Why Couples Work Activates Us (And Why That Matters)

There's a reason so many clinicians avoid couples work - and it's not just about the complexity of managing two people in the room. It's about what happens inside us when we try.

When a couple escalates in session, something shifts in our nervous system before we even have time to think. The room gets charged. We feel the pull to rescue one partner, the urge to take sides, the discomfort of sitting in the middle of raw conflict. These aren't signs of clinical weakness - they're signs that we're human, and that couples work asks something different of us than individual therapy does.

The Unique Demand of Holding Multiple Perspectives

In individual work, we attune to one person's internal world. In couples work, we're asked to do something far more complex: hold two competing realities simultaneously, empathize accurately with each partner's perspective, and maintain our own center while the emotional temperature in the room rises.

Stanton and Welsh (2012) describe this as the core challenge of systemic thinking - the ability to shift perspective fluidly while recognizing that a "complex web of causation" is always at play. Neither partner is the problem; their difficulties are maintained by cycles of negative interaction. But knowing this conceptually doesn't make it easier to feel balanced when one partner is crying and the other is shutting down.

What Gets Activated - And Why It Makes Sense

Emotion-Focused Therapy research helps us understand what we're witnessing when couples escalate: layers of emotion stacked on top of each other. Primary emotions (the gut reaction), secondary emotions (reactions to the primary emotion, like anger covering sadness), and instrumental emotions (expressed to achieve an aim, like tears pulling for comfort) are all happening simultaneously in both partners (Woldarsky Meneses & McKinnon, 2019).

No wonder we feel activated. We're not just tracking content - we're swimming in a sea of emotional data from two dysregulated nervous systems while trying to keep our own regulated.

The pull to rescue often emerges when we over-identify with one partner's vulnerability. The urge to take sides shows up when one partner's behavior triggers our own relational history. The discomfort with conflict may reflect our own family-of-origin patterns around anger or disconnection.

Self-Awareness as Clinical Foundation

This is why self-awareness isn't a nice-to-have in couples work - it's the foundation. Research on mindful awareness in relational contexts suggests that intentionally bringing moment-to-moment attention to our internal experience - cultivating emotional awareness and self-regulation - allows us to stay present rather than reactive (Duncan, Coatsworth & Greenberg, 2009).

This doesn't mean we won't get activated. It means we notice the activation, name it internally, and use it as information rather than letting it drive our interventions.

When we feel the pull to rescue, we can ask ourselves: What am I responding to? Is this about the client or about me? When we notice we're mentally siding with one partner, we can get curious: What's being triggered here?

Normalizing the Discomfort

If you've been avoiding couples referrals, you're not alone - and you're not failing. The discomfort is data. It's telling you that couples work requires something you may not have been explicitly trained for: attending to yourself while holding the couple.

The good news is that this capacity can be developed. It starts with acknowledging what's actually happening in the room - including what's happening inside you.

Felicia Romano, MA will be leading a training on Foundations of Couples Work: Tools for Clinicians on March 18th, where she'll address the therapeutic stance required for effective couples work, including how to build confidence as a directive presence. [Register here - early bird pricing through March 1st.]

References

Duncan, L. G., Coatsworth, J. D., & Greenberg, M. T. (2009). A model of mindful parenting: Implications for parent-child relationships and prevention research. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 12, 255-270.

Stanton, M., & Welsh, R. K. (2012). Systemic thinking in couple and family psychology research and practice. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 1(1), 14-30.

Woldarsky Meneses, C., & McKinnon, J. M. (2019). Emotion-focused therapy for couples. In J. L. Lebow, A. L. Chambers, & D. C. Breunlin (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer.