Christin P Bellian Therapist in Boulder CO

Tag: Communication

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The Therapeutic Alliance and Couples Therapy

The Therapeutic Alliance and Couples Therapy

The therapeutic alliance can be a tricky thing to navigate when working with couples!

The challenge lies in balancing the needs of one person against the needs of another person while tending to the health of their relationship. The therapeutic alliance consists of the therapist-client bond, agreement about therapeutic goals, and agreement about the tasks of therapy (Wampold, 2015).  

The therapeutic alliance is at the heart of therapy.  It is through the therapeutic relationship that healing takes place, and the therapeutic alliance fosters the belief and trust in the efficacy of therapy. This requires the therapist to continuously monitor the therapeutic alliance by directly asking clients about their experience, watching for nonverbal cues, and balancing their focus between both partners. Even more importantly, the couple’s therapist recognizes the couple rather than the individuals as the client.  This is important because it identifies the relationship as the source of dissatisfaction rather than the individuals.  As your couple’s therapist, I promise to do all of the above.  

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Trauma and Making Meaning

Trauma and making meaning have a very strong correlation.

Trauma and making meaning have a very strong correlation.

Trauma disrupts a person’s sense of meaning. There are two types of meaning.  The first is situational meaning, or the meaning a person gives to a specific traumatic event. For example, someone might explain a traumatic event as “an accident.” The second is global meaning, or how a traumatic event fits into a person’s overall view of life. For example, someone might say “I believe everything happens for a reason.” However, after a traumatic event, these two types of meaning may be at odds.  That same person may wonder why an accident happened if they cannot make sense of the reason it happened, especially if they believe the event should have led to greater understanding or an unpredicted better outcome but that is now what they are experiencing. 

After a trauma, there are often discrepancies in one’s belief systems that are resolved either by a person’s ability to incorporate the trauma into their global beliefs or by altering their global beliefs to include the possibility of the trauma (Werdel & Wicks, 2012, p. 62). Therapy helps a person resolve this conflict that a traumatic event might create through in-depth exploration of both their situational meaning and global meaning. 

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How are families like mobiles?

How are families like mobiles asks Christin P. Bellian

I like to use a metaphor popular in Satir theory to prepare families for some discomfort as we move through the therapeutic process.  Virginia Satir compares the strings of a mobile to family rules about what and how family members communicate.  She says, when the strings of a mobile are at the correct lengths, the mobile achieves balance, but if the lengths of the strings change, the mobile is no longer balanced (Satir, 1988).  Similarly, we assume roles and communicate with our family members in ways that maintain family balance.  In other words, we do what we have always done.

I like to tell my clients, “Like the strings of the mobile, if just one family member’s patterns of communication or ways of behaving are different, the family is out of balance.

In therapy, we are going to try different ways of communicating, which might get uncomfortable.”

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Solution Focused Theory for Couples …. Easy as Pie!

Solution focused therapy, it's as easy as apple pie!

Solution focused therapy (SFT) is an excellent choice for working with couples.  For one, couples determine what is or is not a problem in their relationship.  I know I would not want another person determining what is a problem in my own relationship, and I certainly would not want to make that determination about someone else’s relationship.

By using different skills or traits, couples can have different experiences.

SFT uses strengths couples already possess to find solutions to their problems.  By using different skills or traits, couples can have different experiences.  I help couples discover their strengths and put them into action.

SFT uses “the exception question” to help couples identify when the problem is not happening and to appreciate what is different about those times. I use this technique to help couples recognize and disrupt their dysfunctional patterns.

SFT sees couples as caught up in problem-saturated versus solution-building narratives. I help couples change the conversation around their relationship which can change how they experience it.

Finally, I like SFT because of its simplicity.  SFT has just three guiding rules:

  1. Do not fix it if it is not broken.
  2. Do more of what works.
  3. Do not do what does not work.

Easy as pie!

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What is the relationship between self-esteem and communication in families?

self-esteem and communication

Problems occur in families when family members are not able to communicate their true thoughts and feelings or their wants and needs.  Instead, family members communicate what and in ways that do not disrupt the family balance. There is often a strong correlation between self-esteem and communication.

When family members are unable to say what they think, feel or ask for what they want or need, the result is low self-esteem.

Family theorist Virginia Satir (1991) describes the five ways people commonly interact. Placating is characterized by a person putting other people’s needs ahead of their own needs and generally conveying they are not important.  Blaming is when a person refuses to accept influence from anyone else and deflects responsibility for any problems by blaming or criticizing others.  Being super-reasonable is when a person is “inhumanly objective” and responds to an interaction with facts and data while refusing to acknowledge feelings.  Being irrelevant is characterized by distracting from the conflict by bringing in extraneous information to deflect attention from the interaction.

Communicating from these stances results in low self-esteem.

People with high self-esteem communicate from a leveling stance, or they accurately communicate their thoughts, feelings, wants and needs.  When family members see new possibilities for how to communicate, their self-esteem improves.  As your family’s therapist, I will explore with your family how you relate to one another.  I will help you see new possibilities for how to communicate.  Together we will learn, experience, and practice new ways of communicating that accurately convey each family members’ thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs.

Talk to Christin today.