No Place to Hide

I once read—I can’t for the life of me remember where—that one reason people get married is to have someone else witness their life. I can relate to this. I want as many people to witness my life as I can get, and I think that has something to do with my getting married and having kids. I like having people close to me hold me accountable for my behavior and the decisions that I make.

I think there’s a similar dynamic at play in going to see a therapist. By going to a therapist, you’re forced to spend time with yourself and witness your own life. So often we pack our lives and schedules so we don’t have to face ourselves! At least I do. But a good therapist makes space for us to get to know ourselves.

I met a therapist at a gathering recently who expressed that she prefers seeing couples and families to seeing individuals. “The more people there are,” she told me, “the less places there are to hide.”

I relate to this idea, too. When I’m treating couples and families, I get the same sense of partnership and collaboration as I do with individuals, plus I get a more dynamic sense of the clients. Having two or more clients present brings a level of reality to the therapy room that is harder to access when it’s just one client.

With individual clients, I find myself wanting to meet their supporting cast of characters. I’m left to imagine individual clients’ spouses, their children, and their parents. In family therapy, I try to get those people into the therapy room and meet them in the flesh.

I love the fluidity of couples and family therapy and the sense of bringing everything out into the open. Family and relationship dynamics can be stubborn; they don’t change easily. But once you start having a weekly therapy conversation about what each family member wants done differently, things start to shift around.

In couples therapy, the mask comes off, whether or not clients want it to. We see them get triggered, get their feelings hurt, lose their tempers. We get to watch the same dynamics that play out at home happen right in front of us.

A lot of times couples come to see me because their arguments aren’t getting them anywhere and they need a new element to help them progress in their relationship. This is a great reason to see a couples therapist. After I spend enough time with a couple, I can tell them what I see playing out in front of me. I know I’m not supposed to be the referee as a couples therapist, but sometimes it helps to express when I think one member of a couple is being unfair, bullying, or disingenuous. A lot of the time I’m just as lost as the couples are when they argue in front of me, but I can help bring them back to their original intentions and feelings. When I’m at my best as a therapist, I can get angry clients to admit that they’re really scared, or clients who are feeling embittered to admit that they’re really deeply hurt. Sometimes I can get them to see each other and to see themselves.  

Couples and family therapy can be fun and light, but it’s often more intense than individual therapy. This is what that therapist meant when she said ‘there are fewer places to hide.’ There’s no hiding in the couples and family therapy room, even from oneself.