April Luncheon - Using Humor and Metaphor to Disarm High-Conflict Couples

"Using Humor and Metaphor to Disarm High-Conflict Couples"

Presenter: Mathis Kennington, Ph.D., LMFT

Imagine you've just walked into your favorite annual holiday party. It's the one you look forward to all year because the hosts pull out all the stops for the one night of the year everyone has childcare. You arrive ready for a peaceful and fun evening only to find that the Johnsons have sucked all the positive vibes out of the room with their annual meltdown. You think to yourself, "Someone has to help these people.” We are those someones., and it’s our job to step in and help save annual holiday parties everywhere. But how do we do that with clients whose nuclear meltdowns seem to resist the very help they need? Shouldn't clients be on their best behavior when they come to therapy? Fortunately, I've collected enough failures in my career to learn that there are generally helpful and unhelpful ways to disarm explosive conflict in a way that doesn't completely derail the rest of the session. I'd like to share some of them with you. I'll describe anecdotal disaster-prevention methods that have stood the test of time and experience (sorry, no clinical trials yet). I’ll describe the use of metaphor as an appropriately abrupt and meaningful medium for psychoeducation. I’ll host a mini workshop in which you all develop metaphors to deconstruct even the most difficult concepts in common couple impasses. I’ll talk about how the presentation of these metaphors matters as much as the metaphor itself, and I’ll share some of my own clinical metaphors for you to steal if you find them useful.

Dr. Mathis Kennington is a couple and sex therapist in private practice in Austin where he primarily treats high conflict couples and men struggling with sexual health challenges. Mathis teaches couple and sex therapy at St. Edward’s University, is the current President-Elect of the Texas Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and serves as the clinical director for the Austin Family Institute, a nonprofit with a twenty year history of training clinicians and educating the public on mental health initiatives.