Psychotherapy & Counselling for Individuals & Couples
Articles on Relationships
We’ve just published an article on couples therapy & what to expect if you come to us to work on your intimate relationship .
It’s about a 7 minute read and hopefully should give some useful background to couples therapy in general and in particular the way in which both of us with couples.
Here are some related articles we’ve written on couples therapy:
In this post we want to look at relationship in confinement, particularly for intimate relationships, and the potential dynamics between the partners.
With the difficulties of COVID-19, these dynamics can be an extra challenge, because many of us are forced to be in closer contact with our partners than would normally be the case. So points of friction, which we might otherwise have swept under the carpet (or fled from) can become exacerbated.
We’ll look at this from a depth-psychology viewpoint, which is a useful model for the complexities that occur.
The image above shows a depth-psychology view of a relationship, especially of an intimate relationship between two people (of same or different genders). Each arrow (all 6 of them) presents a form of the relationship that gets invoked.
A book could be written about the model above, but we thought we would try to distill it for the current circumstance.
(Note, as with all psychological models, they are only that, models to help us understand. Reality itself is always far more nuanced and complex than any model describes.)
These six relationships mean 12 points of relating, across the two people, only 2 of which are completely conscious (and 4 partially conscious). No wonder things sometimes go wrong!
Let’s look at the four kinds of relationship, marked 1 to 4 in the image above.
Ego is the conscious sense of self – the subject of our experience. Ego is the one we present to ourselves and to others as the “real deal” (however, it may not be quite that simple).
The Ego has its “public relations” component, the persona, or mask, that we use to adapt to others and make a statement we’d like to make, that feels appropriate in a particular situation.
It’s the persona particularly that may be challenged in our interactions during unusual circumstances, such as the COVID-19 lock-down. It’s hard to be a senior executive when you must also be tutoring your kids or doing the laundry, all in the same workday.
We may have to reflect on our ego, and how the egos of the others we are living with are affecting us.
This is a huge topic, one we can only skim over here. It’s the subject of all deep psychological work: How can we have a dialogue, an open two-way relationship between our conscious ego and the vast (99% at least) of the psyche that remains unconscious to us?
Suffice it to say that successful work on ourselves is the precursor and best predictor of effective work on a relationship. We can work to change ourselves; we cannot work to change the other, for if we attempt to do this we will have fallen into the potential difficulties described in (3) below.
The Unconscious has an important historical component: much that has happened to us, good and bad, from childhood onward (and prior to our birth, as collective memory) is held unconsciously. It is these historical components that can hold sway over us, and can affect the functioning of the Ego.
A feature of the Unconscious is that it holds these repressed elements, as we mentioned above. Another feature is that it continually involves itself in projection.
“Projection is a psychic mechanism that occurs whenever a vital aspect of our personality of which we are unaware is activated. When something is projected we see it outside of us, as though it belongs to someone else and has nothing to do with us. Projection is an unconscious mechanism.
We do not decide to project something, it happens automatically. If we decided to project something it would be conscious to us and then, precisely because it is conscious to us, it could not be projected. Only unconscious contents are projected; once something has become conscious projection ceases.” †
Projection is a huge factor in the flavour of the Unconscious-Ego relationship, especially in an intimate relationship. We can never be without projection. But what we can do is start to become aware of what we projecting onto others.
There are levels in this: at a “micro” level we might be continually expecting our partner to behave in ways that we have programmed in from our childhood experiences with our own parents or siblings; or how things “naturally” work in society (“women do the housework”).
But at a “macro” level there the danger that the work we should be doing, we do not do: instead we project our lack in this area onto the other partner.
An example at this macro level is when a man has had a negative experience with his mother, and his feminine unconscious side (the so-called anima in Jungian language) has been wounded as a consequence.
Instead of investigating this resulting internal misogyny, he projects the “problem woman” out onto his partner – seeing her as lacking and negative in various ways.
Another factor that comes into play here is the contra-sexual side of each of us. Often we are not in contact with this, and it can play havoc in the Unconscious-Ego interactions.
“The contra-sexual element within us is so psychologically elusive that it escapes our complete awareness, therefore it always is projected, at least in part.” ‡
So a woman may project her “Shining White Knight” onto the man of her dreams, and only too late find that he is a primarily money-focused achiever who cannot give her what she wants (which is, actually, to have a relationship with that Knight living in her unconscious).
(Note this is unrelated to the genders of the partners – it applies in same sex as well as different sex relationships: we are usually, at some level, mainly at an unconscious level, trying to work out and redeem our contra-sexual side.)
In the example given, of the man projecting his negative mother onto women, the story does not end there.
She in turn, due to her unconscious predisposition, may “take on” this projection, feeling the very things that are projected onto her. (This is called projective identification.) So her ego response changes, as she begins to feel worthless.
However, that is probably not the end of the subject, because unconsciously she is probably bitterly disappointed and angry and will reap her revenge on her partner (again, unconsciously).
We are now talking of interactions that are unconscious with unconscious, and these are difficult to investigate, since neither party knows what’s happening! This is exactly when a third party such as a therapist can assist as they may see the dynamic playing out, because they are not personally involved (and have seen it before).
“There is little doubt that such projective identifications occur. They feel wonderful when one senses that one has come home through the agency of the Other; they feel diabolical if one feels possessed by the Other.
