The Space Between Us: Communication, Care and Connection

And Scott, I suppose, just to kick off, at its core, how would you describe the role of couple or family therapist when working with couples or families?

It's a great question.

Yeah, it is a form of psychotherapy, but it's, it's different.

I usually work with multiple people in a room, so that's different in itself.

Most sort of psychotherapy with an individual, so I would work with multiple people in a room most of the time.

Sometimes I might with an individual, so that's a, quite a difference.

I think as well the main kind of role, I suppose, is creating a space in the therapy room to have conversations that can happen differently than the normal conversations.

I know that sounds very simplistic, but it's quite tricky to do, to actually create, if you think about our own families, what it'd be like to have a different type of conversation with a stranger like myself in a room asking certain questions.

So I suppose it's trying to create conversations, some people use the word generative, like this is conversations that are life-giving, not kind of just the normal repetitive interactions that we can have with families.

I always know I'm doing an okay job when a family member, a couple might say, "I never knew that.

I never heard that before.

You never said that to me.

I didn't realize." So that's creating something new.

It's a new idea, you know? Or just sometimes as well what will happen very quickly in a space will be conversations that just get into the same old patterns and conversations, and I have to see a bit of that.

But I do sort of try and interrupt and almost sort of name the pattern, not that it's anyone's fault, and say, "Is this what normally happens? How are people feeling with this pattern?" So it's almost sort of moving it out for people.

And also, like, sort of shifting what people often have different assumptions of what the other person thinks as well, and so it's very interesting to get people to talk out loud how they think they're perceived by each other.

And often there's a lot of kind of different conversations.

Curiosity happens.

My job in the therapy space, to sum it all up, is to create a kind of an experience, a different type of conversation really that brings a bit of difference and a bit of hope and a bit of life.

That's sort of probably the core of what I do really, yeah.

And Scott, just one thing that stood out to me there-

Yeah

... is when you're talking about, I suppose, noticing those things and creating that space for families to have those conversations that they might have the whole time, but see them in a different perspective, what does a family therapist notice or pay attention to that will be different than other mental health professionals?

I remember doing a lecture to sort of other health professionals.

I sort of tried to contrast it that sometimes, and it's not as simplistic as this, but generally all the mental health professionals will concentrate what's inside somebody, what's inside their brain, what's inside their mind, so you're kind of looking inside somebody and trying to figure out what's going on there.