Contents
Chapter 1 Which Version of You Shows Up to Your Relationship? 1
Chapter 2 The Myth of the Individual 3
Chapter 3 How Us Gets Lost and You and Me Takes Over 5
Chapter 4 The Individualist at Home 8
Chapter 5 Start Thinking Like a Team 9
Chapter 6 You Cannot Love from Above or Below 10
Chapter 7 Your Fantasies Have Shattered, Your Real Relationship Can Begin 11
Chapter 8 Fierce Intimacy, Soft Power 13
Chapter 9 Leaving Our Kids a Better Future 16
Chapter 10 Becoming Whole 16
Epilogue: Broken Light 17
Chapter 1 Which Version of You Shows Up to Your
Relationship?
It has been said that there are two types of couples in the
world—those who fight and those who distance.
But in order to be present with your partner, you must
yourself be in the present, not saturated by your past.
Avoidance learnt by modelling growing up, or by a
relationship that was controlling.
Adaptive Child fixers are fuelled by an anxious, driven need
to take anyone’s tension away from them as quickly as possible. Their motto is
“I’m upset until you’re not.”
One of the telltale characteristics of the you and me
Adaptive Child is that it is automatic, a knee-jerk response.
Relational heroism: when every sinew of your being says do
the old thing, and you do the new instead.
You move from you and me consciousness to Us.
Non triggered us consciousness wise adult.
We want to move from reactionary individuals (you didn’t
give me what I want, gave me what I don’t) to relational teammates: relational
mindfulness.
In your close relationships, urgency is your enemy, and
breath is your friend.
Chapter 2 The Myth of the Individual
Individual comes from indivisible, like atom\cell etc I
guess.
Rubber hand: stroke it with your hand unseen, you will feel
ownership of the rubber hand as yours
Bateson, blindman and stick, stick part of his mind.
Effects of the past, before you act on the past because of
x, get a photo look at them, and say to yourself its more important for me to
be like you than my partner is.
Minds and CNS exist in social context, our relationships,
affect our immune system, and our emotions.
Still face, Ed Cronick, PCG and baby play, then PCG still
face, infant, tries to elicit behaviour, seduce behaviour, and then protests
Reciprocity between PCG and infant produces oxytocin,
cements the relationship
Messiness of relationship Disharmony, repair, harmony
Dysregulation 2 ways, frazzled mum, glares at child, child
not getting what they want protests.
Infant regulates parents, you’re as happy as your least
happy kid.
Closer relationships closer mimicry. Rats in pain, will copy
licking behaviour.
Exert as little energy as possible whilst still staying
alive: law of the jungle: economy of action
PFC off loads jobs to habit, to other parts of the CNS, to
do things automatically, we also offload processing to other people! Eg Co
regulation
Our brains assume we are in a rich environment where tasks
are spread out in the group, I tend the fire, you are on lookout.
PFC slow down on interaction with others.
Having a human connection leads to group mind, reduces
distress, that can be stranger, friend or partner. Increasing analgesic.
However we marry our unfinished business, a partner will
press every button we have.
Relational consciousness moves us from individual dominion
to collective humility; we are part of a large system.
As with climate disaster, it happens in relationship where
reactive parts of the brain take over, and that is precisely the model we
revert to: “I’m right, and you’re wrong. You win, and I lose. I can let you in,
or I can protect myself.” The real question is how we as a team are going to
deal with this in a way that works for both of us.
Domestic life plays out on a small stage full of gigantic
emotions.
There is no place for objective reality in personal
relationships. Useful to get trains running on time, but in a relationship
leads to objectivity battles. Like a dog
chasing its tail. Here you have a negotiation of two subjective realities.
Like so many of the men I treat, Stan was being
instrumental. His focus was on the task at hand, not on the subjective feelings
of his partner. He was looking after her; he was not attending to her emotional
needs.
Do you want to be right, or do you want your wife to feel
better.
“I’m sorry you felt bad. I didn’t mean to make you feel that
way. Is there anything I can say or do right now that would help you feel
better?”
The problem is that their model of resolution is to come to
agreement—
But you live in a relational world, of two subjective
realities not one objective one. The
resolved world is owned by one person but not how both people see the world.
