Individual Couples Adjustment Therapy (TIAP): a new resource for couples in conflict
The Individual Couples Adjustment Therapy is another tool in the treatment of problems related to the area of life as a couple. The assumptions on which the TIAP approach is based are the following
1. The conflicts of couple as such, do not exist . There are the problems of each person as an individual.
2. A couple is the sum of two radically different individuals , with a unique and unique history, with a family, bonds, environment, principles, values, education, experiences and big or small traumas, that give rise to two necessarily different personalities, no matter how great the affection and attraction that towards the another is experienced.
3. Therefore, the problems are not of the couple as such, but the product of the internal mobilization of past conflicts (of a lifetime) of each of its components to collide with those of the other, and the consequent hatching that occurs when trying to make life compatible with a person who also provides a baggage of values, but also deficiency aspects, immature, when not manifestly pathological.
Characteristics of the TIAP
With the exception of what happens in the initial interview, in the Individual Therapy of Couples' Adjustment instead of working together with the two components of the couple (as is usual in most couples therapy modalities), the intervention is developed individually . Each member of the couple will perform a psychotherapy seemingly individual, in different days and times than their partner.
The practical characteristic that defines this type of therapy is that the therapist will work with a double objective:
1. The greatest self-knowledge, maturity, development and assumption of personal resources , acceptance of limits, and suppression of projections and introjections of relevant figures.
2. In parallel, when the therapist knows the strengths and weaknesses of both components, can be enhanced the practice of behaviors that will facilitate in both the knowledge of , knowledge of the other, knowledge of others, knowledge in general, overcoming the usual amounts of aggressiveness and resentment, the result of a frustrated and frustrating common life experience (at least in certain aspects), the management of tolerance to frustration, and the desidealization of unreal expectations, which generate so many sexual conflicts, and which do not stop being but somatizations; that is, the expression through the body (in this case of the sexual organs) of unresolved emotional or affective conflicts.
Framing of Individual Couples Adjustment Therapy
The members of the couple will not be able to comment on the content of the individual sessions in their private or social life , as happens in the components of any group psychotherapy. However, the effects of these sessions must be recognized both by oneself and by the couple so that the therapy can be considered to offer results.
Advantages of the TIAP
The TIAP constitutes a field of individual advancement that is assembled, in parallel, with the evolution of the other, advancing in time the possibility that these individual advances are reflected in their coexistence, in their verbal, affective and sexual communication.
This parallel and complementary enrichment allows that, from the first sessions, both members of the couple begin to perceive important benefits for the relationship, only through the portion of empathy and psycho-affective knowledge of the other, often obtained in just two or three sessions.
The fact of working exclusively with the therapist, without the presence in the consultation of the other member, allows the free expression of opinions, evaluations and feelings , which, with the companion in front, sometimes would not be possible because of shame, grief or aggression.
There are many who, when working with the traditional methodology, do not pass the first session, or, at most, and with heroic efforts, support a few sessions, clearly insufficient, abandoning the therapeutic work with the aggravation of having poured into the joint sessions opinions and feelings that will condition the rest of their potential coexistence.
Requirements to implement the TIAP
To be able to perform the Individual Couples' Adjustment Therapy with guarantees, it is necessary that a series of requirements be met:
- That none of the members of the couple have mental disorders of such severity that they make the process impossible.
- The total awareness on both sides that not only the other has problems , shortcomings, defects, traumas or unresolved conflicts.
- The desirable thing is that the therapy is carried out with the total conviction of its necessity by both parties , as well as with absolute freedom; without pressures, even well-intentioned, of any kind.
