No Problem Is Big Enough To Figure Out

Communication problems are by far the most common reason that couples come in for counseling. However, learning new communication skills does not always address the true cause of their problem.It is the person’s inability to use the skill with his or her partner.

Julie and Greg lived in Sacramento. He worked as a computer programmer and she was in graduate school to become a teacher. Julie’s mother had died three months earlier and she was struggling to do well at school, hold her job and deal with some pretty complicated feelings.

Tim Desmond offers phone counseling and training for therapists through his website http://www.coherencecounseling.com.

I wondered what they hoped to get from therapy, and wondered if they might have two very different goals in coming to see me. It is important for me to understand this first and get a lot of clarity about what each of them are hoping for.

Greg was in agreement with this, but said that he would be happy to try anything new that might keep them together.

I began wondering about why some people want to be with their partner when they are under a lot of stress while others want to be alone. It seemed to me that Julie felt under tremendous stress and sought to feel better by taking a break from the pressures of a relationship. I asked her to stay with that feeling and to say to Greg, “I just can’t stay with you…” and let the sentence finish itself without pre-thinking an ending. She said, “I just can’t stay with you because there is too much pressure.” I asked to continue with the sentence and she said, “I just can’t stay with you because there is too much pressure and I’ll pop.” I then asked her to stay in that feeling and finish the sentence, “There is too much pressure because…” She immediate exclaimed “Because I can’t be myself.”

I asked him to stay with that feeling and try saying to Julie, “If I don’t try to change you.” and let the sentence finish itself. He said that he didn’t feel like he was trying to change her, so we changed his sentence to say, “If I just allow you to feel this way and do nothing, then…” He took a few deep breaths and said, “If I just let you feel this way, you will never get better and you will be depressed forever.”

They were both pretty shocked and disoriented as we unpacked what we had discovered and I summarized it on a notecard for them to read each day. I asked them to correct me and make sure that the words we chose were complete true.

In a follow up call five months later, Greg told me that he had realized how much pressure he had been putting on Julie to get better and that he had been able to start feeling more comfortable when she felt distressed. He said the relationship was more secure than it ever had been and felt that our session had been largely responsible for the change.

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