The Lens of a Gottman Couples Therapist
A Gottman Couple Therapist constantly observes, assesses, plans, and intervenes. While listening to you and your partner, your Gottman Therapist tracks many aspects of your relationship.
The following list is based on what I look at in sessions. Some focus areas are specific to the Gottman Method, while others pertain to the therapeutic process in general.
Love Maps
If you have ever read “The 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work” by Dr. John Gottman, you might be familiar with the concept of Love Maps. Love maps refer to partners’ knowledge of each other, which is the foundation of their friendship. To nurture a strong connection, marriage masters constantly update their maps. This helps them adjust and change through crises, transitions, and aging.
When relationships struggle, partners lose touch with each other’s internal worlds. They navigate their relationships with old understandings and assumptions about each other’s needs, dreams, worries, and values. This lack of awareness leads to misunderstanding, conflict, and confusion. Partners don’t know what their partner is about anymore or how to please them, creating a sense of urgency to address this issue.
During sessions, the depth of the partners’ love maps can be observed in their empathy, sensitivity to their partner’s experiences, and understanding of their partner’s view of the world. When these are lacking, we often notice difficulty validating each other, making sense of each other’s reality, and confusion or disbelief with partners’ new wishes or perspectives. A Gottman Couples Therapist will bring this to the couple’s attention and guide partners to start a new dialogue to help them build awareness, empathy, and motivation to adjust.
Fondness and Admiration
Fondness and Admiration represent a positive sentiment toward each other. They are signs of intimacy, safety, and trust. There is gentleness, softness, and care. This is a strength in a relationship. There is space for vulnerability. Partners can clearly see what each does well and usually minimize the negative aspects of the relationship.
Couples in distress often show little expression of fondness and admiration. Their negative lens prevents them from seeing each other’s appreciation and affection. They desperately want to be seen as worthy and important to each other but struggle to express their needs and be vulnerable to accept praise and appreciation.
In sessions, a disruption in the fondness and admiration system can be seen when partners do not acknowledge each other’s positive comments or reject appreciation with contempt, sarcasm, or passive-aggressive responses. These moments are usually opportunities to gain awareness, acknowledge positive experiences, process difficulty accepting praise, and align needs in the relationship.
Turning Towards
Turning towards refers to partners’ bids to connect. When partners express affection, they make a bid to connect. Their partner might turn toward (respond positively), turn against (reject the bid with a negative comment), or turn away (silently dismiss the bid)
Bids for connection happen constantly when we ask each other questions, share news, or comment on random things. Responding to bids helps partners feel connected, secure, and essential in the relationship.
Partners in distressed relationships tend to use defensiveness, anger, or silence when they respond to their loved one’s bids. Often, couples say they have been hurt and don’t trust their partner cares. They stop seeing bids and also stop making them. Emotional distance has set in.
In sessions, failed bids for connection are acknowledged and brought to the partners’ attention. Partners learn how to repair the disconnection and gain insight into the impact of their unresponsiveness on their partner’s feelings in the relationship.
Conflict Management
Conflict management is a multifaceted process. Many subtle phenomena happen during a disagreement. However, with the guidance of a skilled Gottman Couples Therapist, these complexities can be navigated. A Gottman Couples Therapist tracks all the aspects during conflict conversations and helps partners shift from unhelpful responses to more engaging and collaborative ones, offering a beacon of hope amid conflict.
Start-Up: The inception of a conversation often sets the tone for its outcome. A gentle start-up, characterized by reassurance, caring words, and a heads-up, empowers partners to approach disagreements or feedback with a broad perspective and an open mind. In contrast, a harsh start-up can lead to conflict and emotional flooding, often indicating a distressed relationship. A Gottman Therapist will guide you to transition from a harsh to a gentle start, fostering a healthier flow of communication.
Communication Styles or the Four Horsemen - Defensiveness, Criticism, Contempt, and Stonewalling: Masters of marriage are careful with their words and use fewer of them, even in highly charged disagreements. Distressed couples show more consistent defensiveness, criticism, contempt, and stonewalling when navigating conflict. A Gottman Therapist will interrupt the Four Horsemen when present and guide partners to shift to their antidotes or more helpful communication styles.
Repair Attempts: In any relationship, harsh communication can sometimes occur; however, masters of marriages are adept at constantly repairing these slips. They are acutely aware of the impact of their words on their partner and diligently repair hurtful comments with apologies and soothing. In contrast, distressed couples repair infrequently, and when they do, their attempts are often ineffective. A Gottman Therapist will create opportunities for repair during sessions, enhancing the chances of successful healing and growth.
