Trish: [00:00:00] When somebody has depression, or anxiety, or panic disorder, or trauma, or personality disorder, or any of those things, they feel alone. Even in their relationships, they often feel alone. And so, reaching out for help often feels to them as though it’s unproductive, or it won’t work, because they’re in this helpless sort of state of, nobody gets me, nobody can help me.

What’s the point and best way to help you to overcome that issue. is to have support. Whether it’s medical support, therapist support, family support, some kind of support. And the best kind of support will come from your intimate other. I see my kids now as adults using Gottman techniques in the way they listen to their partners, in the way they discuss during tense conversations.

And they demonstrate all these Gottman [00:01:00] things that we try to teach couples. You know, I’ll be able to sit there and go, ooh, nice turning towards. Excellent validation, you know, so I’m, I’m judging them in my head. And they’ve learned that through observation. And so this is something powerful about doing this kind of work, is that you’re changing things intergenerationally when you, when you teach one couple how to do this better.

Their kids learn it too, and so on down the generations. 

Marie: Hello, and welcome to This Complex Life. I am continuing on with the series all around couples and relationships and couples therapy and all that juicy stuff. And today with me, I have Trish Purnell Webb, who is a clinical psychologist. Certified Gottman therapist and an advanced clinical trainer and consultant for the Gottman Institute.

So loads and loads of experience. And I’ve been fortunate enough to be trained by Trish. So I’m super excited to have this conversation. Welcome to the podcast, Trish. 

Trish: Thanks for having me, Marie. Nice and early on a [00:02:00] Monday morning. 

Marie: Yes, it is. Lucky it’s not Daylight Savings because it would be harder for one of us.

So you’ve, I mean, could you put a ballpark number of how many hundreds of couples you’ve worked with? Would you have any idea? 

Trish: Well, I’ve been working with couples for nearly 30 years now and so it’d be hard to say really. Better be considerable, hundreds or thousands, I’m not sure. I know John Flanagan, my business partner, he did some calculations and he determined some Three or four years ago that he and I had both met the, uh, 10, 000 hours of couples therapy that apparently makes you some kind of a master in things, so.

Marie: Oh, you need that on a mug or a t shirt or something. 

Trish: That’s right. It’s a lot, lot of couples, a lot of hours. Yeah. So you’ve 

Marie: pretty 

Trish: much seen it all. I think so. It’s rare that things [00:03:00] can surprise me or knock me over when, with couples these days. I’ve heard lots of stories. 

Marie: One of the things I’ve noticed, John’s been on the podcast as well, but talking about emotions, not part of this series, but the two of you seem to still have so much compassion and so much empathy for relationships.

There’s no one I’ve met who still loves the work that they do so much. 

Trish: Yeah, that’s interesting, isn’t it? I agree. I think I do love what I do and I know John does too. I think it’s because we do get to see those beautiful moments between couples when there is what we would call a corrective emotional experience occurring in the room in front of us.

They’re very touching. And we know that from those experiences, massive change in their relationship occurs for the better. And, um, we’ve also seen many, many, many couples benefit incredibly from couples therapy. [00:04:00] 

Marie: Yeah, me too. It’s pretty powerful. When you tell people you’re a couples therapist or when you hear people out in the community, like what are the kind of myths or misconceptions that you hear about couples therapy?

And in particular, Um, how it interacts with mental health concerns or mental illness or mental ill health. 

Trish: Yeah. People often have this belief that couples therapy makes things worse. Everybody’s got a story. Oh, my friends went to couples therapy and the couples therapist told them they should divorce or the couples therapist just picked on, you know, this partner or that partner.

And there are definitely some mistakes made in therapy of all kinds. You know, in medicine, there are mistakes made. And there are. Better trained clinicians than others. That’s true. And so it’s goes back to the old adage of, you do need to watch that buyer beware kind of saying where you do a bit of research, you find out who you’re going to see, what kind of [00:05:00] actual training they’ve had and make a smart selection based on that information.

