Yael and Charley: How does a couples therapist help a young couple (Interview 3-PART 1)?

Hello and welcome to The Human Nurture Podcast. I am your host Jason Brand, a couples therapist living and working in Berkeley, California. This season we have been asking the question, “How does a couples therapist learn to do that?!?” And we are down to the final couple and the final clinical interview of this season.

Back again with Charley and Yael in their final clinical interview. They are a young couple and they have now become familiar enough with themselves and their relationship to see areas where they're not able to depend upon each other for a sense of safety and security. 

For Charley, this insecurity can be heard in his difficulty knowing how much to hold emotion inside of himself and his worries and frustrations about flooding Yael with his emotion. And in Yael, it can be heard in the way she comforts Charley but feels she does not get enough comfort from him in return. 

In this interview you will hear a great example of two people who so want to be able to take care of each other but keep getting left with a basic sense of unfairness in their interactions. The work of couples therapy is to help them with the growing up process, understanding and translating the burdens of the past and having a more honest and vulnerable discussion of the burdens of their current life situation.  So let’s take a listen as I work to help this young couple to seize moments where they can hold the challenges and burdens together and hold them as opportunities to build closeness, safety and security.