232: Understanding Leverage in Couples Therapy with Shane Birkel

Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch! This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

In this solo episode, Shane discusses how leverage works in couple's therapy. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots, and watch it on YouTube – follow and leave a 5-star review.

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The Couples Therapist Couch 232: Understanding Leverage in Couples Therapy with Shane Birkel

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In this solo episode, Shane discusses how leverage works in couples therapy. Hear the different forms of leverage, examples of leverage involving couples, how leverage can help you tackle tricky topics with clients, whether it’s right to stay together for the kids, and the most important questions to ask in a couples therapy session. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

• Defining leverage in the couples therapy context
• Sharing hard truths that can save relationships
• How can you create the motivation for clients to change?
• Helping couples avoid guilt and pressuring each other
• When is it appropriate to throw someone (a little bit) under the bus?

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below: 

 Show Notes

• 232: Understanding Leverage in Couples Therapy with Shane Birkel
• [0:25] Welcome to The Couples Therapist's Couch
• [1:29] What is leverage in this context?
• [2:56] How am I going to create a different motivation for change?
• [5:51] When couples get into "right and wrong" conversations
• [7:19] Each person needs to express
• [9:45] Helping couples avoid guilt and pressure
• [12:08] How understanding leverage creates an opportunity to save relationships
• [14:36] As a therapist, do you have leverage with this person?
• [17:15] What's appropriate when a person hasn't felt seen or understood?
• [21:23] When there's a laundry list of items a person wants to change
• [21:42] How Shane has helped therapists when they feel stuck and not making progress
• [25:04] Dealing with the dynamic where one person is more committed than the other
• [28:29] Bringing hard truths to your client
• [29:40] Check out The Couples Therapist Couch Facebook group and website
• [31:52] Leave a review! 

 

What is The Couples Therapist Couch?

This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Many of the episodes are interviews with leaders in the field of Relationships. The show is meant to help Therapists and Coaches learn how to help people to deepen their connection, but in the process it explores what is most needed for each of us to love, heal, and grow. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

Learn more about the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

Find out more about the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new

Transcript

Please note: This transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:00

If we don't take very seriously what your partner needs and wants in this relationship, they're not going to keep coming back to therapy. This relationship will be over.

 

00:14

Welcome to The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors, and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now, your host, Shane Birkel.

 

00:30

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Couples Therapist's Couch. This is Shane Birkel and this is the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and I try to bring you all the greatest guests and topics in the world of couples therapy for you to learn how to improve your practice with couples. And today I'm excited to bring you a topic.

 

00:59

that I think is really important. It's something that people don't talk about a lot or don't understand, so I wanted to go a little bit into depth with it. We were just talking about a case in the couples therapist inner circle where this came up and it was really important and it really changed the way that the therapist was able to work with the couple. And the topic that I wanna talk about is called leverage in couples therapy. And

 

01:29

When I say leverage, I think there's a lot of different ways people can think about it. So, you know, one of the things about it is that it's creating a motivation for change, right? Because I think about couples that I've worked with, especially when I was younger as a therapist, and there would be times where I would feel like I was just kind of floating along.

 

01:59

So I would listen to one person's perspective and I would get wrapped up in the story and I would think they have a lot of good points that they're making and I would ask their partner, why aren't you doing it differently? And then I would listen to the other person's story and I would think that they were making a lot of good points and I would get wrapped up in their story and I would look at their partner and say, well, why aren't you making these changes? And it's sort of, I'm trying to capture the feeling of the stuckness, right? Because it just seemed, when you hear one person saying what's going on for them,

 

02:29

Sometimes it just seems sort of obvious, like if the other person would just change then this would be fine. And the couple kind of spirals into this pattern of both people waiting for the other person to change. And a lot of times when I begin working with what I learned and what happens now when I begin working with people is, well, first of all, I think the time where we're collecting the data,

 

02:56

at the beginning where we're getting each person's perspective and each person's story. That time is so important. I'm really looking for where do I have leverage in this situation? How am I going to create a different sort of motivation for change for one partner or for both? This becomes a very important part of the work. It could determine the whole

 

03:25

you know, 100% of what needs to happen in the work, or it could determine where we need to start. And so I want to really, really deeply understand what does each person want. Right? And this is a form of leverage in itself, right? How can I help you get more of what you want? Right? So for example, let's say that one person wants

 

03:54

their partner to be more loving and affectionate. And the other partner wants their partner, the other person wants more or less name calling, right? So I wanna create, you know, if I look at the partner and say, as long as you continue calling your partner names, they're not going to want, you know, to give you affection.

