This interview is with Figs O'Sullivan, Psychotherapist & Couples Counselor, Empathi.
To start, for readers meeting you on Featured for the first time, how do you describe your work as a Psychotherapist & Couples Counselor and the kinds of clients you most often help?
I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and the founder of Empathi, but I often say my number one qualification is that I am a wounded human being myself. I have the “clichéd Irish story.” I am the son of an alcoholic father and a heartbroken mother, so I understand the desperate longing for connection from the inside out.
I view my work not just as clinical psychology, but as a craft. I describe my daily life as running into burning buildings where couples are throwing gasoline on the fire because they are in pain. My goal isn’t just to teach communication skills; it is to facilitate an emotional experience where partners move from feeling threatened to feeling safe. I help them see that they aren’t fighting each other; they are fighting a “Common Enemy”: the negative cycle or “Waltz of Pain” they co-create.
I most often work with high achievers, founders, and the “movers and shakers” of the world. These are people who have cracked the code on professional success but feel like their nervous systems are crashing when it comes to love. They are usually stuck in a dynamic where one partner is loudly protesting for connection (the Relentless Lover) and the other is quietly withdrawing to keep the peace (the Reluctant Lover). I help them move from two separate stories of suffering into one shared system of connection.
What led you into the mental health care field and ultimately into attachment-focused, emotionally focused, and body-centered approaches to couples therapy?
The real answer is that I am the “cliched Irish story.” I am the son of an alcoholic father and a heartbroken mother.
I grew up in a home where there was a lot of shame, anxiety, and instability. My father carried “The Collapse,” addiction and disappearance, while my mother carried the weight of the world. I didn’t have the sense of belonging or safety that every child needs. I spent my childhood longing to be part of a family that felt solid.
So, my entry into this field wasn’t an academic choice; it was a survival strategy.
At first, I tried to run in the opposite direction. I thought if I made enough money, I could outrun the shame. I moved to San Francisco in the nineties and became a stockbroker. But I learned the hard way that trying to fix an internal wound with external success is like eating M&Ms for dinner. It gives you a rush, but it offers no nourishment.
At thirty-three, I quit everything. I moved to Esalen, the Harvard of the human potential movement in Big Sur. I lived there for a year and a half, scrubbing pots and immersing myself in experiential psychotherapy, Gestalt, and dance. That is where I learned that you cannot think your way out of pain; you have to feel your way through it. My body was the “first ledger.” It had recorded every moment of terror and shame, and I had to learn how to inhabit it again.
Why Couples Therapy? I always say I run into twenty burning buildings a week. Most therapists avoid couples work because it is intense, chaotic, and loud. But I love it because it is real. I was drawn to it because the thing I wanted most, to be a husband and a father, was the thing I was worst at. I had to learn how to do this so I could survive my own life.
Why Attachment, Emotionally Focused, and Body-Centered? These are the only things that actually work when the stakes are high. Attachment Theory is the biology of connection. It reframed my “neediness” not as a flaw, but as a panic response to disconnection. Emotionally Focused Therapy gave me a map to understand that couples aren’t fighting about dishes or money; they are fighting for their emotional survival. And body-centered work taught me that you can talk about your problems for ten years and nothing will change, but if you can feel the vulnerability in your body in the present moment, the nervous system actually rewires.
My number one qualification isn’t my license; it is that I am a wounded healer. These approaches helped me build the family I dreamed of as a lonely kid in Ireland.
With that background in mind, when you begin with a new couple, what do you focus on in the first few sessions to establish safety and momentum?
When I start with a new couple, I often say I feel like a firefighter running into a burning building. Inside that building, there are two people who love each other, but they are throwing gasoline on the fire because they are in pain.
My first job isn’t to teach communication skills or solve the “problem of the day.” My first job is to stop the bleeding and help them survive the fire long enough to realize they aren’t enemies.
Here is exactly what I focus on:
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From Two Stories to One System. When a couple walks in, they usually have two competing narratives. Partner A says, “I am hurting and you are doing it to me.” Partner B says the exact same thing. If we stay there, we get nowhere. Safety comes when I help them merge those two separate “I” stories into one shared “We” story. I help them see they are co-creating a cycle, a “Waltz of Pain,” where both are hurting and both are reacting in ways that unintentionally hurt the other. I tell them: “The problem is not you. The problem is not your partner. The problem is this cycle. It’s the two of you against the cycle.”
