1. Understand their concerns. That is, I need to get them, and communicate to them that I get them. Basic empathy. Simple understanding. “I got it. I get you.”

2. Instill authentic hope. I’m not a Pollyanna. I won’t feed them cotton candy. But I will do my best to communicate to them that there is hope for some sort of change, growth, or health. It may not be the change/growth/health they wanted, but it’s out there. They can improve.

3. Challenge them. I like to tell new clients this: “Everyone who sits on that couch gets a challenge, a takeaway, something they can chew on, struggle with, grapple with. It’s not enough that I understand you and instill hope. I have to challenge you.”

4. (Couples only): Balance my interventions and cultivate reasonably similar therapeutic relationships with both persons. Therapy won’t work if I dislike one of them and don’t work on that, or really like the other one and don’t work on that. And it’s really easy for one person in the couple to feel ganged-up-on. Really easy.

#4 is a constant challenge for me, and I think for any honest couples therapist. But it may not be challenging for the reasons you think. You might think, for instance, that it’s easy for me to like someone in the couple who is more like me in temperament, personality, ways of handling conflict, etc. But the truth is, if you want to pick a role in the therapy room that will get me to like you faster, be the person who is not like me. If you’re a lot like me, then sure, I can readily understand where you’re coming from (or so I think: I have to be careful with assumptions like this), but I can also spot your bullshit a lot faster, having dished some of it out myself in my own relationship! And if you’re not a lot like me, I feel natural pressure to join with you across our differences, and I may need a little more time to recognize your bullshit.

If I sense that my interventions were unbalanced, or feel a hunch that I haven’t communicated #1, 2, 3, & 4 to both people very well, I might check it out with them, starting with the one I’m concerned I didn’t engage as well. “You okay?” I might (might!) say, and then something like, “I ask because I kind of pounded on that thing about your conflict style pretty hard.” Just asking can communicate to the client that I’m there for her.

And yet, there’s a limit to the value of a therapist checking things out with couple clients like this. It could be seen as a trick question, or an unfair question: let’s say you’re not okay, and the professional in the room just asked if you’re okay in the presence of your partner, whom you believe to be aligned with the therapist against you. How honest do you really want to be? So, often enough I won’t ask the question that bluntly, or at all.

Couples therapy is a different beast than individual therapy for lots of reasons. My fourth job demonstrates that this is because there are three relationships in the room, not one. You and me, your partner and me, and you and your partner. It’s complicated, but worth the work!

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Let’s start with the same example I used last time: the couple is fighting about money. Let’s say the fight looks basically like this: “You spend money like an irresponsible fool!” “No, you never spend money because you’re selfish and cheap!” A couple could have that fight for hours. But if we look at it through the Big Theme of values, it looks like this: one of them is generous, the other thrifty.

Generosity is more than a temperament: it can be a value. You want to give nice gifts to your friends because they are supremely important in your life and you want the meaningful experience of giving them thoughtful and generous gifts. You don’t want to nickel-and-dime your way through life. You believe money is a way to express kindness, or freedom. Or you have a value that your life (and that of your friends and family) should include beautiful things, or delightful experiences. This is a central part of your value system.

But wait! What about the value of thrift? Your partner grew up in modest circumstances (or let’s face it, he grew up poor) and he never, ever wants to be poor again. Or he wasn’t able to provide a necessity for someone he loved because he couldn’t afford it, and he never wants that to happen again. He was taught never to use a credit card, and the teacher was someone he deeply respected. He was taught to live within his means. He was taught that being careful with money is the mark of maturity. This is a central part of his value system.

Can you see how, when we talk about money on the level of values, it stops being a fruitless argument full of accusations and insults? Both people are acting out of their value system, but because they don’t share the same value system, they have trouble seeing that in the other.

Another quick example: how do you two deal with your families of origin? I come from a big family that traditionally has valued lots of social contact, but perhaps not a high level of emotional or physical connection. (I said perhaps! If you’re in my family and reading this, don’t freak out.) My spouse comes from a family with different values, different assumptions and patterns and beliefs. It’s tempting to encounter your partner’s differences and judge them as faulty, but they’re just different. Maybe your partner’s family values privacy more than yours, and yours values openness. Privacy and openness: those are two good things. But they don’t mix well together. So a discussion about them as values helps you understand the other person much better, and see each other in a constructive, positive light.

“Yeah, but my partner is still crappy with money,” you might say. Sigh. Okay, yeah, maybe your partner could stand to tighten things up a bit. But how receptive would you be if someone criticized you and failed to recognize that—for all your faults—you are acting out of your own value system?

