Chapter 5: Gottman Method Couple Therapy

Goal 4

Bridge Meta-Emotion Mismatches

• Meta- Emotions : How people feel about how they feel
• Attachment styles vs Meta- Emotions( Insecure Attachment and Avoidant Anxious)
• Two types of Categories: Emotion dismissing/out of control and emotion coaching.
• When Meta- emotions are mismatched in couples this can be a source of great conflict.
• Yoshimoto(2005) found that those who are emotion coaching particularly by husbands had higher level of marital satisfaction.

Goal 5

Chapter 5:

Gottman Method Couple Therapy

Create & Nurture a Shared Meaning System

Step 1

Goal 5

Andrea Pinto, Christianne Porta, Briana Vila

Rituals of Emotional Connection

Relationships-Cross Cultural Experience

Step 2

Create Shared Meanings by Making Goals & Values Intentional

Create and Nurture a shared Meaning System

Practical Considerations

The Seven Affects

5-10 Sessions

Relationship Enhancement

15-20 Sessions

Distressed Couples

There are seven affect systems that have distinct behavioral and neurophysiological patterns shared by mammals.

1. The sentry: primary affects fear

2. The nest builder: feelings involved in bonding, security, affection, love and the opposite emotions of separation, distress, grief, sadness

3. The explorer: affects curiosity and the joy of learning

4. The commander in chief: affects of anger, hostility, rage

5. The sensualist: involving sexuality and lust

6. The jester: with affects related to play, fun, humor, laughter

7. The energy czar: involved in managing needs with energy, food, and shelter.

These systems hold the underpinnings for sound relationships

Masters of relationships are often well matched in meta-emotion or they coexist.

The Sound Relationship House Theory

Serious Comorbidities (extramarital affairs) 25-50 Sessions

Goal 3:

1. Build love maps

2. Build the fondness and admiration system by expressing affection and respect everyday.

3. Turn toward your partner instead of away

4. Allow positive sentiment override

5. Use a gentle approach in presenting complaints

6. Honor one another’s life dreams

7. Build the shared meaning system.

This theory is what guides the interventions in this theory

Build Positive Affect during Non-Conflict

• Turning towards bids of emotional connection opens up a world for positive affect
• The intimate connection is about not only healing previous attachment injuries but also creating emotional availability and responsiveness.
• Understand your partners Love Maps
• Instead of Controlling emotion- focus on the Integration of emotions
• thinking and understanding of emotional connection, couples negative cycles and the dynamics of attachment betrayal.

Goal 2

Up- Regulate Positive Affect during Conflict

Step 2

Reducing the Four Horsemen

Heighten Awareness

• Interrupting Methods

Methods for Goal 4

Assessment

Four Horsemen

Therapy begins with an assessment of a couple’s relationship strengths and challenges.

*Interviews are used for a conjoined session and two individual sessions.

*The Oral history interview is administered.

*A conflict discussion is taped with physiological monitoring.

*Questionnaires following the sound relationship theory are given.

*Next, the assessment is presented to the couple and goals are agreed upon.

*Interventions follow.

Bridge Meta-Emotion Mismatches

Methods

1. Criticism

2. Defensiveness

3. Contempt

4. Stonewalling

• In a 14 year longitudinal study on a group of couples who divorced later (an average 16.2 years) after their wedding found that what characterized their interaction and discriminated them from couples who remained together or divorced early was the absence of positive affect during conflict.
• The importance of Agreement or just say "yes, dear."
• Use "I statements"
• Negative affect happens in all relationships, but the way it can positively affect a relationship is if it is followed by accepting influences.
• Stable couples do not wait to repair negative affect until it escalated. They repaired before the cumulative negative affect became too negative.

Emotional Experiences & Needs

Conclusions

Goal 1

of the study

Step 3

Rapoport's Blueprint for Speaker & Listener

• Alientation & Healing

Background

Down Regulate Negative Affect During Conflict

Meta-Emotional Interview

1. Most relationship conflict is not solvable but it’s perpetual

2. Gridlocked conflict is not about negative affect reciprocity but its escalation from mild negative affects to the more extreme “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”

3. Positive affect is necessary during conflict

4. A gentle approach distinguishes the masters from the disasters of relationships

5. Physiological soothing versus diffuse physiological arousal predictive of improvement versus deterioration over time in relationships.

6. The basis for a dialogue perpetual issue lies in dealing with its core existential nature.

7. Building general positivity in the relationship is essential to ensure lasting change.

8. Friendship processes working via sentiment overrides control the effectiveness and thresholds of the repair of problematic interactions.

9. The couple’s construction of a shared meaning system contributes to happiness.

10. All three systems need to be understood- conflict, friendship/intimacy/positive affect, and shared meaning-they interact bidirectionally.

Goal

Mental Transformation-Validation

Step 1:

• Creating Connection and positive affect
• Build rituals of connection over time
• Informal and Formal rituals
• Create shared meaning through supporting life roles( Father, Mother)
• Creating shared meaning through shared life goals(raising children together, traveling together)

Repair- Processing Fights and Regrettable Incidents

Processing Fights

This method of therapy believes that couples therapy must be grounded in basic research.

This research has been longitudinally held over the past 3 decades.

To understand couples, one must follow them long periods of time to investigate change and stability.

Distressed and well functioning heterosexual and same-sex couples relationships have been observed in these studies.

Conflicts

Processing Regrettable Incidents

Goal 1: Down Regulate Negative Affect During Conflict

"Aftermath of a Fight or Regrettable Incidents"

" Choosing a partner is choosing a set of problems."

• Agreement
• Skills

Methods:

Goals 2 & 3

Step 1:

Emotional Connections during Everyday Moments

• Build Love Maps
• Build Culture Appreciation & Respect
• Turn Towards Bid
• Emotion Coaching
• Increase & Savor Positive Affect

Step 2:

Step 4

Daily Stress-Reducing Conversations

Step 3:

Understanding the Fight

Build Affection, Good Sex, Romance

Step 4:

Process Failed Bids for Emotional Connections

Problem Solving, Persuasion,

and Compromise

Conflict is inevitable in relationships however it has many pro-social functions, such as culling out interactions that do not work, helping us to know one another as we change, and continually renewing courtship.

• It has been found by Gottman and Levenson that higher level and escalation of negative affect predict relationship instability.
• When couples fight using the Four Horsemen, the greater the dissatisfaction of the relationship
• Fighting is going to happen no matter what but these goals are put in place to fight fair.

The Four Horsemen:

Criticism

Contempt

Stonewalling

Defensiveness

"Two Circle Method"

"Anatomy of the Fight"

Step 5

Blueprint for Perpetual, Unsolvable Conflict: Dreams within Conflict

"Deal Breakers"

Exercise

Key: Understanding

Step 6

Down Regulating Negative Affect with

Physiological Soothing

Diffuse Physiological Activation

Correlation with Marital Satisfaction

Methods