What Is Imago? Unlock the Secrets to a Fulfilling and Conscious Relationship. Part 2

Core Concepts of Imago Couples Therapy

Imago Couples Therapy is an integrated heart-mind-body framework inspired by cutting-edge research on developmental psychology, attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, neuroscience, quantum physics, and relational psychology. It offers a comprehensive framework for healing relational wounds and enhancing intimacy.

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Here are some Premises of the Imago Therapy Framework:

Primal disconnection: In early childhood, we experience rapture when connecting with our parents. These painful events, lack of emotional attunement, or neglect are traumatic, and they close our capacities to experience our full aliveness—our core intrinsic Self.

Unfinished childhood: We emerge from childhood with unfulfilled basic needs (need for validation, physical touch, full expression and love), with defensive adaptive strategies Minimising or Maximising traits), with some lost, repressed, or underdeveloped aspects of our wholeness through social programming and negative messages we received ( like "boys don't cry" "don't touch", be quiet"). These deficits and protective strategies create pain points in adult relationships.

Reactivation of childhood wounds: In intimate relationships, we are confronted with our deepest hurts, which an Imago match partner can reactivate. We further perpetuate early developmental wounding in relationships, adding more suffering. Because our deepest wounds happened in our childhood in a relationship with our parents/caretakers, we must heal through a relationship. 

Imago/Image: We are attracted and enter the relationship that matches our Imago/Image created and internalised in childhood, presenting positive and negative traits of our caregivers, e.g. a woman will attract a man who is emotionally unavailable like her father from childhood.

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Hedy Schleifer; “You are with the most incompatible person on the planet. Only incompatible people fall in love with each other, so they can learn and grow.”

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Purpose of the relationship: The unconscious goal of an adult intimate relationship is to bond with an Imago match partner so that we can complete and heal our childhood and reach our wholeness. 

Phases of relationship: After the Romantic Phase (magnificent recovery of the experience of connecting and feeling joyful aliveness) that lasts around 12 -18 months, the phase of painful Power Struggle enters the couple's life. The initial flow of love, romance, support and positivity is replaced with negativity, anxiety, triggers, childhood challenges, defences and also ineffective striving to meet their unfulfilled needs from childhood from a partner who is incapable of fulfilling those needs.

Conflict signals impulse for growth and healing: Conflict often arises due to a subconscious desire to meet your partner's needs. As we stretch to meet our partner's unfulfilled childhood needs, we must grow beyond our character adaptations and pull back into repressed/disowned parts of ourselves. In other words, we ask our partner to meet our needs, but they cannot give it to us due to their childhood trauma and limitations. Thus, the conflict and power struggle continues.

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What Are the 3 Main Practices for a Healthy Relationship?

The fundamental tenet of Imago is that authenticity and connection in a relationship ultimately heal both partners, who are not trying to fix or change themselves as separate individuals. 

Also, safety is paramount for transformation and connecting, and all Imago tools and techniques are designed to achieve this. Both partners must become safe for each other, knowing they will never be attacked, dismissed, blamed, or ignored. It is non-negotiable to have a healthy, loving relationship. You can achieve it through practising:

Imago dialogue

It is the primary tool that will help you; 

• Create safety and trust, enhance your communication skills and conflict resolution, 
• Fulfil unmet childhood needs: This safety allows partners to feel heard and understood without fear of judgment or criticism, 
• Activating curiosity and empathy helps release hormones like oxytocin and dopamine, contributing to feelings of happiness and bonding.
• Promote Emotional Healing: Partners can release resentments, clarify misunderstandings, gain insight into each other's emotional needs, and address and heal past wounds.

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Zero Negativity Process

All negative behaviours rapture connection and breach safety, activate anxiety, increase defensive and survival mechanisms and reactivity, and prevent the relationship from thriving. Negativity is anything that is experienced by a partner as a "put-down" by the other partner, such as a word, glare, eye roll, tone of voice interaction, gesture, or behaviour. The Zero Negativity Pledge dialogue will help couples eradicate negativity from their relationship, and it is the foundation for the effectiveness of the therapy.

