Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 755: Transforming Couples Therapy with David Mars, PhD

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Episode 755: Transforming Couples Therapy with David Mars, PhD · The Trauma Therapist

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Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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My mission is to help trauma therapists be their incredible cells, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
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who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
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authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
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about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
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That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. So five four,
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three, two and one, our folks, welcome back to the podcast.
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I am very excited to have as my guess today, Doctor David Mars.
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David, welcome, Thank you, You're welcome. So, as young
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therapist, doctor Mars went into couples therapy looking for help. Instead, he
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found that the models offered seemed to make matters worse by unnecessarily drawing out and
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evoking the vicious cycle of distress. You found that instead of offering help and
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support, most couple therapy sessions focused on what is wrong in a relationship instead
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of what is right. This set into motion four decades of dedicating himself to
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developing a couple's treatment model that works in a kind effective, pleasurable, and
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time efficient way. And we're gonna spend time talking about that today. David,
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welcome, Thank you, so share before we get going here, sharehere
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their listeners. Where you're from originally and where you are currently. I grew
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up in Massachusetts and western mass and with a family of four brothers and a
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mother and a father, and a good deal of interesting that my parents dug
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the basement for their house and built their own house, which it lived in
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for seventy five years. Remember, wow, oh my gosh, a good
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pioneer stock there, all right. So let me let me want a jump
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out. How the heck did all this start for you? Uh huh?
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Well, when I was a little kid, I was very weird that my
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house is very chaotic. And at about five six years old, I said
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to my my bigger brother, Donald, would you bring me out to the
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forest. I want to go out there and just let me just take me
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out because I couldn't go alone. I was too young, but he was
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my protector. Take me out there. And then I said, just leave
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me be there for like an hour. I'm just going to be here,
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and he did that. And I just found a spot there that was my
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special spot, and I just declared to myself that house over there is not
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my house. I couldn't see if I knew it was. This is my
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home. My home is in the forest. It's in the woods. This
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way that we're living in this house is not really working very well, and
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there's got to be a better way. My place is here with this sense
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of mutual connection to God, and it's really about that. That's really what
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my start was, a guy of feeling this function of my home and wanting
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an alternative and being alternative with regards to nature. How old were you again?
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Five six years old? Wow, that's that's pretty incredible. So so
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obviously from a very young age it sounds like there was a lot going on
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in your home, but you also had the wherewithal to to to protect yourself.
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Just really interesting and cool. So how did things evolve? What?
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What? What? What? Yeah? How how did things evolve from there?
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Well? For me, my great slace was being in school and learning
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about Throw and learning about Emerson and learning about how powerful it can be to
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write creatively and be loved and known by my English teachers, especially the humanities
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such a refuge for me, and that quality is built into my getting a
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conscious subjector status during the Vietnam War and courageously writing that based on the cycles
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of nature as my religion, which was pretty edgy. So I could have
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just said I'm a Protestant, but that didn't feel like it was my main
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orientation. And so that sense of developing that truth with myself, of committing
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myself to all my true spiritual connection was really formed a character in me that
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I think really helped me through undergraduate school to really be true to myself.
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At what point and how did you decide to pursue therapy and more specifically couples.
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Yeah, by age eighteen, I was in therapy, individual therapy and
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group therapy and fun to be so important to my development and began working right
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away with I didn't even finished my BA degree. I was already working as
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a social worker and got licensed that way in Michigan. A grandfathered in.
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But the commitment to families and to love and to the grace of how people
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can get through unbearable situations, to following the felt experience of love right away.
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I was feeling that when I was twenty twenty one, years old working
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as a social worker. So from right off the bat, David, there's
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something very kind of amazing and inspiring about you. I mean, you seem
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to be from I have been from a very early age really in touch with
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not just your own heart and soul and authenticity, but that of those around
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you and how important that is and how it how it can benefit. Yeah,
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this is very true. Well, the wonder is that when I first
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started my job, my title was behavior technician, and the concept was with
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behavior mod I would just turn the screws and adjust these people and they would
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get better. They behaved better. And there was an at time of Johnson's
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administration and he released through an act of presidential power, all the people who
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were in developmentally disabled and actually mentally ill institutions there they were mentally ill institutions,
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and the people got returned to their parents that had been brought to the
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institution for care who had quite severe disabilities in many cases, and the parents
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didn't know their children, who were now adults twenty one years old now had
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left them when they were babies in many cases, and my job as a
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social workers to help these parents and their children to get along were now adults
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and quite powerful physically and do all kinds of impulsive things because they had never
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been in the world before. These development disabled people, blind, deaf,
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cognitively disabled people quite severely often who were then in the community riding buses and
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going to work at a shouldered brookshop. And my job is to help them
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to not hurt each other and not hurt anybody else as a primary rule.
