Hi Guys, I’m licensed for marriage, family, and couples therapy. In today’s article, I’m going to be talking all about effective communication for couples therapy. If you’re curious, stay tuned.

Okay? So when I see couples, or families, for that matter, one of the biggest things in couples therapy is they’ll always say they’re struggling with communication.

Often communication is covering up a plethora of other issues that are bringing a couple into therapy. But today, if you are struggling with communication, I want to share with you some simple tips for couples therapy that will help your conversations be more productive. And so I’m going to talk a little bit about active listening in couples therapy, which is really important.

And we’re going to talk about actual practical techniques in couples therapy for conversation that can make it so that you and the other person or people you’re speaking with walk away with a better understanding of each person’s perspective. Because that’s the goal of good communication, right?

The Goal Better Understanding For Couples Therapy

It’s not to prove your point. It’s not to win the argument. It’s to walk away with a better understanding of the opposing person’s point of view and for them to walk away with a better understanding of yours. So keeping that goal in mind for couples therapy, let’s jump into the tips. So the first thing I have to talk about in couples therapy is active listening or reflective listening.

And what that is, is a very slow way of communicating. Whenever I introduce this to my couples, it is always met with a bit of resistance because it’s much slower than we are accustomed to communicating. What you do is, let’s say we have the first person who is person A in the relationship. Let’s name Angela, and we’ve got person B in the relationship. Let’s name b Brenda.

So Angela is going to be the first person that has a grievance or something that they’d like to discuss. So Angela shares her point of view with Brenda. Brenda then repeats back to Angela what she heard her say. Angela then confirms or denies what Brenda has repeated back to her. Basically saying, yes, that’s exactly what I was saying, or being like, no, you’re missing the point, right?

And by the way, when Brenda repeats this back, it’s not with irritation or sarcasm. You are really trying to mimic the tone, candor, and point of view of the person who is speaking to you. Now, if Brenda gets it right, what Angela said, then Brenda is able to respond to Angela. Then Angela repeats back to Brenda what she heard. Brenda confirms or refutes if Angela has accurately summarized what she said and if she has.

Angela can respond. So you can see this is a very slow way of communicating but it is the only way to ensure that you all are talking about the same thing. So often the main issue, when I’m working with couples, is that one person says something and the other person hears something completely different than what they intended to hear.

So the next tips that I’m going to share with you on couples therapy are tips that will make it so that it’s easier for the other person to fully digest and understand what it is that you are saying. So the first tip on couples therapy is to help ensure that the person you’re speaking with can fully digest and understand what you’re saying, is to make sure it’s clear what the intention of the conversation is.

Set Clear Intentions

I always encourage my couples to set their intentions at the beginning of the conversation. I would say I have one thing I really want to talk to you about and I know there are some other things we might need to address later, but today I was hoping we could talk specifically about what happened at your grandmother’s house. Do what you can to make the environment conducive to a smooth and comfortable conversation.

Create A Safe Atmosphere

I know of couples who will maybe once a month talk and what they’ll do is they will create ideal scenarios so they might go on a getaway to have these conversations or something as simple as running a hot bath with candles. I have couples who will only talk about finances over a glass of wine because it can be very stressful for them and they want to be able to relax.

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Some couples may pray together before they engage in conversations that could be really stressful or frustrating.

Speak Slowly

Take your time expressing what you want to express, but also keep it concise. So speaking slowly doesn’t mean taking a long time. It simply means that you are thinking through what you’re saying you always want to be keeping in the back of your mind, would you be able to repeat back what you’re saying?

Be Concise

Basically, that keeps you from running on a long tangent that’s going to be impossible for another person to reflect back to you in a way to make sure your conversation is concise is to use proper words for couples therapy.

Understandable Language

You want to avoid using words that the person you’re speaking with may not be familiar with the language that you’re using. So you want to be aware of your audience for couples therapy, and know who your audience is. If you’ve been with this person for even a short period of time, then you probably know if you’re overdoing it. Sometimes in conversations, we try to intellectualize, and intellectualizing is actually a defense mechanism.

If you’re in a conversation and you feel like you need to use all of these big words and refer to all of these concepts in terms of what the layperson or average person would not be familiar with, then you might be trying to win the argument by sounding smarter. So focus on using language and maybe even stories that make it easier for you to communicate with your partner, with your child, with your family member, just making it so that it is easy for them to digest, understand, and most importantly, make it easy on them to reflect it back to you for couples therapy.

