Gottman Method for Couples and Professionals

Gottman Couple’s Therapy – What to Expect

As a Certified Gottman Therapist, Gloria Bannasch conducts Gottman Therapy for Couples according to the best recommended practices of the Gottman Institute.  Strong emphasis is placed on a in depth assessment before work on couple’s issues begins.  When you go to your physician, you would expect them to evaluate your physical state before recommending a course of treatment.  If you were to say, “I have a pain on the left side of my abdomen”, there would be justifiable cause for concern if the physician’s response was, “We need to get you to surgery right now”.   Couple’s therapy works the same way; we want to determine what is working well, what is not working well, and how each of the partners issues in the relationship.

There may be one main reason that you are coming to therapy and there may be many; often times there are many other important factors involved in creating and sustaining the problem(s) that bring you into the office (of which both of you may, or may not be, aware).  Though you are (often) in great distress, and want and need things to get better quickly, the fastest route is often not the best route.  We want to identify all the strengths and weakness in your relationship so that we can improve your friendship and increase emotional intimacy; make conflict more productive and less negative; and help you to make one another’s life’s dreams come true.  We also want you to be able to sustain the changes you make in the therapy office.

To accomplish all this, we need a plan, and this is it:

• You and partner will meet with Gloria together.  Usually this is the first appointment, but not always – sometimes couples come in separately for the first session.  The goal for the first session with the three of us, is to get the history of the relationship; to discuss how you met, what made you fall in love with each other, how you have fun together, high and low parts of your relationship, transition periods in the relationship, and the reason(s) you are seeking therapy.  This session and future couple’s session will last between 90 minutes and two hours.
• Both you and your partner will each meet with Gloria individually one time.  The goal of the individual sessions is to gain information about each partner’s family of origin, previous relationships that may have occurred, education, occupation, friendship system, etc.  These sessions usually last between 45 and 60 minutes.
• After the couple’s session, and ideally before the individual sessions, partners are asked to complete the first part of the online assessment portion through the Gottman Connect platform.   The first part of the online assessment is the Enhanced Gottman Relationship Questionnaire.  The questionnaire consists of a set of questions which take about 30 – 45 minutes to complete.  Most of the questions are on a Likert scale and will ask you how strongly you agree or disagree with various statements about your relationship.  The way these questions are answered will give us all a bird’s eye view of your entire relationship, how you feel about many goals and values, and tell us what each of you believe is going well and what each of you believe is problematic.  The issues that need to be addressed will be identified, as well as the strengths in the relationship.  Because the questionnaire also addresses personal issues for each of you, among them depression, anxiety, and other underlying issues, it is helpful to have the questionnaires completed before the individual sessions so that any clarifying or follow up questions may be asked with each of you privately before the three of us meet together again.
• Part two of the online assessment at Gottman Connect is the recording of two conversations on the Gottman Connect platform.  Each of the conversations will last for 8.5 to 9 minutes.  The first conversation is the Events conversation; sharing information about your day, plans you may be making; much like you do at the end of the day.  The second conversation is a Conflict discussion.  The two of you will decide what problem you are going to discuss before you begin recording.  You will then discuss the are of conflict.  The problem you pick should be a topic about which you have had conflict in the past, and you should try to reach a compromise or a solution.  After you record both conversations, using one the two profiles you have collectively created on Gottman Connect, you click the Finish button and the platform will prepare the videos for the third part of the assessment.
• Part Three of the online assessment at Gottman Connect consists of each of you rating both videos.  You will each need to login to your individual profile to rate the videos.  If you fail to login separately, it will appear as though one of you has rated the videos twice and the other person has not rated them at all, and you will both have to rate the videos again.  You are going to rate how positively or negatively you remember feeling about the interactions with your partner moment by moment in the videos.  Since you are asked to rate how you remember feeling, it is strongly suggested that you rate the videos right after you record them.  The rating of the videos will tell us how much of the time your subjective realties of the conversations match.  If one of you believes that the conversation is going positively, does the other person agree?  This is vital information for all of us to have as we begin having conflict discussions and simply learning to listen more effectively to each other.
• Once you both complete your parts of the online assessment, Gloria will view the videos with attention to ratings you are both have given.  She will then complete the therapist’s portion of the assessment and prepare the Couple’s Report.   The 18 page report will tell us how sound the relationship is on the 7 levels of The Sound Relationship House.  It will also give us a breakdown on your subjective realities and how closely they align during the Events and the Conflict discussions.  Gloria will go through the report in session and you will receive two copies of the report to keep.  You will have an opportunity to ask questions, and voice any concerns that you may have.  The goal is to have the session to discuss the results by the third time we meet together.
• After you receive the results from the assessment, you will then be billed for the online portion of the assessment.  The cost per couple for the online assessment is $250.00 and is not billable to insurance.  The reason for the charge is twofold; Gloria has to pay for each couple that begins and/or completes an assessment, and there is roughly an hour of preparation time prior to going over the report in session.
• The information from the assessment process, the part done at GJB Health Services and the part done online at Gottman Connect, is a road map for our work together.  It will identify the issues that need to be addressed and which are the most pressing.  It also guides how we approach managing conflict.  The goal of Gottman Therapy is to teach couples the skills and give them the tools that the successful couples in Gottman’s research (The Masters of Relationships) practice that caused their relationships to happy and healthy.  As you bring the content of what is concerning for each of you into sessions, you will be coached in mastering the skills that will allow you to discuss the issues in a way that you have not been able to do before.  There are skills for improving fondness and admiration, tools for managing conflict, and tools to help you to support one another’s life’s goals.
• We will be using most of the conflict management skills in session, you will also be given homework assignments to help you practice these and other skills.  It is a lot of information and there is a lot to learn.  That is why it is suggested that you attend an Art and Science of Love Workshop for Couples (ASL).  A link for registration for the workshop can be found below.  It is a two day intensive workshop during which you will learn and practice all the major tools and techniques.

The same information covered in the ASL Workshop can also be found by using the Gottman Relationship Coach or Gottman Relationship Builder.  The Gottman Relationship Coach is a collection of video clips, mini lectures, and handouts, which cover all things Gottman.  You can pick the options that you want to purchase cafeteria style.  You will use them on your own, at your on pace, and you own them.  The Gottman Relationship Builder is used by Gloria in session to structure practice sessions and supplement information you will receive in session.  It is also the ideal way to secure all the Gottman Relationship Coach content at a reduced cost.  The link can be found below for the Gottman Relationship Coach.  Give it a look.

Couples often ask, “Do we really have to do all this?  Can’t we just talk?”  That is a question that you can explore in session.  The short answer is that you don’t HAVE to do anything.  You are, however, coming to therapy for help, and presumably for Gloria’s expertise in helping you to improve your relationship; this is the process that research has shown is most effective and experience has proven that it is the easier softer way.