Remedial empath: think before you speak what it’s going to
be like for the person you’re speaking to, to hear it.
your relationship is your emotional biosphere; It’s the
environment we live in and depend upon. Sure, you can choose to pollute your
biosphere over here with a flare-up of temper. But you’ll breathe in that
pollution over there in the form of your partner’s withdrawal.
Chapter 3 How Us Gets Lost and You and Me Takes
Over
There’s a spiritual principle at work here: to move beyond
some part of you, you must first get to know it and ultimately befriend it.
He sees himself, in triggered moments, as an aggrieved
party. He is a professional angry victim. The idiot at the checkout line, with
his lackadaisical tempo, made him late. The moron who picked him up at the
airport kept him waiting for fifteen minutes and barely spoke English. The lid
on the mayonnaise jar thwarted him by not unscrewing. Daniel moves through an
adversarial world out to get him. But man, he goes down swinging.
offending from the victim position.3 When we offend from the
victim position, we feel like a victim while acting like an offender. “You hurt
me, so I get to hurt you back twice as much. And I have no shame or compunction
about what I’m dishing out because you victimized me.”
What is your dysfunctional stance, your adaptive child,
victim, martyr, tyrant?
Where was it learnt, who did you see do this, what did it do
to you, who did you do it to and no one stopped you.
Kids are like gas they grow to the container they are in. If
no one stopped them then, then they will act like that now.
Abandoned is a child ego state, if I’m abandoned, I die.
Adults, get left, rejected etc but they will survive.
Maturity comes when we tend to our inner children and don’t
inflict them on our partners to care for.
Vertical line is self-esteem, too much, too little
Horizontal lines are boundaries too many, not enough
Trauma by abandonment or by intrusion.
Parental nurturing
Were you physically, intellectually, emotionally, sexually
nourished.
Passive trauma is like water on a rock
Health is in the centre. Healthy transactions leave the
child feeling neither superior nor inferior to anyone else. That’s healthy
self-esteem.
False empowering:
Make the child the family star.
Enmeshment: parent uses the child whilst elevating you
understand me more than your mother does.
Children are naturally grandiose and selfish and this needs
to be moderated by an adult.
him. “If you want to do exactly what you want to do, be
alone. The minute you let somebody into your world; you have to at least pay
some attention to what they want to do.”
Some injurious transactions are clear examples of
disempowerment (You little shit!) while others are clear examples of false
empowerment (You’re the only good thing in my life!). But most relational
trauma empowers and disempowers at the same time.
When a parent elevates a child and at the same time uses
them, we call that enmeshment.
It’s typical to resist intrusion or neglect while
simultaneously internalizing it: you take in the dysfunctional ways you and the
world were seen. Those two forces—reaction and modelling—combine to forge your
Adaptive Child.
In reaction mode, our Adaptive Children tend to do the
opposite of what we ourselves experienced. Intrusion breeds walls. Abandonment
breeds intrusion.
Freud regarded all neurotic symptoms as compromises between
the expression and repression of illicit impulses.
Many children face a different
response from each parent. In those instances, the child chooses.
Chapter 4 The Individualist at Home
Rugged individualism, Hobbes, Locke, enlightenment, American
constitution and French revolution. The government serves the individual
The individual born with unalienable rights, life, liberty
the pursuit of happiness.
Aristocracy links everyone bottom to top.
Democracy breaks the link and says everyone can do their own
thing.
Pre WW2 a rational individualism, then post Goethe, a
romantic individualism, i.e. led by passion\emotion.
If the Enlightenment individual thought, the Romantic
individual felt.
grandiose women have
advanced degrees in offending from the victim position: “You hurt me, so I have
no shame or compunction about hurting you twice as hard back because, after
all, I’m your victim.”
Rugged individualism: don’t tell me what to do, unfair in my
eyes is awful: big government.
Romantic individualism: I must be free to express myself,
share myself, manifest my full potential. Authenticity is the big item, being
dominated is the worst.
rugged individualism has become the modern right, while
expressive Romantic individualism has become the modern left.
In the absence of any objective criteria of right and wrong,
good or evil, the self and its feelings become our moral guide … The right act
is simply the one that yields the agent the most exciting challenge or the most
good feeling about himself.24 … Utility replaces duty; self-expression unseats
authority. “Being good” becomes “feeling good.”