 

04:24

So I wanna create motivation for that person to stop name calling. And I wanna connect it to, you're going to get more of what you want in this relationship if you are able to do this. Because oftentimes both people are waiting for the other person to change in order to feel okay in the situation or waiting for the other person to change in order for them to make an effort. And it just doesn't work.

 

04:53

I'm kind of going over this quickly, but if I'm starting to have a deeper conversation or a longer conversation with this person who has a problem with name calling and I'm trying to understand where they're coming from and how hard it is when they don't get affection that I want to be able to have that in my back pocket where I say, do you realize that this name calling is getting in the way of you getting the affection you want in your relationship?

 

05:22

and the connection that you're looking for. So that all of the sudden, the next time they're feeling like they wanna call their partner a name, there's this connection inside of them that might help stop them or motivate them to do it in a different way. So because they're connecting it to what they really, really want on a deep level. And I just made up that example. I don't know if that's a good example, but I hope the point is getting across.

 

05:51

The other thing that happens is it becomes a contest about who's doing the thing wrong, who's doing more of the thing wrong. A lot of couples will get into right and wrong conversations where they'll say, well, I was using healthy communication. You were the one who did it wrong. The other person will say, no, well, I only started doing that because you did that first. They'll go back and forth and back and forth.

 

06:21

trying to prove their partner wrong almost because I think on a deeper level, they really want their partner to understand, I'm not doing it because I don't love you, I'm doing it because I feel like I'm on the defensive or I'm protecting myself. And when we talk about creating change, a lot of times each partner will feel like, well, I'm not gonna change if I can't protect myself. Right, I'm not gonna...

 

06:50

make myself vulnerable if my partner's gonna keep attacking me. And I feel like I'm the one who's doing it the right way. And that's why it's super helpful in couples therapy just in general to move away from right and wrong conversations. So instead, it's sort of like, let's say one person wants to talk about

 

07:19

their day for an hour after work every day. And one person just really wants a lot of space for themself and they're more of an introvert and they want more time for themselves. Like, it's not gonna be very useful to talk about what's the right amount of time to talk after a day of work or something like that, or what's the right amount of space people need. It's much more helpful for each person to express, this is what is important to me.

 

07:47

this is what I want, this is what will be helpful to me. And then the question I like to ask people is, well, I know, let's say one partner is asking for an hour of time to connect and talk about the day after work and the other partner is having a hard time with that. We don't have to argue over what's right and wrong. If I can get the partner to say it in a healthy way.

 

08:15

This is really important to me. This is what I want. This is what I'm asking for. And then I can get the other partner, I can say to the other partner, would you be willing to do this for your partner? Not because it's right or wrong, not because it's wrong that you want time to yourself, but would you be willing to do it for your partner? And maybe that's too much for them and that's okay and we need to compromise and we need to work through that conversation. But we changed the whole,

 

08:45

And again, to go back to the idea of leverage, people feel a lot more inclined to do something if it's seen as a generous gift that they're giving to their partner. Would you be willing to talk to your partner for maybe just half an hour, maybe 20 minutes after work, if that's something that's important to them, if that's something that makes them more connected, and then they're gonna feel a lot more fulfilled in their relationship and be

 

09:15

more likely to be okay with giving you space to yourself if that's what you're asking for. So we create that motivation that feels better for people as opposed to like, if I don't talk to my partner for an hour after work, then I'm a bad person. And that feels like guilt and pressure and something that people feel oppositional to. That's a dynamic that plays out a lot in relationships that a lot of you might resonate with.

 

09:45

If you work with couples, you've probably seen that, or if you're in a relationship, you may have felt that. And so we want to avoid making our partner feel controlled and pressured into doing the things by telling them, well, what kind of partner are you that you don't want to hang out with me for an hour? What's wrong with you? If that's the feeling coming into it, again, it might create some short-term change because people don't like feeling guilty.