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But I found the behavior in mob but not the way to do it.
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These are people who were really in Many kids couldn't speak. So I formed
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groups. I had groups constantly running to do called body awareness groups to really
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get that awareness of love, kindness, safety care, where the blind person
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would help the deaf person and to strouble pose we help by people on either
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side of her because she'd fall down, she'd laugh as she lose control.
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The powerful experience guy of seeing the capacity of love, how people transform with
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love, how they feel that they can trust themselves in a world that's foreign
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to them, even because they're on the outside now in the world, not
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an institution, and to feel that their love was valuable, their friendship was
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valuable, and they began to really heal and connect and form social bonds that
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were gives me chills, and here it is was fifty years later. It
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gives me chills to know how the felt experience of love helped them to transform
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themselves. When you say the felt experience of love, what do you say?
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What does that mean? Exactly? It means when we notice the body
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experience of love and the safety of love, the warm hardness of love,
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the laughter of love, the joy of love, that this is a healing
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element within us, this way vertically by a healing element between us. Also,
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we want to help other people in the spirit of love. We want
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to do the caring thing in the spirit of love, not because it should
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be happening, but and that carries into the couple work of transformative couples therapy
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is body based. It's about not just emotions, but sensations, energy,
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movement, auditory, visual, and imaginal and emotional. Being able to be
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a whole person that, through the whole body awareness, become a knowing person,
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a discerning person, a clear that just minded but clear bodied person.
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I can really be loving and safe in relationship. All right, I want
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to I want to transition to your your couple's work. But before we do,
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I want to just ask you specifically about the you know, you started
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this group, which sounds really fascinating to me. What at that time,
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what made you feel that you could do this with this with these people.
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Yeah, it's not just any group. It was with pretty uh yeah,
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challenge group of people, challenge and challenging if you were using the wrong model,
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because they didn't suffer fools. And there is something about the awareness that
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I had that these are people I had to respect. I did respect the
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respect that I had. And also Janet Adler, she was in a major
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inspiration because she had worked with artistic people in a one to one and even
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a group way at times to help them to feel known and seen and felt
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and heard and reflected. And also having been in theater and learning Bills Boland's
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improvisation for the theater learning how to do circle experience that people could feel safe
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enough to be spontaneous and create new neural networks, create new ways of being
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improvisationally. I love that stay more specifically about creating that space. What what
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did you do? I had a partner named Robin Patterson who would helped me
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to to co facility of these groups, and we had ten groups. They
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are in incredible weekly groups that would meet and we'd be there with them,
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and ways that these people would learn very deeply how to be trusting. They
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could come and be spontaneous and be appropriate at the same time. So what
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are the parts of this. We'd have a circle where let's say we're following
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the leader and a leader forgets he's a leader and begins flapping his hands,
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which is something that was not supposed to do when no hand flapping, But
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when everyone's flapping their hands with you, you say, oh my gosh,
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I'm flapping my hands and awareness that I'm a hand flapping and that makes me
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laugh because the delight of their self awareness dawning on them, which is combined
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with video video tape every session and of every session, they get to see
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themselves this is me, this is me, and that seeing oneself with others
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thanks me, my eyest tyrup is so touching because there's love in the room.
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Is caring, but it's safe love, it's kind love. Is we're
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together as a group, helping each other. So you started talking about the
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couple's work. Let's dive into that. How did that start for you?