I think in terms of mental health. What can happen, I think, is mental health is a very isolating thing, you know, when somebody has depression or anxiety or panic disorder or trauma or personality disorder or any of those things, they feel alone, even in their relationships, they often feel alone. And so reaching out for help often feels to them as though it’s unproductive or it won’t work because they’re in this helpless sort of state of nobody gets me.

Nobody can help me. What’s the point? Whereas we know from lots of years of work and more recently a lot of research that’s been done that when people come to couples therapy, when they have mental health issues, that they get better outcomes than they get from doing individual therapy for that mental health issue.

[00:06:00] Issue, which is a fascinating outcome from the research. 

Marie: How? Like, how does that work? I see it anecdotally, I, I totally get that, but how does couple therapy address mental health issues? Like, how is that helpful? Because I think maybe one of the misconceptions is that the relationship is drowning, people want to break up or they want to unload like a big kind of hidden secret, there’ll be something.

Not see it as a way to support each other through a tough time. 

Trish: Yes. So, as I said before, when you’ve got a mental health issue, you feel alone. And the best way to help you to overcome that issue is to have support. Whether it’s medical support, therapist support, family support, some kind of support. And the best kind of support will come from your intimate other.

You know, in Gottman Couples Therapy, we work very [00:07:00] intentionally. In helping the couples to really attune to each other’s emotional landscapes. Gottman uses this term of love maps and often people see that as just how you know your partner and it can be seen as something superficial, but actually to really understand the map of your partner’s emotional landscape, that’s true intimacy.

And when we do that, regardless of what mental health concerns might be. In the mix, the person who, you know, has that trauma or has that personality vulnerability, or whatever it is, feels seen, they feel known, and they’re not alone. And just that very nature of having that kind of person sort of in your corner means that the symptoms of that disorder are often mitigated.

Yeah, 

Marie: I see it a lot when I work with [00:08:00] families, being a family therapist, whenever it’s a young person bringing in the parents and siblings as well, if possible, but usually parents are a lot easier to get in the room. And you can see even from that, the Ways that they respond can create more stress or can ease the distress.

Is that the same in your experience with couples? 

Trish: Exactly. You know, the, there’s a famous couples therapist called Sue Johnson. She kind of, she and Les Greenberg designed this approach called Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, which. Has a lot of overlap with Gottman and you know, I’m trained in, in emotion focused therapy as well as Gottman therapy and I use them both in a sort of an integrated way because they’re both good for different things, but she wrote a whole book on how.

Relationships and having a truly kind of intimate other, a strong connection can help you to recover from mental [00:09:00] health, particularly trauma. And she kind of put it, I might not get the quote exactly right, but she said some things like if another stands beside you when you face overwhelming terror or helplessness and you’re not alone, that it’s not so terrifying and that.

We all know that it’s better to not be alone in the dark, and that a connection with another makes us stronger. And that’s really what it’s about. But it has to be, it’s not just, you know, the next door neighbor or the community health nurse that we’re talking about here. We’re talking about that person that you know without shadow of a doubt is there for you, will have your back, will walk through fire with you.

And we’ll support you and encourage you and validate you and your experience all along the way, even if they don’t agree. Even if they’re not experiencing [00:10:00] the same thing, to be truly attuned to another, you will accept their experience is real for them and that you can support them in that 

Marie: experience.

So one way to get it wrong is to say something like, why are you worrying about that? That’s no big deal. Or here we go again. Or if you just fill in the blank, 

Trish: all 

Marie: of those kinds of unhelpful responses. I 

Trish: mean, we would call that emotion dismissing. And some of us were raised by emotion dismissing, dismissing parents.

And so it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us. It just means that’s how we learned to deal with emotions, but that’s not always particularly helpful. You know, I remember my mom, when I was a kid and I would go and see her and say, Oh, I’m sad because so and so did something. She would say, well, don’t feel like that.

