Pragmatic/Experiential Therapy for Couples (PET-C)

Are you in love with someone, married, or committed to a meaningful relationship and are in search of the perfect type of intervention to work on your relationship problems? Are you looking for a modern approach to counseling to benefit your lives? Are you ready to talk as a couple?

What is Pragmatic/Experiential Therapy for Couples (PET-C)?

Pragmatic/Experiential therapy for couples or PET-C is a couple’s therapy approach that invites both members of the couple or marriage into the therapeutic environment and into the therapeutic relationship with their therapist.

Pragmatic/experiential therapy for couples is a type of therapy that focuses on the couple, your relationship, your experiences, and your individual reasoning in the relationship.

PET-C is conducted by a therapist that focuses on the couple’s relationship and attends to your, to confront problems, and by mending relationships by focusing on both individual’s:

• Experiences.
• Responsibilities.
• Blaming.
• Realism/consideration.
• Roles.
• Connection.
• Emotions.
• Influences in the relationship.

How does PET-C Work?

PET-C often includes individual sessions and sessions when the couple is present together. When you interact with the therapist individually and as a couple, this is helpful for you, your partner to better understand each other’s views on how the relationship thrives, and what it depends on. Often, having better insight into these areas helps initiate change.

PET-C focuses on two major changes in the emotional states of each member. Each member works to:

1. Identify and begin to modify emotional states that are preventing healthy changes in the relationship. This helps each of you recognize the specific areas that can be changed.
2. Interact and become more familiar with emotional states that are needed to make healthy changes in the relationship. This assists you to begin to implement change.

The Phases of PET-C

There are three major phases of PET-C in couple’s therapy:

• First:  Identifying, reflecting, and processing each individual’s reactions and contributions to the relationship. What are your concerns? What are your partner’s major concerns?
• Second: Identifying personal emotional states that are helpful or hurtful to the relationship. What emotional states contribute to the problems in your relationship? What emotional states and brain states contribute to the solution or to the health of the relationship?
• Third/Final: Lastly, the individuals often meet as a couple in couple’s therapy to discuss the progress that has been made and talked about in the two previous stages. This sets the setting and the therapeutic environment for each individual to begin to make the changes that they have talked about.

In PET-C each of the three stages should be successful before moving on to the next phase.

This type of therapy can be a major intervention for you and your partner, especially if you recognize that emotions and reactions are major obstacles in your relationship.

At Thoughtwise we have inviting therapists that may be able to help your relationship through a PET-C model. If you and your partner are ready to talk with a therapist, please contact us at our central location in Tallahassee today.