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Validating the Protector Parts. Momentum dies if anyone feels shamed. So I validate their reactivity. If someone is yelling or withdrawing, I don’t tell them to stop. I tell them it makes sense. To the yeller: “Of course you get loud! You are terrified you aren’t being heard.” To the withdrawer: “Of course you go quiet! You are terrified of making it worse.” When they feel understood rather than judged, their nervous systems settle. That is the beginning of safety.
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De-escalation is the First Mountain. I set the expectation that the first stage is the steepest part. We aren’t fixing the marriage in session one. We are just trying to get to a place where we can say, “Wow, look how painful this is for both of us. We matter so much to each other.” If we can get to that shared sadness, the fighting stops and the bonding begins.
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Tying a Bow. I never let a couple leave a first session bleeding. I summarize what happened: “You came in fighting, but look what you did. You realized you aren’t enemies. You’re just stuck.” And I give them my signature line: “No one has ever died in a first session with me. You will survive this.”
I don’t try to make them feel better immediately. I help them feel their feelings better. Once they see the system, they stop fighting each other and start fighting for the relationship. That is where the momentum comes from.
Staying with early change strategies, what is one specific communication exercise you consistently use to help partners de-escalate conflict and increase emotional attunement?
The one exercise I come back to again and again is what I call “The Scrummage.” It is an empathy exercise designed to build the muscle of connection in a safe container before applying it to the high-stakes conflict of the relationship.
The Rationale: Scrummage Before Game Day. In early therapy, couples are often too escalated to handle their actual relationship issues without rupture. You have to scrummage first. You practice on a Wednesday with no opposition so you can be good on a Sunday on game day. The goal is to move partners from talking about a story to being in the experience with a witness, creating a moment of connection without defense.
The Setup. One partner shares a short story of hurt from their past that does not involve the other partner. Something like, “My truck was taken away when I was five.” Then I guide them to pivot from history to the present moment: “As I remember those feelings then, I notice I feel sad right now.” That pivot is everything. It brings the vulnerability into the room live.
The Listener’s Sequence. The other partner does not problem-solve. They follow a strict progression I call RAVE.
- Reflect: Repeat back what was heard, emphasizing the feelings. “I heard you say…”
- Accept: Explicitly accept the reality of the experience. “I accept that is your experience. It is true that you felt sad then and feel sad now.”
- Validate: Normalize it. “Of course you would feel that way.”
- Empathize (Feel With): This is the crucial step. The Listener shares their own felt response. “Hearing that, I feel tenderness toward you. I want to scoop you up.”
Why It Works. This exercise creates what I call Empathy Squared, and eventually Empathy Cubed, where both partners feel the sadness simultaneously. By practicing on safe content, the couple builds the neurological capacity to eventually apply this same sequence to their own impossible moments of conflict. It moves them from two separate suffering bubbles into one shared suffering bubble. That is the definition of de-escalation. That is where the repair begins.
Because shame often derails connection, how do you help partners notice and interrupt shame-driven reactions during hard conversations?
Shame is the silent killer of connection. When shame hits during a hard conversation, the nervous system instantly moves to survive. Partners don’t even know it is happening; they just react. My job is to help them catch it in real time.
First, recognize the Compass of Shame. When shame floods in, the body moves in one of four directions:
- Attack Other: blaming, yelling, criticizing.
- Attack Self: collapsing inward, “I’m pathetic; I always mess this up.”
- Withdraw: going quiet, leaving the room, shutting down.
- Avoid: distracting, intellectualizing, minimizing.
The interruption starts when partners realize these are not who they are. They are Protector Parts trying to manage the agony of feeling unlovable or unsafe.
Second, practice Reflexive Participation. Instead of acting out the protector strategy, I teach partners three internal movements:
- Know you are affected. Stop the momentum and acknowledge the physiological shift. “I notice I am affected.”
- Describe how you are affected. Use embodied language, not blame. “My chest is tight.” “My stomach dropped.” “I feel the urge to run.”
- Feel the affect. Turn toward the feeling instead of running from it. Underneath the anger or withdrawal is almost always shame, fear, or grief. Allow yourself to feel it without acting on it.
Third, translate the Protector. Once you interrupt the reaction, you translate the protector language into vulnerable language. When I look mad, I am actually feeling scared because it looks like I don’t matter to you. The pursuer learns to say, “I’m criticizing you, but underneath I feel lonely and I’m scared you’re not there for me.” The withdrawer learns to say, “I’m going quiet not because I don’t care, but because I feel like I’m failing you and I don’t know how to fix it.”