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Well, that example, I gave up being in couples therapy was certainly a
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motivation, and I thought, if this is the best there is, I've
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got to create another model. And I did. And there's something about the
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transformative couples therapy experience that is so inspiring. I just met this morning with
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a group of eight people or part of the TCT research project to validate how
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does this work work, what makes it work and can we get long term
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results from the couples we see in a sixteen session model. So that's inspiring
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to me and their joy and being there with me that none of us are
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paid to do this. It's a voluntary thing, and the research project is
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a fruit of a labor of the last forty years of my career. And
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the quality of seeing it now as an improved research model to go forward by
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James Madison University and each the Mennonette University is thrilling because it inspires me and
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feeds me to feel this work can go into the world as a research validated
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method. Perhaps, so when when you said you said you had your own
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experience a couple of therapy and it was like it was not working. What
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wasn't working specifically about that? Well, particularly the view of seeing the negative
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in the relationship and needing every session having to look at the negative. Let's
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focus that, we're not going to look at the positive yet look at the
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negative. I'm going please, we had a great week, we're quote,
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we're intimate. No, no, no, I'm yet for that. No,
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I'm not going there and going It gives me chill. As it was
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so many years ago, it's still a feeling of I'm deprived of being able
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to be in a positive place. It isn't that time yet, Excuse me
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this. There must be time made for the positive when the positive love is
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there, Let's really be with that. And the basis of TCT is really
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so let's let's talk about that. So transformative a couple of therapy? What
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is it and how is it different? What do you do when I greet
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my person for the first time, it's in a twenty minute interview before I
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ever commit to seeing them, and I want to see Can this couple tell
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each other what they want with each other? Can they say I want to
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be kinder with you, I want to be receiving your love, I want
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more of a second life with you, or real they get into being critical
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and blaming the other one for their suffering. Can they move pretty quickly from
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a blame and shame model themselves? And the one that says, I want
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to talk to you directly eye to eye, my partner, because they was
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asking me to do through this, I'll speak you directly from right from the
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beginning. Let you know where I am with you, how I want to
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be with you. I'm on a journey with you. I want to be
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in this way with you. That's the basis of the model. So that
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first session, the first thing I asked them is you said to me last
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time what you wanted to have with each other in our screening interview? What
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have you given each other what you said you wanted to give each other since
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I saw you last And that's the model every time we meet. How are
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you following through and what you said you wanted with each other? Are you
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giving and receiving? So it's a kind of a my word is my deed
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model? Have I said I'm going to do it? My therapists will check
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with me. Am I doing this? Am I listening before I speak?
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Am I cutting you off before you finish your sentence? So I look at
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you with respect? Am I making sensitive to your response to me, and
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if I am that, I'm in the model where this therapy sets the trajectory.
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It's quite a steep trajectory of growth. The couple follows that model in
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the weekend between they continue growing. So are you Can you give us an
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example of like a case study of some couple you worked with. Obviously we
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don't need to know their names or specifics, but break it down for us
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what might this look like? It looks like where? Because he's a confidential
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cases of course, I can give the kind of a composite but I wouldn't
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want to quote a person's session. It's about how are my differences complimentary to
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yours as a couple member? How can I not shame myself. Let's say
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we're having ADD. How can I be with you with dignity and say I
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have ADD, but I'm also a really warm and kind person. People love
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and trust and the partner but the other partner can grow together because she might
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have a very organized style, I mean, very clear on how to do
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things one ABC to ABC three ABC that he can benefit from if you can
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sit aside his shame of being bad I'm having ADD or being deficient, that
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she can really feel him as a worthy partner and let be let in by
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him to be helpful. We cross pollinate in marriage. In my thirty eighth
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year. Last night, my wife and you know, I celebrate our thirty
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eighth year of being married to each other, and we were reviewing over dinner
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money, stages of life you've gone through together, and most marriages within one
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marriage. So for me, the deep value of this transformer of couples therapy
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is there's a couple of members to find the grass is not greener elsewhere in
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another relationship, it's within the marriage, and that the growth information can happen.
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All right, let me this is you got the lights going on here.
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I want to pause a moment to thank our sponsors. We're speaking with
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doctor David Mars. Will be back in a few seconds. All right,
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David, So this sounds easy, it's it's it sounds simple, of course,
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we know it's not. Why is this so challenging for people? Why?