 

10:11

and you might be pressuring them in to doing it the way you want, but in the long term, it's not a healthy relational dynamic. And I know that's a relational dynamic that exists in a lot of relationships where one partner is sort of controlling and pressuring and the other one is just sort of trying to manage the situation and neither partner feels good about that. The main way

 

10:39

that we need to look at leverage. When you have two people coming into therapy and you're in that data gathering phase at the beginning, trying to understand the dynamic, trying to understand what's going on, the biggest form of leverage is commitment to the relationship. And so what happens by the time people get to therapy, unfortunately,

 

11:09

a lot of times there's one person with one foot out the door and that needs to be identified as quickly as possible because what happens is if you have someone with one foot out the door, you have zero leverage with that person. And as a therapist, if I start asking them to change and I start letting their partner

 

11:39

about what they're not getting every session, that's just gonna push that other person right out the door. They won't even come back for another session. And so I have to recognize that that's the most important form of leverage or the most important thing to recognize when we're thinking about leverage, because I think there are a lot of cases where there could be some...

 

12:08

opportunity for their relationship to be saved and it ends up being lost because people don't understand this dynamic. Okay, so let's say I have a couple coming into therapy. One partner says, you know, I just don't feel seen and understood in my relationship at all. My partner doesn't

 

12:39

My partner just doesn't seem to care. They're still complaining all the time. They're still criticizing me for the things I'm doing wrong. And so I would like to feel heard and understood in this relationship. Okay, those are all valid things to bring up at the beginning. And then I talk to the other partner and they say, you know, I've needed...

 

13:08

things to change in this relationship for a long time. I'm just over it. I'm not sure I can even do this. This is the last ditch effort for me. I'm here to see if there's any chance for this, but honestly, I'm sick of hearing them talk about how they wanna feel heard and understood. What does that even mean? I don't even have enough time. I'm so overwhelmed, I'm so exhausted. I don't have time for myself. So these are important clues.

 

13:37

Right? Where I'm listening to that second person and I'm thinking to myself, I don't have any leverage with this person. They're kind of over it. You know, if things don't go well, they're just going to be done with this relationship. And I'm looking at that other person. I'm wondering, do I, is this person more committed? Right? They're trying to be heard and understood. They're trying to connect. And I might want to ask some more specific questions to find out.

 

14:06

Do I have leverage with this person? And let's say that I do that. And let's say I find out that this person is very committed to the relationship. They really want it to work. And they're willing to put in whatever effort they can to make the relationship work. What I think to myself is that the partner with one foot out the door, I have to be very considerate and thoughtful and in tuned to what they need.

 

14:36

So when the first partner, the one who's committed to the relationship, when they're saying they want to feel seen and heard and understood, they feel criticized all the time. Again, I, I can validate them and say, you know, I can understand how hard that is, but if I start working on that with their partner on, you need to be a better listener. You need to validate their perspective. Let me teach you how to not be so criticizing of your partner.

 

15:06

And I don't have any leverage to back that up. Again, they're gonna say, screw this. I didn't really wanna work on this anyway. And now you're putting all the burden on me to change and to make changes in this relationship. No, thank you, I'm out. Okay, so I have to be very considerate of that. It doesn't mean that all of those things aren't true. Like if the relationship is to get better, it's probably true.

 

15:35

that they need to get better at all those things. But I'm getting ahead of myself in the work if I try to take that approach. I don't even have enough leverage with them to begin that conversation.

 

15:48

So I need to trust that if the other person is really committed, that they have broader shoulders for me to sort of go after what the partner is asking for. So my number one priority, if I don't have any leverage with someone, if they're the, if, let's say they're the one with one foot out the door, I need to tune into what they really want. I need to create the feeling

 

16:17

that I'm really interested in creating change for them. With a person with one foot out the door, I'll say, it depends on the situation, right? You have to feel it out, but I might say something like, oh my gosh, does he always complain about how you don't validate him and how you're always criticizing him? Because I need to create a connection with this person who has one foot out the door.

