Rewired; Neuroscience Meets Real-Life Change

Rewired Relationships: The Power of Couples Coaching with Satya Beneventi

• Tiffany Grimes • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Strong, healthy relationships don’t just happen — they’re built intentionally. In this first episode of Rewired: Neuroscience Meets Real-Life Change, host Tiffany Grimes sits down with professional Couples Coach Satya Beneventi to explore how couples coaching can transform communication, deepen connection, and rewire patterns that keep partners stuck.

You’ll hear real-life examples, science-backed strategies, and practical tools that couples (and the coaches who support them) can use to create lasting, positive change. Whether you’re in a relationship or work with others navigating them, this conversation offers insight, empowerment, and hope.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

  • Why couples coaching is different from therapy — and how it works
  • The neuroscience behind communication breakdowns (and how to repair them)
  • Practical tools for creating safety, connection, and shared vision
  • How small changes in thinking and behavior create big shifts in relationships

Resources & Links:

  • Learn more about couples coaching: https://yesempower.com/coaching/
  • Promo Code EmpoweredLife15 for 15% off coaching (August 4–15, 2025)
SPEAKER_02:

Welcome to Rewired, neuroscience meets real-life change. This is your space for unlocking intentional growth in yourself and in the people you lead, coach, and inspire. I'm Tiffany Grimes with Empower Coaching and Training, and I'm so happy to be here with you. Each episode of Rewired blends brain science and real-world application, delivering practical tools and you can use right away to create lasting change. Through expert interviews, powerful coaching conversations and bite-sized solo episodes, I share the neuroscience-based strategies for rewiring habits, expanding possibilities and living with purpose. Whether you are pursuing your own transformation or helping people navigate theirs, you'll find insight, community and empowerment here. This is where science meets soul. The change gets real. Satya, I am so grateful that you are here and with us today. Our first guest on Rewired, so thank you for that. I want to share with all our listeners who you are. I've known Satya for about five years now. She has been part of our Empower coaching and training team where she's been providing individual and group parenting coaching and it's been such a gift to empower. She is also a certified transformational parenting coach for the last 13 years. She's also the founder of Turning Point Parenting. She brings a wealth of expertise to her practice and just energy and Satya, I adore you. Let me just start there. I do really just adore you. I love our journey together. I love working with you. I love the gifts that you put out into the world and how you are setting this stage to transform not just individuals, but families and really generations and the work that you've done with both couples and with parenting intentionally. And I'm just so grateful to have you in this space. And I know that so our history has really been around parent coaching. And I know that you have really followed this passion of yours that has led you to couples coaching and you're doing more training on this and more work in this. And I thought it might be nice to start with the question just what is coaching for couples you know we know coaching therapy people go to therapy but I feel like in the world of coaching or in couplehood I guess really couples coaching is kind of new to the scene so what is it and why does it work

SPEAKER_00:

yes thank you Tiffany so so very much for having me I'm so appreciative to be here thank you ah you know what is couples coaching? I want to share a story. I think it's a great way to embed the information. So I want to share, I'm currently working with a couple and they came to me, which is a very common way of coming to the couples coaching is we can't communicate and we fight all the time, right? So I hear those constantly. And so I So coming in and working with these people has just been so wonderful. After session number one, basically what we found out was that the wife, this is a heterosexual couple, husband and wife. The wife is a yeller and the husband is the passive aggressive withdrawer. So he bails out. So what happens is, is that she comes after him. right and so she yells she wants the space for connection and she wants to talk but now she's escalated she's yelling husband needs the space to go away and so now he gets passive-aggressive he withdraws and off he goes right and then they are caught in this loop so this loop is Which we can have one pattern in a relationship. We can have three patterns in a relationship. Inevitably, it does really distill down to one to three, right? So we get stuck in this loop. And this is the challenge. This is the sequence. And it's called the Eden loop. There's one way to call it the Eden loop. So his trigger triggers her. Her trigger triggers him. And off to the races they go, right? And so basically... Here they are triggering one another, and nobody wants to be able to stop and say, hey, I want to give you empathy. Hey, I want to be able to say, hey, let's stop, right? It's not in the space. Nobody has the patience for that. Off to the races they go, right? So after session number two, the wife ended up, we found out that her voice as a child was never heard, right? Hence yelling. Husband said, Basically, he was relegated to the corner. He didn't matter, right? So his voice, he just didn't have one. So look, I want to say this. Couples coaching is not, we're not putting a microscope on your past. We're not doing that, right? But what we are doing is answering day-to-day questions and getting those examples that bring us to those places of shining the light on those triggered past places. That's it, right? So here's the thing with it. Once they understood each other's pattern by witnessing it in session together, Whoa, now they understand each other's experience. So what happens here with that is now it's not you against me. Now they're not in the you and me consciousness anymore, right? They're not pointing fingers and saying, it's your fault for this, shaming and blaming and accusations that just pretty much put fuel onto the fire. No, what was happening was they witnessed each other understanding those past triggers and what they're bringing inside of relationship. And now they're a team. Now they're a unit, right? Now they're in this us awareness. We're together. We are in relationship, right? You're going to hear me talk about relationship a lot here and how to really step into relationship in a healthy way. So this is the power of of having coaching. You have someone to bear witness to your experience. You have someone giving you honest feedback and then giving you those tools that can really, really move the needle. I

