The Role of the Body in Couple Therapy

In this course, Dr. Pat Ogden, Ph.D., founder of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, explains how we develop physical patterns without conscious intent as we adapt automatically to traumatic events and relational strife. This somatic narrative constitutes meaning-making influenced by past and present stimuli and experience and is far stronger a communication than a verbal utterance when both are used simultaneously. When couples in therapy can address the implicit communication of such ultra-rapid bodily-based affective responses, making them conscious, they are able to incorporate proximity-seeking behaviours into the relationship and thereby realise positive relational outcomes.