Don’t feel sad. So how do I do that? And so when we dismiss another person’s emotions, it invalidates them and it makes them feel even more alone and even [00:11:00] sadder and more depressed or more anxious or more wrong. So what we wanna do is really learn those skills that we teach couples as, as a part of Gottman therapy to really listen and to validate and empathise with your, really get to know them at that very deep level.

Marie: I think that’s one of the hardest bits for couples. I even think of some that I had recently doing, just a really classic sort of rap rapport, kind of, how do we have these conversations? And they were saying, but if I empathise or validate, I’m agreeing that that’s true. And I don’t think that’s true. And so, you know, if someone’s saying, oh, my boss is being unreasonable, or, you know, they’re just having a conversation that they’re wanting their partner to vent, and their partner says, Well, don’t be silly or whatever, they don’t want to empathise because they think, well, then I’m agreeing that I think their boss is being unreasonable.

And I think that’s not, I don’t think that’s true. So there’s this real [00:12:00] tug of war of if I validate their experience, I’m agreeing with that. And what if, especially when it’s, I’ve done something bad, like if I validate, Oh, I can see that my actions made you feel that way by me saying that it’s saying, I did this to you.

But that’s not what I meant, and that wasn’t my intention, and then it just, it creates like, just lots of stuff. 

Trish: It’s often in the language, the way we language things, so. If I say something like, I’m sorry, I made you feel that way, that sounds like I’m taking responsibility for that. But if I say, I’m really sorry that you experienced it that way, that’s completely different.

Because what I’m saying, what I’m really doing is I’m saying, I acknowledge that’s your experience and that must’ve been painful for you. I’m not saying I agree with your experience or that I intended to do that, but I can see that you had that experience and I empathise with you. [00:13:00] It must have been awful.

How does that? It’s a fine distinction, but it has to be made. And yes, you’re right. Couples do struggle with it. But once they get it, amazing change occurs. 

Marie: How does that correlate with accountability? If you struggle with that, like, because responsibility and accountability sometimes intention doesn’t matter, necessarily.

Trish: Well, I think intention always matters. And the thing about intention is we never really know another person’s intention. We have to make assumptions about it. And sometimes we will make those assumptions based on something inside us. And sometimes we make those assumptions based on our conclusions that we’ve drawn about the other person and the characterisation we’ve made of them.

And so, we, as a listener or as a receiver, Never really know what the other person’s intention is and if they try to tell us we have to choose to believe it or not. And again, we’re going to filter that through a whole lot of our own personal stuff. So [00:14:00] intention is important and it’s hard to really get unless you’re willing to believe your partner.

And the only way you’re going to be willing to believe your partner is if there’s high trust between them. If you trust that they will be honest with you. And so if there’s no trust in the relationship, then of course you’re going to always interpret through your own assumptions, your own kind of characterisations of the partner, which may or may not be true.

So sometimes even if you don’t believe their intention, it’s even better if you can just stay on the fence and go, well, I don’t really know what their intention was and I don’t trust them. So I’m not going to, you know, make a decision either way, but that’s better than going, no, no, no. You need to do this because that just creates world war three.

We get into the argument of, yes I did, no I didn’t, yes I did, no I didn’t, so it’s not fruitful at all. 

Marie: If we bring it back to mental ill health, you mentioned a range of different possible diagnoses. How do you help them [00:15:00] navigate when sometimes the way that distress or that illness presents has this Maybe a hostility or volatility or I love you, go away.

I need you. I need space. I want you to want to know what I need. Like they don’t have maybe in those moments, the capacity to regulate themselves or ask for what they need, or, you know, think of something like depression or sometimes the symptoms of some features of PTSD. It’s withdrawing and isolating when you really want closeness and connection.

How do you help couples navigate the complexities of how those can present? 

Trish: Yeah. I mean, it’s layered. There’s many things that we kind of have to do to help a couple. Recognise and understand these things. So one of the things is some psychoeducation about the issue is and how it occurred. Then the second layer would be the origin story.