Finally, see the System. Depersonalize the conflict. If one person is reacting, both are hurting. My hurt triggers my reaction, which triggers your hurt, which triggers your reaction. It is an infinity loop. When they see that, the fight shifts from “You vs. Me” to “Us vs. The Cycle.” That is where shame loses its grip and connection begins again.
To anchor those shifts in the body, which body-centered or mindfulness practice do you find most effective for in-the-moment nervous system regulation during conflict?
The most effective practice I use for in-the-moment nervous system regulation during conflict is what I call “Coming Home Through Breath.” It is simple, but it is profound.
Notice the Contraction. The first thing that happens when you feel threatened is that you stop breathing. Your body contracts. You are not just facing an inconvenience; your nervous system is facing an existential threat. The first step is simply noticing that you have stopped breathing and that your body has braced itself against the moment. Most people skip right past this. They launch into fight or flight without ever registering that their body has just locked up.
Infuse the Body with Breath. You cannot think your way out of a limbic hijack; you have to inhabit your way out. The practice is to come back home into your own experience. You breathe into the contraction. You breathe into the tight chest or the hollow stomach. You use the breath to tell your body that you are here and that you are not leaving it. This is not deep breathing as a relaxation trick; this is using breath to re-inhabit a body you just abandoned.
The Inquiry: The Spirit of Aloha. As you breathe, you hold a specific internal question from Gestalt practice: “How can I be with what is, with breath, in the spirit of Aloha?” Aloha here means everything all at once: hello, goodbye, love, and welcome. It asks if you can welcome the anxiety, the anger, or the shame without trying to fix it or push it away. You are just breathing with what is true right now.
The Goal: Experience of Self. This practice shifts you from “Story of Other,” what your partner is doing to you, back to “Experience of Self,” what is happening inside you. By anchoring in the breath and the body, you stop abandoning yourself to fight the threat. You become an observer of your own experience rather than a victim of it. That is the stable ground required for repair. You cannot connect with another person if you have left your own body; you have to come home first.
When the rupture is an affair, what sequence of repair steps do you guide couples through to rebuild trust in a sustainable way?
Affair recovery requires a distinct deviation from standard couples therapy. While my general model focuses on the “We,” affair recovery must begin with safety and one-way repair before the couple can return to systemic work.
Close the Door. You cannot repair a relationship while a third party is still in the room. An affair shatters the two core beliefs a nervous system needs to rest: I am your priority and I am enough for you. The betrayer must close the door completely on the affair partner and be willing to show their partner, repeatedly, that the door is closed. We must prioritize safety over forgiveness. You cannot skip ahead to “moving on.”
One-Way Repair. In standard work, I teach that there are no bad guys and we look at the cycle together. But after an affair, the injury is not symmetrical. One person dropped a bomb. The other was standing in the explosion. So we pause the mutual responsibility work. The traffic flows one way: the betrayed partner expresses the injury, and the betrayer witnesses it without defense. If we ask the betrayed partner to own their part too early, it feels like gaslighting.
Managing the Cocktail of Shame. The biggest obstacle to repair is often the betrayer’s shame. When they see the pain they caused, they collapse into “I am a monster,” which makes the moment about them. We need to shift from 100% “I feel bad about myself” to 80% “my heart is breaking for you.” The betrayer must learn to tolerate the heat of their own guilt so they can stay present for their partner’s pain.
Creating the Missing Experience. This is the core of the healing. During the affair, the betrayed partner was alone, gaslit, or invalidated. The repair requires creating the opposite experience now. The betrayer sits in the fire. They listen to the full extent of the hurt, and they do not look away. They say, “Yes, it was that bad. I see what I did. I am here.” That is the proof of the work of repair.
Re-entering the System. Only after safety and validation are established can we look at the “Us.” We examine what connection vacuum existed before the affair. We move from “You did this to me” to “Us vs. The History.” We grieve the scar rather than trying to erase it.
Extending this to the family system, how do you adapt your couples work to support adolescents during grief or major life transitions without sidelining the partnership?
You do not sideline the partnership to help the child. You strengthen the partnership so that the child has solid ground to stand on while they fall apart.
The couple is the base layer. In a family under stress, parents often collapse into being peers to their children because they lack their own stability. The partnership must function as what I call “healthy ossified ground.” Not rigidity. Reliability. The subsystem that is most important to be strong, the anchor for all other subsystems, is the two parents. When an adolescent is experiencing grief or major transition, their world is melting. If the parents’ relationship is also melting, the child has nowhere to land. The couple must show: we are solid, we are a team, we can hold your chaos because we are holding each other.
