A Developmental Approach to Couples Therapy

Speakers:

Clinton Power Relationship Counsellor for Individuals and Couples Clinical Counsellor and Gestalt Therapist www.ClintonPower.Com.Au

Dr Ellyn Bader, Ph.D.

Co-Founder & Co-Director, The Couples Institute Co-creator, The Developmental Model of Couples Therapy

www.CouplesInstitute.Com

www.AustraliaCounselling.Com.Au

[START OF VIDEO] Clinton Power: Hello! This is Clinton Power from AustraliaCounselling.Com.Au. Its my very great pleasure to be here today with Dr Ellyn Bader, who is a founder and director of the Couples Institute in Menlo Park, California. Shes a therapist, workshop leader, author, and speaker, who is dedicated to training a core of exceptional couples therapists and to helping couples create extraordinary relationships. Dr Bader and her husband, Dr Peter Pearson, co-authored the book, In Quest of the Mythical Mate: A Developmental Approach To Diagnosis And Treatment In Couples Therapy and the book, Tell Me No Lies: How to Face The Truth And Build A Loving Marriage. They have been married for 26 years and theyve worked together for 28 years, so I think thats an extraordinary testament to the fact that they practice what they preach. Welcome, Ellyn. Thank you for taking your time to speak with the Australia Counselling members today. Ellyn Bader: Youre very welcome. Glad to be here. Clinton: I wanted to talk to you today about your developmental approach to couples therapy. But maybe before we launch into that, tell me a little bit about how did your interest and passion for working with couples come about? Ellyn: It came about actually I was originally trained as a family therapist and was doing a lot of family therapy. I saw often that the parents marriages were just a disaster and there was so much focus on the kids. And so I thought I want to learn a lot about couples and I want
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to understand what happens in a couples relationship. So I just got really, really interested and started pursuing it and started putting ideas together. One thing that I should definitely tell you is that I owe a debt to Australia, because I used to come to Australia and teach family therapy a long, long time ago. Some of the therapists in Perth invited me back to teach couples very early when I was interested in couples. Pete and I came and we did our first one week workshop on couples therapy that we ever did, and the therapists loved it and they said, You have to do more of this. You have to, you have to, you have to. At that point, we were still wanting to do something together and we hadnt figured out what it was. We got so much wonderful positive feedback from that group of therapists. We came back and decided to start the Couples Institute. Clinton: Wow! I didnt know that about you. So you actually do have a relation ship with Australia that goes back quite a way. Ellyn: Long way, yeah. I have great warmth in my heart for Australia. Clinton: So tell us about how did your developmental approach for couples therapy kind of evolve? How did it come about? How did you birth it in a way? Ellyn: Well, when I was in graduate school, I learned Margaret Mahlers work and in terms of the psychological birth of the human infant. When I started seeing more and more couples, I just saw so many of the struggles as being parallel to some of the stages that Mahler

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had described. Also really thinking that in fact, when people get together, they bring to their primary relationship all those hopes and expectations and desire for unconditional love. In fact, many people get that at the beginning, that wonderful, exhilarating feeling of falling in love. Sometimes I call it being like a little bit of a chocolate high or something. But that feeling you do feel unconditionally loved often at the beginning. And then all the issues arise. I started really looking at whats going on in couples, whats going on at different stages, whats going on in terms of their development. It just did seem to parallel so much of what Mahler had initially talked about that I began to focus a lot on how couples could evolve through a series of stages that would be able to resolve a lot of those issues and help them form very positive synergistic relationships. But definitely, every single person is challenged by issues that come up as they move out of that first stage of marriage or above committed partnership. Clinton: Im thinking as youre speaking, how whole industries have been built on the feelings of unconditional love that occur at the beginning of a relationship. Im thinking of the Hollywood kind of film industry as well. Ellyn: Absolutely. If you ever want to see a great beginning movie, watch the beginning of the movie, Clueless. Its got about 50 of the finest love scenes that youve ever seen all pushed together right at the beginning. Clinton: Great, Im going to check that out.
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So a lot of the Australian therapists may not be familiar with your work or maybe some have come across your work already, but Id love to ask you to give an overview of your developmental model. I know that we could probably spend hours and hours going into as its quite extensive as your model. But if you can give us a kind of overview, a sweeping summary of what are the stages that you kind of saw that couples were tending to move through or needed to move through. Ellyn: Basically, the way we described it is that the initial stage is a falling in love stage. Its a stage of bonding. Its a stage when ideallyits not always this way, but ideally, two people actually focus in a pretty concentrated way on each other, and the goal of that is to establish a boundary around the two of them as a couple. When that is solid, thats better. Its not always solid but anyway, thats the first stage. The next stage is the stage in which we begin to take our partners off that pedestal and we move into recognising really that we are in fact different. The differentiation stage is the second stage and thats the stage where not only do partners have to come to terms with the ways that theyre different, but they need to be able to define themselves. Define themselves openly, actively to each other, and in that process learn how to manage conflicts and differences. A couple who move successfully through that moves into a stage of greater independence or a stage of more individuation, or as Mahler call it a practising stage. In that

