What to Expect from Couples Therapy (and How It's Different From Talking at Home)
When couples first come to therapy, they often ask:
“What will we actually do in the sessions?”
Or:
“How is this any different from just talking at home — or arguing in the car?”
The answer is: everything is different — and it depends entirely on what’s alive between you.
Couples therapy is not just a structured conversation with a referee. When practiced through a PACT lens(Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy), and woven with trauma-informed, somatic, and attachment-based work, therapy becomes a living, responsive space that meets you where you are.
There’s no one-size-fits-all format. What happens in session is shaped by what’s present between you in real time — the conflict, the pain, the love, the shutdown, the history, the longing — and how your bodies and nervous systems are responding to it.
1. It's Not Just "Talking Better" — It's Tracking the Whole System
At home, most couples try to fix things by talking more.
But talking often becomes looping, defending, rehashing — or worse, withdrawal and shutdown.
In PACT-informed therapy, we don’t just listen to what you're saying. We watch how your nervous systems react to each other — your facial expressions, tone shifts, posture, gaze. We track how safe or threatened each of you feels moment to moment, and what patterns of early attachment may be shaping those reactions.
Sometimes the words are calm, but the body is in fight-or-flight.
Sometimes one partner is “trying to connect,” but the other hears criticism.
Sometimes one is in freeze or collapse — and nothing lands at all.
This is the level we work on.
2. What Happens in a Session? That Depends.
There’s no script — because couples don’t arrive with the same needs.
✦ If there's been a betrayal (emotional or sexual),
then nothing else matters until safety and repair are addressed. We don’t paper over the wound with communication skills. We slow down, assess the nervous systems in the room, and work to create containment for what has happened — or is still happening. There may be grief. There may be rage. There must be honesty.
Until that’s worked with, we don’t layer on tools. We attune to the wound.
✦ If you're stuck in reactive arguments or looping dynamics,
we look at the attachment patterns driving those loops. How did each of you learn to signal distress, seek comfort, defend against rejection? How do those strategies collide in the present? We map the inner landscape and start to make the invisible visible.
✦ If one of you wants more closeness and the other wants space,
we explore how proximity and autonomy were handled in each of your early systems. We look at the nervous system thresholds for connection and regulation. We practice tolerating a new kind of closeness — one that doesn’t overwhelm or shut down either person.
Each session is responsive, live, alive. We don’t force a direction — we follow what wants attention and bring it into a container that is structured enough to be safe, and flexible enough to be real.
3. Why You Can’t Do This Work Alone at Home
You’ve probably already tried.
You’ve talked about the same issues over and over.
You’ve had moments of insight — only to find yourself back in the same fight the next week.
Here’s why therapy is different:
You’re not alone with it. There’s a third nervous system in the room (mine) tracking, regulating, slowing you down, making sure no one gets left behind.
We work bottom-up, not just top-down. This means we don’t only analyse what happened. We notice what’s happening right now — in the body, in the breath, in the urge to lean in or look away.
There’s real-time practice. You don’t just talk about the dynamic. You work within it — as it shows up, moment to moment — and try something different with support.
There’s accountability. In therapy, you get a mirror — compassionate but clear — for the impact of your patterns. And you’re supported in making different choices, over time.
4. It’s Not About Blame — It’s About Pattern
One of the biggest fears couples have is that therapy will turn into a “who’s right and who’s wrong” battle. That’s not how I work.
We zoom out. We look at the dance you’re in, not just the steps. We get curious about:
What each of you is protecting
What you’re both longing for
What happens in your bodies before the words even come out
And we start to build a different way of relating — one that is secure-functioning, where both people feel chosen, protected, and supported — not just in moments of ease, but especially in moments of stress.
5. So, What Should You Expect?
Expect that the process will move at the pace your relationship can handle.
Expect to feel discomfort sometimes — but not overwhelm.
Expect me to be active, warm, direct, and involved.
Expect that I won’t sit back silently while you spiral into pain.
Expect that we’ll look at what’s underneath the surface — and that includes each of your pasts.
And expect that, if you’re both willing, you’ll start to feel something shift.
Final Thought
Couples therapy isn’t just a place to talk about your relationship. It’s a place to experience your relationship differently — with support, structure, and depth.
It’s a space to rewire how you fight, how you reach for each other, how you soothe, and how you repair.
And maybe for the first time, it’s a space where what’s hard between you becomes the path back to each other.
If that sounds like something you’re ready for, you’re welcome to reach out. I offer a free 20-minute Zoom consultation to see if we’re a good fit.