De-Escalate Heated Moments in Couples Therapy Without Taking Sides

Safety is the most important feature of relationships, and especially when it comes to repairing relationship in couples therapy.

A structured process is necessary to institute that prevents couples from interrupting and putting you in the role of referee. I teach couples how to dialogue with each other where one person shares and the other mirrors back.

This means they can not respond, interject, argue, or offer their opinion. Their job is to reflect back as close to verbatim as possible what they heard and then ask if they got it and if there is more to share.

Mirroring allows for both people to coregulate, slow things down, and create safety instead of the reactivity that plagues so many interactions.

I tell them, remember I am from Ireland and I grew up eating a lot of potatoes so I am very slow. Do you mind slowing down for me because I am really struggling to keep up.

When two partners are talking over each other in session, the content of what they're arguing about almost never matters. In that moment, both partners' nervous systems have taken over and neither person can hear the other anymore. As a couples therapist, my job in that moment isn't to referee or side with whoever has the "better point," my job is to interrupt their cycle.

The line I use most often is: "Hold on, I'm going to pause you here, what do you notice right now?" I make sure to say it calmly and without urgency. My hope is that either partner (or both) identify in some way that they are not hearing each other. I then connect this to being a telltale sign they are in their cycle.

That sentence works because it does two things at once: it stops the escalation without assigning blame to either partner, and it names what's actually happening (the couple is in their cycle which they know does not lead to understanding nor resolution) rather than relitigating whatever the argument was about.

From there, I'll usually ask each partner, "what is happening for you right now? Say one sentence about what you need in this moment." This pulls them away from continuing to make their case. That small shift from arguing a position to naming a need, is often what allows the room to feel safe again.

With couple's counseling, I start with setting the tone by explaining that my "client" is the couple's relationship. So my one phrase that I use is "is this helping the relationship or hurting the relationship?" Another one I use often is "are we fighting against the problem together or fighting against each other?"