Clarity-Based Couples Therapy
Clarity-Based Couples Therapy is not for people who, rather than being committed to making their relationship stronger and better, feel that they have to be right and have to get their way. It's natural for people to want to be right and get their way and to be disappointed when they don't. It's even natural for some people to need to be right and get their way and to be upset when they don't. Each of those can be tolerated, talked through and even gotten over. However, whenever one or the other partner has to be right and get their way, anything that threatens them with the possibility of either being wrong or not getting their way will be experienced as an assault, and they will do anything they can to defend their position, resist and fight back. The focus of therapy then becomes coaching each partner to react to the inevitable disagreements, disappointments, upsets and frustrations in their relationship, by not becoming upset, angry, shut-down or avoidant of each other. It also involves not beating themselves up.
Conversely, CBCT involves teaching and coaching each partner to confront and fully resolve conflicts as they arise. As it turns out, most people avoid conflict not because they lack the will to deal with it but because they lack a way to do it. Even more apropos, they believe that confronting conflict will only make it worse and have close to zero confidence that it will make it better.
As partners learn the skills to effectively deal with disagreements, disappointments and upsets and make things better without making them worse, each develops emotional toughness, self-respect and self esteem. Add to that effective conflict-resolution skills and tools derived from mindfulness and positive psychology, and any motivated couple can move to a shared future that more than makes up for any emotional baggage they may still have from their genes and upbringing. Nature and nurture are still only two strikes.
CBCT is not for everybody. People who have to be right and have to get their way need not apply.
in Just Listen
Psychology Today
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