The Importance of Mutual Soothing in Couple Relationship

By Ho Shee Wai

Director / Registered Psychologist

The Importance of Mutual Soothing in Relationship

In addition to learning to self sooth, do you know it is important for couple to mutually sooth each other? Learn how and when to do mutual soothing in order to improve your relationship and marriage and reduce conflicts with Psychologists, Relationship Counsellors, and Psychotherapists of The Counselling Place Singapore.

Definition of Self Soothing

The origin of the words “Self Sooth” refer to the action of a young child ceasing to cry without being comforted by a parent or carer, in particular when left to fall asleep on their own. In mental health, it refers to a person being able to comfort themselves when unhappy or distressed. This is an important skills for an adult to self-regulate and in couple relationship, often we suggest for a person to self sooth when feeling emotionally flooded or overwhelmed.

Couple’s ability to sooth each other

What is less spoken about perhaps is the idea for couples in a relationship or marriage to attempt to sooth each other. This concept becomes especially important during the covid pandemic where couples are forced to be in close proximity for long period of time. Even post pandemic, our ability to sooth each other in our couple relationship and marriage is still important and relevant.

When couples are in close attachments such as partnerships, the two individuals begin to form one physiological unit. The brain is wired to seek out the support of our partner through emotional and physical closeness. In fact, our breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, and the hormones in our blood are co-regulated by our partners. The presence and support of a partner even has an impact on how our brains perceive danger.

A study by James Coan and colleagues measured the brain activity of married women after being told they’d receive an electric shock. fMRI results demonstrated that the hypothalamus, the body’s internal regulator, lit up in response when the women were waiting for the shock alone. When they were holding the hand of a stranger, such brain activity reduced. Remarkably, the women’s stress was barely detectable when they were holding their husband’s hand. Furthermore, less activation occurred among women who reported feeling more satisfied with their marriage compared to those who reported less marital satisfaction.

This study shows the connection between attachment and our physiological response to stress. When two people share an intimate relationship, they can help regulate each other’s emotional and physical wellbeing. When you’re upset and in need of a hug, receiving a hug from an acquaintance may help, but receiving a hug from your partner can actually bring you back to your calmness.

Given the strength of our partner’s ability to help sooth us in stressful time, why do not more couple do that? What tends to happen when one person is stressed in the couple is that the other person quickly escalated. This happens because stress is contagious – when our partners are stressed, we become stressed. Think back to an argument that escalated quickly. You might have “caught” one another's stress during the argument, which made you both feel even more frazzled and made you say things you wouldn't have otherwise said.

How to mutually sooth each other?

Therefore how can we turn this to be a positive coping (supportive) strategies for the couple instead of a negative coping (hostile) one?

1. Guy Boddenman’s 3-phase method.

Guy Boddenman describes a 3-phase method of offering support which will be applicable when you try to sooth each other. Each partner takes it in turn to take either the confiding role or the supportive role. Here’s the steps to learn before you apply it to your couple situation.

Phase 1: Exploration

In this first phase the confiding partner identifies a minor stressful experience that happened outside the relationship (i.e. something that’s not about your partner).

Taking about 15-30 minutes the confiding partner then tells the supportive partner about the experience following three guidelines:

• Describe the concrete aspects of the situation (what happened)

• Focus on the thoughts and emotions you felt at the time and afterwards

• Try to understand why the situation was so stressful i.e. what was it about it that touched a raw nerve.

The supportive partner listens to the confiding partner following three guidelines of his or her own:

• Listen actively, pay attention, use body language that shows you are paying attention

• Summarise important issues to show that you have understood

• Ask open-ended questions to get more information about the effect of the stressful event e.g. what was it about it that made you feel so upset?

Phase 2: Support

In this 2nd phase lasting about 10 minutes the supportive partner offers more direct support through:

• Offering emotional support in the form of empathy (e.g. ‘that sounds awful’), understanding (e.g. ‘I can see why that got to you at that time’), and reframing (e.g. ‘I wonder whether there’s another way of looking at the situation?’)

• Offering practical support, if appropriate (e.g. is there anything I can do that would help?’)

Phase 3: Feedback

In the 3rd phase, lasting about 5 minutes, the confiding partner tells the supportive partner:

• How satisfied he or she was with the support that was offered

• What else would have been needed to feel better and to cope more effectively with the stressful situation

At the end of phase 3 the partners swap roles and go through the three phases again.

After you have practice on non relationship issues, you can take the tentative step of supporting each other on relationship related issues.

2.       Physical Soothing

It is not unintentional the physiological aspect of stress was described earlier. Touch is an important method of soothing as it communicate with our reptilian brain. Some of the physical soothing techniques from the neuroscience of healing are called “self-havening” techniques which we not only can apply to ourself but also on our partner. At the most basic level, a simple hug and pat (on the back / shoulder) or just holding your partner’s hand is a quick way to provide the physical soothing.

3.       Couple’s or Marriage Counselling

A study has found that Long-standing couples seek couple counselling when they experience excessive stress due to the accumulation of chronic and acute stresses and limitations associated with the subjective feeling of being overwhelmed and helpless. The counselling process enables the partners to emotionally re-approach each other on the couple level, which in turn leads to the emotional calming of the individuals. The couples resume physical touch, which calms the bonding system of the partners and reduces negative emotional arousal.

 Why not utilize the resource The Counselling Place has in place for you to learn to co-regulate as a couple and mutually sooth each other during stressful or distressing times. Book in a session now.