Hitting the Reset Button in Conflict: Relationship Repair Attempts
Do you ever feel like you and your partner get in fights that spin out of control and leave you with hurt feelings? Words have a deeper meaning, and when they get thrown around in a high-conflict situation as though they don't matter, it can cause deep emotional pain that has a lasting impact on a couple's relationship. Helping guide couples through Dr. John Gottman's Repair Attempts is one of my favorite things to help relationships in conflict learn to regulate emotions and recover from a fight.
What Are Repair Attempts?
Couples often come into therapy for help with their relationship with a shared goal to reduce their high-conflict relationship and essentially to "stop fighting" in general. While we can't stop conflict entirely, couples can learn to fight better and more effectively. One of the secrets to a happy marriage or couple relationship is to not avoid conflict but learn to stay with each other and seek a resolution to a fight. One of these skills from The Gottman Institute is to use "Repair Attempts." Dr. Gottman describes repair attempts as "an action or statement that prevents negativity from escalating out of control." Learning about repair attempts and then beginning to practice these when it comes to conflictual communication can help push the reset button and slow things down. You may not have heard of repair attempts and may already use them in your relationships.
How do we use Repair Attempts?
With the guided help of a therapist, you can begin to understand these repair attempt statements and find your own language that helps slow things down when it comes to conflict. The key is to work together and recognize repair attempts are being used. For example, if you are in a current argument or it has already ended, you can use a repair attempt statement to hit the reset button and help reset the relationship following any conflict. As a conversation escalates into intensity or breaks into an argument, you can use repair statement phrases that will work for your relationship. Think creatively, know your partner and yourself, and use helpful statements.
Using repair attempts takes practice in any relationship and patience with yourself and your partner to learn new ways of communicating. However, learning more about repair statements ahead of time can help you when it comes time to be in the heat of the moment. Giving yourself and your partner some grace during and after a fight can go a long way as you notice and learn utilizing these statements. Remember, as you practice using repairs, slow things down, take deep breaths, and take note that you are trying something new with your partner that will create lasting change.
Experience Couples Therapy at Luminate Therapy in Minnesota
Do you need help to lower conflict in your relationship, learn how to use effective repair statements, and reconnect with your partner? At Luminate Therapy, we are clinically trained using The Gottman Couples Therapy Method, which is evidence-based with the ability to predict the success of a relationship with 94% accuracy. Contact Us to connect and request an appointment.
*At Luminate Therapy, we define a "couple" as two people who consider themselves in a relationship. This can be through engagement, marriage, partnership, romantically, heterosexual or same-sex, etc.