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The Affirmation Process

Since the human brain has a negativity bias, it is not enough to remove all negativity. It has to be replaced with curiosity and affirmations, which, over time the person will create new neuropathways in their brain that support positivity, and it will become a habit in all social engagements. When couples replace the negative response with curiosity, they engage the prefrontal cortex, and the engagement system is responsible for safe connecting. If they include praise and affirmation, the nervous system takes in safety cues, relaxes its defences, and becomes open to connection, play, and love.

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5 Essential Steps for Restoring and Sustaining a Conscious Relationship

The journey to a conscious relationship is a 5 step process. It is facilitated by the consistent practice of a structured Imago Dialogue that uses safe language in the new relational and collaborative partnership while removing negativity from all interactions. Since Imago's approach sees suffering as a raptured original connection, the whole practice of Dialogue transforms suffering and disconnection. When practising these steps, you will create a safe and compassionate environment in the space between, which is required for experiencing and sustaining connection and healing. Here are the steps:

Recommitting: It is the process in which, through structured Dialogue, couples commit to identifying, removing ambivalence from the relationships and closing exits (strategies used deliberately to avoid interacting with each other, e.g. taking on another job, affairs or watching TV). 

Reimaging: It is the process that helps to break the symbiotic fusion by facilitating differentiation so both partners can see each other as unique, distinct and separate persons with their struggles, hurts, desires and needs.

Restructuring frustrations: It helps partners discover the wish embedded in the frustration and ask in a non-polarising and safe way for what they want. Replacing frustration with a request invites partners to stretch into meeting each other's needs that stem from early childhood.

Re-romantisizing: Couples learn and engage in high- or low-energy processes that instil pleasure, well-being, joy, and laughter. These activities trigger the release of pleasure neurochemicals and help restore the experience of romantic love, which restores connection and a sense of full aliveness, e.g., praising caring behaviours, orgasms, and surprises. 

Revisioning: Couples are invited to imagine and co-create their shared vision for the dream and conscious relationship. This vision becomes the roadmap and helps shift the couple's focus from what is not working in their relationship to what is possible.

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What Makes Imago Therapy Unique?

Can be Used at Home

Imago Therapy is usually a short-term therapy that teaches couples the practical life skill of Imago Dialogue so they can take it home to practice and resolve conflicts independently. By mastering this technique, couples can create a safe and supportive environment to address and heal relational issues without the continuous need for a therapist. This self-sufficiency saves on therapy fees, empowers couples to resolve many struggles themselves, and allows them to see the therapist only at the ad hoc level when it is needed.

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The Paradigm Shift from Individual to Relational 

In the new Relationship Paradigm, Imago acknowledges that the separate Self is no longer adequate and that separation is an illusionary experience resulting from a primal disconnect from our parents.  Therefore, Imago Relationship therapy focuses primarily on the connection between rather than on individual partners. The relationship becomes central, and Imago Therapy is a function of resonance and connecting made possible by safe conversations in the space between, which leads to the experience of connection, healing, growth, and full aliveness.

When couples shift their focus from themselves to creating safety in their space-between, they will discover that connecting is their essence and that disconnection is the source of any complaint.

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Role of the Therapist

A therapist in Imago is less of a solution provider and the source of healing but more of a coach or facilitator, focusing on the couples and keeping them in the dialoguing process. The primary role of the Imago therapist is to maintain a connection between partners and allow for the emergent space for clarity, healing, and transformation. This unique approach removes power from the therapist. It empowers the couples to co-create a conscious relationship that transforms their interactions in the "Space-Between". And unlike most conventional therapies, you will face each other (not the therapist) during the dialogue process.

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The Space-Between

It is an exciting concept inherited from Austrian philosopher Martin Buber, stating that life is lived in the "Space-Between" and remembered in the space within. In Imago Therapy, the "Space-Between" refers to the emotional and relational field between partners. It's the dynamic, often intangible, space where interactions, feelings, and energies are exchanged. This concept emphasises that the quality of the relationship is not just about the individual partners but about what happens between them during their interactions. The "Space-Between" is nurtured and healed through conscious, empathetic communication using intentional Imago dialogue, a commitment to and practice Zero Negativity and the exchange of at least 3 daily affirmations.

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What Imago Couples Therapy Can Do for You: Benefits Explained

Practising Imago Dialogue offers a wide range of benefits that contribute to an overall sense of well-being and happiness. From my experience, this methodology/therapy has a multilayered and multidimensional positive impact on a person's experience.

