Couples and Marital Counseling:
Behavior Exchange Methods
Dr. Patrick J. Hart
Behavioral Marital Therapy Seattle
Couples and Family Relationship Counseling
Friendship is not a big thing . . .
. . . it is a million little things!
Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy (IBCT) was developed by Neil S. Jacobson and Andrew Christensen. This method of couples therapy is experimentally based, and supported by a world-view known as “Functional Contextualism.” Noteworthy in this approach is B.F. Skinner’s distinction between contingency shaped and rule governed behavior.[12]
Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy is “integrative” in at least two senses: First, it integrates the twin goals of acceptance and change as positive outcomes for couples in therapy. Couples who succeed in therapy usually make various concrete behavioral changes to attune to the needs of one-another. Partners also learn greater emotional acceptance or “psychological flexibility” in the contexts of both emotional and behavioral functioning. Second, IBCT integrates a variety of treatment strategies under a consistent behavioral theoretical framework. It is considered a third generation behavior therapy which is associated with clinical behavior analysis.
Both the integrative and traditional behavioral couples therapy models have origins primarily in behaviorism.[13] While traditional behavioral couples therapy has more roots in social learning principles and the later model in Skinnerian behaviorism. The latter model draws heavily on the use of functional analytic psychology and emphasizes a distinction between contingency shaped and rule governed behavior to balance acceptance and change in the relationship [14][15]
The Gottman Institute for Marital Therapy:
The Science of Attunement : Research Based Couples and Marital Therapy
“The Gottman Institute, co-founded by Drs. John and Julie Schwartz Gottman, has two major functions. The Institute helps couples directly, and it provides state-of-the-art training to mental health professionals and other health care providers. The Gottman Institute applies leading-edge research on marriage in a practical, down-to-earth therapy and trains therapists committed to helping couples. No other approach to couples counseling, education and therapy has relied on such intensive, detailed, and long-term scientific study of why marriages succeed or fail.”
The Best Relationships Are Gentle!
Please Note: While I am not a certified Gottman Marital Therapist, I do integrate the Gottman’s wisdom into my behavioral counseling for couples — see below.
Gottman Marital Therapy:
A Research Based Model of Couples Therapy
The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse : Save Your Relationship
The four attitudes that most predict the dissolution of a relationship, especially in combination, are criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling (in order of least to most dangerous). Dr. John Gottman, a psychologist at the University of Washington, studied more than 2,000 married couples over two decades. He discovered patterns about how partners relate to each other which can be used to predict – with 94% accuracy – which marriages will succeed and which will fail. Gottman says that each horseman paves the way for the next.
1. Criticism: Attacking your partner’s personality or character, usually with the intent of making someone right and someone wrong
- Generalizations: “you always…” “you never…”“you’re the type of person …”
- “why are you so …”
2. Contempt: Attacking your partner’s sense of self with the intention to insult or psychologically abuse him/her
- Insults and name calling: “bitch, bastard, wimp, fat, stupid, ugly, slob, lazy…”
- Hostile humor, sarcasm or mockery
- Body language & tone of voice: sneering, rolling your eyes, curling your lip.
3. Defensiveness: Seeing self as the victim, warding off a perceived attack
- Making excuses (e.g., external circumstances beyond your control forced you to act in a certain way) “It’s not my fault…”, “I didn’t…”
- Cross-complaining: meeting your partner’s complaint, or criticism with a complaint of your own, ignoring what your partner said
- Disagreeing and then cross-complaining “That’s not true, you’re the one who …”
- Yes-butting: start off agreeing but end up disagreeing
- Repeating yourself without paying attention to what the other person is saying
- Whining “It’s not fair.”
4. Stonewalling: Withdrawing from the relationship as a way to avoid conflict. Partners may think they are trying to be “neutral” but stonewalling conveys disapproval, icy distance, separation, disconnection, and/or smugness
- Stony silence
- Monosyllabic mutterings
- Changing the subject
- Removing yourself physically
Remedies:
- Learn to make specific complaints & requests (when X happened, I felt Y, I want Z)
- Conscious communication: Speaking the unarguable truth & listening generously
- Validate your partner (let your partner know what makes sense to you about what they are saying; let them know you understand what they are feeling, see through their eyes)
- Shift to appreciation (5 times as much positive feeling & interaction as negative)
- Claim responsibility: “What can I learn from this?” & “What can I do about it?”
- Re-write your inner script (replace thoughts of righteous indignation or innocent victimization with thoughts of appreciation, responsibility that are soothing & validating)
- Practice getting undefended (allowing your partner’s utterances to be what they really are: just thoughts and puffs of air) and let go of the stories that you are constructing to make sense of your own conflicts.
The Family & Marriage Counseling Directory
How to Find a Couples Counselor
Seattle Couples Counseling: Marital Therapy
Marriage and Family Therapy: Methods
Relationship Counseling : Struggling in Seattle?
Marriage Counseling Alternatives:
Harmonize Your Marriage: eHarmony provides an online alternative to marriage counseling for couples wanting to achieve healthier and happier marriages.
The Codependency Model: Help for “Codependent” Relationships.
Dr. Hart Seattle Couples Counseling:
Marital and relationship counseling for committed partners.
Marriage is not a big thing, it’s a million little things!