In 2009, the South Carolina governor reportedly “disappeared” for a few days.  It was later discovered that he had been with his mistress in Argentina.  In one of his former wife’s interviews on a news talk show, she described their therapy together after his return.  She said that she could recall the moment in their treatment when she knew their marriage was over, as she began to realize that he was not going to take any responsibility for his part of the problems in their marriage.

Positive Psychology is the study of conditions and processes that contribute to the optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions (Gabe & Haidt, 2005). Therapy builds on the client's positive experiences to improve their well being and to ascertain the role of their positive experiences. Clients begin to recognize they have the solutions to their problems; each moment and each situation is a moment of growth and learning. Our clients need to have hope in their situation and in the challenges they face. 

New consensus study report from the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine is now available.  Read now to explore a #WholeHealth approach to improving the health and well-being of both veterans and the nation. The new report identifies five foundational elements of an effective Whole Health care system. It must be people-centered, comprehensive & holistic, upstream-focused, equitable and accountable, and grounded in team well-being. 

Early in the development of family therapy theory, authors used the term “identified patient” to describe the family member whose behavior brings a family into treatment.  This is usually one of the children, but not always.  It is the person who has acted out enough to cause the parents to seek help or to get the family referred for treatment.

Greetings to all from the American Board of Clinical Social Work (ABCSW) Certification and Membership Committee. I wanted to take a moment to introduce you to the committee. The ABCSW Certification and Membership Committee’s charge is to review certification criteria and processes, develop certification guidelines, assist ABCSW staff with decision making, develop membership benefits, to work with other committees in coordinating efforts to benefit certification and membership, to establish an open channel of communication with all stakeholders (a function of this blog post), and to be a reference point for ABCSW support staff with certification and membership issues. 

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You … and some of your clients … have set goals for 2023 in the form of obligatory “New Year’s Resolutions” … many of which may be broken prior to January 30.  Have you considered setting up some mini-goals to assist in the process?  If resolutions are established annually, why not divide things up into more manageable monthly goals?

As students, those of us who were pursuing a career as psychodynamic psychotherapists learned about the repetition compulsion.  The Oxford Reference (www.oxfordreference.com) defines this phenomenon as “a tendency to place oneself in dangerous or distressing situations that repeat similar experiences from the past.” Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary describes a compulsion as “an irresistible impulse to perform an irrational act.”

All psychotherapists know the importance of language.  We pay close attention to exactly what our clients say and how they say it.  In this post, I will share a case that illustrates how the perfect language of couples’ complaints provide the roadmap for their treatment.

“If you don’t know the language of gratitude, you’ll never be on speaking terms with happiness.” Chopra 

Most forms of couples therapy are focused on resolving conflicts in the present-day lives of couples who seek treatment.  Some methods do delve into the historical antecedents of those conflicts, but their primary goal remains helping couples meet their current needs.

Most forms of psychotherapy require that the therapist perform a “delicate balancing act” between competing forces.  Some authors refer to this skill as dialectical thinking–the ability to mentally (and emotionally) hold seemingly opposite factors in dynamic tension in service of moving a system toward higher functioning.  In Neurodynamic Couples Therapy, there are primarily three areas in which the delicate balancing of the couples therapist is required for therapeutic success.

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A frequent complaint that therapists hear from couples when they enter treatment is that they have felt hurt by each other.  They want to tell us all about the pain that their partner has inflicted on them, and they often seem to want the therapist to declare which one of them has been the “most” hurt.

What is rage?  My sweet little cairn terrier taught me what rage is.  One day I put down her feeding bowl, and she started her meal.  I needed to move the bowl slightly to get it out of my way.  As I reached my hand down toward her bowl, she bit me!  She had never bitten anyone before.  Since I hadn’t spoken before reaching down, I think she might not have even been aware that it was my hand.

Watching the recent upheaval in our society, more specifically watching the January 6^th hearings, I began asking myself the question: Is the interaction in the group a product of individual behavior, or is the group understandable as an intact entity suggesting behavior is a product of the group?

At the end of my last post, I wrote about the shame connected to childhood abuse that must be relived in couple relationships.  Couples in which one or both partners were victims of childhood abuse will likely also be reliving terror.

Because the emotion of shame usually derives from having done something “wrong” in the eyes of significant others, it is inevitably part of every important relationship.  That look of disapproval or disgust that accompanies shame-filled experiences is such a blow to our self-esteem that creates so much subjective pain; it is no wonder we avoid this feeling.  This leads to unmetabolized shame that is going to be relived in couple relationships.

When couples come to us for treatment, they have frequently been struggling with the dysregulated emotions of trauma.  Their right brains have been correctly mutually creating an outlet for these unmetabolized emotions through their recycling dramas, but the partners usually do not know what to do with them and have almost always developed a sizable amount of fear around their expression.

To mask or not to mask? Anti-vax or total vax? What will we most remember from the COVID crises?  “Relationship deprivation” may be the primary memory for many. Just how vital are connections to our sense of well-being?

Another way of thinking about this post might be the old adage, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”  Couples therapists are not responsible and cannot control the timing of a couple’s desire to be together or their readiness to use therapy.  Every person’s right brain (nonconscious) is completely in charge of their ability to tolerate the unearthing of childhood experiences and feelings.  Our brains are programmed to protect themselves, and they are absolutely correct every time about what might create mental disintegration.  So, our clients’ right brains are in charge of the treatment; not us therapists.