4 Couples Therapy Exercises for Communication

Why do we tend to be angrier in our communication with someone with whom we are in a romantic relationship versus a more casual relationship? Some think that high emotional intensity in couple’s communication is rooted in our survival instincts.

When our brain is alerted to danger in our environment, it responds with what scientists call “the fight or flight response.” This in an ideal response if a person is walking in the woods and is confronted by a grizzly bear.

Some of the ways the body responds during “fight or flight” are increased heart rate, release of stress hormones, constriction of blood vessels, and tightening of muscles. These are ideal body responses to fight for survival. Unfortunately, they are the worst conditions for talking through an argument with a significant other. Couples need a way of restoring safety when they don’t feel heard.

Human beings learn from birth that they are dependent on others for survival. Even after a child is grown and able to take care of themselves, the need for social connection never goes away.

It may be that communication problems within a couple’s relationship get so difficult because when a person doesn’t feel listened to, they feel abandoned. Since our development teaches that abandonment equals danger, the brain automatically produces the danger response when we are sharing something important to us that is not received by our partner.

4 Couples Therapy Exercises for Communication

In his book, Getting the Love You Want, Harville Hendrix focuses on communication exercises that return communication to “safety.”

In this article, I will summarize four techniques that Hendrix theorizes help return the brain to the safety state when communication problems arise: mirroring, validation, empathy and behavior change requests.

Mirroring

The challenge in listening to each other during a conflict is that there are competing perspectives and needs occurring simultaneously in a relationship. Typically, what happens in an argument is that while one person is advocating their need, the other person is thinking about their perspective and what they want. The result is that neither person feels heard and the couple does not grow closer through conflict.

Mirroring is a simple technique that is designed to do two things: allow the communication sender of information to feel heard, and prevent the receiver of the communication from blocking out the sender’s message by focusing on their perspective while the other person is communicating.

Couples often fear that if they listen to the other person, they in turn will be invalidated. The opposite is true. When a couple uses a “take turn” approach to listening to each other, they tend to have great mutual influence over each other.

Mirroring is simply reflecting back what the other person is saying, checking for accuracy, and asking for more information.

A mirroring encounter with one person (Mary) as the sender and the other person as the mirror (Jack) might look as follows:

Mary says, “I would like to speak to you about the lack of time I feel we spend together. You come home from work and go right to your computer, and on weekends you’re off having fun with your friends.”

Jack mirrors, “So what I hear you saying is you feel like we don’t spend enough time together. You feel like I come home from work and jump on my computer and have fun with my friends on weekends. Did I get that right?”

If he got it right, he would ask Mary to “tell me more” until she had exhausted her thoughts on this issue. The important part of this is that Jack is willing to suspend his perspective for a short time in the service of making Mary feel safe in their communication by showing her that he is listening. When our partner reflects our words back to us, our brain can relax, knowing it has been heard.

Validation

I like to think of feelings as the go-between that bridges our needs (physical and emotional) and the decision part of our brain that helps us take action on what we need. In order for our brain to correctly discern what we need, there needs to be an accurate interpretation of the message that feelings are sending. Human beings do not learn to interpret their feelings in a vacuum; they learn to connect with them in a relational loop.

Next time you are at a park, watch what a toddler does when they fall down and scrape their knee. Besides crying, typically the first thing they do is look for their parent. Specifically, they are looking for their parent’s face and how they are reacting to the injury. Why do they do this? Well, they are feeling scared and hurt, but don’t know what that means.

If mom’s face looks concerned or sad, then they can crystallize the sensations inside being associated with fear and sadness. If mom looks unconcerned or gives facial cues that don’t match the child’s inner experience, there is confusion. Either they can’t trust the message they feel inside, or mom is not a reliable source for making sense of feelings. Children who get consistent invalidation of their feelings learn to detach and mistrust how they feel. Being relational later on then becomes much more difficult.

Providing validation in a relationship is a way of helping our partner feel secure in their freedom to accurately share their feelings and more fully connect with the relational needs behind them. The problem is that often in a couple’s argument, there are conflicting needs and perspectives that cause a battle for whose perspective is the correct one. The result is neither person’s feelings are validated and both end up feeling unsafe in sharing.

