Gottman Method and CBCT in Couples Therapy Explained

Introduction: Mary and Fred's Contrasting Family Backgrounds

Mary and Fred come from vastly different backgrounds. Mary belongs to a typical modern nuclear family — father, mother, and children — while Fred is Italian and comes from a household in which different generations live together and interact regularly. Mary's family maintains strict and structured familial decorum, discipline, and etiquette: parents never raise their voices in front of their children, and family members ask permission before requesting another's time. Fred's family, by contrast, does not adhere to such rules; its members visit one another freely, without prior announcement and without any express reason for the frequent contact.

In colloquial terms, Mary's family gives each member "space" and treats individual "privacy" as sacred, whereas Fred's family holds no such provisions. In Fred's family, relationship and bonding are paramount virtues — theirs is an expressive family. Although Mary does have an extended family, they live far away and meet only rarely, typically during times of crisis.

The Gottman Method: Background and Theory

In 1975, researchers Levenson and Gottman began studying how relationships progressed longitudinally. Using a multifaceted strategy, the two researchers observed individuals in relationships within a laboratory setting. Some couples shared how their days went; others were in conflict, while still others were simply enjoying each other's company. The laboratory was designed as an apartment that allowed 24-hour recording of activities. Couples were drawn from different racial and ethnic backgrounds across the United States, including unmarried and married heterosexual and homosexual couples. Some were studied from the time they first married through to their eighties. However, Gottman was not able to develop a theoretically grounded method for preventing relationship breakdown until he began collaborating with his wife, Julie Schwartz, a psychologist. Together, they developed a strategy to help couples stay together despite significant conflict (Navarra & Gottman, 2011).

There are seven emotional command systems of affect for humans. Although these seven systems can operate independently, they frequently work in conjunction with one another. These emotional systems, working together with environmental factors, help form a person's feelings, values, and attitudes — in other words, they help define an individual's meta-emotion. When a person enters a relationship, the pairing is in some sense a combination of two meta-emotional systems. Couples with the best relationships are often those who share similar meta-emotions or who have found ways to coexist harmoniously despite differences. Couples with mismatched meta-emotions often struggle, and the majority of couples who seek therapy tend to have significant meta-emotion differences (Gottman & Gottman, 2008).

Gottman and Levenson also found that relationships have marked equilibrium points situated between negativity and positivity, and that this balance is the primary determinant of a relationship's future. Relationships that are not functioning well tend to be those in which the balance tips toward the negative, impairing the couple's ability to reconcile or resolve conflict. One of the most frequently observed dysfunctional patterns begins with criticism, progresses to defensiveness, then contempt, and finally stonewalling — a sequence that reliably escalates negativity (Navarra & Gottman, 2011).

The Gottman Method recommends the following interventions:

1. Establish positive momentum by showing admiration and fondness through small, day-to-day activities.

2. Turn toward one's partner rather than away by quickly recognizing the partner's need for emotional connection.

3. Allow an override of positive sentiment — that is, partners should not take the neutral or negative actions of their partner personally.

4. Take a multifaceted approach to conflict resolution: raise problems gently, accept responsibility where appropriate, self-soothe physiologically, and compromise when necessary. Couples should also examine recurring, unresolved conflicts for underlying issues.

5. Build a shared meaning system by developing different forms of connection, supporting each other, establishing shared objectives and values, and creating shared interpretations of significant symbols (Gottman & Gottman, 2008).

In this model, the therapist functions as a coach. He or she provides the couple with tools they can use to resolve their difficulties on their own.

Applying the Gottman Method to Mary and Fred

The Gottman Method can be applied to Mary and Fred's situation to illuminate the concept of meta-emotions. The two spouses clearly hold vastly different and opposing meta-emotions as a result of their different family backgrounds and upbringings. According to Gottman's theory, the difficulties in their marriage stem directly from this meta-emotional mismatch.

In addition, the pattern of criticism, defensiveness, and ultimately obstinacy is evident when the couple approaches a therapist or counselor. Redress, according to Gottman, requires positive input from each partner to shift the negative balance back toward neutral through mutual effort. Each must recognize the other's needs and connect emotionally. In practice, this means Fred recognizes Mary's need for space and privacy and actively works to provide it, while Mary adjusts to Fred's family culture and respects his familial bonds. Gottman's final therapeutic suggestion — building a shared meaning system — can also be enormously helpful if the couple can identify common interests and goals that belong exclusively to the two of them.

Cognitive-Behavioral Couple Therapy (CBCT): Theory and Interventions

Behavioral Couple Therapy (BCT) emerged in the late 1960s as an offshoot of behavioral therapies that relied on learning principles such as operant conditioning. BCT is based on the idea that relationships consist of two types of interactional sequences — circular and reciprocal — and that the behavior of each partner affects the other's sequences. CBCT evolved from BCT by incorporating a focus on cognitive influences: in CBCT, not only behavioral but also emotional and cognitive factors are addressed in therapy (Baucom, Epstein, LaTaillade, & Kirby, 2008).

CBCT is grounded in the notion that negative behavioral and emotional responses to a partner's actions are shaped by errors in information processing — that is, by cognitive assessments of the partner's actions that are distorted. A relationship may also be judged against non-pragmatic standards of what relationships "should" look like. Couples frequently fail to question the validity of their own cognitions and simply trust the rationality of their automatic thoughts in response to their partner's actions (Baucom, Epstein, LaTaillade, & Kirby, 2008). Other core assumptions of CBCT include: that family behavior, emotions, automatic thoughts, and relationships all influence one another; that cognitive assumptions produce action and emotion; and that action and emotion, in turn, affect cognition (Nelson, 2015).

CBCT interventions include:

1. Questioning unrealistic or distorted assumptions, since partners in relationships frequently evaluate each other in unrealistic ways.

2. Assigning behavioral tasks.

3. Skills training.

4. Building communication skills.

The primary role of a CBCT therapist is to help partners become more active assessors and observers of their own cognitive thoughts and their long-held standards and assumptions — their knowledge structures — regarding their partners and their relationship. The therapist assumes different roles throughout the course of therapy. During the initial stages of evaluation and treatment, the role is didactic, requiring the therapist to be both friendly and direct with the couple in setting targets and in applying cognitive strategies to achieve them (Baucom, Epstein, LaTaillade, & Kirby, 2008).