So if it’s trauma, some [00:16:00] sharing of what the experience of that trauma was, some understanding of how the person who experienced that trauma. Made that mean something in their world about themselves, about other people, about their environment and really understanding what rules and boundaries they created from those meanings and how that’s playing out in the relationship today.

So both partners get to see how it’s all occurred. And what it’s, what the outcome of all of that is, and then we can start to say, so is that a helpful way to deal with your partner? You know, it was probably helpful when you were 10 to throw a tantrum and, and, you know, push people away or do whatever you were doing for your own safety.

But as a 30 year old, is that still helpful in your relationships with the family? And is there another way that we can help you to. Interact with your, with those [00:17:00] that are close to you that, that you want to be close to. And meanwhile, the partner’s hearing this and they’re going to then allow a little bit more grace.

And so when they see the behavior, they’re able to recognise it and we can help them then to have a little process that they can go into to kind of. Soothe their partner in a sense and repair that moment. You know, Gottman talks all the time about repairing the moment. And we, that’s a lot of what happens in these relationships.

You know, I was working with a couple where the female partner had quite significant childhood trauma and, uh, her male partner, they’d been in infidelity. And so there was a lot of rebuilding trust and we were doing really good work. And we’d gotten to the point where. We were ready for him to start talking about what he needed in the relationship, so the atonement phase had been completed.

And he very fearfully talked about what he needed in the relationship. And his partner was so empathetic to him. She heard [00:18:00] it. She was touched by it. She had tears in her eyes. She spontaneously reached over and touched his arm and said some really lovely words to him. But in that instant, her traumatised brain went, Be careful.

The minute you let yourself be vulnerable, thou hurtest. And she wasn’t just meaning him. She was mostly meaning her father. And so she immediately flipped into a barrage of abuse, and it took me a few minutes to be able to settle her down. But in that time, actually, he automatically went into his process for taking ownership of his part in that.

Not for the whole trauma. But in his part, and so between him and me, we were able to get him soothed fairly quickly. Whereas in the past, that kind of uproar might have lasted for some hours. So if we can teach them how to recognise these things. And he saw the flip as well and he knew that’s the traumas kicked in [00:19:00] and he knew exactly what he needed to do and we just keep developing that.

And eventually, you know, quite dysregulated people will find that instead of having a sort of a dysregulation kind of profile that looks a bit like this, it’s a bit more like this, right? It’s a bit gentler. They’re still ups and downs, but they’ve got strategies to work with that, and they feel close and connected.

Now, that couple, I saw them probably six or seven years ago, and they’re still together, and they’re still managing their relationship, and still from time to time. Coming in to just get back on track when things get a little bit too stressful for 

Marie: them. But it works. That’s a beautiful story. Yeah. Is there a difference?

I mean, I hear, I’ve had a few recently and I’ve talked about this in, um, some peer supervision groups. There’s this distinction that some people make between won’t or can’t. And there’s this belief like my partner won’t give this to me or they won’t be [00:20:00] there for me or they won’t say the right thing or they won’t empathise.

Then I hear the partner side and they’re Perplexed or confused or they’re flooded with their own emotions or feelings of inadequacy and they can’t give it. Some don’t even know exactly what it is to even give it and some are like, I know my partner wants something from me. I have no idea what it is.

And I can’t, I can’t meet them there. How do you help people navigate that, like, without them, you know, I hear some people blaming and being like, oh, maybe they need a assessment or a diagnosis of this or that. I’m like, what different, we then talk about what difference that would make. But is that that same bit you were saying around giving each other more grace and trusting the intention?

Trish: Well, it all comes back to achievement, which is the word, a word I use all the time. You know, when you get to know that your partner freezes up in certain conditions, you know, so I don’t know, give you an [00:21:00] example where let’s just say because of his own history, my partner has a freeze reaction to any perception of criticism and you know, I walk in and say, Oh no, it’s going to rain today and ruin our barbecue.

He might actually hear that as criticism of him, Oh no, I’ve done something wrong. The barbecue is going to be wiped out and it’s my fault. And he might freeze and doesn’t respond to me. And that’s because of the way I’ve said it. I haven’t been clear about what my intention is or what I need from him in response to a sort of a cry like that.

