Couples counseling is a type of therapy designed to help couples improve their communication, resolve conflicts, and strengthen their relationship. Some couples seek counseling in times of crisis, while others want guidance with daily relationship issues. Couples may also seek help when they are experiencing troubled, conflictual, and emotionally charged relationships, including high-conflict relationships.
In my practice, I view couples counseling as an opportunity to look beneath the surface of recurring conflicts and understand what is happening emotionally between two people. I am interested not only in what couples are arguing about, but in what those arguments may represent—and why certain interactions can become so emotionally charged.
In high-conflict relationships, couples can become caught in cycles of blaming, criticizing, name-calling, or labeling one another. One partner may come to see the other as “selfish,” “controlling,” “narcissistic,” “uncaring,” or simply “the problem.” These dynamics can be especially pronounced when one or both partners struggle with vulnerability, shame, criticism, empathy, or a fragile sense of self—issues that can have a powerful impact on intimate relationships.
From a psychodynamic perspective, these patterns often develop because present-day interactions can activate older emotional experiences, expectations, and fears. A disagreement about money, parenting, intimacy, or household responsibilities may therefore come to represent something much larger, often outside of the couple’s conscious awareness. Feelings that often go unnoticed may include feeling rejected, controlled, unimportant, criticized, or abandoned. When these feelings become difficult to tolerate, each partner may rely on familiar defenses to protect themselves, often without fully recognizing what is happening.
Understanding these underlying patterns can help couples move beyond the question of who is right or wrong and begin to understand the emotional experience each person is bringing to the relationship. Rather than simply teaching couples how to communicate more effectively, I try to help them understand why communication breaks down in the first place.
This hub explores my approach to couples counseling and the ways I think psychodynamically about relationships, including the role of defenses, coping mechanisms, empathy, trust, communication, conflict, attachment, and recurring relational patterns.
“Across the research, and across different models of working with couples, one finding shows up again and again: lasting change happens when defensive reactions are replaced with more vulnerable forms of communication.”
– Dr. Anthony Mazzella
Q&A
Yes. My work with narcissism has informed the way I understand many of the relationship patterns that bring couples to therapy. Narcissistic dynamics can affect a relationship in many different ways, including cycles of criticism and defensiveness, difficulty taking responsibility, struggles with empathy, and intense reactions to perceived rejection or criticism.
Recognizing these patterns does not mean that one partner has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Many people can experience narcissistic defenses or vulnerabilities without having a personality disorder. In fact, these patterns can emerge in relationships when either partner struggles with vulnerability, shame, criticism, or a fragile sense of self. Understanding these underlying dynamics can help couples move beyond simply identifying who is at fault and begin to understand the emotional patterns that keep them stuck.
This is a question I hear frequently, particularly from people who feel confused, hurt, or stuck in recurring patterns in their relationship. A person may be defensive, self-centered, highly sensitive to criticism, or have difficulty with empathy without meeting the criteria for a personality disorder. A diagnosis of NPD requires a comprehensive clinical evaluation rather than simply identifying individual behaviors.
At the same time, you do not need to determine whether your partner has NPD before seeking help. What may be more important is understanding what is happening within the relationship: Are you caught in recurring cycles of criticism and defensiveness? Do you feel that your experiences are repeatedly dismissed or turned back on you? Does your partner have difficulty taking responsibility or recognizing your perspective? And what happens between the two of you when one person feels hurt, rejected, criticized, or misunderstood?
In couples therapy, I am interested in understanding these patterns rather than simply assigning a label to one partner. My work with narcissism has given me particular experience in recognizing the underlying dynamics. Understanding these dynamics can help clarify what is happening in the relationship and what, if anything, can change.
Psychodynamic couples counseling looks beyond the immediate disagreement to understand the emotional and relational patterns underneath it. In my work with couples, I explore how past experiences, conflicts, and relationship patterns may continue to influence how partners experience themselves and one another in the present.
