Inga Gentile, MFT
PACT faculty
Oslo, Norway
www.ingagentile.com

“Why does she always seem to get clingy right when I have to go out of town for work?”

“Why does he lock himself in his office after work and watch Netflix while I’m alone in the living room?”

Many couples experience confusion and frustration related to often repeated scenarios like these. But it’s not a sign that your partner doesn’t love you. Or that you’re not the right fit.

There’s actually a psychobiological reason these scenarios play out among couples everywhere. It’s called implicit memory. Implicit memory begins at birth and is unconscious and nonverbal. It precedes declarative memory, which refers to the conscious recollection of facts and events. Implicit memory, on the other hand, because it involves older, more primitive parts of your brain, operates rapidly and largely outside of your awareness.

How does implicit memory play out in your...

Inga Gentile, MFT
PACT faculty
Oslo, Norway
www.ingagentile.com

Many couples tell me they simply don’t have the time they need to set aside to address issues in their relationship daily. They are too tired at night, mornings are too hectic, and their days are a blur. However, there are things they can do and ways they can be toward one another to help create greater safety and security in their relationship.

One way to increase secure functioning in your relationship is to be aware of the core vulnerabilities that underlie chronic distress for you and your partner. Stan Tatkin (2012) talked about the three or four core vulnerabilities most people have, usually rooted in childhood experiences. Secure-functioning couples realize it is their job to be aware of such vulnerabilities and to tend to injuries when needed. They don’t spend a lot of time complaining that an injury shouldn’t be there or shouldn’t ache so much; rather, they make a point of creating quality...

Inga Gentile, MFT  
PACT faculty 
Bardu, Norway 
www.ingagentile.com 

In the PACT model, a priority is placed on experience over interpretation. This is in part because we target the more primitive, less plastic parts of the brain (which are experience driven) when staging interventions that lead to psychological development and behavioral change. Sometimes we stage those interventions, and at other times they occur spontaneously in something the couple themselves do. Either way, PACT therapists pay careful attention to moments that may uncover something previously unknown or to affect change.  

A young couple I saw, Dan and Laura, clearly loved each other very much and were both remarkably high achieving and accomplished in many ways. They also presented as depleted, exhausted, frustrated, and lonely. In other words, what we...

by Inga Gentile, MFT, PACT faculty, Bardu, Norway
Website: www.ingagentile.com
Email: [email protected]
“Nothing is more revealing than movement.” — Martha Graham

Despite our conscious narratives, which are formed in the brain’s left hemisphere, much of what we do is driven by fast-acting processes and affect-regulating capacities encoded in the right hemisphere as part of procedural memory. Our early repeated relationship experiences not only create a psychological blueprint for how we view ourselves and others, but also determine how we will operate in future relationships. They also influence the development of brain structures responsible for affect regulation later in life. These memories (when manifest in psychobiological reflexive behaviors\micromovements in the body and face) can either refute or support our conscious narratives. They also influence how we move toward and away from people and how we get people to move toward and away from us,...