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One of my favorite Big Themes is kinship. It’s an old-fashioned word, I know, and maybe that’s why I like it. It evokes something beyond the everyday. And here are a few ways it can reveal itself in a counseling session. Let’s say we’re talking about your aging mother and the conflict you’re having with your siblings about the question of whether to transfer her to an assisted-living facility. It’s obvious how issues of kinship can come up in that conversation: what is the role of an adult child in your family? How does a family deal with a matriarch who no longer can make decisions for herself? What are the obligations siblings have to each other, and to the rest of their busy lives and relationships? Easy: this is a kinship conversation.

But here’s another, less likely one: marriage equality, or even the basic concept of marriage itself. I often work with couples who have different views on the topic. One wants to get married, and the other finds the concept—but not the partner proposing it—appalling. (But you can imagine having trouble distinguishing his negative attitude about marriage from his attitude about you, right?) Sometimes I’ll take them away from the “M” word and ask them what they think “kinship” is, and how they choose their own “kin.” Who are your people? What is “home”? Who lives in this “home” of yours? Why do they live there? What are the ways you mark major transitions or developments in your life? (Marriage is only one of many possibilities.) It’s a kinship conversation, and the back-and-forth about the politicized and electrically-charged word “marriage” can obscure that, and get the couple lost in a fruitless argument.

(Sidebar: debates about marriage equality go better if they’re understood as kinship conversations. Does the government get to tell me who I can and cannot choose to be my kin? If so, why?)

One more example: arguments about money. I’ve had one or two myself, with my spouse, and making it a kinship conversation (instead of “you do [insert annoying behavior] about money and I’m sick of it!”) helps us get to the real thing we’re discussing. What do we believe our kin—our clan, if you will—should do with our money? How much should our clan have? How do we share it, save it, spend it, invest it? Why? It’s “our” money, but it’s also mine, and yours. How does that work? Is it really “our” money? Why? What beliefs and assumptions do we bring from our families of origin (more kin!) about money, and how are we living out those beliefs and assumptions (or not)?

Bottom line: if you’re kin, you can go deeper with your kinfolk on these issues. That’s what you do for your people. And it usually leads to a richer and more productive conversation.

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True confession: I have a soft spot in my heart for an old, funny, fluffy little film called “Shirley Valentine,” the story of a 42-year-old housewife named Shirley Bradshaw who has finally had it with the tiny, dreary life she’s been leading and decides to go to Greece to find her younger self, to become Shirley Valentine once again.

If you’re a stickler about spoilers, stop reading now and go watch it, because the clip I’ve linked to (below) is taken from the ending of the film, a scene that neatly captures what I try to get all of my couple clients to do: to look upon their exasperating, irritating, ill-behaved partners with the eye of compassion.

Before you watch the scene, you should know that while her husband never abused her in the film, he behaved like a shit to her. He treated her like his womanservant, and forgot their love story. They suffer a painful confrontation just before she leaves for Greece, and he, well, he misbehaves. And it takes him quite a while to figure out that he needs go after her if he wants to save their marriage.

I can’t get enough of the way she looks at him as he walks down the beach in his uncomfortable suit and flat suitcase and miserable middle-class-British moustache. Watch how this woman looks past all that and sees the boy she loved, and knows (perhaps for the first time) the real reason why he behaved so badly. It is so hard to do this with your spouse or partner. But when you can manage it, it is a sweet, lovely experience for both of you.

The scene starts at about 1:00, money quote at 2:03, but enjoy the first clip, too: it’s a teaser for the rest of the film. (Oh, and Joanna Lumley makes a cameo in the film: What. Is. Not. To. Like?!)

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Yesterday morning we were on the usual morning walk. I felt a little cranky, I confess, because it was drizzling and the dogs were doing their usual thing: stopping every fifth step to sniff something. Then I turned and realized that Hoku ala, our younger dog, had his mouth full (and bursting) with the half-decayed remains of a dead bird.

At that moment the other two characters in the drama—Stella, our eight-year-old sovereign dog, and me—reacted in quite different ways. Stella’s reaction was, well, highly adaptive and functional: she glanced over, saw what was going on, and went back to her business. (She’s old enough now, and mellow enough, that she feels no strong need to possess what the younger dog has in his mouth.) My reaction: apoplexy, of course. OMG you’re going to die!!! I went crazy. I know better than to shake him—I have never physically harmed our dogs—but I wanted to shake that bird out of his mouth. I wanted to pry his jaws open (I wisely avoided this as well). Faced with no practical way to stop the behavior, I basically just yelled and carried on. I’m sure it was an entertaining scene.

There’s not a huge moral to this story…it’s mostly just an absurd little scene from my everyday life. But it did remind me of the all-too-human habit of over-reacting to the misguided behaviors of others. Hoku is a dog, so the chances were better than even that he’d be fine, that his stomach would process the bird carcass without fuss. But there was also a chance that he wouldn’t be fine. God knows what kind of poison or contaminant might be lurking in the dead bird. (What killed it, anyway??) Dogs can injure themselves by ingesting things that they shouldn’t. I wasn’t completely irrational in my reaction.

