Understanding the PACT Approach: What to Expect in Our Work Together

Informed Consent and Overview of the PACT Approach
Written by PACT Institute, adapted by Märta Spires Sept 2026
Copyright © Stan Tatkin, PsyD – all rights reserved   

Welcome to PACT therapy. Before we begin, I want you to understand how this approach works and what you can expect from our time together. PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy) is an experiential, neuroscience-based model that helps partners create a relationship that is safe, fair, just, and fully collaborative. You’ll learn how to operate as a team, manage moments of stress and miscommunication, and design your relationship so that both of you can thrive. This document outlines what you can expect from the process, how sessions are structured, and the shared principles that make PACT effective. Please read it carefully and bring any questions to our first session.

Purpose of PACT Therapy
PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy) is a developmental model that integrates attachment, neuroscience, and nervous system regulation. Developmental means that we start where you are and put things in place step by step. The purpose is to help couples co-create a secure-functioning relationship — one that is safe, fair, just, and collaborative — by design, not by accident.

Key Principles of This Approach

  • Relationship as a “Team Sport vs. Solo Sport”: The clinician addresses the couple as a system, not individuals. Partners are seen as a We and Us, as a team.

  • Relationship as Invention: Partners are in charge of their relationship, not the clinician. They are viewed as its architects. Romantic partnership does not succeed by instinct; it must be deliberately designed and maintained.

  • Secure Functioning: The approach assumes partners are equal and will build their partnership around agreed-upon, purpose-centered (versus feeling-centered) principles, based on fairness, justice, and sensitivity.  

Therapeutic Methods You Can Expect

  • Experiential Enactments: Face-to-face exercises, role plays, and video playback to increase awareness of facial, vocal, gestural, and language effects on one another.

  • Task-Focused Exercises: Focused, time-limited tasks (e.g., five-minute problem-solving) to test and strengthen collaboration.

  • Agreement & Policy Design: Rigorous step-by-step process for making and enforcing the couple’s social contracts that override feelings and impulses.

  • Education on Neurobiology: Couples are taught how energy conservation, memory bias, and primitive threat systems undermine relationships — and how to hack/override them.

  • Regulation Training: Practicing nervous system regulation skills.

  • Expecting the Best and Planning for the Worst: Partners will design a relationship that guarantees each other’s ongoing, felt sense of safety, security, and  happiness.

Expectations

  • Active Participation: Both partners are fully engaged, and willing to practice what they learn outside of sessions.

  • Focus on Present & Future: The past is used only for repair and future prevention, not for litigation or blame. With the exception of betrayal cases, litigation of the past will be discouraged as it makes matters worse.

  • In Each Other’s Care: This approach underscores that partners are in each other’s care, not merely responsible for themselves. This concept may differ from what many partners expect. It is not about codependency, but rather about interdependency—a balanced union between equals who share mutual responsibility and a joint stake in the design and maintenance of their relationship.

  • Win-Win: Partners commit to creating outcomes that both partners believe are good for each of them and for the relationship as a whole.

Limits of Therapy

  • PACT is not individual therapy; focus remains on the couple system.

  • Trauma or psychiatric conditions requiring individual treatment may be suggested for additional support.

  • This approach does not focus on “fixing” partners but rather the way they interact.

Confidentiality & Technology

  • Sessions may be recorded (audio/video) for clinical use, with consent. This is a common practice for immediate playback for coaching purposes.

  • HIPAA-compliant platforms and secure storage are used for notes and AI-assisted analysis. I do not record transcripts of sessions with AI.

To get the most out of PACT therapy, I encourage both partners to explore one or more of the following books or audiobooks. These resources will help you understand the key ideas behind this approach and apply them in your daily life.

For an introduction to attachment, neurobiology, and secure-functioning principles:

o   Wired for Love, 2nd edition (book & audiobook)

For deeper understanding of relationship design and conflict repair:

o   In Each Other’s Care (book & audiobook)

As we begin this work, remember that PACT is designed to help you build a relationship that protects both of you and works for both of you. The goal isn’t perfection, but partnership — learning to operate as a two-person system based on fairness, mutual care, and shared responsibility. Everything we do in session is meant to help you become experts on one another and co-design a relationship that feels secure, flexible, and alive. Please read this document carefully, discuss it together, and bring any questions or concerns to the consult call.