Imago Relationship Therapy: What Is It?
Imago Therapy creates a sacred space for healing and
growth that can lead you to the relationship of your dreams.
Imago Relationship Therapy is a model of short term couples work that combines insight and practical skills.
Many of the skills learned in Imago work are easily transferable for use with children, in the workplace, or in any human interaction.
In Imago work, couples learn to create emotional safety in their relationship so that they can be open, honest, and caring in their communication with one another and in their shared life together. The result of this experience of emotional safety and enhanced communication is a unique opportunity to recognize and heal the hurts of the past. Couples learn to restructure frustrations and conflict as opportunities to nurture the relationship and to reclaim for each partner his or her authentic self. In an Imago relationship, partners nourish one another to build a strong bond of connection and intimacy. Imago can be used to help couples who are experiencing conflict and challenge in their relationship resolve the conflict and challenges, or to help couples who have a good relationship to make it even richer and better.
Some of the premises of Imago are:
- As infants, we enter the world in an original state of wholeness--relaxed joyfulness.
- Growing up we experience hurts, through things our parents do or do not do, experiences with siblings and extended family, and socialization at school and elsewhere.
- We are unconsciously drawn to an intimate partner who reminds us of our primary caretakers, in the equally unconscious hope that he or she can help heal the emotional hurts, real or perceived, we experienced growing up.
- When the romantic “blindness” wears off, we often find ourselves in a real power struggle with our partner, for some of the things that attracted us now frustrate us, and the coping patterns of one partner frequently “push the buttons” of the other.
- Imago therapy, in contrast to most couples' models, uses the conflicts of these power struggles to help the couples communicate and grow together in love and intimacy.
- Imago also provides couples concrete tools with which to communicate and nurture their relationship. In traditional marital work, the therapist is the hero. In Imago, the couple becomes the hero.
Six Principles of an Imago Couples Relationship
- Commitment
- Commitment to one another’s growth and healing
- Acting lovingly even when we do not feel like it
- Owning our contribution to conflicts
- Accepting and Receiving Love
- Opening ourselves to really accept our partner’s love
- Honoring our partner for his/her efforts, even when the gift is not fully what we want
- Taking Care of and Experiencing the Sacred Space Between
- Building real connection and intimacy
- Caring for the relationship, as well as one another
- Empathy
- Experiencing the inner world of our partner and allowing that inner world to really matter
- Self acceptance and compassion for oneself is a first step
- Discovery of Otherness
- We finally “get it”--we live with another person--a living, loving and wonderfully complex other person
- By seeing the other without judgment, we discovery true “otherness”
- Intentionality - Becoming Conscious
- No shame - no blame - no criticism
- True internal discernment is only possible when we become more conscious
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Page Last Updated: 1/12/2009
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