Positive Couple Therapy

<p><em> <p>Positive Couple Therapy: Using We-Stories to Enhance Resilience </p></em>is a significant step forward in the couple literature. Utilizing a strengths-based approach it teaches therapists and couples a unique method for uncovering positive potential within a relationship. The authors demonstrate how “We stories”–created recovered and made anew–provide essential elements of connection. With vivid imagery these stories capture the couple’s sense of “We-ness” highlighting memorable moments of compassion acceptance and respect. A shared commitment to the “We” simultaneously builds the relationship and enables each individual in the partnership to feel a greater degree of both accountability and autonomy. Couples that can find their stories share them with each other and then carry them forward to family friends and a larger community are likely to preserve a sense of mutuality that will thrive over a lifetime of partnership.<br><em> <p>Positive Couple Therapy </p></em>provides simple and practical instruction for reclaiming positive stories that can catalyze hope in relationships that have become stressed and strained. The authors weave together cutting edge thinking and research in attachment theory narrative therapy neuroscience and adult development as well as their own research and clinical experience to present vivid case histories step-by-step strategies exercises questionnaires and interview techniques. They cover a range of contemporary couple experiences: couples in conflict LGBT partnerships deployed and discharged military couples and couples at various points across the life span. The authors’ unique <strong>Me (to US) Scale</strong> a 10-item tool that assesses the degree of mutuality a couple possesses at the start of treatment gives therapists of any theoretical orientation the ability to put this intervention to immediate use. </p>