Watch Your Body Language

Another very important key for couples therapy is to watch your body language. One of the main things for couples therapy that I’m looking for when I meet a couple for the first time, for the fifth time, if we’ve been working together for years, is what their body language telling me that they are not. So if their partner says something and I see them rolling their eyes or shaking their head or turning off to the side, getting on their phone, all of those things communicate, I disagree with you, or I don’t respect your opinion, I don’t care to be here.

If you can watch your body language. Good body language looks like facing toward the person you’re speaking with and making eye contact. Okay. These tips are really for being in person, right? Some of them you can use when you’re on the phone, maybe even some on FaceTime or virtual platforms like Zoom, but in person, if possible.

If this is not beyond the norm for your relationship, maybe grab their hands, look in their eyes, and try to let them know you are connecting. You are focusing on what they are trying to tell you and reflecting that back to them.

Avoid Sarcasm

Again, without sarcasm, don’t let it be clear from your reflection back to them that you don’t agree. You want to say, what I’m hearing you say is XYZ, and if they say, yes, absolutely, that’s what you heard, then you say, now from my perspective, I feel XYZ. Another thing is what I just demonstrated there, which is speaking from the eye position, you’d never want to speak for your partner.

Right? A lot of times when I’m seeing couples, they’re talking to me about, oh, and then they thought that I did such and such and they filled in. They get mad. One thing about them, is they’re always going to get mad. So you’re mind reading, you’re telling them how they feel.

How about we focus on the one thing you know for sure, which is how you feel? So you take the time to reflect on your feelings about something and you can say, what was the trigger for that feeling? The best script for couples therapy, John Gottman talks about this. He is a founding theorist and couples therapy. He’s got a very well-known approach to couples therapy and understanding research that supports the likelihood of a couple getting a divorce.

But what you want to think about script-wise is I feel blank. When you do blank, you want to say a specific behavior. You don’t want to say, I feel blank when you ignore me. You want to say, I feel ignored when you get on your phone when I’m talking to you.

That is a specific behavior. And in the future, I would like you to blank. Gives them some sort of guide to what to do going forward. We often try to trap our partners by saying, oh, you should know what to do, right? We want them to read our minds.

And sometimes it doesn’t feel s*xy to tell somebody exactly what you need. And that’s okay. It doesn’t always have to be s*xy, but sometimes it can be. By just letting them know exactly what you want, you’re setting your partner up for success.

Stay On Topic

Another important key for couples therapy is to stay on topic. You do not want to shift back and forth between a lot of different topics because then it’s very hard for your partner and for you to keep up. And at the end of the conversation, how will you measure success? Like, we talked about five different things and I’m no clearer on any of these things than I was before we started talking.

Avoid Shifting Blame

Making it clear that you have one specific thing you’re wanting to talk about. And really avoid trying to shift blame in a way where you might be trying to match their grievance with your own grievance. That is definitely something you want to avoid doing in the form is gas lighting. Right? When a person is coming to you about something that bothered them and you say, oh, that bothered you, well, this bothered me.

Something totally separate. Well, if that bothered you, then you have an opportunity to bring that up as well. But at this moment, we’re talking about this one thing now, things you want to keep in mind some barriers to good communication would be loud noise.

Barrier 1 Loud Noise

So if you’re in a noisy area, if you’re in an airport or a loud restaurant and you’re wanting to bring up this very important topic, consider the fact that if you’re talking especially about sensitive things, your partner’s like huh, what?

I can’t hear you. Are you going to get triggered at that moment? Because you’re pouring out your heart and it’s really loud and they can’t hear you. You should probably wait for a time when it’s going to be nice and quiet for couples therapy.

Barrier 2 Stress

And another barrier to communication is stress in couples therapy.

So keep in mind when people are in a stressful situation, if they’ve got something going on at work, you might have some family issues going on outside of the relationship. All of these things can impact a person’s perception of the conversation. If you know you’re already very stressed out, maybe focus on winding yourself down, calming down, and checking in with your partner to see how they’re doing before bringing up a topic that could potentially exacerbate your stress. Sometimes it’s unavoidable and the thing stressing you out is the conversation that needs to be had. And in that case, you work on your breathing techniques or whatever you typically do during the hot bath.

You want to pay attention to your stress levels, your partner’s stress levels, the environment, and atmosphere that you are in, and make it so that this conversation is productive and you walk away with a better understanding of your partner’s perspective and they walk away with a better understanding of yours. Let me know your specific question if you’re in a relationship or not. If you just are looking for some good communication tips that you found this useful, let me know your best tips for communication below as well.

If maybe you guys are working on better communication habits. And I appreciate you for reading all the way until the end of the article. That really, really helps me. So Thank you.