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Why? I mean you're laying it out perfectly, so articulately, and
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yet you know what is the challenge here? I love the question. I
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believe a challenge is unresolved early deprivation and trauma in people's lives, where they
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begin to replicate the kind of shame they were exposed to, the kind of
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not being seen, being ignored, or being misattuned to chronically, And this
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is true most people. Most people come from an insecure attached context, and
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in that they import those insecure patterns into their marriage, and then the marriage
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starts to sprout. These weeds often have thorns on them. They're from early,
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early patterns that are learned in life defensively and in a survival basis.
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That's what I love is seeing people be able to plug out the weeds and
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not repeat those patterns because they're a lot of frictional like sandpaper. They create
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in the relationship, but they grooten grown new ways and new patterns because we
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know now that the neural networks are always available to be sprouted new in us
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are always myolinating new patterns in our brains, and experience creates change in the
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brain. So if I'm creating change in my brain with my partner, my
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partner recreating change with me, then in the dietic relationship we are a transformational
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couple will continue to ascend in our capacity to be mindful, choiceful, and
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kind. When you're working with a couple and there's an interaction that, let's
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say, isn't coming from a healthy spot, and that little light goes on
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in your head saying, Okay, maybe this is coming from a place of
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injecure, attachment or trauma. How do you do that in the moment,
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how would you address that? I'll give you an example that is a peak
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moment when a couple member is looking in a rage toward their partnmber some relatively
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minor offense, like a look that could kill. And this happens in relationship
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is a uncertain moment of charge that's really super high. And I say,
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well, if your partner right now is to move his head over whose face
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is behind his face that you're so angry with right now, and that method
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is very powerful. The person sees, oh, my god, that's my
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father, it's my mother, it's my grandmother, who is my brother,
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and that's why I'm really mad at Then we begin to have the conversation where
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the partner literally gets out of the way and the partner who is getting into
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that rage place puna to play shaming place, can begin speaking to the one
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that hurt them originally and address that person and what's called a portrayal, a
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healing portrayal, and that becomes a way that the couple member gets to know
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when I'm mad at you to that degree, it's not really all about you.
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What's coming through me is unfinished business from the past, unfinished trauma.
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I want to keep working on myself about this. Now you know the inside
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of it, my partner, I know the inside of it. When next
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time I look at you like that, just know it isn't just you.
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As a real consciousness shift in the third eye over the funnel cortex, I
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recognize that the enemy is not you, but I do have suffering in my
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body that I'm still living with. That takes obviously a lot of responsibility for
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both parties to be in that moment and to accept that, are you in
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a case like that? Would might you then work with one of those couples
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individually. I do sometimes see a couple of members separately with their partners urging
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for their support, but I tried to do it within the couple's dynamic,
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because the couple members presents as is her. A couple member partner is going
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through some very deep process their compassion is sprouted in their heart. Their love
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is the love is the nuts. With the adult with a younger part they
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get to meet that four year old, that's six year old that baby part
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in the partner, or a teenage partner, a twenty year old part To
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get that relationship to a part within the adult partner is so deepening because they
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get the sense I care about you, but I also care about your younger
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parts. Wow. Now it might there be the situation where obviously one member
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of the couple kind of needs more attention, needs more work, would it
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seem It might seem to me immediately like, well, maybe this person does
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need their own therapist. That's a good point. There are some therapies where
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I work as a couple therapists and I coordinate closely with each partner's individual therapist,
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and where I might meet with them even for fifteen minutes to really get
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a really under deeper understanding. Let's say that they spent years with a couple
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member doing deep work. I want to know what that was. I'm not
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repeating that, but I'm actually building on it with a couple. So I
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coordinate with both couple members individual therapists with their signed release and with their support,
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and we continue coordinating the therapy as the therapy goes on. So we
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are speaking to each other by phone messages that are secure or by a little
23:14
communications. We meet on Zoom periodically to get updated for a breakthrough or a
23:18
breakdown. So we're always working as a team, the three of us with
