One Simple Ritual to Strengthen Communication Between Partners
By Falon Hooks, MA, t-LMFT
PACT Level 2 Therapist
If you are coming into my office for couples therapy, I can guess that one central concern is communication. Whether it is too infrequent, too intense, or too uncomfortable of a topic, many of you will sit lips pursed, hoping the unspoken moment will pass.
Those micro-moments of anxiety and disconnection add up quickly. Before you realize it, you cannot remember the last time you sat facing your partner to chat and, more importantly, connect.
When I consider how communication between partners must work, I immediately turn to secure-functioning principles of honesty and transparency. Just say what is true.
How many times have you felt a shift in your partner’s mood and the moment you inquire, they brush it off? Their replies range from a grunt to “Nothing” to “I don’t want to talk right now.”
Alarm bells start to sound, you clam up, and you are quite certain trouble is looming. You...
Gearing Up to Get Outside
Blair Anne Hensen, MS, LCPC, NCC
PACT Level 2 Therapist
As the daylight grows longer and temperatures get warmer, it’s time to get outside! Nature is an incredibly important part of wellness. Stepping out of our human-made worlds and into nature offers presence external to ourselves. Simply taking in the sensations — the sound of birds singing, the deep smell of a forest, the feeling of sunshine warming our skin in the spring — allows our attention to move outward.
Spending time outside as a couple has significant benefits: movement, laughter, play, presence, connection are all stress reducing effects. But sometimes getting outside for activities is stressful. It takes planning, deciding what activity to do and how long you want to be out, gathering the right gear, communicating about skills and possible risks. The list goes on.
Depending on where you live, you may face difficult elements. In Montana, where I live, the weather can change rapidly. Traveling in...
Improving Couples Communication Through Neuroscience
Debra Campbell, MS, LMFT, PACT 3 Candidate
“Learning how to communicate better with my partner” is a commonly stated goal of couples in therapy. While not inaccurate, learning how to communicate better is often oversimplified to mean using the right language. In PACT, we are concerned not only about what is said but also how it is said and whether that works for both partners.
Since partners are in each other’s care, we expect them to demonstrate self-awareness as well as expertise in their partner. We stage situations that expose the miscommunications, misappraisals, and misunderstandings that underly a couple’s most challenging interactions. By videotaping and reviewing the sessions, we create greater awareness around the interplay between verbal and nonverbal communication that underly their misunderstandings.
Human communication is highly flawed. We have an assumptive pattern-finding brain that predicts...
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...
Communication 101: Speak and Be Heard, Part 1
By Kara Hoppe, MA, LMFT
PACT Level 2 Therapist
As a couple therapist, I’ve learned that relationships are like fingerprints: each one is unique. Even though each couple reaches out for couple therapy for a variety of reasons, they all, at some point during our initial consultation, ask for the same thing – communication tools.
Communicating with your partner can be downright difficult. Some topics are hard to talk about so partners stay silent, which can create a sour divide in the partnership. Or, topics are so emotionally charged that each conversation becomes a boxing match. This combined with the modern jam-packed, full-tilt, boogie busy lifestyle that many of us occupy, it’s no wonder that couples are struggling with a capital S.
In this and my next PACT blog, I’ll be sharing communication tools you can use in your relationship right now. This post focuses on speaking. The goal is to speak directly, clearly, and kindly so...
The Poetry of Couple Communication
Susan B. Saint-Rossy, LCSW
PACT Level III candidate
Ashburn, VA
www.relationship-therapist.com
Most couples who come to me identify their main problem as lack of or poor communication. Many times, couples believe that if they just learned to communicate properly, their relationship would be “fixed.” Thus, various therapeutic schools have come up with techniques (e.g., active listening, the use of “I” statements) to give order to a messy, complicated process. From the PACT perspective, these approaches can oversimplify a couple’s situation.
PACT recognizes that communication is complex, nonlinear, and multidimensional—much like poetry. Couples’ communication includes the symbolic language of words, micro-expressions, body language, tone of voice, and other elements. There is no one-to-one correlation between words and meaning, or...
