During our recent live call with Resmaa Menakam, the renowned author and therapist shared hard-earned wisdom from his many years of working with couples, unpacking several key concepts of his framework, and speaking directly to many of the challenges therapists can face in this role.

In this 6-minute clip from the event, Resmaa discusses the difficulty of holding space for intense emotional exchanges between couples without reverting to offering quick solutions to diffuse the situation. With practice and personal inquiry, he says, it’s possible to “thicken your container” in order to tolerate the transformative heat that can arise in couples therapy. 

For those who would like to watch the recording of the full one hour live call with Resmaa Menakem and host Ayo Yetunde, you can do so here.

We also wanted to remind you that a new book from Resmaa Menakem on the topic of relationships — Monsters in Love: Why Your Partner Sometimes Drives You Crazy, and What to Do About It — will be coming out in a couple of weeks, and is now available for pre-order.

And, in case you haven’t checked it out yet, we also recommend the new book from Ayo Yetunde (who was the host during our call with Resmaa) on community-oriented models of wellbeing, Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, which is available now.

About Resmaa Menakem

Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, SEP, is a healer, longtime therapist, and a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in the healing of racialized trauma. He is also the founder of the Cultural Somatics Institute, a cultural trauma navigator, and a communal provocateur and coach. Resmaa is best known as the author of the New York Times best-seller My Grandmother’s Hands, the 2022 follow-up The Quaking of America, and as the originator and key advocate of Somatic Abolitionism, an embodied antiracist practice of living and culture building. Resmaa coaches leaders and people to rise through suffering’s edge. His work focuses on making the invisible embodied and visible. His latest book, Monsters in Love: Why Your Partner Sometimes Drives You Crazy—and What You Can Do About It, will be released March, 2023.