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stage, there tends to be much more focus on the outside world. There tends to be a focus on developing a sense of self-esteem apart from how the relationship is fairing. In fact, couples who do that well, again, are able to have a solid base of who am I and my own identity as an individual, as well as my identity in this relationship. Clinton: So with the term practising, are you referring to the individuals are practising moving towards and away or is it a different meaning? Ellyn: In Mahlers terms, what she meant by practising was in fact the energy going outward. She described it in the child, basically, in the infant it starts around 18 months. If you look at little kids in airports or train stations, wherever, theyre running away. They have that exhilaration of moving away from their parents. In the adult version of that, many of us have either our hobbies, our work, we have things besides our primary relationship that give us deep satisfaction. Thats what she call the practising was the beginning of that, the beginning individuation of knowing what really fits me. Then she described another stage which is the back and forth. She used the French word rapprochement and couples do the same thing. After they have that solid sense of differentiation and the solid sense of individuation, theyre able to regress again back into the original love in a way. And theyre able tobut they move in and outthey test it. They want to be sure theyre not going to get stuck in symbiosis. So they may demand their independence one day and then want a lot of connection the next day.
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A lot of couples who get to that stage really begin to develop their sexuality in a very different way than it was at the beginning. Couples who move through that have what we call a synergistic stage or mutually interdependent stage, where one plus one is greater than two. And they love that theyve built and the task that theyve surmounted together, enable them to give back to the world in a way thats greater than either one of them could do alone. Clinton: Okay, great. Im also understanding though, Ellyn, this is not a linear process where every couple goes stage 1, stage 2, stage 3. Can each partner be at a different stage developmentally as an individual or is this more a couple? Its more you see each couple grappling with the different stages. Ellyn: The way that we think about it is that each individual has a stage where their primary developmental energy is focused. So if one partner is still focused on maintaining that initial symbiosis and the other partner is beginning to differentiate, that couple would be at two different stages: one in symbiosis, one in differentiation. In fact, I think its when one partner moves ahead that ideally they trigger the other person to do the same. Now, a lot of times that doesnt happen. In fact, in the clinical population that most of us work with certainly in the Western world, there are two primary types of couples who never get out of the first stage. Those are the hostile, angry couples who want to fight all the time. Often the fight is youre not meeting my needs well enough, and theyre still trying desperately to get that initial unconditional love that they wanted.

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The other one is the conflict-avoidant couples. Those couples will merge with each other at the expense of their own self-development. Often, these couples can look good. They can seem very friendly, but over time they become more and more disengaged because they cant talk about anything with any juice in it. So they end up eventually just talking about roles and responsibilities or tasks that need to be done and they dont know how to keep the aliveness in their marriages. Clinton: I think Ive heard you describe that couple. Sometimes the couple that have been married for 15 or 20 years, and then everyone from the outside thinks theyre the perfect couple and then suddenly theyre divorce. Its this shock in the community that this perfect couple somehow didnt last. Ellyn: Absolutely! Because they know how to look good. They know how to look good in the surface and not to deal with anything of much substance underneath it. Clinton: So where do you see couples getting stuck in the model? Are there other patterns you see that couples will tend to getfor example, get stuck in that point that you described before, one part is moving very much into differentiation but the other partner is in symbiosis and really pulling- wanting their partner to stay with them in that bonding stage. Is that a common place for couples to get stuck? Ellyn: Thats a common place for them. A worse one thats common is when one partner really, really stays entrenched in wanting symbiosis. They have all kinds of