The extension of individualism is loneliness.
In a couple if one loses we all lose.
Chapter 5 Start Thinking Like a Team
When you see yourselves as two distinct individuals, when
you are in you and me consciousness, you are pulled into a linear control
model. Either Rick controls Joanna, or she controls him. When
Angry complaint is not seductive, playing the victim in
sexual desire.
Standing up for your rights but cutting your throat
I need sex
I need a clean house
We both deserve a good sex life
We both deserve a nice place to live in what do we need to
do to achieve that.
When you feel safe, you can be wise.
Believing in essentialism gives away your power, you want
something from your partner, they have the control and even with a gun you can’t
make them do it, as they may prefer to die. But if you see yourself
relationally you can affect them. You can change yourself and that can affect
your partner and they will change, as you are a team, an interwoven duo.
There’s an old saying in family therapy that most couples
have the same fight over forty years. Why? Because they fight the caricatures
of their partners. Core Negative Image
are exaggerated caricatures; there is a grain of truth and a deep exaggeration.
The more you fight your partners core negative image, the
more theirs gets entrenched. The way to do it is to relax, admit and apologise
for the grain of truth in it.
Trend thinking (she always, he never) and from there to
Essential character (she just is cold, he just is a child).
Functional actions in a relationship are moves that empower
your partner to come through for you. Dysfunctional actions are those that
render your partner paralyzed. In
The farther from the particular the more impotent your
partner will feel. Macro level analysis
is fine, but just not in the heat of the moment.
But don’t try to
grapple with relational issues from your Adaptive Child. Get yourself reseated
in your Wise Adult before attempting repair.
If your agenda in that moment is to be right, to gain
control, to vent, retaliate, or withdraw—then stop, call a formal time-out, if
need be, and get yourself recentred.
What’s the more and more pattern. The more man does x, the
more the woman does y.
Passive-aggression, acts out the feelings he doesn’t
address,
redistribution.5 You take a quality that is supposedly
lodged in one person—like badness—and you move it around.
Negative image, overly dramatic\emotional, exaggerating,
scared, overly protective, messy, lacks care.
Chapter 6 You Cannot Love from Above or Below
You can be better at something than someone, but you are not
a better person. You both have the same rights from a democratic point of view,
one vote, the law applies equally to both of you. (Although money is affecting
both of these principles)
Culture rewards competition, me and you, individualism and
your adaptive child.
Successful in your one up career, disaster in your one down
marriage.
We all marry our unfinished business.
Remember, two paths of internalization form the Adaptive
Child. One of them, reacting, tends toward resistance. But the other pathway is
modelling, and often, unconsciously, we model ways of being in the world that
we consciously despise.
Be close to a person who can’t be close to them by modelling
them
Shame you know you’re in it as it hurts, Grandiosity you
don’t as it feels good.
Remember, two paths of internalization form the Adaptive
Child. One of them, reacting, tends toward resistance. Bruce’s drive to succeed
where his father had so spectacularly failed—his drive to resist his father’s
fate—fuelled his workaholism. But the other pathway is modelling, and often,
unconsciously, we model ways of being in the world that we consciously despise.
The emotion driving both shame and grandiosity is contempt.
“Does what I’m about to say fall below the level of basic
respect?” If you judge what you’re about to say as disrespectful, I have great
advice for you. Shut up.
If you’re down, in your mind’s eye you literally reach down
with your arms and scoop yourself back up into same-as,
If you’re up, reach up and pull yourself down. Pia Mellody
gave us a mantra to use for this moment: “Each person has inherent worth. No
one more than. No one less than.”
You are perfectly imperfect, as pia melody would say
When a client shifts from shamelessness to toxic shame, they
move from one form of self-preoccupation to another. You’re still preoccupied
with yourself, even if you’re telling yourself that you’re a terrible person.
“A boy’s question to the world is: ‘What do you have for
me?’ A man’s question is: ‘What does this moment demand of me? What do I need
to give?’”
Once you let go of hubris, you can relax. You’ll find you’re
more able to let things emerge, hear other voices, listen for the unsaid.
