Modern Couples Therapy Assessment: The Research-Based Approach at Couples Therapy Inc – Couples Therapy Inc.

Dear Dr. K,

I appreciate your intensive approach, especially the comprehensive assessment done beforehand. After completing the extensive questionnaire (the “BIG BIG Book©”), I’m feeling discouraged. We’ve faced numerous challenges, and we both have regrets about our actions. Seeing it all laid out has made me worried that our relationship might be “too far gone” for the intensive.

My questions are:

• Given my concerns after the assessment, what would you advise we do next?
• Can the therapist review our assessment and provide insight on whether our relationship is salvageable?

Assessment Anxiety

Dear Assessment Anxiety,

The BIG BIG book© is designed to provide your couples therapist with a “snapshot” of your relationship as it stands today. It is only one important part of an extensive assessment we complete. The other involves the first evening’s “Story of Us” where you discuss your early years together, and how your relationship has changed. We also do a 10-minute “fighting sample” where we get to see how you fight, live and in action, so that we know how to intervene as well as individual meetings with each of you.

After each of these aspects of the intensive:

• The BIG BIG Book©
• Problem History and Story of Us
• Fighting Sample and
• Individual meetings

…we provide a pretty comprehensive assessment of your relationship strengths and weaknesses and what specifically you’ll need to do differently to enhance your marriage.

We’ll be the last ones in the room to give up on your marriage. It’s not our job (nor should it be) to tell you to stay together or to break up.

We tell you:

• Why things are problematic
• The dynamics that keep them going
• What particular aspects you both need to work on and why
• The tools you can use to work on them.

This is based upon over 40 years of research on real couples and real issues. Happy couples do this. Problematic couples do that. We know what those things are and how you each can interact differently to accentuate the positive and reduce the negatives. Only you two can decide if your relationship is worth the effort.

But more importantly, we’ll tell you why troubled couples feel so hopeless and helpless and why that’s not of great concern to us. Those feelings of despair are a natural offshoot of problematic interactional patterns in intimate relationships. Motivation plays a greater role than a belief that things will or won’t get better.

After completing the BIG BIG Book©, you’ve done only a small part of the overall assessment, and you’ve likely looked more carefully at all aspects of your marriage than you ever have.

Now, let us take all of that data and help you to understand what it means to you and to your marriage.

Your commitment to change can make a profound difference in your life and the lives of those you love.

Thanks for writing.

Dr. K