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rationalisations and beliefs about why thats the way a relationship should be or a marriage should be, and they dont want to do their own growth. The other partner maybe tries a little bit of differentiation, cant hold on to it very well. But they get frustrated with that pull to symbiosis, so they move out into the world. They become increasingly independent and often theyll say things like, Youre just smothering me. I need my space. And so you get what we call a symbiotic-practising couple. Thats where its very unbalance. They are two different stages. Its very, very

unbalanced, and many of those couples wait too long to see a therapist. Also, many therapists make a mistake seeing those couples because they think that the individuating partner is the healthier partner, and they miss the lack of differentiation in both. Clinton: Its like a red herring in a way, isnt it? That from the outside its going to look that their partner isit could be perceived that their partner is differentiating, but theyre actuallyI think youre saying theyre actually in reaction to the other pa rtner which is not a differentiating response. Ellyn: Well, theyre partially in reaction. But theyre alsoI always talk about the difference between individuation and differentiation. Because individuationI can individuate whether Im in a relationship or not because it has to do with what are those things that build an individual sense of self-esteem. And so theyre individuating and it may be very good for that partner. It may be helping them a great deal.

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But theyre still afraid of the process of differentiation and they are avoiding the process of differentiation. So if a therapist doesnt see that, then they wont know how to help both partners. The task there is to get both partners to be able to be in the differentiation process together at the same time. Clinton: Yes, which I think takes a lot of skill. Ellyn: It does. It takes an enormous amount of skill. And ideally, all of us are doing our own work in our own relationships, too. So that we learn because the emotional capacities that are developed by doing that make you a better partner and they make you a better therapist. Clinton: Yes, exactly. Ive always been very challenged by the hostile dependent couple. Thats certainly from the type of couple that I tend to feel dread sometimes if I know theyre coming. But as times gone on, Ive actually found that its the conflict-avoidant couple that feels like its much harder work because of a lack of energy in the room. Im curious just to hear your thoughts about that. Ellyn: I would say something very similar to what you said which isfirst of all, I grew up in a conflict-avoidant family. So when I first encounter the really hostile-angry couples, they were a little scary to me. Then as I learned to work with them, I actually appreciate their energy. I like to mix it up with them. The conflict-avoiders are much, much harder not only because of the lack of energy, but they will undo very quickly what you do with them in a session. They can walk out and undo it
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in seconds. I oftenwe dont have time for today, but I often tell a story, I work with one conflict-avoidant couple for years. They were my nemesis. And I kept trying to find ways to say, Dont you want to go see somebody else? In the end, they did amazingly well. In the end, they had a hot sex life, they were differentiated, but getting there was excruciating. Clinton: Yes, hard work. But it sounds like it really paid off, kind of hanging in there with them. Ellyn: It did. I have to tell you there was quite a while where I thought it was not going to pay off. Clinton: So how important for you is psycho-education within the therapy sessions and do you teach your couples about the model and what stages you may be seeing that theyre getting stuck? Ellyn: I do some psycho-education. Pete and I have a brochure thats available for therapists if theyre interested in using it or giving it away to their own couples called, Stepping Stones to Intimacy. It has pictures on it that demonstrate the stages. I give one of those away that every new couple so that they can read it. I also like I said do some education. If a couple is very, very intellectually defended, I dont spend much time on it. But on the other side, if theyre like the highly volatile couple and they dont have any idea whats going on, I think psycho-education is very valuable. It also helps to calm things down and structure the session event.
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Clinton: Yes. Another flavour of your work, the work of you and Pete has been about helping couples get off to a strong start. And this is something in my own practice Ive experimented with over the years. Ive really noticed the significant difference that when I can get couples to do some preparation even before they come in for that first session, it does feel that well get off to a stronger start and often theyre ready to go and theyre already thinking in terms of how can I start to be different so I can be a more effective partner. So tell us a little bit about your ideas about getting off to a strong start. Ellyn: Okay, so that is definitely one of our passions, that were alwaysI think we are constantly working at how to find the best ways to do that. Well say that if you end up mired in the negativity for a few sessions, its very hard to get out of it. So there are a few things we do. One is we have an article on our website called, How to get the Most Out of Couples Therapy. Thats an article that we recommend couples read before they come in and we encourage therapists to write their own versions of that. Then on the telephone, I usually spend usually about 15 minutes the first time somebody calls. I give them questions to answer before they come in to the first session. Those questions are usually very much geared so that they wont be coming in with a bad behaviour story about the other person or they wont be telling me about the fight that just happened. So I might ask them, When you come in, will you tell me what you think you need to learn in order to be a more effective partner yourself ? That would be an example of a question.