And it’s because of, you know, perhaps it’s because of some childhood stuff of having a highly critical mother. But if we can understand that, I might see the reaction and be able to say to myself, Oh, wait, that came out too strongly or too harshly or too suddenly. And I might be able to adjust that, do a little repair as Gottman calls it.

And say [00:22:00] something like, I know you have nothing to do with the weather and it’s okay. I’m just sad that perhaps it won’t go as well as we had hoped. And that he could probably hear. And so it’s about how do I say something that allows my partner to hear it through all of the static that’s in their head from all of their life experience.

So I’m often saying that to couples, you know, what you’ve got to say is really important and it’s important that your partner hears it, but the way you’re saying it is preventing your partner from really being able 

Marie: Hmm. That’s such a good example that They don’t know your intention. They’re activated by their own stuff.

I call it like you step on little landmines sometimes for the other person. So as someone who’s trained so many other therapists, supervised other therapists, watched videos of therapy sessions, conducted hundreds, 10, 000 hours. How has it changed how you do [00:23:00] relationships? Like what have you learned about relationships?

Trish: How long have you got? I started reading Gottman material back in the late nineties. And the first thing I noticed was that in Gottman’s early writings, he spoke a lot about the masters of relationship and the disasters of relationship. And he would give examples of reactions and behaviors. And without doubt, every little scenario, I’d be like, Oh no, I’m a disaster.

What am I doing? And so I was making all the same common errors that people make. And through that reading, I started to realise I need to figure out a way not to do that anymore. Like one thing I used to do all the time was particularly when I had young babies, I’d be a bit. You know, lonely and, and worn out at the end of the day and all I wanted was adult company and my husband would come home and I’d do the old, ah, honey, how was your day?

And he’d go, all right, and then he’d want to wander off and I’d be like, but wait, tell me about your day. Oh, nothing, nothing, nothing happened. And then I’d click into this thing of, oh dear, he’s, he’s [00:24:00] upset with me. And so then I would say, what’s the matter? Nothing’s the matter. Why aren’t you talking to me?

I don’t have anything to say. But something must be the matter if you’re not talking to me. There’s nothing the matter, but I must have done something wrong. What, what have I done wrong? You haven’t done anything wrong. And I would literally chase the poor man around the house until we got to the point where he would suddenly say, for goodness sake, can’t you just leave me alone?

And then I’d be able to go, I knew you were angry because I just made him angry. And so, so I got to be right. And so that was probably one of the biggest mistakes that I was making during those years. And I realised how, how uncomfortable that was for him and how that was actually pushing us away from each other.

And so I just really took on a lot of strategies that Gottman talked about in his book and even things, little things like recognising that. When I point out all the things that aren’t right in the house, he thinks it’s his fault. So what I needed to do was turn that around and talk [00:25:00] more about what he was doing that I really appreciated.

And then I could add on little things like, honey, thank you so much for bringing the washing in. I really appreciate that. I’d love it even more if it was folded up a foot away. And so you can add it on. And I learned over time, these things work brilliantly and he’s a smart man. He didn’t read any Gottman material, but he picked up on this.

And so he rolled along with me. And our kids got to watch this, and I see my kids now as adults using Gottman techniques in the way they listen to their partners, in the way they discuss during tense conversations. And they demonstrate all these Gottman things that we try to teach couples. You know, I’ll be able to sit there and go, Ooh, nice turning towards, excellent validation.

You know, so I’m, I’m judging them in my head. And they’ve learned that through observation. And so this is something powerful about doing this kind of work is that you’re changing things intergenerationally. When you, when you teach one couple how to do this better, their kids learn [00:26:00] it too, and so on down the generations with any.

Marie: I love that. I’m going to make a note because I think, you know, that changing it intergenerationally, that’s such a beautiful legacy. We often hear our intergenerational trauma or patterns of maybe not even abuse and neglect, but unhelpful ways of coping or suppressing emotion. But we rarely talk about that.

