You Deserve to Know What Your Couples Therapist Is Doing

So you're in therapy with your wife. Good for you! That's a brave step to walk into a room and trust a stranger with your deepest pain.

I hope it's going well for you.

If you're not sure that you're making progress or if you're sure you're definitely not making progress, let me give you three questions that you can ask your therapist to help you clarify what's really going on in that counseling room.

I'm also going to give you two reasons why he might not give you a straight answer.

You're a brave man for going into counseling with your wife. I commend you for that.

It's a tough thing to do for anybody to sit in the room with the person who causes you both the most joy and the most pain in your life and be willing to discuss what's going on in the relationship openly in front of a stranger.

And hopefully that stranger is someone who has expertise in working with couples.

But how can you tell for sure what's going on in that counseling room other than how you feel when you leave or how you feel while you're there?

Because sometimes you can feel like, What are we doing? We just keep having these same arguments. Now we're having them in front of a therapist that we're paying every week and I don't see any progress. You might be thinking that. And if you are, pay attention to that thought.

Because today I want to share with you three questions that you can ask your therapist to make sure you understand exactly what he's doing in his work with you.

You know, the first question that I would ask is, What's keeping us stuck?

And that's a good question to ask even in the first session.

But certainly if you've been going for six sessions or more and you don't know what's keeping you stuck or you don't know what the therapist thinks is keeping you stuck, then something needs to change.

But ask him, What's keeping us stuck? And then listen carefully for his answer.

Some therapists can articulate that really well.

Others don't really know what to do with that and they would deflect it.

And there are some reasons for that and I'll get to that in a minute. But you know, the second question to ask them is what's the plan for getting us unstuck?

What's the path that we'll be following to find success? Are there stages to it? Is there ways to understand where you're taking us? You could ask those questions in any way you want to. You can have an actual dialogue with a therapist about the process that he's taking you through.

Now he should be able to articulate that to you real clearly.

He should be able to tell you what his method is. And maybe he uses the Gottman method or maybe he uses emotionally focused therapy for couples. There's a lot of different approaches.

Mine is more into understanding the differences between men and women and that causes so much misunderstanding and miscommunication and going in opposite directions for goals.

But he should be able to articulate that to you very clearly in a way that makes sense and that you have a feeling that you're actually going to be making progress in your work with him.

The last question is probably the most interesting one and it's like if both of us cooperate, if both of us actively engage in this process of getting ourselves unstuck, what's possible for us?

You want to have some hope. And you could say, Now that we understand what you're doing, if we can both actively participate in this process with you, If we engage with one another and if we trust your expertise and where you're taking us, what's possible for us?

And that's a big question. And maybe that one should even come first.

What's the hope here? Because without hope, without a plan, without understanding what it is that you're trying to fix, it's no wonder you feel like you're lost and that you're wasting your time and your money and your energy.

But oftentimes, a therapist won't give you an answer straight up for two reasons.

One of two reasons, sometimes both, but probably one of two.

First of all, he doesn't know.

Working with an individual is very different than working with a couple.

When you're working with a couple, you've got to be able to monitor both people at the same time.

And you've got to be able to be active in the process.

You've got to be able to step in there and make interventions much more frequently than you ever do with an individual.

Probably the most important thing is that the therapist needs to level the playing field and oftentimes he doesn't.

Oftentimes he doesn't even realize that he is actually just reinforcing the dysfunctional system that you came in with. I'll talk about that in another video. That's a really deep topic to go into.

The second reason that he won't tell you or doesn't tell you, I should say is that he doesn't think you should know. Now that sounds weird, but there are a lot of training programs and therapeutic approaches that say that you shouldn't disclose things to the client himself or herself, that they should figure it out on their own. And that just by talking and having a voice, they're able to figure that out. The problem is that usually it's only one person that does like 80% of the talking in a couple session. So that person may be getting their needs met, the quieter person doesn't. And without leveling that playing field, which is the therapist's job, you're just reinforcing that dysfunctional system that you came in with. Another reason that he doesn't tell you how he sees all of this is because he doesn't know how to do it without offending someone.

Oftentimes, if he told the truth, he has taken sides.

