A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Last week, I explained a bit about Imago Relationship Therapy, a type of couples counseling that I have found to be very effective in improving a couple’s communication. In this post, I’ll describe the core practice of Imago Therapy, namely, the Imago Dialogue. In this dialogue the couple engages in a three-part structured conversation. I teach the dialogue’s structure in counseling sessions, and we practice it extensively in my office. Eventually the couple is able to use the dialogue at home, away from my office.
The first part of the Imago Dialogue is listening to and mirroring (repeating back) a spouse’s concern. Mirroring is important because it provides an opportunity for the listener to convince the speaker that the listener heard and understood everything that was said. The second part of the Dialogue is validating, in which the listener insures that he/she understands the partner’s point of view without judgment - and without necessarily agreeing with it. This requires the listener to suspend his or her critique and to try to understand the other person’s perspective. (This is not easy!) The third part of the dialogue is empathizing - or truly feeling what your partner is feeling as if you were the one experiencing it.
The goal of the Dialogue is to be as fully attentive and respectful as possible during communication and, ultimately, to help each other heal and grow. This is not an easy process at first, but it can be learned with practice. The couple’s job is to commit to this challenging (yet highly rewarding) practice in order to become attentive and attuned to one another and to become witnesses to one another’s intimate experience and healing.
Tags: Communication, Imago
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 10:23 pm and is filed under Communication.
One Response to “Imago Relationship Therapy II”
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April 8th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
This article/advice made me think and I shared this with my husband and we may try and see if any of this helps us in our last ditch efforts to save a dying 12yr marriage.