Couples Therapy using the Gottman Method
The Gottman Method, Emotionally-Focused Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Somatic practices, and Non-Violent Communication skills trainings are all reflected in the Better Treasures treatment approach. Following your initial meeting with Dr. Mason, you will have a better understanding of the micro and larger-scale practices for immediate and long-term improvements. You will learn new ways to celebrate and optimize your strengths as a couple while adopting better skills to work with historic, intrinsic, & organic problems unique to each partner within the relationship.
How does using the Gottman Method for Couples therapy work? First, it begins with a thorough assessment of each partner. You’ll both have a personal interview with Dr. Mason and complete online questionnaires. You will also meet with Dr. Mason as a couple, to be interviewed together. All of this data and the observations complete the assessment, so that in the 3rd session, you’ll receive a detailed analysis complete with treatment options, sequential strategies, and tailored exercises for subsequent therapeutic sessions.
Gottman Method Therapy is returning promising outcome research in reconstructing relationships whose trust and commitment have been wrecked by affair. Many of Better Treasures clients have remodeled relationships starting with Marathon work and with weekly maintenance to proof their new relationship from the vulnerabilities that lead to betrayal.
Behavioral science is now so clear about what tiny habits in cognition start the cascade into building walls between you and your partner while also opening windows to unfaithful emotional and physical connections. There is hope–it is science!
In therapy, we confront and replace dated misinformation about boundaries and communication and work toward establishing a transforming transparency necessary for fortified and well-nourished partnership. Initially, this level of transparency can be anxiety producing for those of us who cope with shame, anxiety, or even low-confidence–many times tightly masked by high-achievement, high-performance, social gregariousness–whatever the case maybe, many couples are not comfortable in vulnerable states.
And honestly this discomfort exists for a variety of very good reasons! The amount of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling represented in today’s culture is mirrored in our romantic relationships…a not-so-hard look puts us face-to-face with our own damaging, punitive, and harshly critical yet often subconscious self-talk. Learning the neurophysiological and psychological consequences of sarcasm, contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling motivates replacing these coping skills with more effective communication strategies and Gottman’s famous antidotes. Relationships that once resembled those of the categorical Disasters, resurrect to resemble those of the Masters.
Additionally, during therapy, insight about individual blind-spots (Internal Working Models) builds compassion for self and other as they illuminate downstream effects on both the individual and the couple. You’ll learn how to build bridges across personally entrenched chasms that continue to corrupt your coupled adventure. You’ll practice skills honed in session to (perhaps for the first time) correctly and effectively engage your partner, when blindspots/challenges/vulnerabilities impede successful navigation of perpetual sabotages and pitfalls. Couples are taught techniques to work-through as well as work-around.
Finally, unlike any other therapy today, the Gottman Method has brilliantly tooled conversation guides to steer you through a variety of conflicts inherent all relationships. It’s essential to remember that regardless of what relationship you enter, your conflict quotient remains the same: greater than 60% of all interactions are conflict related!! Better to develop the skills to put your relationship into what is termed the Positive Perspective (a state where interactions tend toward acceptance, and flow-state interactions vs. the incessant quibbling and irritation of negative sentiment override). Learn the tools (repairs and pivots) and you are able to cleverly navigate through nearly any conflict hand-in-hand, and heart-to-heart with your partner.
Similarly to reparative conversations from EFT, the Gottman Method has a tool called Aftermath of a Fight; it has an uncanny way of freeing your relationship from age-old entrenched and corrosive resentments. While initially a difficult tool to use, practice in therapy will set you up well to independently sustain practice of this relationship-maintenance tool long after the therapy, effectively preventing resentments from ever taking root again.
And while working with conflict can be among the most transcendent practices of the therapy, it would be incomplete without addressing the spirit of partnership: making dreams come true and creating a life together rich in shared meaning!
Therapists who use Gottman Method when working with Couples establish routines that can reboot friendship & passion in the even the most lifeless relationships. Additionally, couples adopt practices to ‘keep the slates clean’ enabling both partners to meet at the negotiation table from a state of generosity and abundance. Negotiations become launching points for making shared meanings and life dreams (for each of you) come true. Couples stop choosing off a limited menu of what they might presume their partner might concede. Open up and enjoy a life empowered by two partner’s creativity and competence vs. eeking out a constantly compromised existence in a zero sum game.
As mentioned studies show that many couples seek help 6 years after irreconcilable problems have begun to plague their shared happiness. You don’t have to wait, addressing these problems can be relationship-saving, especially for couples who have already begun to see distancing and decreased intimacy. New couples set up house with a rock solid foundation while other couple rebuild from the ground up–Relationship 2.0. Reignite romance, restore friendship, reconcile affairs and other betrayals. This therapy offers a process and space to heal and find clear direction. And if you have tried therapy before and it ‘didn’t take,’ do try again. Studies indicate that finding a ‘goodness of fit’ between therapist and couple may take you through several therapists (m=6) before you find the right one.
In conclusion, Gottman Method therapy and its bent to non-violent communication and efficacious conflict management (along with alot more) shows tremendous benefits to clients in its ripple-effect throughout one’s personal, social, and environmental arenas. In the event that you opt out of the relationship, at a very minimum, you take home the skills to enrich every other relationship in your life, including the one with yourself!
Recommended Gottman (and more) Reading:
the Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
Why Marriages Succeed
Eight Dates
And Baby Makes 3
The Science of Trust
A Roadmap for Couples Therapy
The 4 Habits of Joy-filled Marriages
Hold me Tight
The Power of Feelings
Non-Violent Communication
I & Thou
The Neuroscience of Human Relationships