Love in the Time of the Coronavirus: PACT and Telehealth
As PACT therapists, we are trained to be ready to move with our couple. The COVID-19 pandemic is an exceptional virus that has compelled health professionals around the world to adapt best practices and improvise. By using telehealth sessions, they continue to provide care during this unprecedented moment in history. In this article, we share our thoughts and suggestions about how you may consider moving with your clients and adapting your practice of PACT to serve your couples through telehealth.
This introductory...
Be Ready to Drop Your Darlings and Other Lessons from PACT
By Beth O’Brien, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist
PACT Level 3 Therapist, PACT Ambassador
In PACT training, Dr. Stan Tatkin shared this gem: “Be prepared to drop your darlings.” Darlings are those valuable insights a counselor acquires as s/he sees the concerns of the couple unfold. My initial response to his suggestion was “Oh, no!”
As a couple’s therapist of over 20 years, I’ve had many darlings to insert into the therapeutic work. Dr. Tatkin’s gem became an important guideline, as it advocated for the couple therapist to be open, flexible, aware of timing, and able to assess the benefit of an intervention.
Who hasn’t had the experience of sharing a clinical observation that falls flat? Which counselor hasn’t had a perceived valuable comment result in the couple squinting their eyes, their facial expression indicating discord, their inner thoughts confusion?
Before sharing a darling, I had to...
Beyond the Valentine Chocolates and Roses: Creating a Long-Lasting Relationship
Clinton Power
PACT Level 2 Therapist, PACT Ambassador
clintonpower.com.au
Some people want chocolates and roses for Valentine's Day, but it's not the small (or big) romantic gestures on special occasions that lead to relationship success. To go from an initial date to a long-term relationship you need to look for qualities in a potential mate that make you feel safe and open with that other person. What you may not know is that these traits can lead you in the direction of developing a secure-functioning relationship.
What is a secure-functioning relationship?
A term coined by PACT co-founder Dr. Stan Tatkin, a secure-functioning relationship is an interpersonal system based on principles of true mutuality, collaboration, justice, fairness, and sensitivity. You and your partner are taking on the world together. You protect each other from the threats of the external, the outside world, and from the internal, each other. A secure functioning relationship acknowledges and celebrates...
Relationship Resolutions: A New Spark for the New Year
By Lisa Rabinowitz, LCPC
PACT Level 2 Therapist
https://www.baltimorecounselor.com
Every new year brings new and renewed resolutions and commitments to our work, school, family, and self. We are excited by the thought of what this year can bring. Frequently, we wonder about what new possibilities and opportunities will arise in 2020. As we reflect on our lives, we reflect on our relationships, too.
Some people begin the new year with a new attitude of hope: “Today’s a new day. I am not letting the past hold us back. This year we don’t need to keep repeating all of the old patterns. This year we don’t need to keep waiting for something to change; something can change.” The new year begins to reignite long-held hopes and dreams. When people talk about new resolutions and new beginnings, they start believing that this is the year when things can and will be different.
Other people have wishes to meet the “one” this year or a desire...
The PACT Institute: Growing with You in 2020 and Beyond
Dear PACT Community,
Happy 2020! Here at the PACT Institute we wanted to take this opportunity – as we enter a new decade – to share with you the vision we hold for the Institute in 2020 and beyond.
Our goal is to create a global and sustainable organization. In the last year, Stan, Tracey, the faculty, and our administrative team have worked hard to lay the foundation so that goal becomes a reality.
One of our biggest challenges at the Institute is meeting the increasing demand for training. As a businessperson – I admit – this is a problem I love having! We are meeting that challenge in a number of ways: a new website, new course offerings, and new ways to engage with the Institute.
At the heart of the Institute’s expansion efforts was updating to a new, more user-friendly website. The new site will be our gateway to even more training and educational opportunities in the future. Both the professional clinician and non-professional who is seeking...