And in taking sides and it's so common. We all do that. We hear one person's story and can totally see where they're coming from.

And even if they see both sides as having things they need to change but if he offends one person, they won't come back.

You know, kind of along that line is that losing the client is such a huge deal for a therapist.

In fact, I rented office space from a psychiatrist for a year or so.

And I remember he came to me one time and he goes, You know if you'd stop fixing people, you wouldn't have to get new clients all the time.

I didn't know how to answer them. I'm like, would I not want to help my clients? That's why I became a clinical psychologist in the first place was to be able to actually help people. And now you're telling me that in my own interest I should not help them because I want a full caseload?

That just sounds wacky to me. But I think people do it more unconsciously than consciously. He obviously was very conscious about what he was doing and what he thought I should do.

But I think a lot of people get that they like a client, they like working with them, they are steady, they pay regularly, everything looks great, their caseload is full and so they lose sight of the fact that they are there to work themselves out of a job. And that working themselves out of a job should start the moment they meet the new client and his wife.

So those are tough questions to ask.

What's keeping us stuck? What's your plan for getting us unstuck?

And how could this go if we both cooperate with the process? What's possible for us?

Those are very important questions. And I encourage you to listen carefully to the answers that you get because it will tell you a lot about what's really going on in the room. And you've got to pull back a little bit. Don't get defensive and just listen.

You know? Okay, so you think this and really question them. If you wanted to renovate your house and you hired a contractor and he came over to your house and kind of roamed around from room to room and just listened to you talk without asking you any specific questions about what you wanted or what you wanted changed or made any suggestions.

And then he asked you for a check as he left and told you he'd see you the next week.

And then he'd come back and he'd do the same thing. And then all of a sudden, like, he... He's been coming for weeks now.

Imagine that contractor. And one day he goes, well, I think you should move that picture from that wall over to that wall.

And you go, okay.

So the contractor leaves. You move the picture from that wall over to that wall and you go, that does look a little bit better there.

And you think, well, yeah, he's he's thinking. He's he's figuring this out. He's learning what what our home looks like and and what is gonna make it better. This just takes time. He would never do that.

You know, and say one time he comes and and he opens the drapes.

And then he goes, see, isn't that better?

You go, yeah, that's better. And then he goes, but we wanted to renovate the house.

But again, he's expert so you're relying on his expertise. He comes highly recommended as great reviews on Yelp or Google or whatever.

And so you just keep going and your house never gets renovated. You would never do that. You would start asking questions from the beginning. You'd want to be engaged in the process. And you'd want your wife to be engaged in the process too. And you would want to feel like you both had a voice when you're there talking to the therapist and that you have a common goal and that you're there to solve a problem, not to just vent everything that's already been said.

You know, this is like such a tough thing to do. And I've seen people do it over and over again. I a colleague years ago who had been seeing a couple for five years.

And I had just started working exclusively with couples. So she said, I'm going to send these guys to you. I've been working with them for five years. Nothing changed. They keep arguing all the time.

Now, colleague was a good friend of mine. She was a very good therapist with some issues. She worked mainly with anxiety disorders and she worked with individuals.

She didn't know how to work with a couple so she referred them to me. In about six weeks we'd uncovered a lot of issues that were going on with them and things started to change rapidly.

So here's what to do next.

The next time you go to a therapy session, start asking some questions.

Ask those three questions.

What's keeping us stuck? What's the path forward? What does that look like? What do we need to do?

And what could this look like if we both engaged in the process, actively engaged in the process with you as our guide?

What's possible?

You know, you shouldn't have to be there for five years or twenty years or whatever years.

Ask those questions.

And if you'd like to hear my insight on your marriage, you're invited to join the next Marriage Masterclass for Men.

I'd be happy to meet with you, to talk with you. I do some teaching. It's a very interactive Masterclass.

I keep it very small so that everyone has a chance to participate And you can even upgrade to VIP and have an entire hour with me where you tell me your story. And I'll give you my insight. That same insight that I was talking about with asking her therapist what's going on that he should know but may not tell you about.

In the meantime, I'm still here. I'll be back soon with another video. Until then, take care and I'll see you soon.