When Couple's Therapy Is Best

This may not be the most popular opinion, but it’s important to note, especially during love month, that when it comes to confronting relational issues, it’s best to do so in couple’s therapy.  This doesn’t mean that individuals are prohibited from discussing the challenges they encounter in relationships, but it’s a reminder that you need to be careful.  Dominique Lemelin, one of our amazing couple’s therapists, often reminds us in supervision that we need to be so careful when working on couple’s issues in individual therapy.  

Why?  Because as unbiased as the client and therapist may strive to be, the therapist will never fully understand the honest dynamics of a couple unless both persons are present and participating in the process.  When you are only hearing one side of the story, it’s easy to cultivate a bias toward that person’s story.  When the other person is not their to defend themselves or add context, it’s easy for therapists to create a hypothesis of who is in the right, as well as who is in the wrong.  Therefore, recommendations based on incomplete and even inaccurate information, can not only be unhelpful, but straight up harmful.

For instance, if my client tells me how horrible or terribly unhelpful her husband is, I’m more inclined to validate her experience and provide recommendations that are in total alignment with her experience.  However, this approach is obviously wildly unfair for her husband.  For it could be that he finds his wife overly critical and for all I know, has been struggling with undiagnosed depression as a result of childhood trauma.

This is all to say, be careful and incredibly mindful when discussing couple’s issues in an individual session.  While there is absolutely space to explore your personal tendencies, you cannot dissect the other person’s tendencies without their presence.  You can absolute explore your habits, but you cannot examine theirs.  I even believe there is space in individual therapy to explore how you could better show up in relationships, communicate more calmly and clearly, as well as establish healthy boundaries and limits.  However, when a client is trying to work through a contentious or complex relationship issue - couple’s therapy is always best.