Generally speaking we choose to go into therapy when we can’t figure out how to make our lives work by ourselves. Maybe we’ve been aware of underlying sadness that doesn’t seem to go away no matter what we do. Or perhaps we have started having panic attacks for no noticeable reason that we cannot contain on our own. We could be tearful much of the time and don’t understand what is causing it. 

On the other hand, we could enter therapy because we are unhappy with our marriage and we can’t get ourselves to leave or figure out how to change it. 

When we go into therapy for any reason, and we are married, the odds of ending up divorced actually increase.  I suspect this is because when we enter therapy we are looking at things solely from our own perspective. We go into therapy hoping to get a different perspective, but often what happens is that we get support in our perspective.  Most therapists are kind, care giving types of people who have gone into the profession in hopes of helping people.  So when you enter their office they give you support and encouragement, they help you feel better about yourself and your position.  If you have a partner and you are unhappy with them, the therapist encourages you to stand up for yourself and assert your needs. 

The downside of their doing this is that while it may make you feel better in the short run, it runs the risk of destroying your marriage in the long run. This is because what has happened is that you have gotten help in making you stronger, at the cost of the connection between you and your partner.

In supervision early in my career I remember my supervisor saying that once a person brings their spouse into therapy you become the marriage’s counselor and not the individual’s counselor.  This made sense to me at the time.

Since then I have come to realize that when someone comes to me their relationships are as much a part of the therapy as they.  This means that I do not take positions against the other parties.  I support the person in discovering more about themselves and exploring how their current relationships are impacted by their past experiences. I do not make judgments about my client needing to end their relationships just because my client is unhappy in the situation. 

One of my past supervisors habitually demanded that her clients cut off connections with their families.  Now, at the time this made sense to me since some of those family connections were with parents that continued to be abusive.  And, sometimes, this it can be important to take time-outs in these situations until the clients are strong enough to protect themselves.  But most of the time what my clients need is to be able to develop a different kind of relationship with these important people in their lives by developing compassion for both themselves, and for their parents.

To do this the therapist has to themselves be…

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