What is “individual” couples therapy and how does it work?
It’s a form of working on a relationship with only one person in the room. This can happen when one person is in treatment and they want to deal with their relationship without the other person. Or, it may be that one person wants couple therapy but the other person does not want to come in at this time. The purpose is to enable the individual to have more influence in their relationship.
For example, what if you feel that you are not heard, and that whatever you’re saying is going to deaf ears, and you’re not getting anywhere? It's really frustrating.
Often I am able to create a little “script,” not something you memorize, just an example of ways that you can approach your partner. I am usually able to do this once I have an idea about where you’re at and what you tell me about the dynamic with your partner. We talk together to modify this “script” so that it feels natural and right. Theoretically, this can have the effect of making a conversation go in a more effective way, to enable you to you feel heard and to become able to influence your partner. I say “theoretically” for a reason!
There is a goal in couples therapy to “come from love” when speaking to a partner or at the very least remember you’re stuck with still having to live with them!
Sometimes this “script” sounds really good on paper but you feel so hurt and/or angry after years of painful interactions that there is no way you can go back and say lovely, even influential things to your partner.
In the individual setting, you have the opportunity to vent as well as to unpack all the background and the reasons why you have no inclination to say nice things at this time to your partner– even if it’s in your best interest. You’re way too overwhelmed with all the feelings and you’d have to gloss over them in order to speak this way. Or worse, you have to swallow them, which maybe has been your coping strategy for a long time. This is not helpful to you! Therefore, in the quiet of the therapy room, you get to say out loud all the things you want and need to be heard, and how you feel about them. Maybe you benefit from going back and thinking about their origins earlier in life, how this became embedded and is now showing up in the relationship. You get to look dispassionately at what brought you together in the first place. This sets the stage for being able to talk productively in “real life” with your partner.
This is important in the “individual” couples treatment as people often feel that if they said out loud to their partner, “when you criticize me it brings me back to my dad doing it and how hurt and outraged and helpless I felt,” and saying that leaves them open to the partner saying, “yeah, this is about your dad, not me.” Which would be invalidating and make things worse. So what one chooses to say out loud in real life with the partner has to be thought through carefully in the individual setting.
It’s a process; you try out a new behavior, report back, and if it works, fantastic. If not, we analyze why and make a new plan. I have found this type of ongoing work to be extremely therapeutic for the individual, and ultimately, for the couple— even though it was done indirectly.