It has been another week where once again I was reminded of how central regulation is in couple therapy. The delicate balance is always the same: enough emotional intensity for something meaningful to shift, but not so much that one or both partners slip outside their window of tolerance. Most sessions live in the tension between those two edges.

The reality is that when activation spikes too high, the work becomes almost impossible. You can structure the session, slow the tempo, and redirect conversation, yet one or both partners may still be unable to stay within a workable range. In those moments, the conversation is no longer constructive; it is compounding injury. You find yourself constantly trying to bring the exchange back into the optimal band of intensity, only to watch it drift toward the same spiralling every time.

This is where the work becomes reactive. Not because the couple resists insight, but because the intervention itself pushes people back into their own skin. Instead of staying absorbed in interpreting or attacking the other, they are forced to sit with what is happening inside them. That shift is deeply uncomfortable, and it is often the act of slowing down and naming activation that triggers even more activation.

What I keep learning is that the work is reactive because it asks partners to inhabit themselves while staying in contact with each other. That demand is unfamiliar and destabilising, and it makes regulation not just something to support but the terrain you are actually working in.