You’ll begin to develop, at any age, the basic trust that
psychologists would wish you to have in your twos and threes, the simple trust
that things will work out on their own without the stamp of your will.
Chapter 7 Your Fantasies Have Shattered, Your Real
Relationship Can Begin
Harmony, then disharmony, then repair is the essential
rhythm of all close relationships. It’s like walking. You have your balance,
then you stumble. You catch yourself and rebalance.
Trauma as shattering your assumptions in life that made you
safe, if this has gone what else.
love addicts simply move from one honeymoon phase to
another, after the real people show up
Honeymoon phase=>Mundane phase
You hoped your partner would heal you.
You hoped your partner would agree to the unspoken marital contract;
they don’t.
The person you let in closest is the person that hurts you
most.
In family therapy, we are taught to think of couples as
having a “marital contract,” usually unspoken.
Falling in love means that whether you acknowledge it or
not, you think, with this person I will be healed, or at the very least I will
avoid and compensate for my earliest lacks and injuries.
Affairs are flattering, new, exciting, sexually pleasurable.
We ask someone why they don’t cheat. What makes someone say no?”
The unfaithful partner has insufficient constraints in
themselves. In other words, their selfishness trumps their relationality.
The relationship has become so unsatisfying—so contentious,
or distant, or dead—that the cheater feels there isn’t enough worth protecting.
I call the harmony phase of a relationship love without
knowledge; I call the disharmony phase knowledge without love. Now you know
exactly and precisely all your partner’s flaws and blemishes. You see them all.
But you don’t love your partner very much. You are utterly in you and me
consciousness, facing an adversary, fighting for your psychological survival.
Empathy can heal, if indirectly. The best way to open
another’s heart, it turns out, is to open your own.
harmony, disharmony, and repair.
which gives her a sense of resiliency. Listen, all ye
anxious helicopter parents: resilience originates not in the absence of
disharmony and discord but in its survival in you as a pair.
The neuroscientist Stephen Porges posits that feeling safety
in another person with whom we interact consists of two important qualities—the
absence of an agenda, and the absence of judgment. I will neither intrude nor
disappear.
In mainstream individualist culture, our relationship to
relationships is passive. We get what we get and react.
Disharmony is to your
relationship as pain is to your physical body.
you and me consciousness knows just what to do in times of
disharmony:
(1) wrap yourself in rightness
(2) attempt to control your partner
(3) give vent to every emotion and infraction
(4) retaliate
(5) shut down—or some
combination of all five of these losing strategies.
We stand grounded in the humility of our own imperfections.
Who are we to get high and mighty? The poet W. H. Auden wrote in his beautiful
poem, “As I Walked Out One Evening”: “You shall love your crooked neighbour /
With your crooked heart.”
Chapter 8 Fierce Intimacy, Soft Power
They never went from harmony through disharmony to repair.
Instead, they went from harmony to each his own corner.
A good woman lives to serve others. But a man, like Phil,
has no voice either. With the exception of a supposedly ever-ready lust, a
strong man should have no emotional needs, certainly nothing vulnerable.
Fierce Intimacy
Fierce intimacy is the essential capacity to confront
issues, to take each other on.
Aim for bland harmony but no intimacy, which requires
relational rupture and repair
Affair as narcissistic entitlement or getting some vitality
back.
Fighting couple, re-find what was good
Distant couple, work through their arguments to rejoin.
Do you tend toward fighting or towards distance? Do you need
to find more constructive ways to talk to one another—less blaming and
criticizing and more humble sharing of your own experience along with real
curiosity about the experience of your partner? Or would a good fight, like a
summer storm, shake a few leaves and clear the air?
I want that for them, both passion and stability. The
challenge, of course, lies in having both in one relationship.
Dealing with each other. What does that phrase really mean?
At its most basic, it signifies taking each other on. Airing your
dissatisfactions, articulating your desires, making concrete suggestions about
how things might work better for you, and then, if all goes well, working like
a team to make things right. Repair demands assertion (not aggression) from the
unhappy partner met with care and responsiveness (not defensiveness) in the
other. There is a technology to repair,
First, repair is not a two-way street. Almost everyone gets
this wrong. When you are faced with an upset partner, this is not your turn.
