PACT therapy is a relatively new and highly dynamic form of couples therapy developed by Dr. Stan Tatkin. What distinguishes PACT therapy from all other forms of couples therapy to date is the integration of one of the newest areas of psychology and psychiatry—interpersonal neurobiology. This newly developed sub-field focuses on the interaction of the brain and nervous system within and between humans.
Sessions are typically two to three hours long. While PACT therapy was developed originally to help couples in severe circumstances,1 it can be applied to almost any pairing. This includes parents and children, siblings, or even friends. If a couple (or pair) has very high levels of distress, sessions may need to be shorter (closer to an hour) but more frequent (instead of once a week, they may meet 2-3 times).
PACT & Attachment Theory
Dr. Tatkin took important developments from interpersonal neurobiology and merged them with a re-appreciation of attachment theory as it applies to the romantic pair bond.1 Dr. Tatkin sees our infant attachment experiences as influencing the development of our brain and nervous system, which then colors how we relate to others in situations of deep intimacy, dependency, and trust.
By understanding well-researched attachment styles and mapping them on to romantic pair bonding, PACT is able to anticipate blind spots for individuals and areas of misattunement and misunderstanding in the couple. Then this knowledge of attachment and the related brain and nervous system tendencies can be re-trained through new experiences during PACT sessions as the therapist guides the couple to have more synchronous and fulfilling interactions.
What Happens During a PACT Therapy Session?
Common experiences you might have in PACT therapy include learning to read your partner’s expressions and gestures to assess whether or not their nervous system is settled or unsettled, and then learning through experiences in session how to move your partner’s nervous system from dysregulation into regulation using things like eye contact, vocal inflection, physical proximity, and touch.
Moving Toward Collaboration
Instead of focusing on the content of what couples are fighting about (money, sex, time, mess, or kids) the PACT therapist is watching how the couple moves through their disagreement. Are they productive? Fair? Collaborative? If at any point the couple is not working as a team to better understand each other and take better care of each other, the PACT therapist will interrupt the interaction and point out where things are going off track.
Through finding the disruptive patterns and correcting them, the couple learns how to attune to each other even during disagreements. Relationship conflict is normal in close relationships; PACT teaches the couple how to make a disagreement productive instead of a stalemate situation. Mutual respect is increased and couples feel truly and deeply cared for by the other, even in moments of disagreement.
Movement
PACT therapy makes use of movement as well, as neuroscience now understands the difference between implicit and explicit memory.2 Explicit memory is conscious and can be recalled and explained verbally. Implicit memory, which guides us through most of our day, is fast, unconscious, and non-verbal.3 PACT therapists make sure to pay attention to posture, gesture, and movements made by the couple to better inform the dynamic, and may encourage the couple to experiment with different ways of greeting each other (hugs, other forms of non-sexual touch) or de-escalating using nonverbal or touch methods.
Highly conflicted situations can be unpacked in deeply meaningful ways by having clients recreate the “scene” in a PACT therapy session so that the implicit memories can be reactivated in real time for the therapist to work with.
Working Through Unfaithfulness
One of the most common reasons that couples come to therapy is due to affairs when one partner is unfaithful either physically or emotionally. On the surface, people assume that an affair is a result of the current circumstances. One partner became enthralled with someone else. A PACT therapist is quick to see that there is more going on involving both partners’ histories of trust, betrayal, allegiance, abandonment, and even abuse.
The current betrayal, the affair, is taken in the context of both partner’s histories to deconstruct the larger meaning. It is only when the larger meaning can be revealed that the rupture can be truly repaired and the relationship can be “affair-proofed.”
Examples of PACT Therapy
Implicit Memory Deconstruction
A couple arrives in therapy and his chief complaint is that she does not seem to feel loved by him. He insists that he adores her and tells her this repeatedly but she says she doesn’t feel loved by him. The PACT therapist explores the issue and asks when this conversation last occured. The couple responds that it is most often at bedtime, while laying side by side. The husband reaches over to caress his wife’s hair or shoulder and tells her that he loves her.
