizing the length of when we’re talking and then having the partner repeat that. If they didn’t get the whole thing, asking for clarification, saying, “This is what I heard. Is that correct?” Then the other person would say, “Yes, that’s exactly what I said.” Or, “No, this was really the essence of it.” It’s really about getting to the essence of what the person wants to communicate.

Another technique that they do in Imago Therapy is called PMS. That’s when we want to communicate a request. A lot of the thinking is black or white. He never does this, or she never does that, or I want him to do this, and that could be very overwhelming for someone. PMS stands for Positive, Measured, and Specific. An example of that would be I would like to have dinner with you twice a week for the next week. That doesn’t seem very overwhelming because it’s very specific, it’s a positive request, and it’s measurable. It has a beginning and an end, instead of, “We need to have dinner together more often.”

Or we never eat together!!

Or we never eat together, exactly. Those are just 2 ways that communication can improve and it’s setting these little tidbits of tools. Basically, the way that I describe it to my couples is you guys come in here and you don’t have a toolbox. We create a toolbox and every session, you get another tool and you get another tool, and sometimes you get 2 or 3 tools in 1 session. When you’re home and that’s why this is a conscious process, and it does take work, and I always say, “The therapy doesn’t necessarily happen in the hour that you’re in my session. The therapy happens when you walk out my door and then you start implementing some of the stuff that we’ve talked about, but now you have a toolbox. You have active listening. You have a learning how to do a request. You know how to cross over to another person’s world and listen to where they’re coming from. You’re able to trust and you know what you’re feeling to be able to express that better. Each session builds, they build on each other.

Recently, I saw a couple that has been married for 12 years and have 2 children.  The husband presented his issue to me as: “ we are having difficulty communicating and we need to rekindle our relationship”. This issue is not unique to this couple, in fact many of the couples I see experience this very similar problem and as a therapist my goal is to bridge the communication gap.

Communicating in general can be difficult; now add fears of abandonment, rejection, and judgment from your partner and you have a recipe for communication exhaustion. I often hear, “I’m tired., I don’t feel understood. He/She doesn’t get me. Etc..”, from many of my patients. By the time couples get to therapy they feel like they are in 2 different worlds.

The expressions of fear, tension, loneliness and anger that I felt in the room when I met with this couple, are all too common. With this particular couple they stated that they began to see issues of communication arise “after the children”.  What I see occur many times in relationships is that once children are introduced, couples often begin to put their relationship second.I truly believe that if a couple does not put their relationship first, trouble is just around the corner. Why you ask, because our primary relationship is with our partners, not our children.

When trying to repair a relationship in couples therapy, we must ask ourselves why do we choose to be in a partnership? The answers are often: for support, love, mutual respect, knowing we can depend on someone to be a witnessin our accomplishments etc. When kids come along it’s very easy to forget that our partner still has needs. I also find that couples feel as if their partner’s support is gone, the love has been replaced with taking care of the children, their needs aren’t respected and they have no witness.  These feelings are even more conflicted when partners stay silent, or when one partner does bring it up and the other will become defensive.

In therapy my goal is to teach partners to listen to feelings, to look beyond the details or requests, and hear for the emotion. I find that when couples start hearing emotions there is a tremendous shift in energy. Couples will begin to come from a place of love and realization that they are on the same team. At the end of the day, isn’t that what we all want; a teammate to work towards the goal. What is the goal we are talking about here? Goals are couple specific and this is a question that I help my patients answer and come to agreement to. In therapy we develop a goal and then delineate specific steps to get there. Every couple has different goals; however, some common goals are around true intimacy, better communication, and a more fulfilling sex life.

If the goal is better communication, the couple is given exercises to briefly discuss their feelings about a particular situation and listen for the underlying feeling. This hones in on a language of validation and much needed clarity.

In my next post I will discuss how to take steps towards better intimacy and communication, so stay tuned.

If you have any questions regarding how to improve intimacy in your relationship, feel free to email me at: Charlene@soundmindmiami.com and I may address your question in my next post.

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