Gottman Method Couples Therapy

1. Gottman Method Couples Therapy

• According to Dr. John Gottman, the Four Horsemen
are behavioral predictors of divorce or break-up.
• Their destructive nature earned them the name and
reference to Christian religion: The Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse.
i. Criticism
ii. Contempt
iii. Defensiveness
iv. Stonewalling
Drs. John and Julie Gottman developed nine components of healthy
relationships known as The Sound Relationship House Theory.
1. Build Love Maps
• How well do you know your partner’s inner psychological world, his or
her history, worries, stresses, joys, and hopes?
2. Share Fondness and Admiration
• The antidote for contempt, this level focuses on the amount of affection
and respect within a relationship. (To strengthen fondness and
admiration, express appreciation and respect.)
3. Turn Towards Instead of Away
• State your needs, be aware of bids for connection and respond to (turn
towards) them. The small moments of everyday life are actually the
building blocks of relationship.
4. The Positive Perspective
• The presence of a positive approach to problem-solving and the
success of repair attempts.
5. Manage Conflict
• We say “manage” conflict rather than “resolve” conflict, because
relationship conflict is natural and has functional, positive aspects.
Understand that there is a critical difference in handling perpetual
problems and solvable problems.
6. Make Life Dreams Come True
• Create an atmosphere that encourages each person to talk honestly
about his or her hopes, values, convictions and aspirations.
7. Create Shared Meaning
• Understand important visions, narratives, myths, and metaphors about your
relationship.
8. Trust
• This is the state that occurs when a person knows that his or her partner acts and
thinks to maximize that person’s best interests and benefits, not just the partner’s
own interests and benefits. In other words, this means, “my partner has my back and
is there for me.”
9. Commitment
• This means believing (and acting on the belief) that your relationship with this
person is completely your lifelong journey, for better or for worse (meaning that if it
gets worse you will both work to improve it). It implies cherishing your partner’s
positive qualities and nurturing gratitude by comparing the partner favorably with
real or imagined others, rather than trashing the partner by magnifying negative
qualities, and nurturing resentment by comparing unfavorably with real or imagined
others.
Assessment
• Couples begin with an assessment process that then informs the
therapeutic framework and intervention.
• A conjoint session, followed by individual interviews with each
partner are conducted.
• Couples fill the Gottman Relationship Checkup.
• This online tool automatically scores a relationship’s strengths and
challenges and provides specific recommendations for intervention.
• Couples complete questionnaires and then receive detailed feedback
on their relationship.
The Gottman Relationship Checkup is comprised of five sections:
1. Friendship and Intimacy: relationship satisfaction, emotional
connection, romance, and admiration
2. The Safety Scales: trust, chaos, commitment, and emotional
philosophies
3. The Conflict Scales: stress, relationship harshness, and conflict
management
4. The Shared Meaning System: shared rituals, values, and goals
5. Individual Areas of Concern: individual issues, safety, sex,
depression, drug and alcohol use, violence, anxiety, and other issues
that may need psychological or psychiatric help
Therapeutic Framework
• The couple and therapist decide on the frequency and duration of the
sessions.
• Some of the relationship issues that may be addressed in therapy
include:
Frequent conflict and arguments
Poor communication
Emotionally distanced couples on the verge of separation
Specific problems such as sexual difficulties, infidelity, money, and
parenting
SESSION ONE
There are 8 parts to the first session.
1. Welcoming them. For a few minutes, we begin by welcoming the couple to our office and building a
connection with each of them.
2. Office Disclosure Statement. Washington state law requires psychologists to go over a written office
disclosure statement the therapist hands each of them. The office disclosure statement tells the clients about you,
your credentials, your philosophy of treatment, what they can expect, office policies, confidentiality and the
limits of confidentiality. We review the fact that in this therapy there is an assessment phase that will require
them to take part in this interview, fill out some questionnaires, and be videotaped talking about an area of
disagreement for 10 minutes, during which we will use a finger pulse oximeter to measure their heart rates and
the percent of oxygen in their blood. We show them the video monitor, which is sometimes used for video
playback, and we say, “Sometimes we may watch a tape of an interaction and see where we each think it has
gone off the cliff.” Then we talk about being interviewed individually in the next session. Finally, we tell them
that in the third session we will summarize what we see as the strengths in their relationships and the areas that
need improvement, and that in that session we will talk about the goals of the therapy. This takes about 10
minutes. We ask them if they have any questions.
3. Their narrative. After describing the assessment process, we ask them to tell us the story of what brings them into therapy at this time. As
they talk we take notes. We make sure to ask them about previous therapies they have had, and medications they may be taking. The
therapist says something like, “Let’s begin with you telling me the story of what brings you here, what you’re hoping to accomplish in
coming here, and what some of your nightmares may be in coming here— what you don’t want to see happen.” This usually takes about 15
minutes.
