Perhaps you want to go to individual therapy to improve your relationship with your spouse? This goal sounds simple, but achieving this outcome will take a bit more forethought than anticipated. One would expect that individual therapy, which focuses on individual satisfaction, will inevitably result in increased relationship satisfaction. This expectation is based on the fact that individual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction are positively correlated, with individual satisfaction generally improving relationship satisfaction and vice versa. Nevertheless, the relationship between individual therapy and relationship satisfaction is more complex in psychotherapy, which was originally constructed to serve an individual’s mental health. Individual therapy can be a powerful tool toward enhancing your relationship, but it is also possible that individual therapy could have a negative impact (Doherty & Harris, 2022). This blog post is designed to help you to increase your relationship satisfaction within the context of individual therapy, and avoid any negative relationship side effects.
I will start by identifying three potential negative side effects of individual therapy on relationships with guidance on strategies to move past these barriers to reach all the benefits.
- Tendency to skew reality and the facts about a particular situation.
- When feeling intense emotions about a challenging situation with a spouse or family member, not only is it possible to skew facts, but individuals can even unintentionally create memories that never took place. In some forms of therapy, like trauma therapy, not being able to describe the specific facts about a situation may be less pivotal. Trauma therapy involves a lot of emotional processing and one would expect that the facts are skewed. This is not a problem.
- Regardless of one’s emotional state, when making decisions about a relationship, it is important that both therapists and clients strive to be as accurate as possible. To prevent oneself from straying too far from the facts, you may consider bluntly telling your therapist if you made an exaggeration or lied about something in a previous session. Moreover, if the therapist says something inaccurate about your relationship, immediately correct them. A mature, experienced therapist will thank you for the feedback, and your interjection will help them to be a more effective therapist for you.
- Residual effects of intense negative emotional expression and judgment.
- Sometimes clients tell me that they left their filter at home and brought all of their emotions and judgments to the session. A person might say, “I never talk like this at home when I am around my daughter. But, I am bringing it all here to blow off steam.” The answer to whether or not ranting to your therapist about your relationship will be helpful is complicated.
- First, if you do not live with the person and do not plan to have a close relationship with them, the rant may have more positive side effects, than negative side effects. Also, as noted previously, there are specific therapies that strategically invite emotional expression where the client is invited to not censor and fully remove any filter.
If your goal is to have a more effective relationship with your partner by discussing your marital conflict with your individual therapist, then it is wise to ask your therapist to help you to drop the judgments (e.g., “narcissistic asshole”) and to help you to decrease your anger. The unintended side effect of ranting for sixty minutes about a partner in a judgmental manner can be further hateful thoughts that provoke another conflict later that evening. Your therapist might also implement a meditation to help you transition at the end of the session, or at a minimum, can help you to change the topic and prepare to close the session.
- The role that the individual client expects the therapist to play and how that role is conveyed to an intimate partner.
- For example, clients often face a significant barrier when they aim to improve their relationship with their spouse, but hope their therapist will act more like an individual lawyer. Then the client may return to their partner stating, “my therapist thinks it is best for us to get a divorce,” and expect the partner to understand the therapist’s professional advice. When an individual therapist offers such advice, the client should be skeptical and request an evaluation that includes the partner, such as a discernment or couples counselor.
- To avoid these issues in individual therapy, clients should be clear about their relationship goals with their individual therapists. Moreover, clients may wish to acknowledge that, even when the individual therapist is playing the role of relationship consultant, an individual therapist will be biased toward the individual client’s well-being, and therefore, it is expected that the client’s partner will be skeptical about the therapist’s advice and that the client’s partner has knowledge of additional factors that the therapist does not know.
Although there are barriers to working on relationship satisfaction in individual therapy, working in individual therapy can have many benefits for healing relationships. Individual therapy can help people to heal from trauma, work on emotional reactions, and role-play effective interpersonal skills in ways that can be highly effective to improve relationship satisfaction. Moreover, often when circumstances are complex and challenging within family or couples therapy, partners need individual therapy to attend to their own self-care and grow as individuals. Thus, individual therapy can complement couples work. When the client stays mindful of their relationship goals in individual therapy and aware of the ways that they discuss their intimate relationships with their individual therapist, individual therapy can be a powerful tool for relationship growth and satisfaction.
About the Author
Samuel Eshleman Latimer (he/his), Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist that specializes in effective conflict management and dialectical behavior therapy. Samuel also works to help individuals, couples, and families decrease interpersonal difficulties and manage challenges associated with borderline personality disorder. Samuel believes that people do not need to choose between learning effective techniques that are based on science and developing warm, genuine relationships, as both of these styles complement each other. Click Here to learn more about Samuel’s experience and therapeutic style.
Reference
Doherty, W. J., & Harris, S. M. (2022). Relationship-undermining statements by psychotherapists with clients who present with marital or couple problems. Family Process, 61, 1195-1207. doi: 10.1111/famp.12774