Online Relationship & Couples Counselling — The RIPP Approach
If you're looking for
online relationship counselling, couples counselling or marriage counselling because repeated arguments, anger, resentment, withdrawal or other recurring problems are damaging your relationship, STOP RIPPing® offers a different way of understanding what is happening between you. Rather than simply focusing on individual disagreements, we look at the emotional process underneath the conflict — what each of you is reacting to, why the same patterns keep repeating and how those automatic responses can begin to change. Every relationship experiences conflict. Disagreements are a normal part of sharing a life with another person. The greatest damage rarely comes from the disagreement itself, but from what happens when two people become caught in emotional reactions they no longer seem able to control. Perhaps you find yourselves having the same argument over and over again. One of you becomes angry while the other withdraws or shuts down, or you both become angry and keep adding fuel to the fire. Small issues become much bigger than either of you intended, resentment builds, and you can become emotionally distant and no longer know how to find your way back to one another. Sometimes something much more serious has happened. An affair, betrayal, separation or threat of abandonment can produce extraordinarily powerful reactions and leave a relationship that once felt safe seeming completely unrecognisable.
Whatever has happened, I don't look for which one of you is the problem. I want to understand what is happening between you and within each of you.
Why Do We Keep Having the Same Arguments?
Many couples believe they have a communication problem. Communication certainly matters, but in my experience it is often not where the difficulty begins. Long before the words become hurtful, both people may already have entered an automatic emotional response. One person feels criticised while the other feels unheard. One becomes angry while the other withdraws. The withdrawal can then feel like rejection or indifference, creating more anger, while the anger makes the other person want to withdraw even further. Before long, neither person is really responding to what the other is trying to say. Both are reacting to what is happening inside themselves. This is why simply learning better words to use doesn't always change the relationship.
Changing the words alone rarely changes the pattern. Understanding what is happening beneath the words gives us an opportunity to change the way we respond.
Anger in Relationships™ (AIR)
Anger is one of the most powerful ways emotional pain can appear in a relationship. I use the term Anger in Relationships™ — AIR — for the patterns that can develop when anger, withdrawal and emotional reactivity begin feeding one another. One person may express their distress outwardly through anger, criticism, demands or confrontation, while the other responds inwardly by becoming quiet, emotionally distant or unavailable. Each person's reaction can then intensify the other's, until it can feel as though there is no room to breathe. AIR also represents the opportunity to come up for air — to take a breather from the anger and unhappiness, become grounded and create enough emotional space to see what is really happening. This isn't about avoiding the problem, suppressing anger or pretending everything is okay. It is about stepping out of the automatic reaction — and ultimately the RIPP Loop and RIPP Vortex — sufficiently to approach the problem from a calmer, more resourceful place. Instead of asking which person is causing the problem, we can begin looking at what is happening between you, what each of you is experiencing within it, and how you can begin to come up for AIR.
The RIPP Loop in Relationships
Over more than twenty-five years of working with people and their relationships, I began noticing a recurring emotional process beneath many apparently different conflicts. Something happens that we are in
resistance to. We experience what is happening as an
injustice — wrong or unfair. We feel
powerless to change it or make it different from what it is, and emotional
pain follows. I call this
RIPP — Resistance, Injustice, Powerlessness and Pain. In a relationship, both people can become caught in their own RIPP process at the same time. Your partner's reaction becomes your trigger, and your reaction then becomes theirs. Each person's attempt to protect themselves, be heard or understood produces another reaction, and the conflict gathers momentum. This is what I describe as the
RIPP Vortex. Neither person necessarily sets out to hurt the other. Often both are desperately trying to be heard, reassured, valued or loved, but the way their distress is expressed makes it increasingly difficult for either person to give the other what they need.
Recognising this process gives us a very different place to begin our work together.
Understand How RIPP Works
When Love and Anger Exist Together
Anger and love are not necessarily opposites. We can become most emotionally reactive with the people who matter most to us precisely because they matter so much. Rejection hurts more when we desperately want to feel wanted by the person we love. Being criticised, judged or ignored hurts more when it comes from someone whose love and approval matter deeply to us. Betrayal can be devastating because there was trust, and the possibility of losing someone we love can create enormous anger precisely because we don't want to lose them. This doesn't justify intimidation, manipulation, cruelty or abusive behaviour, and understanding an emotional response does not remove responsibility for it. But it can help us understand why relationship difficulties generate such powerful reactions. My approach is not about identifying the
'bad' partner and the 'good' partner. It is about understanding what is happening and helping each person take responsibility for their own responses without becoming trapped in blame.
Betrayal and Infidelity
Few experiences can trigger RIPP as powerfully as discovering an affair or another serious betrayal. The betrayed person may experience overwhelming
resistance to what has happened, an enormous sense of
injustice, and terrible
powerlessness because the past cannot be changed. Anger, questioning, checking, accusations and repeated attempts to understand why can follow. The other partner can become caught in powerful emotional responses too — shame, defensiveness, guilt, frustration, fear of losing the relationship or a desire to escape repeated confrontation. Each person's reaction can then intensify the other's distress. Whether a relationship ultimately survives a betrayal is not for me to decide. Sometimes the outcome is rebuilding the relationship; sometimes it is understanding what has happened well enough to make a different decision with greater clarity and less emotional destruction.
The important thing is that, as much as possible, decisions come from awareness and choice rather than from the middle of an emotional vortex.
Working Together
I work confidentially online with couples together, with each partner separately where that is helpful, or with just one person if their partner does not wish to take part. You don't need your partner's agreement to begin understanding your own emotional responses. Sometimes a significant change in one person's responses can begin to change the dynamics of the relationship. Our sessions are
practical, personal and nonjudgmental. I want to understand what is actually happening in your relationship, what each of you experiences and how the patterns between you have developed. The purpose isn't merely to teach you how to argue more politely. It is to help you understand
what takes over when your relationship is under pressure and discover different ways of responding to one another.
A Different Way Forward
The aim of STOP RIPPing in Relationships isn't simply to stop arguments, nor is it necessarily to keep every relationship together at all costs. It is to help you understand what is happening beneath anger, withdrawal, resentment and recurring conflict so that you have greater freedom in how you respond to one another. When those automatic reactions begin to lose their grip, there can be room again for listening, understanding, warmth and genuine choice. Sometimes this helps two people rediscover one another and go forward stronger than before. Sometimes it helps them make difficult decisions with greater clarity.
Either can represent meaningful change. 
