It was over 12 years ago, and a couple I worked with only wanted to spend one day with me. It was just long enough for me to give them an extensive assessment and feedback.
I could tell by the look on their faces that it wasn’t the news that they wanted to hear. They had been together many years and faced substantial hurdles such as recovering from substance addiction and an affair. I didn’t think this couple was “beyond hope.” I did my best to express my sincerest wish that they continue to work with me on the tangible areas that would help them.
But I could tell that they were crestfallen.
They refused my offer of additional help and left my office.
Devastating Outcomes of a One-Day Intensive
Years later, one of the partners contacted me and asked for their partner’s BIG BIG Book. Their loved one had committed suicide, and they were desperate to read their words again, to learn whether there was something they could have done differently to prevent this tragedy.
I knew that my decision to allow this couple to come in for one day set them up for failure.
What I knew, but they didn’t understand, was that they both were in Negative Sentiment Override, (NSO). Dr. John Gottman calls NSO: “A Roach Motel for Lovers: You Check in but You Can’t Check Out.”
That was a clinical lesson I never actually recovered from, even to this day.
The Problems With a One-Day Intensive
1. NSO is Difficult to Overcome Quickly
It’s almost impossible for a couple in NSO to actually hear me when I say that it is a transient state. It doesn’t feel like that. It feels so permanent, so hopeless. And I knew with this former client that I sounded like a cheerleader or worse, like I was giving them a sales job when I told them that. I was speaking from a science-based perspective. But in their state of shock at hearing “the worst news,” they could only grieve.
2. Making Things Worse
People often want to know why we don’t offer “cheaper” forms of intensive help, like a one-day intensive. The answer is simple: Because you will get just enough “help” to worsen the state you are currently in.
3. Why Assessment is More Than Information
Yes, I could kill the assessment portion of the day and jump right into doing couples therapy. But what is that actually getting you? Do you know what to tell me that will be useful for me to know? Can you do that while your personal “peanut gallery” argues how “wrong” you are from the sidelines? Will you be in “admitting mode” when the hostility in the room is high? Unlikely.
4. A Defensive Posture is a Given
Couples come to therapy in a default defensive posture. They deny responsibility, deflect blame, or dismiss their partner’s concerns. They do this for complicated reasons that involve a combination of their personality, family history, relationship history, attachment styles, and most recent relationship betrayals or hurts.
5. Being Thoroughly Versed in Your History is Essential
After completing an extensive assessment, which we call The BIG BIG Book, I walk in with a lot of material that helps me to understand that unique mix of personal and relationship features. You are saying “hello” to me for the first time. As I reply, I am actively processing the similarities and contrasts between what you’ve told me about yourself and how you present yourself verbally, nonverbally, and interactionally with me and your intimate partner.
6. You Need Time to Tell Your Story
Moving you from defensiveness to admitting mode takes time—intensive time. I have to demonstrate to you that I understand you well enough to help you. I have to listen to your relationship heartache with an open mind while helping to share all that I have learned with you.
- It is a paradox that a spouse will simultaneously try to tell me how hopeless everything is while asking me to convince them that it is not.
- Others want to convince me they are the “innocent party” living with someone impossible to live with.
- Still others tell me that nothing is wrong. I just need to help them develop a better attitude.
7. No One Can Do Their Own Couples Therapy
People come in with a story about their situation and have strong feelings about it. Nevertheless, you aren’t a science-based couples therapist. Even if you were, you can’t be objective about your own marriage. (Ask me how I know.) And you aren’t a statistic. The details of your life, past and present, truly count.
Dr. John Gottman calls NSO: “A Roach Motel for Lovers: You Check in but You Can’t Check Out.”
The Deep Process of Understanding Couples
8. ‘Grokking’ You and Your Marriage
Most of one solid day involves me trying to “grok” not only you and your partner but also what’s happening between you. In Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Stranger in a Strange Land, the term “grok” is a Martian word that has no direct English equivalent, but it essentially means to understand something so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed, creating a deep, intuitive comprehension.
Our goals are to:
- Comprehend deeply and understand you empathically
- Understand your situation intuitively and resonate with it.
- Fully assimilate your dilemma and internalize it completely.
None of these fully captures the complete meaning of “grok” as Heinlein intended, which is why the term has been adopted into English.
9. I Have to Sleep on It
I literally have to “sleep on it.” I have to allow my unconscious mind the opportunity to absorb my immediate impressions of your relationship. That’s Friday night.
10. My Second Night I Have to Process Your Receptivity
I then sit with each of you on Saturday morning, and your words come alive. I sometimes have a great deal to say to you. Other times, I listen more than speak to develop a more refined understanding of who you are and what you need. I have to grok each of you.
On Saturday I introduce the first targeted intervention. I do this to see how receptive you are to my approach. I will continue if it’s working. I’ll dramatically shift direction if it doesn’t. It sometimes takes an overnight for me to incorporate very resistant couples. I need to allow my unconscious mind to inform me. I might also reach out for help with a team of consultants I know I have standing by.
The Professional Demands of Intensive Couples Therapy
The Drama of Couples Therapy
If this all sounds way too dramatic, that’s because it is. This work can’t be done by just anyone who likes to do couples therapy. Even a skilled couples therapist can burn out on this kind of work. No one can dial it in. Some clinicians simply can’t offer that level of concentrated attention for an entire two days. Some can’t handle the direct, intimate, and sometimes confrontational challenges. It takes a blend of being humble and confident, strong and flexible, certain and curious.
Feeling Deskilled is a Given
After about 15 years of intensives (and 30 years of couples therapy), I have gradually been able to calm down into the process, but allow me to assure you that it took time. I’d be in a panic at times on Saturday night early on, saying, “I have no idea what I’m going to do to help this couple!” and by Sunday lunch, I had become centered and laser-focused.