 

16:46

more than anything else. And the other person might be like, what the heck? I was just trying to share with you what, how I feel and now you're using it again. But I don't really care. You're, you're coming back to therapy next week. Well, no matter what I say, you have to kind of feel it out and get better at being in tune to these situations as a therapist. But I do this kind of thing all the time where I know I have leverage with someone and usually they see what I'm doing and they, they've

 

17:15

are grateful for it, but I need to create that connection with the person with one foot out the door. And if I have to throw their partner under the bus a little bit, because it lets them see that I can, I'm willing to tune into their perspective. My guess is in a lot of these situations, they haven't felt heard or seen or understood for a very, very long time. And I want to create that experience for them.

 

17:45

So I want to get really curious with them. I want to say, tell me more about why you have one foot out the door. Tell me more about, you know, this can't have been an easy decision. The two of you have been together for so many years. You've been trying to work through this. I'm sure this isn't the first time you've tried to work on your relationship. And

 

18:12

I'm sure this is, you know, you have kids, you have, you know, a shared life together, you live together, shared expenses, all of these things, your lives are intertwined. It can't be easy for you to get to this place where you're not even sure you can be in a relationship. I am so sorry. I'm so sorry you're in this situation. This is hard. This is really hard. I know it's not easy to speak your truth and to say...

 

18:41

that you don't know if you can do it anymore. I really appreciate that you're being honest about that because the only way we move forward is if you're truly honest about where you're at with that. And staying together for the kids is not a good enough motivation. Staying together because you think you're gonna be a bad person if you get a divorce. None of these are good enough reasons to stay together. I really want...

 

19:10

you to feel like you can leave this relationship and you would still be a good person. You would both could still be healthy and happy in your life. You'll get to that point. If you do choose to stay.

 

19:26

The reason that I say that is that if you do choose to stay, I want you to feel like it's an empowered choice that you're making because that's what you really want. That's the way this feels healthy and feels okay. It doesn't mean everything's going to be resolved and everything's going to be okay, but you have to know that you would still be a good person. You would still be okay if you decided to leave and you're making the choice to stay anyway. But tell me more about what's not working for you. Wouldn't you?

 

19:54

What needs to change in order for you to feel okay in this relationship? And again, I want to tune in to that person's reality and I'm going to explain to the PR and I try, I've told, you know, I've said this on the podcast many times before, you know, I talk about this a lot that I try to be transparent with what I'm doing. I will tell people where I see this leverage. I will, I will look at the other person and I will say, listen,

 

20:24

If we don't take very seriously what your partner needs and wants in this relationship, they're not going to keep coming back to therapy. This relationship will be over. I've seen this story multiple times before. I can tell you what the outcome is. If you keep doubling down on criticizing your partner or even just focusing on yourself and what you need in the situation,

 

20:53

I'm afraid that we could lose your partner or you could lose your partner. That's really what I want to say. I want them to see like, you know, if what they're asking for is, you know, they want to feel more connected, they want to feel more understood, you know, they have a list of things that they want from their partner. I will say that's all completely valid and I want you to have more of those things too.

 

21:23

The only way we get there is if we start with your partner first and we make sure they're feeling heard and understood and we have a plan in place where we're addressing the things that they need in their relationship. Otherwise, they're gone.

 

21:39

So I need to recognize this because

 

21:42

I've, you know, in the inner circle, I teach therapists all the time and we do consultations and I've had so many different therapists who have been working with a couple for months, three months, six months, and they feel like they're stumbling around in the dark because they haven't really achieved, you know, they're focusing on the person who they have leverage with, the person who's more committed.

 

22:12

instead of the person who's less committed. And they're not making any progress because the person who's less committed is in the driver's seat really. And it's not fair. It's not, but no one's doing anything wrong. Like it's not something they're trying to create, but we have to recognize if there is, if there is that dynamic and there, and there, by the way, there isn't always this dynamic in place. Sometimes you have two people who are both very committed, right?

 

22:41

And the work is actually easier in that case. Sometimes you have two people who aren't very committed. That's the worst case scenario. I mean, sometimes a form of leverage you can mention is their own misery. That would be, you know, like looking at the two of them and saying, wow, the two of you are miserable. I wouldn't want anybody to feel like this every single day.

