Therapists in the Hot Seat: Let’s Cool It Down Together with PACT and Deliberate Practice

By Jason Brand, LCSW
PACT Certified Therapist

On my podcast Human Nurture, I set out to take a three-season deep dive into PACT and explore the questions that most perplexed me about the model and about couple therapy. I started at the foundation and worked my way up. Season 1 explored the theoretical underpinnings of PACT. In Season 2, I documented my training by interviewing real couples and receiving supervision from expert PACT therapists.

Then came the third and final season, which I called PACT in Practice.

My hope was that Season 3 would support therapists wanting to make the leap from working with individuals to working with couples. To prepare, I interviewed twelve therapists who represented my ideal listener and asked them what questions they wanted answered.

The interviews came alive when I asked each therapist to describe their belief in the power of PACT. The thrill of the work going well was clear from everyone I spoke with. Words like “spontaneity,” “fun,” and “improvisational feel” captured that excitement. And inevitably, the excitement brought up anxiety: fear of messing up, fear of being ineffective in the face of conflict, fear of not knowing what to say or do.

I completely related to both the enthusiasm and the anxieties expressed. And I also felt that through my journey of recording two seasons of the podcast and becoming certified in PACT, I had something useful to share. In my own work with couples, I was feeling more confident, more spontaneous — and yes, more playful. I wanted to help new couple therapists feel more at ease in the “hot seat,” coming from someone whose seat had, over time and with training, significantly cooled.

My mission was getting clearer. In Season 3, I wanted to demystify the model and break down all that spontaneity, fun, and improvisation into skills that could actually be practiced.

That’s where I got stuck. When it came time to translate all of this into the podcast, I couldn’t figure out how to move forward.

Enter Deliberate Practice

While grappling with the next season of Human Nurture, I stumbled upon something that completely changed how I think about learning in psychotherapy: Deliberate Practice. Over the past two years (yes, it’s been a minute), my deep dive has led me into Deliberate Practice and the Sentio Supervision Model.

Deliberate Practice isn’t unique to psychotherapy. It’s a framework for developing expertise in any performance-based field (yes, psychotherapy is a performance-based field). Rooted in the science of building expertise, Deliberate Practice focuses on structured repeated practice activities designed by a teacher to target specific performance gaps (Ericsson, 2003). The supervisor or coach identifies a skill deficit, builds a task to strengthen it. The learner repeats it until it looks and feels like a more natural fit.

Here’s what that looks like in a PACT supervision context.

A Peek into a Deliberate Practice Supervision Meeting Using PACT Skills

As a Deliberate Practice supervisor, I work with the therapist’s session video or transcript to pinpoint where things go off track. I highlight the moment by explaining the challenge the couple is facing and the deficit in the therapist's response. I choose one (and only one) PACT intervention to work with. I explain why it might be a better fit in that moment rather than the one chosen and then break the intervention down into clear, observable criteria. The therapist rehearses the skill with feedback until it becomes more fluid. They leave with specific homework to keep practicing.

Here’s what that might look like:

Supervisor (me): Let’s go to 17:43 in your video. We’ve got a wave/island couple. As you told me, “The island has just dared to speak up for the first time and then seems to shut down.” I agree. Notice her body language after she expresses that she’s upset; she drops her head and almost folds into herself. You respond by saying, “It’s okay, you’re safe here,” and if we watch what she does with that reassurance [I hit play], she basically takes back all of her frustration.

Therapist: Yeah, I see that.

Supervisor: That’s a crucial moment. Reassurance, in this case, put the pressure back on her after she took a risk and put you in the position of being the one to take care of her. Instead, we want to route the pressure toward her partner. What was your intention when you reassured her?

Therapist: I’m not sure — I think I just felt bad that she looked so uncomfortable.

Supervisor: Totally makes sense. It’s a natural reflex when we see someone in pain. But remember, in PACT, the couple is in each other’s care. We want to help them rely on each other, not on us, and this is a good opportunity to see if they can start to do more of that.

Therapist: Right. So the partner needs to step in here.

Supervisor: We would hope so, but we won’t know unless we set it up and see. Let’s practice Cross Questioning. I’m going to rewind and pause at the moment she expresses that she’s upset. Here’s what I want you to do:

1. Interrupt the couple by saying something like “Hey, I just want to jump in here. I think something important just happened.”
   
   
2. Turn to the partner who received his partner's upset comment.
   
   
3. Ask: “Do you know what it’s like for your partner to speak up when she is upset?”
   
   
4. Quickly shift your attention back to the upset partner to gauge the impact of her partner's words. I’ll pause it right after she speaks, and you come in with the intervention. We’ll keep practicing until you meet all the criteria.

I hope this illustrates that this is not conceptual training — it’s experiential, performance-based learning that makes intuitive sense. One part of this that is hard to see in the transcript above is that Deliberate Practice is a process that evolves as the rehearsal takes place. The criteria will change based on the supervisee’s responses and needs. It’s lively and creative. It’s the kind of training I wish I’d had from the very beginning.

PACT and Deliberate Practice : A Natural Fit

While I haven’t yet recorded Season 3 of Human Nurture, I’m genuinely excited about where I’ve arrived. Deliberate Practice and the Sentio Supervision Model offer a new path for making PACT skills more accessible. In my experience, PACT therapists will take to Deliberate Practice quickly because the two models have a great deal in common.

Deliberate Practice asks therapists to do what we ask of our couples in PACT: to rehearse under realistic conditions. In PACT, we create a lab-like space where partners engage in experiments. We set up a process for them to follow that helps them view their day-to-day struggles through a secure-functioning lens — and hold them in that space until something unexpected or revealing emerges that moves the process forward. In Deliberate Practice, supervisors do the same for therapists: identify where they are ineffective, briefly describe and design a different response, and then the therapist rehearses it until it clicks.

Both models rely on a deep understanding of capacities and deficits to create an experiential zone of proximal development where growth can occur. Video recordings and procedural learning are central tools in this process. PACT therapists will recognize the value of moment-to-moment interactions and transactional patterns captured on video and transformed into opportunities for do-overs. In both PACT and Deliberate Practice, the emphasis on procedural learning — building an easily accessible internal operating manual through repetition and feedback — helps foster more effective interactions, whether between partners in PACT or for therapists engaging in Deliberate Practice supervision.

Most of all, what I value in both PACT and Deliberate Practice is the shared moment when something hard becomes doable, when a difficult skill finally lands and feels like a natural fit. Those moments come through effort, vulnerability, and repetition. But they come. And there is a shared sense that the effort was worth it.

So, What Now?

This is where my deep dive has led me, and I’m wanting to share what I have learned. On Friday, June 27, I’ll be leading a workshop where you can experience Deliberate Practice and PACT in action. We’ll break down interventions, rehearse PACT skills, and explore how deliberate practice can make you more confident and effective as a couple therapist. I hope you’ll join me.

Sign up for the June 27 workshop here.

If you want to take a deeper dive here are a couple of good video examples of Deliberate Practice in action and further reading:

Video: Deliberate Practice for Empathic Understanding: https://youtu.be/DhWf6rGMDL8?si=0gVq6outCB4OVqyD

Video: Deliberate Practice for Multicultural Therapy Demonstration: https://youtu.be/8WbGq57smpA?si=9YrP2fXUnphaFQx0

Reference:

Ericsson, K. A. (2003). Development of elite performance and deliberate practice: An update from the perspective of the expert performance approach. In J. L. Starkes & K. A. Ericsson (Eds.), Expert Performance in Sports: Advances in Research on Sport Expertise. New York: Human Kinetics.