The PACT therapist has the couple get into this position, side by side, with each of them on the side that they are in their own bedroom. The PACT therapist asks the couple to recreate the scene. As the husband reaches for the wife’s arm and begins to stroke it lovingly, telling her how much he loves her, the PACT therapist can see the wife stiffen and a curl of disgust crosses her mouth.
The PACT therapist then asks what is happening and what she is experiencing. Immediately caught in that exact moment the wife can recall that her mother, who would often drink to excess at night, would come sit on that side of her at bedtime to tell her goodnight. The wife begins to cry as she recalls how embarrassing it was for her that her mother would be intoxicated, and she wished her mother would leave her alone. This implicit memory is stored in the wife’s body and tied to bedtime and being touched on that side.
The PACT therapist asks the couple to change positions so that now the husband is on the OTHER side of his wife. They do so and the husband is instructed to convey his affection to his wife while at the same time asking her to look into his eyes. As she turns her head to meet his gaze this re-orients her brain to the present moment rather than allowing the memory from the past to come forward. The change in position, with the husband on the opposite side from the one her mother sat on, further differentiates this experience for the wife. She is able to look into her husband’s eyes, see that it is him, and take in his words of care.
This is an example of how a skilled PACT therapist can deconstruct a seemingly innocuous event like a bedtime kiss and ferret out the deeper meanings and hidden childhood attachment ruptures. Then, in real-time, the PACT therapist is able to carefully alter the pattern in specific ways to create new neural associations. The husband laying on the opposite side from where mother sat, looking his wife in the eye to alert her nervous system to NEW information, is now able to convey his love for his wife in a way that is not triggering that old neural network of her mother.
Affair
A husband begins to have inappropriate relationships while away on business. While he loves his wife and family he feels compelled by the excitement and forbidden-ness of the affairs. This perplexes him as his wife is warm, attentive, and loving. Yet he finds himself engaging in repeated trysts with women who are emotionally unavailable and somewhat cold. When the affairs come to light the PACT therapist is able to ask the man “who else did you feel that way towards in your childhood?” and immediately the man is struck. He tells the story of an emotionally distant father for whom he yearned for approval.
Then the PACT therapist asks about a history of sexual secrets. Again the man is immediately struck and reports that, although he has never told anyone, he was molested by a babysitter from 9-12 years old. The PACT therapist is able to frame the affairs for both partners as acting out of both a fusion of sexual excitement with secrecy and shame as well as a yearning to win over a distant and cold parent. These unresolved traumas from childhood have emerged into the affair behavior.
The PACT therapist is careful never to forget that “where one goes there is the other” and takes a careful history from the wife as well. The wife reveals that her parent’s marriage was broken up by an affair and that although she knew that her mother was having an affair by the time she was in high school she deliberately turned a blind eye to it, not wanting to “break up the family.” Thus, the wife begins to see how she could have been turning a blind eye to any signs of her husband drifting away from her emotionally or sexually.
Both partners can see the affair in a new light—one that is balanced, informed by history, and useful to the construction of new and healthier patterns. It is no coincidence that this couple also has a history of not being fully transparent with each other and turning to friends instead of each other when feeling vulnerable. The couple now sees the affair as a large beacon guiding them to the repairs that have ALWAYS needed to be done in their relationship, and in their own personal histories from childhood.
In creating new patterns between them they both feel assured that they will not end up in this same place in the future. Instead of the affair dividing them they are united to reclaim their marriage from the ghosts of their pasts that had inserted themselves in ways they never imagined.
What to Know Before Starting PACT Therapy
PACT therapy has been called “ambitious,” and indeed it is. However, when considering a relationship that we hope to span 40, 50 or more years, being ambitious seems warranted! Those interested in PACT therapy need to be prepared that it is an investment in time, money, and emotional effort. However the dividends can be life-altering. Many clients who come to PACT report having failed with multiple therapists and types of couples’ therapy, however they find substantial relief and change with this dynamic model, often in far fewer sessions.
