How difficult (or easy) are I-Statements to use? I mean - they’re simple, in theory. So, the caveat here is that the formula might be straightforward and simple, but implementation isn’t necessarily easy. When you’re in the thick of frustration with your partner(s), it’s legitimately hard to fully engage your cerebral cortex (i.e., thinking structures in your brain) enough so that you can fully think about what you’re saying in the moment. When the emotional centers in our brain are loud, they overpower the thinking structures (which is why it’s hard to do this in the moment, although still simple in theory).

But also no, therapists don’t just listen. We listen, we encourage, we educate, we advocate, we call bullshit when we see it, we ask pointed questions designed to get you to think deeply about yourself, your life, your actions, your relationships, and we celebrate with you when you achieve what you’ve set out to achieve. And this is all done with our own theoretical and foundational groundings, meaning that we have frameworks that influence our work, how we understand problems, how we see the cycle of change unfold, and how we approach therapy. Listening is the prerequisite to good therapy, but it’s not, by any means, the only ingredient.