A developmental, psychobiological and emotion focused approach to couples therapy
Development and differentiation:
Thriving partnerships require us to balance two seemingly opposing needs: attachment and individuation. Healthy attachment is safe connection, which occurs when we’re able to skillfully attune to each other and create intimacy and closeness. Individuation is being an autonomous, separate self. Healthy differentiation is the balance of BOTH attachment and individuation at the same time.
There is a natural tension between attachment and individuation in partnership. It can sometimes feel impossible to have both, but it isn’t; in fact it’s necessary. Our work is to hold that tension and help partners use it to grow both individually and together.
The tension that comes from differentiation can feel threatening, but it doesn't have to be. If we learn skillfully and safely how to be with the tension of difference, we can be “ME” and “US” at the same time. This is the developmental growth that we need to have secure attachment in our relationships. Safe to be connected, and safe to be autonomous.
Differentiation requires each partner having a developed sense of self, and being able to define themselves (core needs, values, wants, beliefs, boundaries) differently from their partner; manage the natural anxiety and conflict that difference creates while accepting their partner’s differences; and effectively negotiating ways to meet both people’s needs in relationship.
A core piece of couples work is helping you and your partner self define needs and desires, to tolerate the anxiety that difference creates, and to move towards negotiation and mutuality. We draw from the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy for this differentiation framework. Once we can skillfully practice differentiation, conflict becomes creative rather than destructive and leads to growth.
The importance of co-regulation for couples
Our nervous systems are designed to respond to various life situations. Polyvagal theory teaches us that when we feel safe, we’re able to be socially engaged, curious, and compassionate. When we sense danger, our sympathetic nervous system activates and our bodies become mobilized to act either towards the danger (fight) or away from the danger (flight.) If the danger goes away, we go back to a ventral vagal safe and relaxed state of being. If the danger continues too long or we sense life threat, we go into a dorsal vagal survival state of shut down and collapse (freeze).
Our social engagement system is constantly searching for signals of safety or threat, through facial expression, tone, touch, head tilts, or the gaze of the eyes. When we can signal to each other through these bodily cues that we are safe and the other person is safe, and we’re able to soothe each other’s nervous systems, this is called co-regulation.
Co-regulation is essential to develop self-regulation; when we’re babies and little children we rely entirely on co-regulation. As we grow, we learn self-regulation and then can develop the skills to co-regulate others.If co-regulation was unavailable or unpredictable, we may not have developed the ability to self-regulate; our bodies then rely on sympathetic (fight/flight) or dorsal vagal (freeze) states to survive.
As a couple system, you and your partner should be a co-regulating unit. One of the main reasons we choose partners is to have a safe haven, a relationship of trust and protection, that helps us weather the stresses and storms of life. If intimate partnership cannot offer safety and connection, then what’s the point of being together?
But our past context complicates this goal, because once we form an attachment relationship with a life partner, all our past wounds from past relationships start to come up. The reason we trigger each other is precisely because we cannot be close with someone else without the hurt parts of us coming into contact with each other too.
The good news is, with the right support, triggers coming up in your relationship is an opportunity to heal past trauma and regulate your nervous system.
In couples therapy we teach partners how to co-regulate each other. We collaborate closely with each couple to learn each partner’s unique “nervous system setting” and how they can be experts on each other’s nervous systems, acting in ways that create soothing and safety in the moment, rather than setting off the alarm system in each other’s neurobiology.
We safely explore patterns that you and your partner get into, of pursue-withdraw, attack-defend, or other dysregulating dynamics, that may be from misattunements in the relationship or traumas from past relationships. We help couples to express emotions and unmet needs in safe ways that promote closeness and create new positive patterns of relating.
Serenne is trained in this approach from a Psychobiological Approach To Couples Therapy (PACT). There is a saying in PACT that from a neuroscience perspective, healthy relationships are a “regulation game.” If we’re not regulating each other constantly, whether consciously or unconsciously, it just won’t FEEL good to be together. Our bodies will start to build up sensations of discomfort and distress. Co-regulation is a big piece of learning how to build safety and connection, that often gets missed in couples therapy.
ATTACHMENT AND THE BODILY LANGUAGE OF EMOTION:
Developmentally, we're a body-self before we become a mind-self. Our bodies are the first way we connect with other human beings, our physical protection in this world, and our container in which all of our life experience gets felt, processed and stored.
Secure attachment with others, the ability to give and receive love, and psychological and emotional maturity all require us to know how to understand what the feelings arising from our bodies are telling us, communicate needs, and set healthy boundaries. Yet, culturally our body-self gets denied and oppressed; and most of us grow up disconnected from knowing who we are as embodied beings. It's my belief that most of us are relationally limited or traumatized in various ways because of this cultural disconnection from our bodies.
When we learn to speak the emotional language of our bodies, we gain a deeper understanding of what we need and how to try to meet those needs; and we can discern whether our feelings are relative to the present moment or if they are old feelings arising from unmet childhood needs.
Securely attached, healthy relationships require us to be emotionally intelligent, open, attuned and responsive to each other. This responsiveness requires being in touch with our bodies and the emotional language that our bodies speak.
In this work we explore the emotional dynamic that couples do with each other from an attachment lens. Couples react emotionally to each other in ways that move towards or away from closeness. The art and science of connection requires learning the bodily language of emotion, and to heal emotional blocks that may be limiting intimacy. We use both Somatic and Emotion Focused Therapy to help my couples create a safe and attuned emotional dynamic with each other.
Sometimes, emotions are confusing because some of them are arising from unprocessed past experience. (Getting “triggered” is an indication of this.) Memories remain stored within the body-mind because we went through periods of time when we were alone and it was too overwhelming to process and feel our feelings.
Any experience that is overwhelming and creates intense emotions that we are forced to bear alone is registered in the body as trauma. To cope, our bodies survival patterns of fight, flight or freeze get activated. These patterns are initially mechanisms of protection; if they become chronic, however, they become mechanisms of ongoing stress and disconnection, often preventing us from being able to relate to and love ourselves and others in the ways we want to.
When couples have ongoing conflict or destructive communication patterns, there is usually unresolved emotional wounds or traumas that need to be healed to move forward.
Are you ready for you and your partner create the relationship you both want? To learn more or book a session, reach out and let’s connect.