Collaborative Couple Therapy
I have been trained in Collaborative Couple Therapy by its founder Dr. Dan Wile. Collaborative Couple Therapy is a type of couple therapy that helps partners learn to shift out of an adversarial or withdrawn pattern and into a more collaborative one. This type of therapy assumes that the main problem is not what partners are arguing about, but rather their inability to help each other with it.
Collaborative Couple Therapy is designed for couples who may be struggling with patterns of conflict in their relationship.
The focus of Collaborative Couple Therapy is on helping partners work together in a collaborative way to solve problems and improve their relationship in the process. Collaborative Couple Therapy therapists see a fight between partners as an opportunity for a conversation.
Collaborative Couple Therapy therapists believe that relationship conflict emerges when partners are unable to express their true thoughts and feelings, which may lead them to act in ways that hurt their partner. Couples engage in adversarial cycles when they say something hurtful to their partner and withdrawn cycles when they say nothing about how they are feeling. In Collaborative Couple Therapy, partners are encouraged to identify and express their “leading-edge” thoughts and feelings—the ones in the moment that motivate, distract, or linger in the mind or body—rather than continue engaging in adversarial and withdrawn patterns.