SPEAKER_02:

love what you talked about with the past. we don't go back and zoom in on the past, right? We do visit it, but with that purpose in the coaching world, we're visiting the past as a tool to move forward. What lessons are back here? What do I need to know about myself so that as I move forward, I'm doing that with that story, that intention and that understanding, that awareness? I love that. And then when you said you and me, it made me think of you versus me right in those conversations of course we all know it uh in families and and couplehood of it becomes this win-lose it's like i can't even hear you anymore because i'm waiting to bite down on something you said or prove it wrong or and so i love that idea of it's you and me rather than you or me it's you and me it's you it's us it's this team Maybe we're together against the problem even. We're together to find the solution. I love that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, indeed. It's the individualistic. It's the myth of the individual, right? So you came together as a team. You got to try and stay a team. And by the way, with this particular couple, the story that I just shared, I spoke with them yesterday and they told me they have not had a fight in two weeks. Wow. Yeah. they've been integrating the tools that they are learning and putting it into play

SPEAKER_02:

yeah

SPEAKER_00:

yeah

SPEAKER_02:

what an amazing journey for them and so tell me when you think about so that's one story which i love um if we if you were able to sum up kind of coaching versus and i'm ad-libbing here so feel free to think your way through this but if we think about a couple sentences that would say Here we are as a couple. We know we want to invest in ourselves. There's coaching therapy. There's coaching counseling, I guess I would say. And there's couples coaching. What's the difference? Why would I choose one over the other?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so the difference between therapy for couples versus couples coaching. You know, as I mentioned just a little bit ago, talking about... the not going into the past, not digging up those old wounds, really, really, really shining the light on those old wounds. Yes, they're helpful to understand, but we don't want to immerse ourselves into the past. Coaching to me is like, I, as a coach, I have my hand at both of your backs, right? Or we're holding hands and we're walking through this journey together, not as, not, I'm your guide, right? Right? I'm the enlightened witness. I'm somebody who's here who can really show you those places that may be the fragility, those fragile points in that relationship where... Whereas, Tiffany, I want to say like couples therapy, I don't feel like couples therapy is... as there's not as much dialogue, right? So we're in this together. We're holding each other's hands. We're having the dialogue together. We're coming up with the solutions together. And then you're taking it home, right? Applying it. And then you come back and you say, this worked. We got stuck here. And off we go to continue to go up that ladder, right? that to that place that apex that feels that crescendo that really feels like we know what to do now right we know what to do i can walk away six ten sessions with somebody it doesn't even matter really the number but you know what to do i want to equip you with those tools to know that we can go home and we can be we can be sovereign we can be this couple that can do this We don't have to go back to therapy for 10 years, you know?

