From Alienation to Connection – Bridging the Gap:

From Alienation to Connection – Bridging the Gap:
According to Joe Whitcomb, PsyDc, Author of Reboot Your Relationship and Couple Therapist -- when couples disagree, most repeat the following disruptive pattern: blame, criticize, defend, express contempt, distance, and emotionally or physically withdraw. Distress is not about how many fights you have or even if you resolve the fights. Distress is about how you fight, and whether you can retain some sort of emotional connection after the fight. While traditional types of marital counseling tend to be open-ended and seek to solve immediate problems, such as continual arguing, by focusing primarily on behavior change and communication skills, the Reboot Your Relationship approach hones in on increasing a couple's appreciation for how each partner feels in order to build trust and a secure base they can each rely on. In this approach, couples learn to recognize the negative cycle they are stuck in, where one person criticizes and the other responds defensively or withdraws. Couples learn to identify the needs and fears that keep them in that cycle. They learn to identify and express their underlying emotions. Partners learn to empathize with each other and become more supportive of each other. Partners come together through the emotional needs they are each expressing, and can begin to comfort each other's needs.

Until a couple is able to identify, acknowledge and ultimately forgive injuries, an emotional gulf persists between them. No matter how dissatisfying things have become and how unhappy or angry partners may be, they each need to feel safe in coming together to work out their problems. Each partner needs to understand the emotions dictating their actions. The emotions behind perceived problems are the key to understanding each other.

The Reboot Your Relationship Couple Therapy and Intensive is a journey that can lead couples:
• From alienation to emotional connection.
• From vigilant defense and self-protection to openness and risk-taking.
• From a passive helplessness in the face of the old destructive “dance” of the relationship to a sense of being able to actively create a new and better dance.
• From desperate blaming of the other to a sense of how each partner makes it difficult for the other to be responsive and caring.
• From a focus on the other's flaws, to the discovery of one's own fears and longings.
• But most of all, from isolation to connectedness, reconciliation and forgiveness.

SOS Couple Retreat
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