One-way traffic. In standard couples work, the goal is mutual empathy. When working with adolescents, the traffic flows one way. The parents are not equals with the child. They must metabolize their own anxiety and grief within the partnership so they can offer a regulated nervous system to the teen. If a parent shares their vulnerable side with the adolescent, it forces the child to become the caregiver. The parent must say to the partner: “Hold me so I can hold them.”
Decoding the protector parts. A grieving teen rarely looks sad. They look angry, bored, or checked out. They slam doors or hide in their room. Parents must see past the behavior. Instead of saying, “You are being disrespectful,” try saying, “I see that you are hurting. You are protecting yourself because this transition is scary. That makes sense.” The reaction is a biological protest against instability, not defiance.
Modeling repair. The most powerful tool for an adolescent is not advice but witnessing repair between parents. When parents rupture and then find their way back in front of the teen, it teaches them that disconnection is not the end. It proves that “us” survives the storm. That gives the adolescent permission to be messy, knowing they will not be exiled.
Naming the change. During transitions, the parents must name the new reality together. “We are moving. We are grieving. The water feels different. But the glass, our commitment to caring for you, has not broken.”
You support the adolescent by being the adults. You show them you are the container and they are the content. Strong enough to hold their grief, their rage, and their silence without cracking.
Looking at high-stress contexts, what boundaries or rituals do you recommend to your executive clients to protect their relationship from chronic work demands?
For executives, I do not recommend “balance.” Balance is a myth. I recommend containers and rituals that help you shift from your work identity to your relationship identity.
The Air Lock. High performers often live in what I call “The Penthouse”—strategy, control, fixing—and they bring that energy home where it destroys intimacy. Before you walk through the front door, you need a physiological reset. Take two to five minutes in the car or the driveway. Drop your shoulders. Breathe. Thank “The Bull” for his service today and tell him he can stand down. When you walk in, go to your partner first. Before the kids, the dog, or the mail. Look them in the eyes. Make physical contact. Signal to their nervous system: I am here, you are my priority. Everything else relies on the strength of that subsystem.
The Stopwatch Session. Executives live by the calendar yet leave their relationship to chance. Set a timer. Ten minutes: Partner A speaks on “What is it like to be me right now?” Partner B only witnesses. Ten minutes: switch. Then ten minutes to process together: “What was it like to share? What was it like to listen?” No logistics. No kid talk. No work talk. This forces you out of Fixer mode and into Witness mode. It is the most efficient way to rebuild the emotional bond in a busy week.
Name Work as a Competing Attachment. Stop pretending work is just a logistical demand. For the nervous system, work is a third party. When you need to check your phone, name it. “I am feeling anxious about a deal, and I need to check this email. I am going to step away for twenty minutes and then I will be back with you.” When you check your phone mid-sentence, you trigger an abandonment response. By naming it and containing it, you reduce the threat.
The Appreciation Exercise. High performers are trained to scan for gaps and errors. When that optimization mindset turns toward the partner, it feels like criticism. Every night, share one specific thing you appreciated about your partner and what it meant to you. This retrains the brain to scan for safety and connection rather than problems to solve.
Sovereign Ground. Create physical spaces where work is not allowed. The bedroom is sovereign ground. No phones. No laptops. If your partner looks over and sees the blue light of a screen, their body registers a third party in the bed. Protect the space where co-regulation happens.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
If I could leave you with one thing, it is this: the relationship is the unit of survival. Not the individual. The relationship.
Everything I have shared here comes from the same place: a lonely, heartbroken kid in Ireland who wanted a family that felt safe. That kid grew up, made every mistake you can make in love, and then dedicated his life to understanding why we hurt the people we need the most.
What I have learned, in thousands of hours sitting with couples in pain, is that love is not the problem. Love is always there. The problem is that we do not know how to stay present when love feels dangerous. We run. We fight. We shut down. We abandon ourselves and then wonder why we feel abandoned by our partner.
The work I do is not about fixing people. It is about helping two brave humans see that they are not enemies. They are two nervous systems trying to find safety in each other and getting lost along the way. When they stop fighting each other and start fighting for the relationship, everything changes.
I am not the smartest therapist in the room. I am not the most polished. But I am the guy who will run into the burning building with you. I have sat in that fire myself. I know what it costs to stay. And I know that staying is worth it.
If any of this resonated with you, if you are in that fire right now, reach out. You do not have to do this alone. That is the whole point.