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Yeah, kind of coming in goal-oriented, right? We're moving towards solution. There's a start and an end to coaching, which I think is really valuable and gets, I think, the best. I think about it as people kind of on the edge of their seat. We're going in. We're going in for a period of time to make shift intentionally, and I love that. Yeah. So what would be a sign if people are listening to this or thinking about couples coaching, what would be the signs that would help them know they're ready?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I love this question. I have a couple of answers for it. I want to plainly say it is so important for you to follow your intuition. You know when it is time, period. We all do. We all do. You feel it in your gut. You have to follow your intuition. Just do it, right? Just do it. So I want to say that. And then, you know, in a more pragmatic standpoint, I want to point out, I look at it like a spectrum. You've got one end of the spectrum and you have the other end. This side of the spectrum is we want what's best for our relationship, period. So we're going to go in, we're going to be proactive. We want to take charge and we want to feel that we are equipped with the tools to know what we're doing when we start to take that nosedive, which we all do, right? So that's the one side of the spectrum, I believe. And I think it's so incredibly helpful. I personally do it that way. And the irony, what I think is so funny, is that you go in thinking, well, we want to be the best relationship that we can be. And you inevitably get into the coaching and the coach poses a question, bam, you have so much stuff that's underneath it. So then the other side of the spectrum truly is, You know, when you notice that you're in that cycle I was talking about before, and you just feel stuck, you're so challenged, and it's the same stories over and over and over, right? You're in that repetitive loop. So that's really a key indicator. Another one is that you feel so closed off to your partner. You feel so closed off. You want to learn new methods of communication, right? you just don't have the open heart to do so, right? I'd love to share an example. I was at a workshop about 13 years ago and being stuck in this loop. So I went and I asked the woman who was speaking, she was speaking on relationship and I went up to her on break and I said, what do you do when you have the couple that's in a stalemate, right? They're just, they just can't She goes, somebody has to be able to give empathy. And so that's one of the things that really truly will be taught. You will learn the skills, which kind of leads me to my next point here is that when you feel so closed off, you know, you will learn the tools to understand your own triggers and you're going to understand your partner's trigger because you're going to understand that pattern better. that more of like an adaptive child pattern that your partner has and you can see them in it and you'll be able to soften it and diffuse it with simple language, simple terminology. Also, another one is you're really scared that the relationship is close to the end.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Right? So this is clearly a sign to get some coaching. And I really want to kind of hone in on this point for a moment. So when you feel like that you're close to the end, please do not do nothing. Right. Do not do nothing. Get in there. You must give your relationship a chance. Don't you dare. Don't you dare walk away from that thing without giving your relationship a chance.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. I love some of those indicators and I think about, you know, how we can probably all go, oh yeah, I remember that. I remember that feeling of like, oh, this again, or why would I even bring it up? There's nothing, nothing's going to come of it, right? So if we're thinking some of those thoughts, it might be a really great indicator that this is This is a great tool. You know, the other thing I think about some of the myths just around coaching in general, and I think it applies for couples coaching as well, is that we need to be broken in order to go do the work, right? And so some of the indicators just might be like, I think we could do more here, right? Like we have such a solid foundation. We have such a, we have good tools and we're working this fertile soil and I want to see what we can grow. What can we do together? What's the next level? I think, of course, both people have to be at that mindset, but, you know, I think those indicators where it might feel a little broken and also, like you said, just that intuition of like, I think there's more here. There's something that is bringing me to this or keeps me thinking about this or really curious about coaching could be another indicator.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

that's great. Okay, so if we have couples who are looking to do this, what are some of the outcomes that they can expect?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I think a fun one is you can expect to fall in love again. If you want to, if you so desire. I want to share a little story. I think it's really sweet. My chiropractor, his grandparents at the time were married 40 years and he chose to share this story with me. And he said, you know, Satya, my grandfather told me in the 40 years, I fell in and out of love with your grandmother four times.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

I think that's such a poignant story. Nothing really else needs to be said. You all get it. You understand. It is a roller coaster. Relationships truly are. And the other thought I have about expectations that you can expect from outcomes you can expect from coaching is, you know, Would you put a 16-year-old behind the wheel of a vehicle without them learning the rules of the road? No way. That is so scary. That's not true. And they have to learn how to parallel park. They have to take the test. They have to do all the things, right? And with couples coaching, you will learn how to relationship.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And so what I mean by that, the outcomes you can expect from that is to say, how can you spot when your partner is in their patterned behavior and how to diffuse this, again, with simple language instead of getting yourself triggered, again, not shaming, not blaming, not pointing fingers, not accusing them. Again, it's going to add that fuel to the fire, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I love that what you opened with this, you'll learn how to relationship. It makes me think of that Stephen Covey line that love is a verb. And I absolutely love that. phrase. I keep it all around our house. I say it all the time. It's an intention. It's an action. It's a practice. It's something I'm engaging in. It's active. It makes me think of that story you just told about the couples falling in and out of love. And when we do, we're really at a choice point. Okay, I'm here. We feel this way. We're here as a couple. What's the action? Am I investing in us or not? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It's so beautiful. I could not agree more. It's an action. So Marianne Williamson says, love is a participatory emotion. Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