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the two couple members. For many people, it's the first functional family they've
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ever had. They have three therapists working on the behalf. We're talking to
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each other productively, so transformative couple therapy. So you're teaching this to other
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therapists in what capacity? How? How are you teaching this? Is this
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online? Is this in person? Both? What it used to be in
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person? I used to fly to China to all over the world, and
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now I'm just working on Zoom. It was amazing because I get to be
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working without the travel time, without the jet leg and to give courses in
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China, in Netherlands, in India or anywhere in the world, Australia and
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across the US and Canada of course, but I have nine courses that I
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teach ongoing. They're ongoing courses that as therapists get to get trained in and
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have a very intimate relationship with each other that feels safe. We emulate the
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safety of the couple's therapy in the core training groups, in the process training
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groups, and the webinars that I teach the sense of a secure base or
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capital cultivating with non projecting language, with owned experience. People really get to
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see this is other therapy work. We're doing it right now in the group,
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not as therapy, but as a coordinated relationship that is has purpose to
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help grow the therapist. Or when we were talking about how the model actually
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works, you said, you know, we're from the go focusing on the
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positive, on that kind of upward trajectory. Say more about that. You
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know there are obviously there are many models out there. How does this differentiate
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from those other models of therapy, couples therapy. Yeah, I could say
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that wonderful writers like Barbarat Frederickson, amazing therapists like her phonicky kinds of people
25:23
who are at this point pretty if they're still living there, pretty long,
25:30
living their career. For me at seventy two, my joy as I'm still
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able to work and they have joy in my works, bringing my step about
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it and the way that I see it moving. Is that I don't know
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of another couples therapy model that is like TCT. It's quite unique in the
25:47
field, and I think there we have company of very excellent therapies, but
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it's a question of what kind of therapies therapists want to do. Then,
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statically based therapy is body based, and that's hyper focused on emotion, not
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emotion. Not emotion focused, is body focused. But the way of freedom
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for the therapist is to really feel that their own loving intent, they're inner
26:11
knowing of their bodies guides them to take the next step. They're not looking
26:17
at APIs the therapist. The therapists are knowing, not from a cheat sheet
26:21
of saying, well, now do this, now do that, but really
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basing their own sentient awareness what is needed for this couple to grow. Give
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us an example of that sounds amazing. An example is I'm working with a
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couple that it had a really difficult affair to affair is going at once one
26:37
of the couple members and I was very blunt with him, very direct,
26:41
very caring, very kind, in your best thinners. I want to tell
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you, I think your relationship right now it's teetering. I think you need
26:48
to make a decision. What do you want with your partner? Is truthfulness
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really in your best interest? Right now? It is the other person there,
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the partner there, right there, and that full more full truthfulness.
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When I met with him next time, just yesterday, there's a huge breakthrough
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in her trust, her love, his love, his trust in himself and
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in her. That sprout it in the week between because he watched his video
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twice, took notes about it, saw what he was associating and didn't know
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about. This was way back to those body awareness groups of using video.
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More than forty years I've been doing that. So that quality of his self
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awareness was dawning on him that he was acting in a ways that he found
27:30
reprehensible even in the session. So he made some repairs with her, some
27:34
corrections of his behavior between sessions. So then we met they were so bonded
27:40
and so in love again. The session before it was a train wreck of
27:44
her being so distraught at the end of a rope. So it's a wonderful
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feeling. So how did you as the therapist You were talking about using your
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own body sense to determine next moves. Where does that come into play?
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How does that come into play is largely heart based for me, and feeling
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that sense of inspiration also my belly, my throat, or my hair standing
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up, having chills in my body, energetic phenomena, having a sense of
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a surge of gratitude. This is a big thing. I mean to express
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my gratitude. A couple member who just suddenly broke through the whole no liver
28:21
another level of truth telling self awareness, productive truth telling, not just blurting
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something up, being really skillful and bringing the exact awareness to himself. He
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needs to have himself to grow. When his partner responds that with love,
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I just helped that to be cemented into the relationship, say, well,
28:41
look at that love and her eyes as you begin to tell the truth more
28:44
deeply, which for me, if I'm a couple member, I make this
28:48
awareness. Wow, either telling the truth is going to get me in trouble.
28:51
It's actually helped me to feel loved and loving and trustworthy and dignified.
28:56
That's amazing. Now I'm imagining and guessing that that type of uh you know,
29:07
sense in or within our own selves, within our own body, within
29:11
our own feelings and heart, as you say, it has to be cultivated.
29:17
Right, there's a huge amount of trust that we self trust. Talk
29:22
to me about your evolution in that self trust. How did you cultivate that?
