PACT Therapy
What Is PACT Couples Therapy?
Human beings crave connection with others. It is our birthright to find loving partnerships that provide comfort and security. However, we often struggle with parts of ourselves that create conflict, disconnection, or mistrust within our relationships.
When we isolate ourselves from our significant other or live with the constant fear of losing them, it is often rooted in past experiences. What we learn about love and connection is formulated in our life journey, from childhood to past romantic partners Addressing these tendencies within ourselves and our partner enables us to move into the relationship wholeheartedly. When we commit to a partner, we commit to working through the hurts, protections, and learnings from every past relationship we have experienced.
Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT) is a therapeutic model that recognizes our relational and nervous systems’ capacity to co-create change within relationships. Drawing from neuroscience, attachment theory, and the psychobiology of the human arousal system, PACT therapy provides couples with a deeply effective approach that reinforces a more harmonious, regulated, and understanding relationship. Regardless of the issues couples confront in therapy, PACT ensures a strong emotional connection has been established that will lay the groundwork for resolving conflict, deepening connection, and reinforcing commitment.
Created by Stan Tatkin, a psychotherapist, clinician, researcher, and professor, PACT therapy has become a sought-after form of couples counseling. Since its inception, psychobiological therapy has gained a reputation for effectively and quickly creating more relationship satisfaction in couples.
How PACT Therapy Works
The goal of PACT is to bring your relationship into a realm of greater safety and security. PACT therapy identifies each partner's learned beliefs and behaviors relating to love, intimacy, and connection. Changes will emerge as you gain clarity, insight, and attunement into your partner's process. You will build confidence in yourself as a partner to notice, address, and hold space for anything your spouse is going through.
In therapy sessions, we will work through the fears and feelings that keep you from being the best partner you can be. Throughout the process, you will develop a greater nervous system and cognitive capacity to meet your partner’s emotional needs.
By bringing each other into a more peaceful and regulated state, you will rewire your internal attachment system so that you become more emotionally available to each other. Learning how to recognize the reactions of your partner’s dysregulated nervous system—like when they feel threatened or become emotionally flooded—will foster empathy and space to be present to your partner’s experience, rather than reacting and taking their responses personally.
Although sessions may begin by focusing on specific issues or conflicts, healing comes from addressing the relationship process. Skills such as reading your partner effectively, somatic exercises, and experimenting with trust and commitment will help bring you closer. More than anything, creating empathy built on nervous system regulation will establish mutuality and a loving connection.
Who Can Benefit From PACT Therapy?
PACT therapy is for couples in all forms of relationship—married or dating, open or monogamous. PACT offers effective relationship therapy for couples dealing with infidelity, conflict, commitment questions, parenting, division of labor, and professional roles. And if your relationship needs a system for you to stay connected and communicating, PACT counseling provides a clear framework for providing health and longevity to relationships.
How PACT Couples Counseling Differs From Other Marriage Counseling
PACT is different from other forms of couples therapy because it addresses and resolves issues of security and attachment. As a PACT therapist, my job is to effectively and warmly support your relationship towards becoming an unshakeable refuge, a loving container, and a synergistic force for healing to get the love and connection we all deserve in this lifetime.
In other forms of couples therapy, there is often an emphasis placed on conflict and challenges with effective communication. Couples are often encouraged to talk about the problem, while therapists offer logical strategies to resolve it. Although PACT therapy also touches on conflict, it focuses on the relational dynamics in the therapy room. In sessions, we actively work to shift the underlying currents of emotional connection in real time.
You will each become a master of figuring out your partner—learning and loving how they relate to you by developing more insight into their relationship styles, hopes, and fears. Understanding and compassion will be fostered by learning more about how your partner's past shaped their approach to relationships right from the beginning. At the same time, I will help you convert this understanding into actionable items to meet and match your partner's emotional states and needs.
Developing nervous system regulation skills, both individually and as a couple, will enable you to sit with the difficult moments that inevitably come up in all relationships. Not only does PACT therapy let you navigate feelings and situations in the relationship consciously and collaboratively, but it can also be completed in a relatively short timeframe compared to traditional couples therapy.
Why I Incorporate PACT Into Couples Therapy
The work of Stan Tatkin deeply reenergized my therapeutic work with couples and also created many "aha" revelations for me. After reading some of his classic books, such as We Do and Wired for Love, I immediately felt PACT therapy was the missing piece in my work with couples. After my PACT Level 1 therapist training, I have a clear vision of what is possible for couples to achieve in their relationships.
As a PACT-trained therapist, the relationship is my primary client and my therapeutic interventions are designed to support the relationship first. I do not take sides with either party but seek to understand the motivating factors, protection, and longing that springs from each partner. I will meet with you only as a couple to create more pathways for openness, clarity, and secure functioning. And if you have an individual therapist, I will collaborate with them to best support your process.
Find Out How PACT Therapy Can Help You
Utilizing PACT therapy within sessions weaves deeper trust, intimacy, and confidence into romantic partnerships. Please contact me to schedule a free 20-minute consultation and discover if we are a good therapeutic fit.
Schedule a Free Consultation
Letting someone into the inner world of your relationship relies on working with a therapist you feel comfortable and relaxed with. Reach out to schedule your free 20 minute consultation.