Here are some key benefits:

Lowering the level of stress: Engaging with Imago Dialogue and other practices of Imago Couples Therapy helps regulate the Central Nervous System and the Vagus Nerve, which has a direct impact on calming, soothing, and relaxing physiology by decreasing cortisol levels and increasing happy hormones such as oxytocin and dopamine. Some research confirms a strong link to having great relationships and a strengthened immune system.

Activating the Prefrontal Cortex: This activity encourages thoughtful communication and active listening, which engages the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for higher-level thinking, decision-making, and empathy. This activation enhances problem-solving abilities and fosters understanding between partners.

Calming the Reactive Reptilian Brain: This helps partners stay present and regulate emotional reactions without activating defensive or offensive fight, flight or freeze responses, promoting a sense of safety and curiosity that supports connection. 

Enhancing Communication Skills: Practising Imago Dialogue improves communication skills, which helps resolve conflicts and resentments effectively.

Deepening Connection and Intimacy: As partners learn to communicate more openly and empathetically,  their connection and emotional bond deepen, fostering mutual understanding, appreciation for each other and overall satisfaction.

Healing the Past and Expansion: This helps partners become conscious of their childhood wounds and unmet needs, repressed/disowned parts of their wholeness, survival adaptations, triggers activating pain, and unconscious closure patterns. As the couples learn about these areas, their compassion, understanding, and empathy increase, and they can heal, grow back into their full potential, and reach maturity. 

Anxiety and Depression: Helps reduce the level of stress and states of depression, which is the response of the  Dorsal State of the Central Nervous System, creating emotional numbness, collapse, and dissociation. Practicing listening, validating and empathising can dramatically improve the symptoms. 

Love: I left it as the last benefit, but it should be the first. According to many philosophers, mystics, and spiritual teachers, love is the ultimate goal of every human being. Love is the highest goal and subconsciously more valuable than any earthly possessions, including money and gold. Imago is the vehicle to re-experience human romantic love and the invitation to tap into your Core aliveness, which is Love. And if you are lucky and persistent, you might experience yourself as Pure Universal Love, which some call God. It is not a promise but a possibility that can be experienced while doing the Imago Work.

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Helpful Tips

Practice: Your success in having the relationship you have always wanted or once had rested upon one thing—practising the Imago Dialogue. It is doing the Dialogue that will give you the experience needed for you at that moment to actually know what is possible while in the process. Learning yet another new concept, theory, or belief will only take you so far, but doing it has the power to change your life. 

Negativity: When you are inclined to criticise, teach, give advice or analyse your partner, STOP! Take a breath, cross the bridge back over to your partner's world, and return to the Dialogue.

Request to engage with Imago: If you would like your partner to experience Imago and receive its benefits, here is one good way to do it. Rather than coming from a place of judgment and desire to fix your partner, which triggers a defensive survival response that creates unsafety and disconnection, you express the request in this form, making it about yourself rather than your partner. 

You could say: "Have you had a second to talk about something valuable and exciting I have found that could help me become a better and more loving person? The Imago material resonates with me. I want to explore it with you and see how that could improve our relationship. Can you look at it and tell me what you think?

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How to Get Started with Imago Couples Therapy:

• If you're ready to explore how Imago Therapy can help you and your partner strengthen your bond and create a more fulfilling relationship, consider reaching out to me to schedule our first 1-hour session by visiting: www.re-connected.com/
• Visit Harville and Helen's official website for insights and articles by the founders of Imago Therapy: https://harvilleandhelen.com/
• Dive into their best-selling book, Getting the Love You Want – A Guide for Couples. It outlines practical strategies and exercises to enhance your relationship
• Find a certified Imago therapist near you through the Imago UK directory
• Discover workshops and events tailored to couples or individuals seeking to deepen their connection on the Official UK Imago Website.
• Watch Harville and Helen`s short video: "The Imago Process" using dialogue with appreciations.

• Watch Harville and Helen 60 min interview, including modelling Imago Dialogue: "Strenghten Your Relationship While Sheltering in Place".

Conclusion: Embracing Healing, Growth and Joy 

Imago Couples Therapy is not just about resolving conflicts; it's about transforming relationships into sources of profound healing and growth. By embracing the principles of Imago Therapy, compassionate Dialogue, understanding our pasts, nurturing emotional connection, removing all negativity and affirming each other, couples can experience joy together.

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