5 Key Mistakes Therapists

Make with Couples
(and what to do instead!)

By Rebecca Jorgensen, PhD

©2016
 Your task is not to question their


love, even if they do. Rather it is to
find the barriers that block them
from sharing and counting on it.

©Rebecca Jorgensen, PhD

Certified Trainer, Supervisor
and EFT Couples Therapist

Key Mistakes therapists make doing couple

Couples therapy is
considered one of the
therapy.
hardest forms of
therapy. 1. Not maintaining session management.
Failure to intervene.
Most therapists do
couple therapy. Working with distressed couples requires high
engagement. You need to prevent the continuation of
Most therapists their arguments. Couples look to you for help, if they
struggle doing couple knew how to be calm and stay in conversation they
therapy. wouldn’t come to your office. Make therapy a safe place.

Most therapists WHAT YOU CAN DO: Be prepared to manage the

don’t have specialized session. It will take your influence to keep the session
training in how do to from falling apart or blowing up in yelling, arguing,
couple therapy. defending and withdrawal. You need to be active in
structuring the session, so the couple’s distress don’t
Even if you have escalate. Let them know what to expect, and lay out a
specialized training in clear structure. Interrupt and intervene before things get
couple therapy, these out of hand. Make therapy a safe place.
tips can help.
5 Key Mistakes Therapists Make with Couples
Page 2


2. Being the Judge. Julia F. is a licensed MFT. During her
It’s easy to get seduced into being a judge. In fact, couples training she worked with children
and families and did her internship
often want you to take sides and tell who’s right, who’s wrong at a hospice program. She didn’t
and dictate their partner’s behavior. As a couples therapist your have any experience or coursework
job is to treat the relationship. s. As a therapist your job is to on couple therapy.
offer treatment, not take sides.
She loves working with kids but
sees that most of their problems
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Be empathic to both. Help them stay in come from distress between their
difficult conversations and find the blocks that prevent them parents. She sees the occasional
couple, has requests to see quite a
from working together. Remember, it’s their dynamic - fueled few more and believes if she could
by vulnerable feelings - that causes the majority of problems help the parents work together
and distress. Help them see the dynamic and identify the more the kids would get better
faster.
insecurities driving it.
Even though the demand for couple
3. Treating couples with individual therapy therapy is high, she is reluctant to
schedule them.They often don’t
methods. Couple therapy is not the same as “individual come regularly, sessions are difficult
therapy with partner present.” Most therapists who do a little to control and all the bickering
leaves her feeling tense and a bit
couple therapy get caught thinking about individual psycho- overwhelmed.
pathology. Individual therapy skills, used on a couple, can have
the opposite impact of what you expect and reduce your She’s never quite sure which tools
of the trade she should use and
effectiveness, especially when you give into your biases and while she likes problem solving with
see one individual as unreasonable. the couples most of the couples she
sees break up.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Learn to treat couples with interventions
developed for systems - their relationship is a system. Work to She wonders - how can she help
couples get better?
address the underlying problem that creates and maintains
their relational distress. The couple’s interpersonal dynamic is
your ally.
 

5 Key Mistakes Therapists Make with Couples
Page 3

4. Not assessing or discussing the couple’s sexual

relationship. Couple relationships are romantic and sexual. Most
couples have not learned to discuss their feelings about their sexual
relationship. While the cause of the relationship distress probably
doesn’t stem from sex issues, it usually creates them.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Assess their sexual relationship and the impact
their relational distress has on it. You’re the therapist, so lead the way in
discussing difficult things with confident, calm curiosity. Your openness
will help them learn how to share and be more responsive to each
other.
5. Using the no-approach approach. Many therapists have a “tool
box” of techniques or interventions they use. No theory, no plan, no map, just a
tool box. Research tells us this doesn’t work. It adds chaos to a chaotic and
unstable terrain. The majority of couples who are treated with the “no approach
approach” get worse.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Use an evidenced based model specifically designed for
couple therapy that has solid outcome research on it’s effectiveness. Easy.
There’s only two. Many models claim they are “research based,” but don’t have
outcome-based evidence. A systematic, empirically validated theory provides
structure, has verified interventions, and lays out what to do, when, and why.
The most successful evidenced-based approach to couple therapy uses
attachment theory as a guide and provides a map for the treatment. You can
take couples from distress into happy stablility.
 5 Key Mistakes Therapists Make with Couples
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 4

Thank you for your interest in couple therapy and doing all you can to help the sweethearts
who come to you when they are distressed.

One thing I’ve been enjoying a lot recently, is how science is coming together across
disciplines in ways that really benefit us as mental health practitioners. Researchers are
learning more about our need for connection, the neuroscience of empathy, how cognition
and emotion work together, and what we need to do to empower our clients as they build
resilience and what we can do to find joy in our own relationships and practices. After all, we
are interconnected and contextually bound within society, and as healers we need to
experience community amongst ourselves so we’re fed as we supply care, kindness, love
and engagement in the world.

Because of these things, I’m excited to attend the conference Creating Connections 2016:
New Frontiers in Science and Psychotherapy. My favorite psychotherapy researchers will be
there joined by the leading neuroscientists to integrate the newest science of relationships
and psychology practice. Think Dan Siegel (Mindsight), Sue Johnson (Emotionally Focused
Therapy), Marco Iacoboni (The Science of Empathy) and Jim Coan (Why We Hold Hands),
among others. Check it out for yourself here and if you come, well I hope to meet you in
person.

About Dr. Jorgensen

Rebecca Jorgensen, PhD is Co-Founder and
Director at the Training and Research Institute for
Emotionally Focused Therapy (TRI EFT) and
director of the Attachment Advancement Institute. 

She is best known for inspiring and educating

therapists and couples around the globe, online
and in-person. She facilitates the Hold Me Tight
Workshop For Therapists and Their Partners in
San Francisco and San Diego as well as other
national and international locations. She holds the
PhD in Clinical Psychology with specialized
training in treating trauma and problematic sexual
behavior. You can follow her on Facebook
and Twitter and join her online for consultation,
courses or webinars - or get her best selling
video Emotionally Focused Therapy: A Complete
Treatment.

Dr. Jorgensen is a certified EFT Trainer,

Supervisor and Therapist and is honored to work
directly with Dr. Susan Johnson. She does
intensive couple therapy near her beach side
residence in Baja CA, Mexico.  She is devoted to
strengthening families through helping couples
develop safe and secure marital bonds and helping
other therapists learn more effective couple’s
therapy. Married to the love of her life, she and
Max are proud to be grandparents of seven
delightful (smart and attractive too) little beings.