How you can heal and the impact that that can have. 

Trish: Yeah, that’s right, exactly. And you know, when children watch their parents support each other through dark times, or through sort of irrational sort of behavior or reactivity, they learn great skills of being able to. empathise with others, but also how to have compassion because that’s what they’re seeing.

I had my father who was quite severely affected by dementia living with us when my kids were young and middle teenagers. And that [00:27:00] made them grow up into such compassionate people with around anything where somebody has a bit of a difference or is struggling with something. And I think that, that kind of, Witnessing is really important in their development.

Marie: You touched on the, the fighting just briefly. I was reading a book or listening to it as an audio book, and this researcher was talking about how kids witnessing conflict can actually be really healthy for them. It’s how that conflict is. Correct. How it happens. So we’re not talking about abuse. We’re not talking about foul language.

We’re not talking about shaming someone and putting them down. But actually growing up in a household that maybe sees things as debating and can bring different perspectives and that not ruin the relationship or if someone is, does cross a line, they repair it. And that has a lot of value. How do you.

Can you explain that to families or [00:28:00] couples? 

Trish: I mean, it’s easy to help them understand that kids are watching you all the time. They’re taking it in. They’re learning everything from you. And so if you’re yelling at each other, they’re going to walk away going. That’s how you win a fight, you yell at somebody and then somebody, the person who yells louder wins the fight.

Or, as one of my couples told me, they learn that you walk over towards your refrigerator and you look at a piece of paper that’s stuck to the refrigerator door and then you solve your problems. And so that happened to be the Gottman repair checklist that was on their refrigerator and this five year old.

Had seen his parents when they got into something, they would just gravitate to the fridge and they’d be looking at the list and then an escal, an argument that was escalating would suddenly calm down and get better. And so he was wanting his ice cream dessert before dinner and his mother was saying, no, you have to wait, you have to eat dinner first.

And his father had come home and they hadn’t seen him, so he was just observing this. Anyway, after a few minutes, the little boy took [00:29:00] his mother’s hand and said, come with me. And he walked over to the fridge and he looked up at the fridge door, wasn’t even able to read at this stage. And then he looked back and said, now can I have my ice cream?

Because he’d gone to the magic spot where things get worked out. So they watch and they internalise and they learn and sometimes they, the learning isn’t quite sophisticated enough, but over the years he’ll, he’ll get to understand how mom and dad do their relationship and do conflict. And he’ll take a lot of that on.

So, you know, I always say to people, you know, you want to think about the kind of partner you want your child to choose because you’re showing them. You know, what sort of a partner is okay. And if you’re yelling at each other, that’s the kind of partner that, you know, they might end up with in their life.

How would that feel to you? So you want to really be sure that you’re showing your children modeling good behavior, but not perfect behavior, not perfect, because they got to see how you repair as well. [00:30:00] They’ve got to see how a couple can have a fight and go away from each other and then come back and still be okay.

So there’s a whole lot of things that kids should experience naturally and authentically. Hopefully. Healthily as well. So it’s healthy behavior, not toxic behavior. 

Marie: Yeah. I usually tell families that, you know, kids can’t be what they can’t see. And so if you want them to be honest, if you want them to come to you when they’ve made a mistake, like they can’t have empathy if they’ve never felt it, they can’t show accountability if no one’s ever come to them and role modeled taking accountability and responsibility.

So it really is a bit of a. Something you learn through osmosis and observation. That’s right. We could keep talking for hours. I could have you as, but we’ll have to end it there. But thank you so much, Trish. It’s been an absolute pleasure. 

Trish: Good. Thanks for having me.

Marie: Thank you for listening. To keep the [00:31:00] conversation going, head on over to Instagram or LinkedIn and follow me. If you’d like to keep updated with episodes and other interesting things happening in mental health, join my weekly This Complex Life newsletter, where I’ll share tools, tips, and insight. There’s a link in the show notes.

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