Emotion Regulation and Reactivity: Emotions derail communication due to the effects of flooding on people’s rational thinking. Masters of marriages constantly soothe each other and keep their conflict emotionally manageable. They might use repair attempts, take breaks, redirect the conversation, and use humor, reassurance, or physical touch to regulate flooding. A Gottman Therapist watches for moments of flooding and helps partners gain awareness and skills to regulate heightened feelings.
Compromise and Influence: Healthy relationships are constantly evolving. Partners accept each other’s influence and navigate the relationship as a team. Masters of marriage are mentally flexible and open to their partner’s differences and perspectives. In distressed relationships, partners display more rigidity and approach differences with a “you against me” attitude. A Gottman Therapist notices the lack of flexibility and influence and addresses the lack of compromise with diverse strategies to help partners overcome barriers to more inclusive decision-making.
Perpetual versus Solvable issues: All couples experience solvable and perpetual issues. Perpetual issues include personality, values, preferences, and other subjective differences. Masters of marriages engage in an ongoing dialogue about these issues, accepting that they will never be resolved. In distressed relationships, partners view these differences as personality flaws and desperately try to change their partners to be more like themselves. Partners get stuck in a perpetual gridlock where resentment and frustration slowly erode safety and connection. A Gottman Therapist identifies gridlock problems and helps couples start a more intimate and open dialogue while guiding partners to tentative compromises.
Triggers
In relationships, triggers refer to partners’ intense emotional reactions to each other. Did you or your partner ever wonder during the conflict, “What the heck just happened?” Why are you making such a big deal out of it?” There you go—a trigger happened. Triggers escalate conversations and interactions in general. These are often blindspots for people and are challenging to make sense of.
When the intensity of your partner’s reaction does not match the gravity of the situation, there is a trigger. Triggers have a story and disrupt communication. Marriage masters know each other very well (love maps are updated). They are aware of each other’s past trauma or adversity. They avoid triggering each other and repair or soothe before proceeding with the conversation.
Triggers are always attended to in sessions. Bringing triggers to partners’ awareness is often an aha moment. They finally can make sense of their partner’s reaction. A Gottman Therapist notices triggers in sessions and leads partners to explore, understand, make connections, and adjust to minimize the effect of triggers on the relationship.
Empathy, Validation, Understanding
Empathy is crucial to relationships. It helps partners care for each other. When partners perceive their partner as separate from themselves, they are more accepting of the differences and can consider both their own and their partner’s perspectives. Empathy helps compromise in relationships.
When couples empathize with each other, their partner’s reactions make sense to them; they can step into their partners’ world without fear of losing theirs. They also have more motivation to make changes to accomodate their partner. When understood and validated, partners feel considered, worthy, important and cared for.
In distressed relationships, empathy is a challenge. Conflict and constant disagreements weaken safety in the relationship. Lack of acceptance and influence often builds resentment and lack of power balance in the relationship. They have to fight to be heard or to get their needs met. A Gottman Therapist will help partners rebuild safety and unlock empathy, improve understanding and validation.
Patterns
Patterns are predictable sequences of events. Some patterns are positive. For example: “When you come back from work, I give you a hug, or When I go to bed, I kiss you good night, or when you get tense, I start listening more.” Other patterns are negative. For example: “When I cry, you raise your voice or when you text me, I don’t respond, or when I hug you, you get tense.”
All couples engage in both negative and positive patterns. Masters of marriage, however, address negative patterns as they happen. They repair, apologize, comfort each other, and reflect on their role in the pattern. They are open to their partner’s feedback and adjust their moves in the pattern. This shows a high level of sensitivity and care to each other.
In distressed relationships, positive patterns are not acknowledged due to the negative sentiment in the relationship. Meanwhile, negative patterns tend to escalate and overwhelm partners’ experiences in the relationship. Couples start anticipating the worst-case scenario before they even engage in a conversation. This negative focus reinforces negative patterns. Couples feel stuck. Their repairs are ineffective, and a sense of hopelessness and resentment settles in. In sessions, a Gottman Therapist will bring these patterns to your attention. They will also track the steps that lead to, reinforce, and maintain these patterns. A Gottman Therapist will guide you to change these steps and rewire unhelpful cycles.
Dynamic
There is a dynamic in any pattern. The dynamic in a relationship refers to partners’ responses to each other in different contexts. Based on the reactions, the interaction escalates either negative or positive emotions. Your partner’s responses to you affect you, and your reactions to them affect them. This is often a blind spot for couples. Partners tend to see their loved one’s negative effect on them but fail to see the impact on their partner. Partners also tend to see the positive responses in themselves but fail to see them in their loved ones. This bias explains miscommunication and lack of ownership in relationship problems.
Masters of marriage are aware of their steps when engaging each other. They also track their partner’s reactions to them and repair escalation early and often to keep the dynamic emotionally manageable. Masters of marriage step out of the interaction and comment on the dynamic when it's unhelpful. It helps them to redirect the topic, focus on their partner, and adjust their behaviors.
