Aditi Shrikant
When psychologist Caroline Fleck first learned about the “rapoport technique” she thought it would be a “disaster.”
The strategy, developed by renowned psychologist John Gottman and used during couples therapy, asks one person to express their perspective and the other to write down what their partner is saying and then read it back. If they get parts wrong, the speaker is allowed to correct them. Then, they switch.
Fleck, who is an adjunct clinical instructor at Stanford University and author of the upcoming book “Validation,” couldn’t see how the exercise was supposed to help people in a heated argument.
“I am basically intervening in the middle of the conflict to get people to do a writing assignment,” she said. “I thought, ‘This is not going to go well.'”
To her surprise, it was extremely successful. “It’s one of the most powerful tools in my therapy arsenal,” she says.
When people are required to slowdown and actually hear their partner’s side, they are validating their partner’s experience. And that, Fleck says, is often what’s missing when couples are trying to find their way out of a stalemate.
‘They start really listening’
Validation is “widely misunderstood,” Fleck says. It’s often confused for…