So good. Yeah. Really good.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, go ahead. I also believe some of the outcomes to expect are that you can expect to be able to learn how to take responsibility and accountability without guilt. And without shame. Right? You can learn to apologize when you messed up. Right? You can dissect your own inner triggers to be able to say, hey, I'm not going to show up like that. You have that. You will learn this gap. There is a gap in time. Instead of going from zero to 60, you're going to learn that there is a very small gap where you can create something new. And that is the conscious awareness that you're in a pattern. So these are all the things that you can expect. So much, right? There's so much more. But again, this is how to learn how to relationship. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And it's a verb. Indeed. It's a verb. And what I'm hearing you say, which it's just kind of a light bulb moment for me, and of course it is this way because it is coaching, which is that... The work while we're going in as couples is also so very individualized for me, right? Where you've talked about learning my own patterns, learning how to give empathy when I see my partner's patterns, learning... These practices and these awarenesses that are really about self, rather than going in with the expectation, I'm changing this person. It's really, I'm transforming and I'm doing this in partnership to better our relationship, to relationship better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

100%. We all bring our personal issues into the relationship first. Yeah. And another really funny phrase that I love is this is from another mentor of mine, Terrence Real. He shares, we all marry our unfinished business.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. In so many ways. Yeah.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So this is exciting. I love this. I'm curious. I know in the coaching world, there are 1000 ways to offer services. So I would like to hear about the way you offer coaching? What would a typical session look like? You know, and knowing for our listeners that this could look 1000 different ways based on another coach, but for you, what does a typical session look like? What is the experience? And do you coach virtually? Can people access you outside of your area? Do you even coach in person? What what can we expect?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, wonderful question. Thank you. So definitely, virtual is the way to go, right? People are busy. Couples are busy. Inevitably, they have children. So we get on the Zoom just like this, and we work together. So it's wonderful. It's such a great way to not have to add that travel time. And I do also see people in person, you know, if need be. But yeah, virtual is usually the way to go. Well,

SPEAKER_02:

it's so nice. I travel a lot for work. So I think about the ability to, we don't have to skip weeks. If I'm gone, we can still zoom in. My partner, myself, coach, the work can still be happening.

SPEAKER_00:

100%. Yeah. Yes, exactly. And then, you know, I like this from a conceptual standpoint. I don't believe that... The coach is in a one-up position, okay? I believe that here we are, we're all together. We have come together for a reason, for a purpose, and we have met one another for a reason and purpose. And I believe that we're in this game of life together. I may have the skill set to guide you in a way that you haven't seen before, yet we are in the same playing field. I like to say that.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

We will establish a baseline of confidentiality, of respect, of trust, of safety, a lot of guidelines from the standpoint of not interrupting one another, right? Really compassionately listening to each other. I know people get really fired up in couples therapy and sometimes it can go off the rails, if you will, and that's okay too, right? But I'm there to guide you and to hold that space as sacredly and safely and respectfully as possible. The other piece is that we are listening to each other intently. So there are times in session when I'm saying, you know, hey, Sam, did you actually just hear Jane? What did you think she said there? Which I think is really, really important. Yeah, and then the sort of the, to me, the miracle question at the beginning is, if you were to come into this coaching space capacity in the sessions together, what is the outcome, right? What is the home run for you? What is it that you both want to experience with your relationship? And knowing that you've got that goal, you've got that end point, we are working toward it. And I bring that back in session, almost, well, whenever we meet, right? Weekly, every other week, what have you. But we know where we're going. We morph, we bend, it's organic, but we have that goal, right? That place that you want to be. So and, you know, sessions are an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. Yeah. So that what I say would be a typical, a typical session. Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

And it sounds like people are meeting with you weekly or every other week. Is that about right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I feel that more than every other week, we're sort of losing steam. I know life happens. Um, but if you want to come in and get this done, and like we said much earlier is like coaching, you know, coaching is not a long-term event, right? We're here to really support you and get you going in that trajectory where you want to be as a couple and you have those tools to do that. And you walk away knowing how to do it. Right.

