Show Notes
We tend to think about therapy as something that is helpful for individuals, but what about when you want to address problems which affect you and a partner or spouse? In this episode, Dr Lucy Maddox speaks to Dan Kolubinski about cognitive behavioural couples therapy, and hears from Liz and Richard about what the experience was like for them. Show Notes and Transcript Podcast episode produced by Dr Lucy Maddox for BABCP Dan recommended the book Fighting For Your Marriage by Markman, Stanley & Blumberg https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fighting-Your-Marriage-Best-seller-Preventing-dp-0470485914/dp/0470485914/ref=dp_ob_title_bk Some journal articles on couples therapy are available free online here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-cognitive-behaviour-therapist/information/let-s-talk-about-cbt-podcast The podcast survey is here and takes 5 minutes: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/podcastLTACBT The BABCP website is at www.babcp.com And the CBT Register of accredited CBT therapists is at https://www.cbtregisteruk.com Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
Transcript Lucy: Hello, and welcome to Let's Talk About CBT. It's great to have you listening.
When we think about therapy, we often think of one-to-one conversations between one person and their therapist. But what about when the problems that we're going for help with are related to how we're getting on with a partner or a spouse? Cognitive behavioural couples therapy helps with these sorts of difficulties. To understand more about it I spoke to a married couple, Richard and Liz, and Dan Kolubinski, their therapist.
Richard and Liz did this therapy privately, but couples therapy is also available on the NHS to help with some specific difficulties. We hear more about that from Dan later on. For now though let's hear what Richard and Liz thought of their couples therapy in this interview which I recorded with them remotely.
Richard: My name's Richard. I'm 37 years old and I've been married to Liz for just over seven years now. I'm a postie at the moment, and kind of lived in Essex most of my life.
Liz: It's like a dating programme.
Richard: It is, isn't it? Yeah, a little bit. (laughs)
Liz: So I'm Liz and I make cakes for a living, and write about mental health. So that's us.
Lucy: That's great. So thanks so much for agreeing to speak with me about your experience of couples therapy, and specifically cognitive behavioural couples therapy. Would you mind telling me how you came across it and what made you think you might want to try it?
Liz: Yeah. So I think it's something that we've spoken about in the past. And we've both had therapy separately, and I think we've both had various different types of therapy. So Richard has had CBT before, I think we've both done psycho-dynamic counselling.
So when we decided we were going to do it, we realised that for us it was more beneficial to almost do a crash course, as it were, together. So to do a whole weekend, rather than a little bit once a week. And that was how we discovered Dan, and were able to book in with him.
Richard: Yeah, I think we both understand the value or had both experienced and understood the value of therapy individually. So it was kind of an easy step for us then to decide there could be a lot of value in doing this together.
Lucy: That makes total sense. So you already had a bit of an understanding of what it might be like, or what it's like on an individual level?
Liz: Yeah, definitely. And actually very early on in our marriage we had some couples counselling, which I don't think was actually as successful, and it was after that that we had separate counselling. And I think it was after we were both able to get ourselves into better positions, as it were, that that's when we were able to come back together and experience some therapy together.
Lucy: That's really interesting. Do you think that helped you access the conversations together in a different way?
Ri
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