This is not a dialogue. Liz doesn’t air all her grievances as an invitation for
Phil to then air his. You must take turns.
Unhappy partner, deal with that. No objective facts, not
about you, but about them, it’s their turn, they are in disharmony, and you get
to get them to harmony. If they complain, this isn’t an invitation for you to
complain, then you have two disharmonies.
Stay on your side of the street. Don’t accuse them—talk
about yourself. Not “Liz, you’re avoidant,” but rather, “Liz, I don’t feel
met.”
Janet hurleys feedback wheel
1. This is what I recollect happened.
2. This is what I made up about it.
3. This is what I felt. And that all-important fourth step
most speakers leave out:
4. This would help me feel better.
Soft Power: Strong and Loving Simultaneously
Power with not power over
Dominance does not breed intimacy.
In the gender binary of patriarchy, affiliation is
“feminine” and power is “masculine.” Cooperation is nowhere in sight.
I want us to blow up the gender binary, moving beyond the
false dichotomy of power or belonging.
Soft power: By asserting in virtually the same breath his
own needs and also the value of our connection,
There’s an old cliché in family therapy: one partner talks
to the other in order to get them into bed with them. The other partner drags
them into bed in order to get them to talk.
Soft power. When you need to speak up, be artful. Take care
of your partner as best you can by explicitly cherishing them and your
relationship.
If that is not your intention, you are probably in your
Adaptive Child. Stop! Take a walk around the block, journal, and splash some
water on your face. This won’t go well until you are self-regulated.
If that is not your intention, you are probably in your
Adaptive Child. Stop! Take a walk around the block, journal, and splash some
water on your face. This won’t go well until you are self-regulated.
Feedback wheel
1.
what happened
2.
what you
made up about it
3.
how you
felt about it
4.
what you’d like now.
When you share your feelings, skip over the emotion that
first comes to you, your go-to emotion, and lead with others.
if you are used to leading with big, powerful feelings, like
anger, or indignation, soften up—reach for and lead with your vulnerability.
Changing your stance changes the dance between you.
Detach from the outcome, you did a fine job of speaking,
your outcome will vary dependent on the day, but you’re not in charge of that
Be specific, don’t go for trend or character. General makes
you helpless, makes it dirtier, more of an insult.
Apologies get more powerful going up from specific to trend.
Respond with what you can do, not what you can’t.
Don’t discount your partners repair, let it happen, not I
don’t believe you.
“Tone trumps content.” Tone reveals which part of your brain
you’re in, us consciousness or you and me consciousness.
Chapter 9 Leaving Our Kids a Better Future
There’s an old line in AA: “Pass it back or pass it on.”
Was one of your parents intrusive? In reaction, you erect
thick protective walls. Was someone controlling? In reaction, you develop a
black belt in evasion. Were they needy? You become expert in giving care.
For many clients,
keeping spiritual company with their problematic beloved parent is their only
way of feeling close to the parent.
Desiree and Juan: “You Cannot Rage at My Husband”
Chapter 10 Becoming Whole
Narcissism: outside in self-esteem, performance, what other
thinks, what you possess, being better than others at being
Self-esteem: inside out selfself-esteem, I value myself,
care for myself
Passive aggressive: put out a stink, punish people by what
you don’t do
the simplicity of the three family roles first described in
AA: hero child, scapegoat child, lost child.
You grew up good, and you grew up hungry.”
“Emotionally alone,” I correct. “Psychologically alone.”
“You really can’t be
mad at not getting what you never asked for.”
We will never experience collective healing until we undo
the dissociation and compartmentalization that is required of us to do
collective harm.
Everyone thinks themselves in a group that is better than
some people worse than another: we have never been a lonelier people.
Intimacy is not some blended egoless amalgam. Intimacy is an
endless dance of I and US, the needs of each vital part of the relationship
called myself or yourself as those individual wants filter through the needs of
the relationship itself.
Epilogue: Broken Light
Individualism bids us to see ourselves as separate and
dominant. Ecology, relationality, invites us to see ourselves as neither
dominating nor dominated but part of.
Couples: some have too weaker skin and they are too reactive,
so you can thicken their boundaries. Some have to thicker boundaries and they have
no connection, so you need to weaken their boundaries.