4. Oral History Interview. Next we do a reduced combined interview, which asks them about the history and philosophy of their
relationship. The first question in the Oral History Interview is, “Let’s go back now and tell me how the two of you met. What were your
first impressions of one another?” We ask about the major transitions in their life together. This usually takes about 20 minutes. Learn the
exact form of the questions (memorize them) because we have developed these questions over many years, and the exact form gives us the
best results of people talking openly about their relationship.
5. Family histories. We ask them to briefly tell us about their families growing up, starting with a question like, “I’d like to get some sense
of your primary families growing up. What was your family like?” This takes about 10 minutes.
6. Videotape a conflict interaction. We then have them identify an issue in their relationship, an area of continuing disagreement that is a
problem for both of them. They have usually talked about some of these problems in their narrative, but we take a few minutes to help them
identify an issue and become specific about a recent example of how this issue emerged. We say something like, “I’d like to make a
videotape of the two of you trying to resolve this issue. I know this is somewhat artificial, but I won’t be saying anything for these 10
minutes. Talk to each other as if you were home alone. We want to see how you naturally discuss a disagreement and where you might get
stuck.” Then we make a videotape of the two of them talking to each other. Altogether, this takes about 10 to 15 minutes.
7. Instructions for the individual sessions. We explain that the next time we meet we will be seeing them individually for 45 minutes, and
that there is no confidentiality from one another in these sessions, because couple therapy cannot work with secrets. We tell them how to fill
out the questionnaires online, or give them paper copies of the questionnaires to bring with them for the individual session, filling them out
alone. If they are done online, it’s possible for the therapist to have the automatic scoring results before their individual session. This takes 5
minutes.
8. Parting. We tell them that we understand how difficult it is to talk about these personal matters with a therapist and thank them for
trusting us with this delicate information, and we ask them if they have any questions.
SESSION TWO: TWO INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS 45 MINUTES EACH
• Before this session, remember that we will have discussed the ground rules of seeing them individually, both in the disclosure statement, and again, at
the end of assessment Session #1. We recommend saying that you will not keep secrets, and that everything that gets said is potentially information for
the couples work (see section 3.1. #7).
• We always start every session by asking the couple or individual how they are doing, which makes it possible for them to talk about what may be
pressing and on their mind(s) at the moment. We begin the individual assessment session by asking the client about his or her own narrative of the reason
for coming to therapy. We want to know how he or she feels about the relationship and specifically, about any family history the partner thinks might be
pertinent to the therapy and the relationship itself.
• Recall that in the individual sessions we are assessing:
 The individual narrative
 Relevant family history
 History of prior relationships
 History of prior therapy
 Each person’s commitment to the relationship, and discrepancies.
 Their hopes and expectations for the relationship (including potentially getting out of the relationship) and for the therapy.
 Their personal goals.
 Their Big Cost/Benefit analysis of the relationship. (How do they evaluate the benefits and costs of staying in and working on trying to make this
relationship better, versus getting out?)
 The presence of ongoing or previous physical abuse, especially a pattern of using violence to intimidate and control one’s partner.
 The presence of ongoing or previous betrayals, especially ongoing extra-relational affairs.
 Psychopathology and other potential resistances (e.g., Depression, anxiety, PTSD, OCD)
 The presence of ongoing or previous sexual abuse.
 The presence of ongoing or previous drug and alcohol abuse, or other addictions.
• Many couple therapists beat themselves up when the couple actually is not interested in couple therapy. It is
usually not our fault. In our research, we found that couple therapy is a reliable pathway to divorce (our
point-biserial correlations are around .50 between going to couple therapy and getting divorced), and this is a
general finding (see also Cookerly, 1980). If there are differential commitments to the relationship, to therapy,
differential hopes and expectations for the relationship, and a very different cost-benefit analysis about
staying in or leaving the relationship, this will affect the decision about whether or not to continue in therapy.
As noted earlier, we recommend that you always do individual interviews to assess violence, personal goals,
individual psychopathology. Remember to discuss the ground rules of seeing them individually; we
recommend that there are no secrets, and that everything that gets said is potentially public information.
• At the end of each individual session, tell each partner that your next meeting will be held together. In it, you
will share your assessment findings and together with the couples, discuss a treatment plan.
• SESSION THREE: THE FEEDBACK SESSION ONE CONJOINT SESSION 1½ HOURS
• In the third 90-minute session we again see the couple together. We begin by asking the couple how they are doing, which makes it possible for them to
talk about what may be pressing and on their minds at the moment.
• We may ask about how they are experiencing all of these parts of assessment. They may report some experiences or even changes in their relationship.
• Then we summarize the assessment, integrating information from the Oral History Interview, conflict sample, Individual Interviews, and assessment
questionnaires. We give the couple a copy of the Sound Relationship House drawing and, starting from the bottom, go through each of the salient levels
of the House. We follow these steps for each level:
1. Define the level of the Sound Relationship House.
2. Tell the couple how they are doing on that level. Is this level a strength or a challenge? Do not provide specific results from the assessment
questionnaires such as each individual’s numerical scores.