But I did no one (least of all myself) any favors by flipping out. And there are times when I am tempted to do this with humans. Sometimes clients will make decisions I think are going to get them into trouble, or lead to something they’ll sorely regret. But sometimes it’s not my job to say so. It’s not my job to take away their agency, their own control over their lives, even if that control gets them into jams. I’ve made enough major mistakes in my life to know that mistakes are supposed to be a part of my life story. They teach me lessons, and they give me vital information about myself.

So I keep practicing the art of under-reacting to the alarming behaviors of others. I tell myself, slow down, take it easy. You think they’ll live to regret this, and maybe you’re right. But maybe that’s just an interesting chapter in their life story.

And how’s Hoku? Oh, he’s fine. Crazy little monster.

Prince Hoku ala Papageno, approximately 14 hours into the process of digesting a dead bird.

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Every once in a while a client will seem to be working less hard than me on his/her (or their) problems. Most often this reveals itself when we’re scheduling appointments: everyone has busy schedules, and I don’t think I have one client who’s not very busy with something, but sometimes I’ll sense that they’re cancelling sessions or scheduling appointments sporadically not because of busy-ness, but because they’re not putting counseling (or their relationship, or their health) very high on their priority list. I once had a personal trainer at a gym who said to me, “The people who succeed at this are the ones who put exercise right up there in the top two or three priorities of their life.” You don’t have to set counseling itself as a top priority—that wasn’t what my trainer meant: he really didn’t care how often I saw him, just how often I exercised—but if you’re not setting whatever we’re working on in our sessions as a top priority, you won’t see a lot of improvement.

Another way to say it: whatever we water will grow.

That’s why I’m reaching a point where I recommend to new clients that they schedule three sessions, not one. They can cancel the second and third one if they feel it’s not a good fit, but it’s smart to initially plan on three sessions to get into some serious work. And we should plan them to be at a regular day and time: therapy goes best if it’s regularly scheduled. It builds momentum and rhythm.

Having said that, I also know that some clients will come to sessions regularly, but won’t do much within or between them. This is natural, and understandable: when we’re resisting something, there’s usually a good reason for it. Relationship improvement can be hard, and painful. Working on lifelong issues around mood, behavior patterns, and attitudes can be hard, and painful. It’s easy to feel discouraged and even hopeless.

When I sense this is happening, I try to name it in some way. On a few occasions I’ve had to say it bluntly: “I don’t want to work harder than you, and it kind of feels like that’s happening right now.” What we need to do at that point is this: I need to show you that I understand your resistance and discouragement; I then need to back off a bit and give you time to sort through your feelings; and then you need to decide if you want to take this (whatever it is) on right now. You might not. On some level you may never truly want to change. But you may decide, okay, I’m serious now. I need to change now. I’m ready to do one of the hardest things in my life.

When you do, I’ll be working just as hard as you, and we will make progress.

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But hey, it’s Friday, the sun’s out in Seattle, and I’m in the mood. I’m also desperately hoping my critique of this song will satisfy the ear-worm god and get it out of my head, where it’s been on a constant loop since seeing an ad the other day for the re-released “Titanic” movie.

That’s right, it’s time to poke some therapeutic fun at that Celine Dion chestnut you love to hate. Here it is, with my, um, reflections below it:

“Every night in my dreams
I see you, I feel you
That is how I know you go on
Far across the distance
And spaces between us
You have come to show you go on
Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more you open the door
And you’re here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on
Love can touch us one time
And last for a lifetime
And never let go till we’re gone
Love was when I loved you
One true time I hold to
In my life we’ll always go on
Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more you open the door
And you’re here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on
You’re here, there’s nothing I fear
And I know that my heart will go on
We’ll stay forever this way
You are safe in my heart
And my heart will go on and on”

Allrighty then! Let’s see. It’s…not that bad, actually. She loves him, she will always love him, it doesn’t matter that he drowned in the north Atlantic, love is forever. Okay. I remember in the film she went on to have a great life, so I can’t scold her for endlessly pining for the dead Leo and missing out on the richness of life. I think she even married and had kids, right? But I have a couple of complaints about these lyrics.

First, if you’re going to make a boatload of money writing an iconic song for a blockbuster movie, can’t you come up with something better than, “Love was when I loved you”? Really? But my quarrel with this song runs deeper than the vapid lyrics in the later verses, and maybe the song’s flaw is the reason its later verses are so stale: sorry, Rose and Jack, but love doesn’t “go on” forever, at least without changing a great deal.

