Maintaining Alliance With Couples

If you work with couples, you know that you need to stay neutral, even if you think one person is mostly to blame. But how?

Awareness

It all starts with awareness. You should get into the habit of constantly checking in with yourself to see how you feel about clients. If you are starting to have strong feelings, either positive or negative, about one of the partners of a couple there’s a good chance you are becoming biased.

Repairing Bias

Before the bias becomes too deeply entrenched, you should process your feelings with a colleague or supervisor. Bias can range from a simple dislike of some characteristic of the client (e.g. they talk too loudly), to serious and deep-seated counter-transference issues (e.g. client reminds you of your abusive father). The intervention will depend on the severity of the bias. If the bias is due to a minor annoyance, then simply searching for some qualities you like about the client can help. However, if the bias is due to counter-transference issues, you may need to work out your personal issues with a therapist.

Tips for Preventing Bias:

1. Give equal time to both partners, particularly in the beginning of the counseling relationship. If you’ve met individually with one of the partners, do not meet as a couple until you’ve spent individual time with the other partner.
2. Know there are two sides to every story. Well, actually there are four. One for each partner, one for the therapist, and then actual reality (which nobody knows, by the way; even therapists have biases that affect their perception of reality).
3. Utilize preemptive empathy. As soon as you find out one partner has done something egregious like cheating, begin searching for ways to empathize with them in your mind. Your outward empathy — particularly in the beginning of a therapy relationship — needs to be toward the betrayed or hurt spouse, while developing inward empathy will help you stay balanced without alienating the betrayed spouse.
4. Prevent burn-out. A burned-out counselor is going to have difficulty avoiding bias because they will tend to rely on their moment-to-moment emotions rather than look more objectively at the big picture. Even worse, a biased counselor will create more stress for both themselves and the couple, leading to more burn-out. So make sure to take good care of yourself.

Yours in the Joy of Knowledge,

Dr. Barbara LoFrisco