While the total number of sessions is often less than other couple’s therapies, the actual sessions themselves are quite a bit longer. A typical PACT session is going to be two to three hours. This is because coupes bring double the complexity so a therapist needs double (or more) the time. A successful PACT session not only SHOWS you the problem, it takes time to move you OUT of the problem in a way that you can replicate on your own outside of therapy.
How Much Does PACT Therapy Cost?
The average cost for a PACT couples therapy session is going to be in the range of $450. While that might sound unreasonable, ask yourself, how much is your marriage worth to you, your children, and your partner? Some insurances do cover couples therapy, but be aware that they may only cover one hour of the two-hour (or longer) session. And some insurances don’t cover any amount of couples therapy so you may need to be prepared to pay out of pocket.
Where to Find a PACT Therapist
PACT therapists can be found by either looking on the PACT therapist directory located on the PACT Institute website or by searching an online directory and selecting “PACT” as a specialty in the search tool menu. To be labeled as PACT-certified, a therapist can fulfil a few different levels of training to be able to claim level One, Two, or Three certifications, the final including submitting work to Dr. Stan Tatkin himself. Further levels involve becoming PACT Faculty, with further training from Dr. Tatkin.
What to Ask a Therapist Before You Begin
Before beginning PACT therapy, as with any therapy, it’s important to ask the therapist if they have worked with your particular problem before and what kinds of outcomes they have had. It’s preferable to find a therapist who has experience with your particular difficulty, although depending on the specificity of your problem and your geographical location, you may need to settle for someone who has ample experience with PACT therapy but who has not dealt with your specific problem, per se.
It is acceptable and encouraged to ask therapists how many years they have been using PACT and whether or not they adhere exclusively to the model or blend it with other models.
What to Expect at Your First PACT Session
In your first appointment expect a lot of history taking. PACT, like many psychodynamic therapy approaches, believes that our earlier experiences are very formative and tend to factor significantly into our adult relationships. The therapist will guide you both through a series of questions ranging from how you met and why you chose each other to details about your parents’ relationship and your experiences in childhood.
First sessions are sometimes longer, for example, three hours instead of two. Ask your therapist ahead of time how much time they want for the first session so you can plan accordingly.
Many PACT therapists will suggest that you allow them to videotape the sessions. This allows the therapist to review the footage after the fact if a session has not gone as well as they had wanted. A couple’s therapist is trying to track two faces, two bodies and two nervous systems and sometimes things are missed in real-time. In that case a videotape allows us to go back and, if we want, analyze frame-by-frame what happened. It is a fantastic learning tool already well-established in many professions such as performers, public speakers, and athletes, and PACT has brought it into the psychotherapy arena. However, videotaping is optional, so if you are not comfortable with that don’t let it dissuade you from trying PACT.
History, Efficacy, & Future Research of PACT Therapy
PACT therapy is one of the newest couples therapies to emerge on the scene. Dr. Tatkin began training other therapists in this model around 2010 so there has not been much time to have the approach verified in scientific research. However the elements that PACT is built on, largely interpersonal neurobiology and infant attachment, are extremely well-researched.4,5,6 There are many peer-reviewed journal articles and hundreds more books written on both of these areas of study.
The PACT Institute is currently preparing to conduct its first outcomes study so stay tuned for those exciting results. There have been studies showing how the attachment system that is leftover from our childhoods can, indeed, be changed from insecure to secure using a skilled therapist as a guide.7 If this can be done with individuals then theoretically it should also be able to be shown in couples. The PACT institute will be the first couples therapy system to explore this idea and we look forward to sharing those results.
Final Thoughts on PACT Therapy
Whatever you are struggling with as a couple, know this— therapy helps. According to the American Psychological Association, about 75% of couples who undergo counseling report that it improves their relationships.8 Study after study confirms that couples therapy can help a variety of problems. If you have tried other forms of couples therapy and can’t seem to make progress then talking to a PACT therapist may be the next right step. If you’ve never tried couples therapy at all, there is no reason not to start with PACT. PACT is distinctly different from other forms of couples therapy, and sometimes different is just what is needed.
