Couples’ therapy

Couples’ therapy is a modality of therapy that addresses problems in relationships. Couples—whether living together or not, married, engaged, or in a committed relationship—seek the help of a therapist to improve their relationship, prevent problems (as in pre-marital counseling), deal with old or new problems to the relationships. The more chronic problems are, the more difficult it is to treat, and unfortunately couples sometimes wait too long to seek help for their problems because they think they “should be able to solve their problems themselves,” or because one of them doesn’t believe the therapeutic process can be effective. Sometimes they don’t want to be blamed even more than they are already blamed at home, or they think, “We’re fine. My problem is that my partner is not happy.” Well, if your partner thinks there are problems in the relationship, you probably should take a look at it, instead of letting things go for too long.

Couples’ therapy should be performed by a therapist who has experience and proper training, since it is very different from other types of therapy. For the couples’ therapist, it’s the relationship that is the client, not the separate individuals in the relationship. Sometimes one or both partners could be referred to individual therapy if their issues are contributing or getting in the way of therapeutic work.

Ms. Borges has been working with couples for almost 20 years. She is Level 3 PACT therapist being trained by Stan Tatkin himself. Dr. Tatkin is the creator of PACT, Psychobiological Approach to Couples’ Therapy.

PACT

Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy, PACT, is a type of couples’ therapy that integrates developmental neuroscience, arousal regulation, and attachment theory.

Attachment Theory informs about secure functioning and helps us understand each person’s need for connection and safety in relationships. Attachment Theory helps us understand that our behaviors and models for relationships were learned in our childhood and serve as a lens to see our partner, ourselves and the world.

Arousal Regulation informs us that every time that we are not feeling safe in a relationship we will feel aroused, and not able to access our resources, skills and will get into fight/flight/freeze mode. It informs that much of couple’s fights and arguments comes from the inability of the couple co-regulate each other when discussing difficult matters.

Developmental neuroscience gives an understanding that the parts of the brain related to social-emotional functioning are mostly implicit, non-verbal, primitive parts of the brain. These are the arts of the brain related to attachments are basically out of conscious reach.

PACT helps couples access those less-than-optimal moments with an experiential approach, bringing the issue to the present moment, helping clients to regulate each other and not be a threat to each other.

Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a technique used by healthcare professionals that helps with a variety of problems: physical illnesses, like gastro-intestinal disorders, skin conditions, pain, childbirth, pre- or post-surgeries, but also psychological problems like anxiety, depression, phobias, stress, habits, relationship issues, etc.

The process to induce hypnosis is called trance induction. Trance inductions are tailored to each individual according to their goals in therapy, values, idiosyncrasies, etc. Hypnosis can be defined as a state of focused attention in which most people feel calm and relaxed, and describes a very pleasant experience.

However, hypnosis might not be the right technique or procedure to be used in all cases, or with all patients. The decision to use hypnosis in therapeutic treatment should be done in consultation with a qualified health care professional who has training in therapeutic hypnosis, and discusses the limitations of hypnosis as well as the reasons to use it.

Myths about hypnosis:

Hypnosis is a well-researched procedure that shows its therapeutic efficacy in the issues mentioned above. Nevertheless a lot of people think hypnosis is hocus-pocus or still have the erroneous idea that hypnosis is a controlling form of intervention: either the subject complete loss of control or complete gain of control. These are myths about hypnosis. The client is not a mere subject that doesn’t have any control over what’s happening in hypnosis. The client is a co-participant in the therapeutic process.

It is true that hypnosis can be a powerful therapeutic tool in hands of a trained professional and have shorts cuts in therapy, but patients still needs to commit to the process that we call therapeutic work.

Ms. Borges has been using hypnosis and training other professionals in using therapeutic hypnosis for almost 30 years.