Validation is not the same as agreeing. It is a willingness to enter someone else’s world in the service of listening and making communication safe, to acknowledge how their thoughts and feelings are fitting together for them at that moment.

In other words, I don’t have to agree with someone’s perspective to acknowledge at face value that if my partner is thinking about a situation in a certain way, it makes sense that they would feel the way they do.

Going back to our previous Jack and Mary example, Jack may feel he spends plenty of time with Mary, but he can still validate her feelings about the situation.

After mirroring her concerns, he might say something like:

“Mary, it makes sense if your perception is that I just jump right on my computer when I get home without talking to you that you feel we don’t spend enough time together. Also, if you can’t remember the last time we did something on a weekend, it makes sense that you feel I may prefer time with my friends.”

The goal here is not to interject facts or the opposite perspective. Making things safe is the primary goal initially in good couple’s communication.

The fourth step of the process discussed in this article will address where to introduce a differing perspective. At this stage, being willing to validate your partner’s view of things adds an additional layer of safety to your communication.

Empathy

Many couples complain that their partner expects them to understand exactly how they feel. While being sensitive is important, what actually promotes safety in a relationship is seeing your partner stretching to understand how you feel.

It is the process of trying to understand that seems to register in the brain that the other person is safe for connection. Proverbs 20:5 reads, “The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.”

How can we possibly figure out what is in someone else’s heart? It may be that our basic relationship and development needs are similar enough that we can make some good educated guesses about what someone else is feeling with some effort. Insight comes from trying to put oneself in someone else’s shoes, imagining that you are thinking and feeling as if you were them.

Going back to our couple example, if Jack has mirrored and validated Mary’s concerns, he can then move to empathy.

He might say something like, “Mary, not only does it make sense that you feel we don’t have enough time together based on your viewpoint, but if I was in your shoes I would feel lonely, unimportant, and ignored. Are you feeling any of those things?”

The main goal here for Jack is to make some strong educated guesses how he might be feeling if he were in Mary’s shoes. Mary seeing Jack stretching to understand things from her perspective would be a lot more willing to share what is really on her heart. An atmosphere of understanding is ultimately what draws out what is in someone’s heart.

Behavior Change Requests

Once communication has been mirrored, validated, and empathized with, a request for change can be offered. Going back to our couple example, Jack may be very worried at this point that Mary does not understand how much pressure he is under at work. He may feel that if he makes himself available for change, she may walk all over him with demands for time he feels he doesn’t have.

The good news for Jack is that making himself available for change will force Mary to change her emotional reasoning about the situation into specific and measurable requests that then can be negotiated between the two of them.

To initiate a behavior change request, Jack just needs to ask, after empathizing and hearing what she feels, “What can I do so that you are not feeling these things?”

To make a behavior change request, Mary must now make a specific and measurable behavior change request of Jack. Using a label, such as, “I need you to be more loving” is not specific or measurable. What is “loving” may be very subjective and different for Mary than it is for Jack. She must define what she means by being loving.

She might say for example, “I would feel more loved if you spent 20 minutes with me when you get home for us to share about our day and if you planned a 3-hour activity for us once a weekend.”

This request is both specific and measurable. It is not a good idea to commit to a request in a relationship that you are not going to follow though. Behavior change requests must be negotiated until there is an expectation that one partner is willing to meet.

Jack has three options to Mary’s request for more time together. He can: 1) agree to the request if he feels it is doable; 2) ask to go through the process detailed above about a conflicting issue of his own before committing to the request; or 3) say “no” and commit to a compromise that would be achievable for him given his current limitations.

The goal here is that some change is agreed upon, preferably after both partners have been heard, validated, and empathized with by each other.

In summary, the above techniques are designed to provide both the elements for safe communication and creating the proper conditions for negotiating change. It takes practice and intentional focus to include these elements in a dialogue with a significant other.

Often, couples build up negative patterns in their relationship that are opposite for safe communication. Meeting with a couple’s therapist can be the start of learning to unwind these patterns and learn to make to relationship a place to build a strong, intimate connection.