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Lately, weve been experimenting with a number of new things as well. One is we have a couple of different video tapes that we sometimes show couples in the first session that are inspiring videos about working together as a team. Another thing we sometimes do is start off with the question to each person. I just sort of say to them the usual way to start a couples therapy is to ask why youre here. And then Im going to hear a lot ofyoure each going to point fingers and tell me a lot of negative stuff about your partner. So I would like to start out a little differently. How about if you each tell me what you believe your partners main

complaints about you are. Clinton: Well, I like that. Ellyn: So we ask them to do that. After theyve done it, well say to the other one, So how good of a job did they just do? If they say they did a good job, you say, They may have been listening to you more than you thought. Clinton: Well, that certainly shakes up their expectations of what theyre prob ably expecting what happen when they sit down with you. Ellyn: Absolutely. Clinton: What are you noticing from showing the videos? How is that changing the sessions? Ellyn: Its all setting a context. We talked about it a lot as getting through the stages means that you can be a really synergistic team. You can be really, really effective together.

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Theres a wonderful video clip from the movie, Any Given Sunday, with Al Pacino, in which he gives an incredible emotional speech to his team about h ow hes failed and how he doesnt want them to fail. Especially, for men who are a little reluctant about therapy, it can be very inspiring. There are some good videoswe have one that we show geese and the whole way the geese collaborate and work together. But its designed to set an emotional tone that it is possible to collaborate. It is possible to work through this. Our model is not a pathological model, so we really see theyre being hurdles and its natural and normal for people to get stuck an d that our role is to help them get unstuck and be able to go on their merry way. Clinton: Yes, Im imagining that instils hope right from that first session as well seeing those videos. Ellyn: Yeah, definitely. Clinton: Wonderful! So how do you structure your sessions? You just spoke about you make some contact before they come in, you give them some questions. Do you tend to have, like, an assessment phase? Do you move between work together, work individually? Do you have a framework around that? Ellyn: I dont have a definite framework that I use. I know a lot of couples therapists do, I dont. I see people for a double session the first session. So that will be, like, 100 minutes for the first session. In that session, many times now, this is different than early, but I can make a

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very quick assessment. If I cant or I really dont think somebodys telling me the truth or whatever, Im much more inclined to see people separately. Sometimes I do see people separately in the course of therapy and we work out the agreements around that as we go. But I dont automatically see each person separately. So I prefer to do the majority of the sessions together. Clinton: I heard recently you speak about how you deal with confidentiality with together and separately. It just really opened my mind to a different way of doing it. I think you put it to the couple, how they want you to deal with the confidentiality. So tell us about that. Ellyn: OK, so I struggled with that issue for a while. I know some therapists have an open secrets policy like Janis Spring wrote about. Some people keep it confidential some dont. I decided that I really wanted the responsibility for that decision not to be mine and so I actually do ask the couple before I see them either one of them separately. I say there are two ways that we can do this and there are advantages and disadvantages to each. So I lay out the advantages to confidentiality is Im going to know a whole lot more about whats going on, but it could turn out that I know something that one of you doesnt know. I dont want to be in a position of holding a secret if you dont know that things are confidential.

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And so I give them the opportunity to decide to choose confidentiality or they can also choose no confidentiality which means that I basically tempering anything I want to into the sessions when were together or even when Im in a session with the other person. Clinton: Yes. Are you noticing your couples are choosing one more than the other? Ellyn: They choose both. The interesting ones of course are the ones where they cant decide, because sometimes there is a person who wants to tell you, Hey, Im having an affair and I really want out of this marriage and I want you to help me out of this marriage. So they want it quite confidential. And the other person doesnt want it confidential at all because they already have a sense that there are some secrets. Clinton: So youre already seeing that dilemma in front of you and them trying to make the decision. Ellyn: Right, it puts it back in their laps. Sometimes something comes out sooner than it might have otherwise because it is back in their lap. Clinton: Yes. Im really passionate about giving therapists resources. I know that your website which is www.CouplesInstitute.Com is an enormous resource. Ive been using it for quite a while as well. You run a series of online programs and you have a number of resources for therapists. But can you just tell us what do you have there at the moment, because I know your online programs stop and start. Whats upcoming that Australian therapist s possibly could join?