The Importance of Consultation Mid-Intensive
I genuinely pity the one couples therapist in the entire practice who is given the job of conducting intensives. It’s happening more and more as a “trend-following” service extension.
It’s not uncommon for there to be one single couples therapist in a group practice. It’s a lonely job. Couples therapists are a unique breed that dedicate themselves to this type of work almost exclusively.
They find it hard to discuss their cases with individual therapists who often focus on and pathologize one of the couples instead of viewing the work systemically. And if this sole couples therapist in a practice thinks “intensive” therapy is just more couples therapy, they are in for a rude awakening.
These solo couples therapists in a group practice sea of individual therapists need support to do intensive work. Not next week, not at the next group consultation. They need help while the intensive is happening. It simply can’t wait.
We offer three different consultants who are on-call throughout the time intensives are offered. Not once a month, (we have that help available too, in the form of team meetings) but EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND.
My best intensive couples therapists call me mid-intensive to talk. I welcome their calls. Their conscious minds need to integrate their understanding before they can help their clients.
The practice of consultation or supervision in therapy, where one therapist discusses a case with another therapist, exemplifies this mid-process of the intensive “grokking” process.
Consultation serves several important functions:
- Bringing the implicit to explicit awareness: The therapist must articulate what they “know” about the client that might be operating at an intuitive or unconscious level.
- Verbalization as discovery: Often, in the very act of explaining the case to a colleague, the therapist discovers new insights they hadn’t consciously recognized before.
- Countertransference illumination: The supervisory process helps identify emotional reactions and blind spots that may be influencing the therapist’s understanding.
- Schema integration: The consultation helps integrate new understanding with the therapist’s existing knowledge framework.
- Testing understanding: By exposing their thinking to another professional, therapists can test whether their understanding is coherent and comprehensive.
The Unknown Known and Out-Knowing
This process represents a perfect middle stage between “grokking” the client’s situation (through empathic attunement and clinical observation) and “out-knowing” (applying this understanding in therapeutic interventions).
What’s particularly valuable is that this mid-process often reveals deeper understandings that the therapist wasn’t fully aware they possessed. By articulating these deeper insights to a trusted colleague, they surface into conscious awareness, allowing for more intentional therapeutic work.
The Clinical Team Approach
A Framework of Understanding Takes a Team Effort
The first 5-8 minutes of our exchange of our mid-intensive consultations might sound nonsensical to those outside of our company. In the ER, it sounds that way, and here’s a parallel:
| Medical ER Vitals: | CTI Vitals: |
| “BP is 90/60 and dropping, pulse 120, thready and irregular.” “Oxygen sat at 88%, falling, respirations 28 and labored.” “Pupils equal and reactive to light.” | “Lock-Wallace: 69/65” “Wiess Cerento: 3/0” “Both in NSO” |
| Medical ER Patient History/Incident Details: | CTI Summary History: |
| “42-year-old male, no known allergies.” “Found unconscious at scene.” “Patient reports crushing chest pain radiating to left arm.” | “Ages: 43/45, 3 children, two under 17, one in college” “Husband has developmental trauma; Couple had two previous therapy attempts, short-lived, not science-based” “Attachment Styles: Secure-100 for both, Anxious-20/35, Avoidant 16/55, Chaotic 8/33” |
| Treatment Already Administered (ER): | CTI Treatment Already Administered: |
| “2 large-bore IVs established, running wide open.” “Pushed 1 of epi, 3 minutes ago.” “LUCAS device running for 8 minutes.” | “Poor oral history telling. Lots of back and forth” “Presence of affective dysregulation in and outside of fighting sample” “10-min fighting sample showed no repair, contempt, quick escalation” |
No two couples will sound alike, although there will be patterns. Sometimes, very skilled clinicians feel triggered by a client, and that’s explored. At other times, it is a strategy consultation. Not every client absorbs information in the same way. Sometimes, our job requires that we present the message differently so that the client may be better able to hear.
These dedicated professionals always want to ensure they “didn’t miss anything.”
It is the reason we have three clinicians available for consultations every weekend.
The Journey From Surface to Depth
The Admitting Mode encourages individuals to acknowledge their role in relationship dynamics. By creating space for vulnerability and accountability, this technique helps partners move from destructive patterns toward healing dialogues. This transformation from defensive posturing to authentic vulnerability is why one-day intensives cannot work – they don’t provide the time needed for this essential shift.
Effective couples therapy isn’t about quick fixes or temporary bandages. It requires meticulous, patient work to truly understand each partner’s inner world and their complex dynamics. It demands time for processing, reflection, and the gradual building of trust that allows for genuine change.
If you’re struggling in your relationship, remember that healing takes time. The path to reconnection often feels longer than we’d like, but meaningful change rarely happens overnight. Investing in a properly structured intensive program gives your relationship the respect and attention it deserves – and significantly increases your chances of finding your way back to each other.
Take the Next Step in Your Relationship Journey
If you’re ready to move beyond the limitations of traditional therapy, our multi-day intensive retreats provide the depth and structure needed for real transformation. At Couples Therapy Inc., we’ve designed our couples therapy retreats based on years of clinical experience and the science of what actually works.
Our comprehensive programs include:
- Complete relationship assessment using The BIG BIG Book methodology
- Dedicated time for both partners to be fully heard and understood
- Science-based interventions tailored to your specific relationship dynamics
- Ongoing support following your retreat experience
Don’t settle for quick fixes that may leave you worse off than before. Invest in the future of your relationship with a retreat designed to create lasting change.
Your relationship is worth the investment. Your relationship deserves more than a one-day solution. It deserves the time, expertise, and comprehensive approach that only our intensive retreats can provide.