We may explore both the distant and more recent past, including how experiences of criticism, rejection, shame, vulnerability, or feeling misunderstood can shape the relationship. At the same time, psychodynamic therapy does not require every couple to focus on their history. When immediate concerns demand attention, I focus more directly on the day-to-day interactions that repeatedly precipitate conflict, disconnection, or chaos.
The goal is to help couples recognize the patterns underneath their conflicts so they can begin to respond to one another differently.
Couples counseling can be particularly helpful when both partners are ready to look beyond proving who is right and begin to develop a more nuanced understanding of themselves, their partner, and the relationship. This means you are willing to move beyond blame and certainty about the other person, and to become curious about the patterns that keep the couple stuck.
Sometimes couples come to therapy hoping to determine who is at fault or to have their perspective validated by a professional. The ultimate goal in couples therapy is to help partners move beyond blaming and begin to understand the relationship as a system, in which each person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors influence the other.
From over twenty years of working with couples experiencing troubled, conflictual, and emotionally charged relationships, I have found that defenses and coping patterns can play a significant role in the development and persistence of interpersonal problems. Defenses are ways of protecting ourselves from emotional pain or discomfort, often without our being fully aware of them.
In couples therapy, I help couples identify these patterns and understand how they may be contributing to recurring conflicts in their relationship. Through exploration, clarification, and confrontation, I bring to light patterns and relational dynamics occurring outside of their awareness. As couples develop a greater understanding of these dynamics, they can begin to communicate differently and develop a more nuanced understanding of themselves and one another.
Trust is one of the foundations of a healthy and fulfilling relationship, and when it has been damaged, couples can become caught in cycles of suspicion, defensiveness, resentment, and withdrawal. Trust can be disrupted by many experiences, including betrayal, deception, secrecy, or a pattern of feeling that one’s partner is not being open or emotionally available.
In therapy, we explore not only what happened, but how each partner has come to experience the other as a result of what happened. Rebuilding trust involves addressing the underlying relational patterns that contributed to its loss while developing greater openness, reliability, and emotional safety. I also help partners strengthen their capacity for empathy—to listen to one another, consider the other person’s perspective, and remain engaged even when difficult feelings arise.
Narcissism Decoder Podcast Episodes:
The Dance Between Codependents and Narcissists: Can Therapy Really Help?
Learn the ways couples can become trapped in cycles of giving, taking, control, and loneliness, and what counseling can offer for breaking these patterns.
Why High-Functioning People Get Stuck in Relationships with Covert Narcissists
Explore how covert narcissism can shape the dynamics between partners and why thoughtful, responsible people may become vulnerable to these patterns.
Emotional Withdrawal In Relationships: How Do You Break the Pattern
Discover how coping mechanisms can become patterns of avoidance that affect relationships, emotional connection, and daily life—and how to begin breaking free from them.
High Conflict Relationships: Why Arguments Escalate So Quickly
Identify how hidden psychological dynamics can drive high-conflict relationships, causing arguments to escalate, repeat, and remain unresolved.
Articles
Why Couples Fight – The Role of Unconscious Beliefs and Indifference
Examine how unconscious beliefs and emotional indifference can shape couples’ communication, leading to misunderstandings, conflict, and recurring fights.
High-Conflict Relationships: Why Do Small Issues Become Major Conflicts?
Consider the ways everyday disagreements in narcissistic relationships can escalate into criticism, defensiveness, control, and emotional role reversals.
Can High-Conflict Relationships Actually Change? What Happens After Escalation
Learn how emotional escalation and unresolved ruptures can create repeating patterns in high-conflict relationships, and why repair matters.
How Can You Resolve Conflict in Narcissistic Relationships?
Understand how to stay emotionally connected while maintaining your own thoughts, feelings, and sense of self in high-conflict relationships.
Videos on Couples Counseling
“The goal of couples counseling is to build—and gradually increase—the capacity to hold both your own, and a loved one’s perspective, their feelings and their internal experience, in mind.”
– Dr. Anthony Mazzella