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Ellyn: Well, theres couple of possibilities. The ones for real concentrated training, I do an online training course that does have openings right now. A lot of people finish in July and August here and then so it starts again, so they can join actually anytime now. And there are a lot you can read about that at www.CouplesInstituteTraining.Com Clinton: Is that like a monthly training? Ellyn: Its a monthly training. Actually, its a year-long program and they get two written lessons every month. Every other week you get a written lesson showing up in your email. Also, Im on the phone once a month, sometimes twice a month, but usually at least once a month doing consultation with a therapist and teaching off that consultation. There are also blogs and ways for them to write in and ask questions throughout the year. So its a way of getting sort of your hand held as youre learning the material throughout the whole year. I just did a consultation with an Australian therapist a couple weeks ago. Clinton: interactive. Ellyn: Yeah, I love it, because I like the thing of people around the world helping each other. Clinton: It sounds like youre really building quite a community there . Ellyn: Trying to, yeah, I really want to. My commitment is I want to really strongly train a group of couples therapists around the world. So that might have been a colleague of mine. It sounds like its very

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Clinton: Yes, Im also aware that one of the resources I found incredibly helpful was your audio series of In Quest of a Mythical Mate. I believe youve got a special coming up about that. Can you tell us about that? Ellyn: Sure. That is a CD set that has 10 CDs, a 100-page workbook, and a bunch of other things that come with it. It is designed for home self-study, so people can go through it at their own pace. We actually do have a $60 special on it going on right now which was just an accident based on you asked me about it before. Its $60 off the normal price right now. They can learn about it by going to www.CouplesInstitute.Com When you go there, youll see a section of the site thats called Therapists Resources. And its one of the therapists resources. There is another way they can get there too which was kind of fun which is if youPete and I did a video of us dealing with chore wars issues. So there is a page called www.CouplesInstitute.Com/ChoreWars If they sign up for the newsletter on that site, then theyll get an email about the special. Clinton: Great! I saw that video, its a lot of fun. Ellyn: It was fun making it, actually. Clinton: It looked like it. On a personal note, Ellyn, Im aware that youve developed quite a passion for some charity work in Africa, and I know youre leaving for Africa very soon. So just let us know what are you doing there? Ellyn: Were building schools. Last summer, I went toand this is in areas where people were displaced by political and tribal violence. So the community that we worked in last
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summer was one where three and a half years ago the people lost everything they had and theyre completely displaced and moved. The government gave every family one tin roof and that was it, and land that they can relocate on to, but small patches of land. So theyve been rebuilding their lives for the last three and a half years. The kids would have no school. So last summer, we built an elementary school there with eight classrooms, one for each grade. We realised when we were there that unless these kids get a minimum through high school, theres no hope with them escaping poverty at all. So then this summer were going back. The high school is being built and were going to go back and finish building the high school this summer. Im really excited. The people in this village are just amazing. For all of us and all the trauma work that most therapists do, I couldnt believe the amount of life and vitality and giving from these kids and these parents, who like I said, many of them lost their fathers, their siblings. The family that I spent the most time with, there are 11 kids living in one house. One of the older daughters, whos been out of school since she was 11, shes now almost 15, desperately wants to be a kidney surgeon. Im planning to help her over the years. I think she can do it, but they need help. But its incredibly rewarding to give when a U.S. dollar goes really far there. Clinton: Yes, Im feeling so inspired hearing you talk about it. What if therapists would like to contribute to your charity? Is there a way that we can do that, we can make donations?

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Ellyn: There are two ways: one, there is a website for the organisation itself which is called www.WorldTeacherAid.Org Actually, on the front page of that is a video of our trip last year. Its a pretty inspiring video if anybody wants to watch it. You can donate there di rectly. When we come back this year, were doing something really going to be interesting. I dont know how its going to go, but were going to make a documentary of the kids while were there this year and then come back and put it up online with a plan to have a million people each give a dollar. Because a dollar can feed one child a healthy meal for a month. The money will go to school building too, not just feeding. Can you imagine that you can take $1 out of your pocket and give a protein lunch to a kid that enables them to go back to school for the afternoon and think and use their brains for a whole month with that $1 that most of us would spend without even thinking about it. Clinton: Its hard to comprehend. But I can feel your passion as youre talking about it. It sounds like an extraordinary work youre doing there and really making a difference. Not only with couples but in another part of the world that desperately needs it. Ellyn: Yeah, and I encourage anybody to go to the site, learn about it, consider going back with me. I hope to go back every summer for a long time, so come along next year. Clinton: Fantastic! Well, Ellyn, thank you so much for speaking to us today. I really appreciate you giving up your time, your wisdom and knowledge and sharing with the Australian practitioners. I hope we can speak again sometime. Ellyn: Thank you, too.
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Clinton: All the best in Africa. Ellyn: Okay, thanks. Clinton: Bye for now. Ellyn: Bye. [END OF VIDEO]

Visit http://www.australiacounselling.com.au for more information and resources for therapists and counsellors.

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