Couples Therapists Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt Revolutionized Couples Therapy, Teach Dialogue Communication Skills Worldwide

Aug 14

Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D., are internationally respected couple's therapists, speakers, and New York Times bestselling authors. Together, they have written 10 books with more than four million copies sold, including the timeless classic, Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples.

Back in the 1970s, couples therapy was just in its infancy… and not very effective. People in pain would come to Harville’s couple's therapy practice, but the success rate of their staying together was less than half. His own marriage to Helen also was not going well. The power struggle between their two strong personalities devolved into loud arguments. They realized they needed to try something different and noticed that if they would both stop talking at once and develop a system for listening to each other, they could make progress toward resolving their conflict.

Harville took that process into his practice, turning the couples he counseled from parallel talking with him to dialogue with each other. Over a several year period of refining the process, he realized success rates were improving dramatically.

‘We learned the way they talked to each other determined how they related to each other. You don’t solve things with aggression or put downs,” he said. He realized a couple’s problems were a function of the quality of their conversation, and the quality of their conversation determined the quality of their relationship. Rather than focusing on how to solve their problems, he changed the way they talked about them which led to their learning how to solve their problems themselves.

The process involves three steps: mirror, validate, and empathize.

In practice: one person talks until he/she is finished. The other one then mirrors back what they’ve heard and asks, “Is there more?” The speaker has a chance to add details until they’ve had their say, which deepens the conversation. Key phrases include, “Did I get it?” which helps check for accuracy and makes the speaker feel heard.

The listener then validates their partner’s view. “I can see how you are thinking.” This does not mean they agree, but just that they understand the other’s opinion. Then the listener shows care and concern for the other’s feelings – empathy. Then they switch so the other gets a turn.

“Everybody needs to be seen, heard and valued,” Harville said. “We help them understand their problems are not their problems … Their problems are just challenges they have to meet. The problem is how they talk about their problems. I tell them, ‘You get to talk differently, and let me tell you why.’ When you use monologue (talking at someone), and you are frustrated because you think you are right and they are wrong, your adrenal gland releases the hormones cortisol and adrenalin, which elevate your heart rate and blood pressure. Brain research performed by the Mayo Clinic reported that when people use dialogue, it engages the left-brain hemisphere and the pre-frontal cortex that releases peaceful chemicals that result in the experience of safety and connecting. Safe connecting results in better health, both mentally and physically.

Helen, with her own degree in psychotherapy, added the component of healing from a childhood emotional wound to the dialogue process. Eventually they named this new type of therapy, Imago, after the Latin word for image. Imago Relationship Therapy started gaining traction in the 1980s. Clients began to function better and use it outside of their romantic relationships with children and colleagues.

“Everybody needs to be seen, heard and valued.”

— Dr. Harville Hendrix

The couple was inspired to take their practices “from the clinic to the culture.” They published Getting the Love You Want in 1988, (recently revised in 2019) which became a best seller and caught the attention of Oprah Winfrey – the host of the most popular daytime television program at that time. Over the following 20 years, Harville was a guest on her show 17 times.

In 2010, Harville and Helen met with a group of well-respected relationship scientists (including the Gottmans) to discuss ways to make relationship education more accessible to the public, allowing people to learn these teachable skills before they were in crisis. The meeting was the birth of the organization, Safe Conversations®. The process is designed to “help people learn how to talk without criticism, listen without judgment, and connect beyond differences.”

“By shifting the culture from ‘competition between individuals’ to a relational culture where ‘everyone collaborates,’ the spread of universal connection and equality can occur,” according to the organization.

They developed a leader training program and engaged the community, initially piloting the project in Dallas.

2,400 adults and 500 children attended workshops beginning in 2015. Sixty mental health providers and 150 community members volunteered. 100+ city organizations and churches partnered. In 2016, Safe Conversations® streamed a live event at which 2,100 parents and kids attended. 15,000 watched online from 38 countries, according to the website.

Now, Safe Conversations® has trained leaders in communities world, sharing the proven process in communities everywhere. People can access its information for personal or corporate use at Safeconversations.com.

The organization initially offered four-hour life skills workshops online that explain and train people to use the dialogue process in any setting “It's not natural to slow down and take steps to understand another person, but these skills can be taught.” They are available to corporations, congregations, and schools.

They realized that while Safe Conversations® offers basic skills to help couples connect (with application to any relationship, intimate or otherwise), sometimes people need to go deeper with a therapist to walk through issues that need more attention. Harville and Helen founded Imago Relationships International, a non-profit organization that has trained thousands of therapists and educators in countries around the world.

The website HarvilleandHelen.com offers several ways people can benefit from the process. They offer a six-week online course called Couplehood: A New Way to Love. Those attending the workshop will watch Imago Relationship Therapists, along with Harville and Helen, demonstrate how to talk and listen in this new way. They’ll hear couples sharing their relationship challenges and witness them using the dialogue process in action.

Harville and Helen also personally host live Getting the Love You Want workshops in the Northeast several times a year. In these couples’ workshops they begin by orienting attendees to the psychology of marriage and the theory of the unconscious selection process.

“People wonder, ‘How did I wind up with this person anyway?’” Harville said. “Why did the person of your dreams become the person of your nightmares?” He’s found people subconsciously are drawn to someone similar to the person from childhood who didn’t meet the needs they had as a child. “You’ll look for what you didn’t get all your life,” he said. The brain wants what it didn’t get, and it transfers that need to the intimate partner. Ironically, because the mate exhibits similar characteristics to the caretaker who disappointed them, the spouse is the least likely person to be able to meet those needs.

“People keep waiting in deficit,” he explained. Each is trying to get the one who is not capable of meeting their needs to do the impossible, which creates a power struggle. Once he explains the situation, Harville and Helen teach couples to apply the dialogue system to resolve conflict.

“Your partner is not your problem,” Harville said. “Your partner is triggering a memory of deprivation from your childhood.” The workshop helps people identify the unmet need and recognize how it keeps showing up in their marriage.

They also introduce the idea of expressing appreciation – noticing something positive about their spouse and using dialogue to tell them. Appreciation goes hand-in-hand with declaring the relationship a zero-negativity zone. Harville teaches participants how to convert a frustration into a request. “Behind every frustration is a wish,” he said. “Ask for what you want instead of complaining about what you aren’t getting.”

Lastly, the curriculum concludes by teaching couples to recognize the other’s intrinsic value. Once someone can look through eyes of wonder at their partner, they have reached a place of real love. Harville’s found if one of the spouses can get to that point, the other will reciprocate. “It’s a totally different relationship,” he said.

Over the past decades, Harville and Helen have revised the process and have seen transformative results in couples who attend.

Helen remembered a couple that remained quiet for most of the workshop until the closing event. The husband stood up, brought his wife to the center of the room and said that the workshop had been their marriage’s last chance. “I came here with my biggest enemy, and I am leaving with my best friend,” Helen reported he said. They ripped up their divorce papers!

Helen and Harville dream of bettering the world through the Safe Conversations dialogue. The group started corporate workshops in 2019 to improve communication between coworkers. In 2020 Safe Conversations formed as a for-profit public benefit corporation called Quantum Connections, to better meet the needs of those all over the globe seeking relationship.

Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt

Harville and Helen have introduced the process in South Korea and across the continent of Africa. They hope to spark a global social movement. They are in discussion with both the United Nations and the Vatican to see how those entities might incorporate the Safe Conversations model to influence large numbers of people worldwide.

They estimate that by 2050, the world will contain 9.8 billion people. If they can train 30%, 2.4 billion people, to use dialogue effectively, the entire world will have changed the way they communicate and resolve conflict. What an amazing goal!