Corrective Experiencing as a Common Factor in Couple Therapy: Creating New and Positive Emotions in Relationships

Common factors are therapeutic elements that transcend models, occur in many settings, and help facilitate change in clients. A key common factor in individual psychotherapy is corrective experiencing, which includes interactions where clients deeply experience emotions in new and unexpected ways. Corrective experiencing can involve helping clients (a) process challenging emotional issues that have been avoided, (b) express emotions in a deeper way, and (c) regulate emotions. Although corrective experiencing is well recognized as a common factor in individual therapy, it has not received attention as a common factor in systemic therapy. However, almost all couple therapy models include interventions that facilitate corrective experiencing, such as expressing and responding to emotions with more regulation, having constructive discussions, and preventing escalation. In this paper we discuss relational corrective experiencing as a common factor in couple therapy and share how a better understanding and application of the processes of corrective experiencing can help clinicians utilize this specific skill across couple therapy models and interventions.