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If I had known this I would have said – not that it ever would have worked – “stay home for a week.” Once my clients were quarantined at home, the couple’s work continues and the conversations have changed. Commitment enables the work in couples therapy.
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Are You Reluctant to Commit to Couples Therapy? So since I’ve been more firm with this, my gay male couples are showing up more regularly. They have meetings and getting them to my office at the same time sometimes is a huge challenge, so much so that I’ve actually changed some of my rules in working with these couples, which is that the time is sacred and they pay for their slot whether they come or not.Īnd as a result, they’ve become more committed to coming to couples therapy, because beforehand, my clients were canceling their sessions all the time because one of the partners had a business meeting or a work trip. I work with a lot of gay male couples who are in powerful positions in various industries. Like our team here at CTI, Rick often tends to work with “C” level executives, artists, and entrepreneurs. Rick told me that Some gay male couples don’t necessarily know how good their relationship was before COVID. Rick Miller Do You Know How Good Your Relationship Is? Are You Reluctant to Find Out? What’s good gets noticed …and what’s difficult also gets noticed as well.Ī “Power Couple” intent on acting on the world… may now realize that there’s not much of a world left to act upon, but if their underlying relationship is still pretty good, then they can return to that focus, and actually use that lockdown time to deepen their relationship. Being stuck together is a force multiplier. When a gay male couple is quarantined, whatever is going on in the relationship, good and bad, tends to be like a force multiplier. There’s something about everyday stress being wiped away.Įven though this pandemic has its own stress, the stress of day-to-day life, the stress of commuting to work, getting out of the house, never seeing one’s partner, arguing about details of house and work, and being too busy to connect… are no longer part of my gay male couples’ lives.Īnd I’m seeing them for sessions, and they’re sitting next to each other on the couch with a level of connection that is very different from what I’ve seen, especially for some of these couples that have seen me for two or three years. Pandemic Stress is Supplanting Our Former “Normal” Stress Click this link to hear the complete interview. Here are some highlights from a conversation I recently had with Rick. Rick’s therapeutic imperatives are is to build comfort for gay male couples and better align their minds and bodies. Gay men have long endured developmental challenges. Rick’s approach unpacks the unique ways gay men experience pain. Rick not only drew on years of experience working therapeutically with gay men, but he also drew on his own as a gay man.
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Rick’s ego-strengthening hypnosis techniques, which he has designed specifically for use with gay men, focus on the unique challenges growing up and finding one’s place in the world as part of a gay male couple. Rick developed a hypnotherapy curriculum for working with gay men that has been used at both the Milton Erickson Institute of Mexico City, in Mexico, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, which is also in Mexico City.
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Rick has served nationally, (and internationally) on the faculty for The International Society of Hypnosis, the Milton Erickson Foundation of South Africa, the Brief Therapy Conference, the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, the American Group Psychotherapy Association, and Harvard Medical School. He is well-known for his pioneering work with gay male couples. Rick is a social worker in private practice in Boston and on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. My colleague Rick Miller is an important thought leader in couples therapy.