How does talking with a couples’ counselor help? Here are thoughts from some great theoretical writers, Wilfred Bion, Jill Scharff, and Virginia Goldner.
“From Bion, we take the concept of containment. While listening and observing…we are sitting with anxiety without reacting, jumping in, interrupting, or ending the session early. We are learning to hold anxiety and give it back to the couple in a more manageable way so that they have the experience of using thought to transform distress.” Jill Savege Scharff, 2014
Goldner says it well: “The containing, regulating, soothing, educative, ethically instructive aspects of good-enough psychotherapy, traditionally backgrounded in individual treatment, are here foregrounded to the relief of all parties…”
“…Relational distress is ultimately caused by breakdowns in other and self-regulation of affect (especially anger, sadness, fear, and shame.) Bearing and working through these states in the presence of the partner is at the crux of the work…misfires can miraculously get a do-over, affects can be calmed, affect tolerances enhanced, complex messages translated, ruptures painstakingly repaired, and the emotional consequences of attachment injuries worked through…” Virginia Goldberg, Romantic Bonds, Binds, and Ruptures: Couples on the Brink”, Psychoanalytic Dialogue, 24: 402-418.