Communication 101: Listen and Understand, Part 2
By Kara Hoppe, MA, LMFT
PACT Level 2 Therapist
Couples have a seemingly universal ask when they first reach out for therapy: each couple, no matter their specific struggle, is on the hunt for solid communication tools. This makes sense. Communication is a crucial part of how we connect with each other. We are wired for connection.
In my September blog post, I offered some deceptively simple tips on how partners can better communicate with each other by speaking clearly, kindly, and directly. I’m now back with part 2: effective tools to help us all tighten up our listening skills.
We long to be heard, seen, and understood by the people closest to our hearts, but finding connection through communication can get a bit tricky. Becoming a Jedi-level listener takes practice and intention. We need to learn to be present with our own discomfort.
Contrary to popular belief, being a good listener is a learned skill, not our natural tendency. We tend...
When Partners Write Internal "Movie Scripts” that Hurt the Relationship
Hans Jorg Stahlschmidt, PhD
Certified PACT Therapist, PACT Core Faculty
A central function of the brain is to detect patterns. It must make sense of the data that bombards us from our ongoing internal and external experience. An aspect of this function is to support the sense of continuity and cohesiveness of the self. One way to understand this is the brain’s bias for narrative.
The brain does not function well without purpose, meaning, cohesion, and connectivity. It is busy trying to filter and assemble the data toward a cosmos. The brain cannot exist in chaos without severe repercussions for mental health and functioning in the larger world.
The magnitude of data that the brain is required to process makes it inevitable that significant omissions, mistakes, and distortion occur. These errors in pattern detection and assembly are filled by the left brain in its “narrator” function. The left-brain narrator function often works...
Thinking About Polyamory? Is Consensual Nonmonogamy Healthy for Your Relationship?
By Carolyn Sharp, LICSW
PACT Level 3 Therapist, PACT Ambassador
More and more couples who come into my office for therapy are interested in polyamory or consensual nonmonogamy. Some have been practicing it for years and believe it to be part of their values and their self-expression. Others believe it will bring sexual excitement and enhanced intimacy to their primary relationship. Regardless of where you are in your relationship, the decision to introduce other people into your committed relationship carries significant risk and challenge and should be done with a great deal of thought and care.
As a PACT therapist, my process is in helping couples build a secure-functioning relationship, and I have helped both monogamous and nonmonogamous couples build strength and health in their connection. However, it is only through a secure-functioning relationship where I have seen polyamory work well for the couple and each individual.
Why Is Polyamory...
Mutual Injury: The Challenge of Symmetry
Patricia Hart, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist
PACT Level 3 Therapist, PACT Ambassador
We have all encountered that moment of impasse with our couples (and probably with our own relationships) when each partner feels like the injured party. The other is perceived as dangerous, and neither partner wants to or feels able to make a reparative move. Witnessing the struggle that ensues feels like watching a race to the bottom.
These moments remind me of my pothole theory of marriage:
The sun is shining, a soft breeze is in the air, and life is good. You and your partner walk down a winding road. Suddenly, a pothole appears. Before you can stop, you and your partner descend into a large dirty hole. How did it happen? Does it matter? The only important task is to help each other out as fast as possible so you can resume your enjoyment of the gorgeous day together.
If only life – and relationship – were so easy.
Couples locked in the grip of mutual recrimination are dysregulated....
The Big Win - What Divorcing Parents (and Their Kids) Want
By Aurisha Smolarski, MA, LMFT
PACT Level 2 Therapist
www.aurishasmolarski.com
The marriage and relationship have ended, and you wish you could just say goodbye to each other and move on. But . . . you have kids.
Relating to each other as divorced parents can be as much, or possibly even more, of a challenge than the marriage had been. Feelings of anger, hurt, sadness, longing, and relief may taint your perspective. But whether you experience an amicable or contentious separation, a continuing relationship as parents is necessary. You two are still responsible to each other for the care of your children.
“Wait, what? I still have to be in a relationship with this person?”
Just because you no longer share a bed or life goals, you are still operating inside a social contract that demands a commitment to the co-parenting partnership moving forward.
Fortunately, there is no reason why people who can’t be married can’t...
