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...
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...
Self-Regulation and the PACT Therapist
By Carolyn Sharp, LICSW
PACT Level III Therapist
http://www.carolynsharp.com/
After laughing with Marty about the wonderful date they had, Peter adds, “Of course we had to go to the restaurant you wanted.” With that slight emphasis on going to Marty’s restaurant pick, they go from shared laughter to bulging eyes and hostile voices, following each other out of connection and into attack. All it takes is one wrong comment to spin into the dynamic this high-arousal and high-conflict couple came to address. My heart rate increases and my throat tightens as my mind imagines the session going out of control. With my own arousal rising, I’m in danger of losing my capacity to be helpful.
Christina and Sam stare listlessly at the floor during extended pauses after my questions and comments. Their passivity and disconnection are in charge here, and neither partner makes a move toward closeness or engagement. I...
Creating Community, Deepening Intention
by Carolyn Sharp, LICSW
PACT level 3 candidate
Seattle, WA
http://www.carolynsharp.com/
One of the richest aspects of the PACT approach is the experiential, embodied nature of the sessions. Over the course of a 2- to 3-hour session, couples develop a felt understanding of one another and of a new way of relating. As a PACT practitioner, I am continually awed by the power of this approach to help couples reach new levels of connection and healing. In the last year, I began offering couple therapy intensives and retreats as two ways to multiply and deepen that experience over many hours on back-to-back days, and provide opportunities for PACT interventions on steroids.
In a call to me, Bess described through tears her love for her husband of 15 years, Theo, and the ways she had hurt him despite this love. Emotional infidelities had created fissures in the trust and safety of their connection, and both were questioning whether they could get it back. Because of the critical nature of...