I believe in loving relationships that last for decades. I don’t have to “believe in” them, actually, because I’ve observed them directly. I have friends approaching their 65th wedding anniversary this summer, and they’re having a delightful ride. I’m also aware that love for someone who died can last a lifetime: I’m closing in on 16 years of love for my departed mother. But love changes. Sorry, but there’s no way Rose can feel the same way for Jack when she’s in her dotage and has lived a full life without him. Grief and love have this in common (which makes sense, because grief is a function of love): they evolve. It’s been a long time since I’ve sobbed with grief about my mother. In some ways I grieve her more deeply now than I did in the months after she died. I’ve had more time to appreciate the tragedy of her not being there for major events in my life, and for the final third of her own. But it’s just a fantasy in James Cameron’s XXL head that human beings could sustain the same breathless love, or the same powerful grief, for someone who has departed from their life.

Oh, and while I understand poor Rose’s need to have Jack “go on” even though he has died, and I wouldn’t want to say this out loud at Jack’s funeral, I’ll say here that the departure of someone from your life—whatever your beliefs about immortality, or notions about people “living on in our hearts”—means that in ways that hit you in the gut, they really are gone. Not “gone.” Gone. And the discovery that you can love again, completely and deeply, is part of a healthy recovery. My mother died, but motherhood didn’t. Jack died, but marital love didn’t. Rose’s love “goes on” for Jack, and that’s sweet. But—sorry, Celine—Rose also moved on.

Dammit, it didn’t work. That song is still in my head.

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“Both TP and FP can learn from TJ and FJ that closure is important, and TJ and FJ can learn from TP and FP to create enough openness, enough space, for complicated issues to be thoroughly considered. TJ and TP can learn from FJ and FP the importance of feelings and relationships when resolving a conflict, and FJ and FP can learn from TJ and TP the importance of sound analysis and frank appraisal of data.”

I mean, wtf? Even I can barely make sense of it! Here’s what I mean, in a more understandable table format:

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Also, you can now go here for the forms you need for your first counseling session with me as an individual or a couple.

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We talked yesterday about the two ways people prefer to make decisions—beginning with logic and analysis (T) or beginning with values and the impact on people (F). And we paired these preferences up with the Judging (J) preference of organizing the world around you and moving toward closure. Now let’s look at T and F when they’re paired up with the Perceiving preference (P), which is a preference to be adaptable with the world around you and keep options open (rather than seeking closure). When T and F are paired with P, here’s what we see in a conflictual situation:*

People with a preference for TP:
Likely cause of conflict: challenges to/of trust
Desired outcome: defined process or progression
Deal with emotions by: excluding them
Others’ impression: catalyst or contributor to conflict
Satisfied when: they can subsequently analyze the outcome

People with a preference for FP:
Likely cause of conflict: challenges to/of values
Desired outcome: respectful listening
Deal with emotions by: accepting them
Others’ impression: someone who includes others’ values and concerns
Satisfied when: there is open exploration

TP’s are…feisty! Trust and personal credibility are important to them, and they’ll address all kinds of issues when they’re in conflict with others. They’ll play devil’s advocate, question assumptions, poke at accepted truths. They may acknowledge their feelings along the way, but in the end they take the conflict into the neocortex for extended analysis and debate, sometimes just with themselves. FP’s can be feisty too, but they’re a differently-colored unicorn: they move into action when their values are threatened, and they accept that emotions belong in the room when the conflict is being resolved. Instead of analysis, they want conflict to lead to open exploration of ideas and possibilities, with everyone being respectfully heard.

Both TP and FP can learn from TJ and FJ that closure is important, and TJ and FJ can learn from TP and FP to create enough openness, enough space, for complicated issues to be thoroughly considered. TJ and TP can learn from FJ and FP the importance of feelings and relationships when resolving a conflict, and FJ and FP can learn from TJ and TP the importance of sound analysis and frank appraisal of data.

In the many relationships of your life, no doubt you get into conflict with people who share some of your preferences, but not all. Sometimes you’re battling with your direct opposite. Having a perfect match doesn’t guarantee that the conflict will go well, because that means you share certain blind spots, so neither of you has easy access to something (a preference to seek closure, for example) that might help you resolve the conflict. But fighting with someone with opposite preferences is tricky too: you might fail to understand each other, or respect each other.

Having said all this, it’s essential to keep in mind that we all do everything described in the MBTI. Yeah, I prefer ENFJ. But I can introvert my feelings, I can take a clear-eyed look at the facts, I can make hard decisions based on impersonal data, and I can remain open-minded and not jump to a resolution before the group is ready. So as you look through these different preferences for handling conflict, you’ll likely recognize yourself. That’s good! Use self-understanding to improve your skillfulness and self-awareness in conflictual situations. But look at the other preferences too. They have much to teach you.

*The differing lists of conflict behaviors for TP and FP preferences are quoted (with light edits for clarity) from Introduction to Type and Conflict, by Damian Killen and Danica Murphy. All other commentary in this post is written by Stephen Crippen. Here’s Killen and Murphy’s booklet:

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