29:30
What I can say is that for me, in the seventeen years I
29:33
led body awareness groups as authentic movement groups as an adult. Seventeen years of
29:38
that, I really learned to trust myself more deeply because I'd be witnessing people
29:44
in a group for an hour or more moving and later we group come in
29:48
the group and use that model of process language speak to each other in a
29:52
safe witnessing way, to not give feedback to each other or judge each other,
29:57
but to really give elections of witnessing. And that's created very deep trust
30:02
in me of my body awareness, my sense of how I can be with
30:06
people in the nonverbal realm, because an authentic movement, they're not speaking,
30:11
they're moving with eyes closed for an hour or something sometimes, And I was
30:15
a therapist who's holding the space is to sit with them and be with them.
30:19
And in seventeen years we had a complete experience of people being kind,
30:26
loving and safe with each other. We had more men of those groups than
30:29
women. It's a it's a miracle. What's the likelihood someone touched someone inappropriately
30:36
but didn't happen. People were really guided by the inner awareness, whereas my
30:40
hand where is this person's body can be chills? Is that respect that's deeply
30:44
brought in about gender boundaries, about sensitive boundaries of who is able to receive
30:51
something right now and who is not ready for that? We all developed that
30:53
in the group. In the groups who there were two of them on going
30:56
always and the power of it is so inspiring to me still, now,
31:03
what is it? So? We we have obviously the therapists of all kinds
31:08
listening to this, who I'm sure are being just becoming very inspired by you.
31:15
I mean, you're a very inspiring person. You've been doing this for
31:18
a while, and you have a sense of love quite frankly that exudes and
31:25
genuine iss certainly, what does it take to do to be an effective quote
31:33
unquote couples therapist? Yeah, I would say in this particular TCT model that
31:41
what it takes is the humbleness to really be able to know. I need
31:47
to grow to do the work effectively. I need to find what channels of
31:51
experience do I not occupy? How am I running blind or on energy?
31:55
How do I not experience a sensation? Clearly? How do I not be
31:57
aware of the tone of my voice the auditory channel. If I willing to
32:01
grow myself every session and meditative consciousness, then I'm helping my couple members to
32:07
grow with me. I grow together. That's the key. Is that humbleness,
32:10
and that not just a desire, but a deep meaning. I want
32:15
to grow as a person, as a therapist, as a partner. I
32:17
know for me, my relationship with my wife is built on the growth I've
32:22
been doing in my clinical work. They're totally connected. So talk to us
32:30
about your program Transformative a couple's therapy. How can people learn about it?
32:37
When can people join, etc. Well, interesting timing because there's a new
32:45
sign up for twenty twenty four. All my courses are filled now or twenty
32:47
three, but a whole new set of courses of core training, multi channel
32:52
webinar, process group supervision groups will be forming twenty four. Website cfttsite dot
33:01
com is the way to get in touch with me or my email address David
33:07
Mars PhD at gmail dot com. As Mars like the planet, and the
33:14
quality of response would be that I meet with people before they come into these
33:17
groups. I want to know them and to talk with them and have a
33:23
sense of what they're really wanting. Is part of that sense of the early
33:28
connection. Its like with my couples, same thing before I take them into
33:30
my practice, we meet for twenty minutes. Now, do these enrollees have
33:35
to be licensed clinicians, psychologist therapists? What well licensed clinicians is important?
33:43
I think there's sometimes there's people that come in that are a little bit pre
33:45
licensed there, maybe they're hours have done, then the license is not finished.
33:51
They're also welcome counselors, psychiatrists, couples therapists, individual therapists. That
33:57
the power of the work is in learning together. We're so often a team
34:01
of learning together. Let's say a group of six and court training where each
34:06
person is learning something from the others because we have different backgrounds, different strengths
34:09
to drawing, and that's a very powerful thing to have in a group.
34:14
Awesome. We'll have all that linked up here at the show notes page at
34:16
the Traumatis podcast dot com. David beyond inspiring. Oh my god, I'd
34:23
love to have you back at a later date. I'm excited to get this
34:27
out there, but thank you so much for being here. It's amazing a
34:30
pleasure to be with you guy. All Right, we'll be in touch. Wonderful ye