 

23:10

Are you willing to do something different? Are you willing to learn how to do things in a different way? You know, or why are you even holding on to this relationship? The two of you are so cruel to each other. This is awful. Why would you want to continue doing that? And again, just trying to create some sort of motivation, trying to create some sort of momentum in a positive direction, some sort of leverage to build on for that case.

 

23:39

Sometimes people won't be willing to change for themselves, but they'll be willing to change for them their kids This might be more of an individual therapy kind of thing where you know let's say like someone's trying to quit drinking or something like that and they're they're just sort of depressed and Don't have feel a lot of self-value don't don't have a lot of self-esteem and They feel like well, I don't care. I'm just gonna you know

 

24:08

quit drinking and nobody will care about me anyway. But when you start to talk about their kids and a lot of people will feel so much more love and compassion for their kids and they do for themselves. And they'll be like, well, I'm willing to quit drinking or make these changes for my kids if it's gonna make their life better, if it's gonna.

 

24:34

improve my relationship for them or, you know, it's usually a very selfless thing that they're not even doing it for their own satisfaction. They're doing it truly for their kids because they love their kids so much and thinking about their kids just fills them up with so much love and joy and compassion much more so than themselves. So that can be a form of leverage as well. But to get back to the main...

 

25:03

thing that I want to talk about is that dynamic with where you have one person who's much more committed and one person who's much less committed, possibly even with one foot out the door. That's what I really want. Try to continue getting better at identifying that dynamic. If you leave this podcast episode and you want to start trying a little bit of this, really start trying to pick up on

25:33

where the leverage lies in the situations you're working with, in the couples you're working with. Then you want to start pushing on the, I don't know if I would say pushing on or you want to start challenging the person who you have more leverage with, meaning the person who's more committed to the relationship. You really want to... One...

26:01

Move into compassion for the person with less, who's less committed, really tune in, really get their story, really find out what they want. Find out what's gonna get them to come back to the session next week. It's not even about saving their relationship. It's like, what do you need just to keep working on this? And then really, really challenging or pushing on the person who is more committed.

26:27

and being transparent about this, look, if we don't address this, this person isn't going to continue with the work. A really important question, maybe you could start asking early on in the beginning, as each partner is talking about what they want in the relationship, start asking them, well, what are you going to do if this doesn't change? Right? Because some people might

 

26:57

That's a really good way to measure how much leverage do I have with this person because some people will go, well, if this doesn't change, I'm done. If they're at that level of extreme, that's a really good piece of information. Some people might answer less emphatically, but that's a really good question. What are you going to do if this doesn't change? You want to be able to use that later on when you look at the other partner and you can say, listen,

27:26

If this doesn't change, your partner's not coming back to therapy. They said that, right? And so it's not you as a therapist telling them what's going to happen. It's taking their words, taking their partner's words, taking what's coming into the meeting and really bringing it back out at the right time in order to apply the leverage or apply the right pressure in the right spot to create the change that we're looking for, the motivation, right?

27:56

creating that motivation for what we're looking for.

28:01

And as a therapist, we don't tell them what to do, but we, I think we can really clearly lay out, look, what I hear your partner saying is that if this and this doesn't change, they don't know how they can stay in this relationship. And really just putting it out in front of you, putting it on the table for people, because a lot of times people have a hard time facing the truth of their reality. If my partner is...

28:29

has one foot out the door and I keep just bringing up normal day to day things that I'm frustrated with, I'm actually think that I'm helping the relationship but I'm doing the opposite. We got to bring that to people's attention. That might take a while to get to in the work. To go back to what I was saying before, you want to start in the beginning just asking what each person wants, getting clear on what's going to happen if this doesn't change.

28:57

and starting to get a sense of where do I have leverage and how do I start focusing on the person I have less leverage with to really tune into what's going on for them. So I hope this is helpful. I hope that all of you have a great rest of the week.

29:16

Let me know if you have any questions. If you know, a lot of times these solo episodes that I do come from conversations we're having in the inner circle or questions that I'm getting in the inner circle, but you can also reach out to me and let me know if there are any topics you want me to discuss or specific guests that you want to come on the show. But thank you so much everybody. I'm so grateful for all of you. I'm always grateful if you want to leave a rating or a review, wherever you listen to the podcast.

29:46

And I'm Shane Birkel. This is the Couples Therapist Couch. Have a great week, everybody!