Fiachra Figs O'Sullivan LMFT

What It’s Like to Work with Figs: An Expert Q&A

About Me

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 “cliched 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 is not 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 are not fighting each other. They are fighting a Common Enemy: the negative cycle, the 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 Drew Me to This Work

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 what I call “The Collapse,” addiction and disappearance, and my mother carried the weight of the world. I did not have the sense of belonging or safety that every child needs.

So, my entry into this field was not 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.

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.

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 are not 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.

How I Start with a New Couple

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 is not 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 are not enemies.

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 is the two of you against the cycle.”

Momentum dies if anyone feels shamed. So I validate the hell out of their reactivity. If someone is yelling or withdrawing, I do not tell them to stop. I tell them it makes sense. To the yeller: “Of course you get loud. You are terrified you are not 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.

I set the expectation that the first stage is the steepest part. We are not 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.

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 are not enemies. You are just stuck.” And I give them my signature line: “No one has ever died in a first session with me. You will survive this.”

How I Help Couples De-escalate Conflict

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.

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.

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 other partner does not problem-solve. They follow a strict progression. Reflect: repeat back what was heard, emphasizing the feelings. Accept: explicitly accept the reality of the experience. Validate: normalize it. Empathize: share their own felt response. “Hearing that, I feel tenderness toward you. I want to scoop you up.”

This exercise creates what I call 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.

How I Help Partners Interrupt Shame

Shame is the silent killer of connection. When shame hits during a hard conversation, the nervous system instantly moves to survive. Partners do not even know it is happening. They just react.

When shame floods in, the body moves in one of four directions. Attack other: blaming, yelling, criticizing. Attack self: collapsing inward, “I am 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.

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.

Once you interrupt the reaction, you translate the protector language into vulnerable language. The pursuer learns to say, “I am criticizing you, but underneath I feel lonely and I am scared you are not there for me.” The withdrawer learns to say, “I am going quiet not because I do not care, but because I feel like I am failing you and I do not know how to fix it.”

Nervous System Regulation During Conflict

The most effective practice I use for in-the-moment regulation during conflict is what I call “Coming Home Through Breath.”

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.

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, into the tight chest or the hollow stomach. You use the breath to tell your body that you are here and 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.

As you breathe, you hold a specific internal question: “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.

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. You cannot connect with another person if you have left your own body. You have to come home first.

How I Guide Couples Through Affair Recovery

Affair recovery requires a distinct approach. 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.

You cannot repair a relationship while a third party is still in the room. An affair shatters 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.”

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.

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 the partner’s pain.

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 work of repair.

Working with Families and Adolescents

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.

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 reliable 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.

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 “You are being disrespectful,” try “I see that you are hurting. You are protecting yourself because this transition is scary. That makes sense.”

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 the relationship survives the storm. That gives the adolescent permission to be messy, knowing they will not be exiled.

Protecting Your Relationship from 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.

High performers often live in what I call The Penthouse: strategy, control, fixing. 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. When you walk in, you go to your partner first. Before the kids, the dog, or the mail. You look them in the eyes. You make physical contact. You signal to their nervous system: I am here, you are my priority.

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.

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 are triggering an abandonment response.

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.

One Final Thing

If I could leave you with one thing, it is this: the relationship is the unit of survival. Not the individual. The relationship.

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 landed for you, if you are in that fire right now, reach out. You do not have to do this alone. That is the whole point.