ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how couples communicate and offers options to change their conversations. Often one or both partners become too dysregulated to speak or listen effectively. Since remembering childhood injury together generally evokes empathy, the chapter illustrates how to help the couple unblend and become curious about the ways in which a partner's behavior in the present relates to the past. Intimate relationships require good communication, which ultimately means being able to stay in a conversation that involves differences long enough for both people to feel heard and understood. Couple therapists will notice that the more reactive the couple, the less internally differentiated the individuals in the couple. Highly reactive couples need significantly more help with the internal process of unblending. Robust data in attachment research show that human beings thrive on connection. The goal of treatment in Intimacy from the Inside Out (IFIO) is to part difficult from wounding and help couples do what's difficult skillfully.