In a distressed relationship, partners are vulnerable due to the state of their relationship. Their focus is negative due to the wounds from the past, betrayals, or a history of challenging moments. They are more reactive or dismissive. They also feel justified in their pain and struggle to acknowledge their partner’s hurt. Their dynamic is emotionally charged. A Gottman Therapist tracks the steps partners take that lead to heightened emotions. A Gottman Therapist watches for unhelpful responses, brings them to partners’ attention, and models a shift to redirect the conversation on a more gentle and empathetic path.
Initiative and Engagement
Commitment and motivation to improve the relationship are primordial in couples counseling. They are usually seen in high levels of engagement, emotional expression, conflict, and responsiveness. Commitment and motivation are often embedded in unhelpful patterns, which is why partners seek help.
Occasionally, one of the partners is more active than the other. Or there needs to be more initiative and engagement on both sides (very rare, even in discernment counseling). When a lack of participation is observed, your couples counselor will make attempts at engaging the withdrawn partner in the process. Lack of engagement is different from being shy or introverted. Lack of engagement shows apathy, emotional shutdown, lack of interest, or ambivalence. There might be a secretive agenda on the withdrawn partner’s side, which is usually explored and addressed by a trained couples counselor.
Lack of engagement and initiative might also be part of an unbalanced pattern in the relationship. A trained couples counselor tracks and intervenes on the barriers to more active participation.
Rapport with the therapist
When you start couples counseling, your trained couples counselor will build a relationship of trust with both of you. This relationship is crucial to your buy-in and trust in your couples counselor’s guidance. Very often, couples bring a one-sided perspective on their relationship problems. However, your couples counselor’s role is to observe and affect both partners’ roles in the issues they present. Partners look for fairness and empathy in their couples counselor, and it is only possible if your therapist has built a strong relationship with both of you. They then can provide challenging feedback while validating both of your perspectives.
A Gottman Therapist and any trained couples counselor keep both of you in mind and watch for any connection and trust ruptures. They repair and address any changes in the strength of the therapeutic relationship. In sessions, these ruptures in connection and trust show up in different ways: eye-rolling, passive-aggressive comments, defensiveness, silence, and shut down when the therapist speaks to them or their partner. Some partners openly verbalize feeling like a bad guy or not having enough validation or space to talk. This feedback is very helpful to your therapist. They will either adjust what they are doing and repair or process your feelings if they do not match the reality of the session (explore triggers and internal processing).
It can be damaging to remain in couples counseling when rapport with the therapist is poor. I hear partners repeatedly describe their past experiences as unhelpful, unfair, insulting, and discouraging due to a lack of trust in the counselor and their recommendations. Always check in with yourself and bring your feelings to your therapist’s attention. A trained couples counselor will consider your feedback with openness and curiosity.
Progress
When couples start counseling, they feel an urgency to change their relationship. Stress, tension, and exhaustion caused by relationship issues cause anxiety and a strong desire to end it. Partners are sensitive to a lack of progress or when things slip back into old habits.
A trained couples counselor tracks partners’ discouragement and frustration during sessions. A Gottman Therapist or a trained couples counselor ensures that realistic short-term and long-term goals are set based on the assessment and partners’ priorities. These goals help direct counseling and focus on urgent matters.
A Gottman Therapist or a trained couples counselor, with their keen observation, adapts their strategies and guidance to the couple's needs. They assess the effectiveness of interventions and tools used in sessions, ensuring the counseling remains effective and beneficial.
Conclusion
A Gottman Therapist’s focus is not just on the therapeutic process but also on the framework. They view relationship issues through the Gottman Method, a set of principles that determine the health of an intimate relationship. This method, which they are well-versed in, guides their assessment of adherence to treatment and partners’ engagement in therapy, instilling confidence in their expertise.
A Gottman Therapist is an active participant in the counseling process. They adjust their approach and interventions based on observed progress and partners' needs. A Gottman Therapist holds space for both partners while containing escalation and acting out of destructive patterns.
A Gottman Therapist tracks many relationship processes, prioritizes, intervenes, and assesses. Couples counseling is far from an open-ended conversation where partners can figure out their relationship independently. Distressed relationships are complex for various reasons, and a Gottman Therapist has the skills to regulate and guide the process safely and helpfully for both partners.
Stay tuned to read about “Couples’ Unhelpful Experiences of Therapy.”
If you are curious about what happens in Gottman Couples Therapy, read “What to Expect in Gottman Couples Therapy.”
Do you have any questions about couples counseling or the Gottman Method? Please email me at tmatyukhin@tmatmcs.com
