The Profile Dossier: Orna Guralnik, the Psychoanalyst Fixing Your Relationships

"To learn how to suspend your judgement, hold it lightly, then watch it evolve."

Jul 28, 2021

On the internet, we see the flawlessly filtered and carefully curated relationships that seemingly smitten couples want you to see. But what happens when you dig past the superficial and deep into the raw messiness of our relationships?

You may end up on the couch of psychotherapist Orna Guralnik.

Guralnik is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who is the unlikely star of a show called Couples Therapy. The series gives the viewer a glimpse into Guralnik's process that guides and nudges reluctant partners to share old wounds and deep insecurities. The footage is sometimes hard to watch, but it allows us to recognize parts of ourselves in each participant.

Showrunners Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg, and Eli Despres filmed four couples over 20 weeks of one-hour therapy sessions, then edited down and stitched together each couple’s journey into nine half-hour episodes.

In each session, we see Guralnik listen intently, challenge assumptions, and sometimes push her patients to understand things about themselves they've long avoided. Through the show, Guralnik says, she hopes to help people "think about the kind of couple’s dances that we all do — that we get into repetitive cycles.”

Guralnik views couples as mini political systems. One of the pulls between partners is often centered around the need for power. She says that power struggles often mask other issues that people have trouble accessing, like hidden vulnerabilities or insecurities. Power struggles can be organized around gender politics, class, race, or privilege.

But ultimately, Guralnik believes in the good of people. In her office, she sees couples with good intentions who genuinely want to become better for their partners, families, and society as a whole.

“People really do want to do better — they want to transcend, they want to grow, there’s this underlying push toward health, connectedness, betterment,” Guralnik said. “I really feel as a therapist and an analyst, you get to tap into the underlying forces that mend humanity.”

Here's what we can learn about ourselves from Guralnik's work in the therapy room.

READ.

On the complexity of couples therapy: When asked about how often she sees couples that she thinks should definitely break up, Guralnik says "a very small proportion." She believes that most people don't want to be stuck in a cycle of misery, and they proactively want to work things out. "I don’t have fixed ideas about which couples should stay together or not," she says. "People live very complicated lives in all sorts of arrangements, and I really don’t think one size fits all." In this Q&A, we learn about how she helps her patients make sense of their relationships and of themselves.

WATCH.

On helping couples resolve conflict: In the season premiere of Couples Therapy, you meet the four couples that come to Guralnik's office in hopes of resolving some deep-seated conflicts. In it, couples dive into their sex lives, their childhoods, and their financial insecurities. Guralnik listens (really listens) and guides them to better understand each other’s perspectives.

LISTEN.

On love during a pandemic: The COVID pandemic presented unique challenges to even the most committed and strong relationships. If you've felt overwhelmed in the last year, you're not alone. But Guralnik suggests asking yourself: "Is my feeling of overwhelm coming from a rational place or an emotional place?" In this conversation Guralnik discusses COVID-19, quarantining, and all other relationship anxieties.

On the source of your issues: The lockdowns of the last year have exacerbated a lot of conflict for some couples. Guralnik often asks her patients to think about the source of great aggravation with their partner. What is it that would lead you to break up? "Often, the source of aggravation comes from a state of some kind of unhappiness that comes from somewhere else, and because their partner is right there in front of them, it's very easy to project a lot of one's own stuff onto their partner."

On normalizing therapy: So many of our unhealthy adult patterns are childhood wounds we continue to play out with those closest to us. There could be abandonment issues, fear of dependency, fear of intimacy, anxious attachment, and so much more. By going to therapy, Guralnik says you are investing in your own mental health. "Ultimately, if you do the work, you'll be able to do good in the world," she says.

TECHNIQUES TO TRY.

Structure time together (and alone): Guralnick is a big proponent of structure — structure in your day as well as structure in your relationships. In a time like COVID when everyone was confined to the same space, she says you need to artificially manufacture time spent together as well as time spent alone. "You might even create situations that mimic commute, like going somewhere, moving spaces," she says. "Most places, you can still go out for a walk. It sounds very artificial, but it actually works. Structured time is important so that you set a schedule and keep to it." Remember, she says, in times of uncertainty, boundaries and variety in our days are very important.

Find the nuance: One of the biggest traps couples fall into, Guralnick says, is that they take on certain roles in the relationship. “Polarization is a way to reduce confusion by breaking things into black and white,” she says. For instance, you may label yourself the anxious one while your partner is the brave one. This forces you to forget that you are both complex human beings who are capable of holding a multiplicity of opinions. Guralnick recommends that when faced with a situation where there appears to be no middle ground to give yourself and your partner the space necessary to figure out the nuance of your feelings. “Give each other room to figure out the range of reactions you’re having. People might look like they have one perspective, but they’re usually quite internally conflicted about many issues,” she says. “Then allow each person in the couple to really express what their concerns are, without crowding or trying to influence." You might actually find that you agree on more than you previously thought.

Learn to tolerate confusion and anxiety: During the pandemic, many couples had to confront big, existential questions they hadn't necessarily had to grapple with before, like: Where do we want to live? How much time do we spend at work? How much time do we spend with our kids? For some people, these questions were make-or-break, but Guralnick says they don't have to be. “When people get anxious about change, they tend to restrict," she says. "Give yourself the breadth, the time, and the space to tolerate a level of confusion. Don’t rush to make it clear. And don’t rush to go back to something habitual simply because it makes you feel safe." Take the hard times as an opportunity to rethink your approach and use it as a way to implement positive change.

Use 'thirdness' to diffuse heated arguments: When you're in the middle of a conflict and unable to think clearly, what you really need is an objective perspective of a third person. Enter a therapist. But what can you do when you don't have the resources or the ability to enlist a licensed professional? During an argument, many couples are locked into a "you, me, you, me" mentality. To break out of it, you need to be able to "observe your dynamic from a perch," Guralnick says. That takes a lot of maturity and empathy. "Thirdness" is when you're able to stop, take a step back, and look at your actions from another, more objective lens. “It requires that each person grapple with the reality that their narrative is deeply subjective and influenced by a multitude of not necessarily conscious factors,” she says. “A ‘perch’ is created when the couple can observe their process rather than be consumed by it.”

QUOTES TO REMEMBER.

“Sometimes you get to witness people transcend, like a phoenix rising, to do better than the cards they were dealt.”

“People do better with the truth than without it."

"To learn how to suspend your judgment, hold it lightly, then watch it evolve."

The Profile