SPEAKER_02:

So, yeah. So could we, I'm curious as a couple, if we were to come in and do, um, I love this idea of kind of going in, being intense, getting the tools and then going off and seeing how we do with those for a while. Is it something where we could come in, do three to six weeks with you And then go for a few months, go for three months and see how we're doing and then come back. Now we're ready for the next level. Can it work like that? A

SPEAKER_00:

thousand percent. Thank you for asking that question. Yes. Countless people have decided to come back in for a tiny little refresher.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's a hundred percent possible.

SPEAKER_02:

That's wonderful. Okay. Okay, so I think I'm to my final question here, which is really what I want to do is have folks leave with some things they can do right now to kind of juice things up in their relationship, right? If you've listened to this and you're feeling the curiosity bubble up or what is coaching, what is coaching couples, what could this do for our relationship, our marriage, so forth, I'm curious if you have three coaching questions that couples could use tonight within the next 24 hours to kind of spark connection? I

SPEAKER_00:

love it. It's such a great question. Such a light. Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. So let's see here. One of the things that I do do usually in first session, and I think it's a wonderful tool. You can do it tonight before you go to bed, maybe before dinner. Tell one another. It's an appreciation exercise. You know, just say one thing. that you appreciate about your partner. And, you know, to me, it's more impactful if it's character-driven versus, well, thanks for taking out the garbage today, you know, like I asked you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, this is what I appreciate about you, you know, about who you are, how you show up in the world, how you show up in our relationship, you know? Yeah. I can't remember though, right? So it's, yeah, an appreciation exercise.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. So a character driven appreciation exercise, not what did you do for me lately? And insert, what is that, Janet Jackson? But really like just who you are as a human being in this world.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

So great. So

SPEAKER_00:

beautiful. Yeah. And another thing that pops into mind is the 17 second hug. You know, it releases the oxytocin, that love hormone and just hug each other. Just give each other a hug. Hold it for 17 seconds. No words, no words, no words are not necessary here. And that transference of love can speaks volumes.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, that's really lovely. I love that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And then another one I would say could be, I remember when. I remember when. Share a positive memory. You took a trip together, you went to a ballgame together, or something that was, you know, a really fond memory of something that you've done together that can actually, you know, the present is the gift, right? We know this, but In this scenario, when you're in the places where you just feel so closed off to one another, it can be just a sweet little exercise to say, hey, I remember when we took that trip to the coast and we played around in the ocean. And, you know, it's such a beautiful to go back to the past and just recall a memory. Yeah. A healthy, positive memory.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. That's so great. We just did this accidentally last night. When Dade and I were first together, he had white carpet. Who has white carpet? White carpet. And I had a mouth. I just take not a mouthful. I wasn't chugging red wine, but I had a mouthful of a drink of red wine. And he said something that made me laugh. And I just had it. everywhere so we were just having that moment and walking down you know the apartment living pre-children and how we would pause and just have a nice glass of wine together as opposed to where we are now which is in full-on go mode for parenthood and it was really just yeah it was a great moment and also kind of nudged us to like let's go sit outside you know let's it it reminded us like we do really quite enjoy each other you know we still have the we left stains in that carpet to prove it i really do like you so great Well, Satya, thank you very much. I so appreciate you. I do want to just say to anybody who is interested through Empower, you can work with the amazing Satya. We have couples coaching and we are offering for the part of the month of August, August 4th through August 15th is a 15% discount. The code is EmpoweredLife15. And so I'll put all those links down and thank you Satya we appreciate you I appreciate you I'm so grateful to spend this time Thanks for tuning in to Rewired. Neuroscience meets real life change. I'm Tiffany, and I'm so grateful that you were here today. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd be so grateful if you could take a moment and leave a five-star review. Your feedback helps more people discover this brand new podcast and gain the tools, insights, and inspirations they need to create lasting change.