3. Give hope. On levels of the Sound Relationship House where the couple is weak, we tell them that we have exercises that are designed to strengthen
these areas. Talk about what our goals would be for the therapy, the order in which we’d like to do things should they decide to proceed, and check with
them if these goals make sense to them. We ask them if they also have some goals they’d like to focus on so that we can incorporate these as well into
the therapy. Based on the assessment, here are some possibilities for what the couple might need.
4. Ask more questions if necessary to get their reactions to what we’re saying. Does the feedback fit and make sense to them?
 Initial crisis management. If the relationship is full of extreme escalating quarrels, both people are highly flooded, and their lives are also high on chaos,
then there is a need to immediately down-regulate negativity in their lives. In that case we discuss the need for a break ritual (from conflict discussions)
and self-soothing and instruct them not to discuss “hot button issues”, except in session.
 • Making conflict discussions constructive. We discuss and work on our “blueprint” for dealing with conflict so that it is more constructive.
 • Improving friendship, emotional connection, and intimacy. We discuss and work on our blueprint for improving friendship, emotional connection,
affection, romance, courtship, passion, and sexual intimacy. We discuss increasing positive affect systems, peacefulness, play, fun, excitement, pleasure,
joy, and adventure.
 • Improving the shared meaning system. We discuss and work on our blueprint for making the shared meaning system intentional by helping the
couple create: (1) understanding and meaningful rituals of connection, (2) understanding and support of one another’s life roles, and/or (3) understanding
and discussions of their cultural heritages, life goals, missions, legacies, philosophies, ethics, morals, values, and spiritual religious beliefs.
Therapeutic Interventions
• Interventions are designed to help couples strengthen their
relationships in three primary areas: friendship, conflict management,
and creation of shared meaning.
• Couples learn to replace negative conflict patterns with positive
interactions and to repair past hurts.
• Interventions designed to increase closeness and intimacy are used to
improve friendship, deepen emotional connection, and create changes
which enhances the couples shared goals.
• Relapse prevention is also addressed.
Intervention
Current Status of Treating Couples’ Issues.
• We want to begin the intervention section of this workshop by first informing you that the research literature on
couples’ therapy has now validated five treatments for couples’ distress. We assume that you will want to know
about all the treatments currently available, and make your own judgments about what interventions to employ in
your own practice. As a great guide, we refer you to the recent Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy, Fifth Edition,
(2015), edited by Alan Gurman, Jay Lebow, and Douglas Snyder (New York: Guilford Press). The validated
treatments described in this book include:
1. Behavioral Marital Couples Therapy (Chapter 2), either traditional or acceptance-based, as described by Donald
Baucom. This therapy has had the most outcome studies done.
2. Insight-Oriented Marital Therapy (Chapter 2). Chapter 2 also includes references to the “insight-oriented”
marital therapy, developed by Snyder and Wills. Their therapy was influenced by analytic thinking about
relationships.
3. Acceptance-Based Couples Therapy (Chapter 3). The late Neil Jacobson and Andrew Christensen developed this
“accept your partner as he or she is” therapy as a contrast to behavioral marital therapy, in which asking for change
was central to the therapy. The new therapy actually includes asking for change as well as acceptance-based
interventions; it also uses Johnson’s “softening” anger intervention.
4. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (Chapter 4) as described by Susan Johnson. Johnson is one of the most
important leaders in our field and she brought extensions of attachment theory for adults into the couples’ domain.
5. Gottman Couple Therapy (Chapter 5) as described by John and Julie Gottman.
• The goals of Gottman Method Couples
Therapy are to
disarm conflicting verbal communication;
increase intimacy, respect, and affection;
remove barriers that create a feeling of
stagnancy;
and create a heightened sense of empathy and
understanding within the context of the
relationship.
• The Gottman Method is not recommended for couples
that suffer from physical domestic violence.
• While this form of therapy can help with many
relationship issues, couples counseling can't change
patterns of physical violence.
• Instead, this issue should be handled by a domestic
violence specialist, a shelter, or the police.
Gottman Treatment Plan
The Treatment Plan serves several purposes including:
• A place to organize and summarize the vast amount of information gained through the assessment process
including the Couple's Narrative, Oral History Interview, Conflict Discussion, Individual Interviews and
numerous written assessment questionnaires. Of course all the information obtained about a couple cannot be
placed on a one page form. This is not intended to replace reviewing notes and specific written
questionnaires. This Treatment Plan may be supplemented with additional information. One way to do this is
to place a footnote number or a symbol, such as an asterisk, in the appropriate box to reference additional
sources of information such as notes obtained during interviews or on specific written questionnaires.
• Supplement other treatment plan formats currently used. Please feel free to adapt this form for your personal
needs.
• Organize information for use in the feedback/treatment planning session.
• Guide therapy throughout the course of treatment.
• The content of the Treatment Plan is straight forward. The (+), (o) and (-) symbols on the Sound Relationship
House (SRH) diagram, which may be circled, are for indicating whether a level of the SRH is a strength,
neutral or a weakness.
The Treatment Plan is designed to be used in conjunction with the Gottman Assessment Scoring Summary sheet
and its accompanying "Interpretation Guidelines".
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