How many pogroms, martyrdoms, burnings, mass hysterias have scarred history, destroyed lives, because of … contamination between [the unconscious of two people]?” §
It is our intention here to offer a model for the complexities of relationships, which may in this difficult time be more in evidence.
The good news is that, often, if couples address issues they are having before there is a crisis, good work can be done in exploring some of the “skeletons in the closet”, and enabling the couple to feel relieved and better able to tackle the difficulties of the world they are facing.
As the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Iain McGilchrist says, you can take a poisonous gas (chlorine) and a dull reactive metal (sodium) and combine them chemically to form a harmless but very necessary white substance – salt!
A relationship, too, can undergo such an alchemical miracle, made from two possibly quite odd components!
If you wish are seeking to make a change in your relationship feel free to reach out to us for support.
† John A Sanford – The Invisible Partners, p10
‡ John A Sanford – The Invisible Partners, p11
§ James Hollis – The Eden Project, p54
At Therapy Duo, in Couples therapy, we often take a psycho-educational role and offer very practical tips for resolving couple conflicts. But we are also always aware of another level operating in the couple relationships we see.
This level can be hard to pin down and define, and yet we as therapists often have a real sense of its presence and how it might be accessed further to transform a relationship. In this blog post we will try to say a little about this other level (“the third”).
Culturally and educationally, society is swayed by a scientific view of things. The rise of science since the end of the seventeenth century has been extraordinary, and no-one would deny the tremendous gains that have come from this.
Science is an exacting lens on nature, a champion of the “cause and effect” paradigm (i.e. that all effects have causes, which are previous to them in time). Science has brought about amazing devices such as our computers and smartphones.
It’s interesting to note though, that at about the time of the beginning of the rise of science, another world view was dying out in the West. This was the world of (Western) alchemy, and it works in an opposite direction to science.
While science was starting to become a study of material life, and how matter changes over time (by a disembodied subject), alchemy was always a science of the soul. Although some still see alchemy as just a primitive version of chemistry, other current thinking is that in fact they were diametrically opposed disciplines, in their intended goals, operating within two markedly different paradigms.
Science wants to (and has been very successful at) demarcating a split between subject and object. It enables subjects (people) to successfully manipulate objects (nature). Yet, with science we are at a crossroads now: this process cannot continue unabated without destroying the earth, through climate change and species extinction. We could say that science has been a victim of its extraordinary success.
Some commentators are now starting to look closely at Western alchemy again, and to wonder whether in fact we threw too much out when we assigned it to the dustbin of history.
For what was it trying to do? Alchemy insisted that subject and object are always linked (evidence that quantum physics is now corroborating); that soul exists as an inner life that moves by its own rules, independent of cause and effect, independent of time. That synchronicities exist, and that they order reality. And that this discipline is a proper subject for psychology (for psyche, soul).
For soul, cause and effect are irrelevant. What is deeply relevant to soul is relationships, and the quality of relationships. (These relationships can be between parts of a single person, between people, or between a person and the so-called material realm – the environment.)
For this reason Western alchemy talked at length about opposites, their combinations and their resolutions as transformative processes.
Alchemy liked to keep this idea of relationship living by considering the subtle body. This was the third element, the realm between two opposites (such as matter and soul, subject and object, two people in a relationship) and it had a reality as an intermediate realm.
While this may sound obscure and unlikely, it is good to remember the words of Claude Levi-Strauss on the dangers of dominant thought systems:
Every civilisation tends to overestimate the objective orientation of its thought and this tendency is never absent. (The Savage Mind, p3.)
We have written on this blog in the past about the value in seeing that any couple have the relationship itself as “The Third”. (Here, for example, on The Life of The Relationship as a third entity. Or here, in relation to neurobiology: relationship itself is a third reality.)
We are suggesting again in this post that there is good evidence for taking the concept of “The Third” very seriously in couples work. We see this play out in the therapy room sometimes when two people, who have been attacking each other (and continually defending themselves), are able to “stand aside” and watch the life of “The Third”, in the room, at that moment – and for them to realise that they have this important Third on which mutually to work – which is the Relationship itself!
We in the therapy room can then sometimes all detect a change that happens; there is a sense of rightness and of hope for transformation. Which, of course, was what alchemy was all about, the transformation of opposites to form a higher state, neither inner nor outer (which science would insist be one or the other!) but of a third realm: the “subtle body” of the relationship.
…they have this important Third on which mutually to work – which is the Relationship itself!
We could argue that due to our very scientifically-oriented culture we are sometimes doing relationships under duress. There is potentially a large part of the world of relationships for which an effective language of discourse no longer exists. And the right words are often needed before the deeper experience can be had.
It may be better to stand back in couples work, from love vs hate, attack vs defense, good vs evil, mind vs body, left-brain vs right-brain, love vs power, and sit with the alchemical idea of essence, something that pervades all of reality and connects the opposites; something that can have real presence in couples work if it is allowed in.
Couples work could then be a microcosm of what we must also do collectively in the outer world, as we find new paradigms to save the planet from destruction; paradigms that see ourselves as part of the one subtle body of nature, rather than as subjects exploiting nature.
Here are two quotations from Nathan Schwartz-Salant’s The Mystery of Human Relationships, speaking of the alchemical attitude in relational therapy:
…one becomes focused upon relations, on the nature of the ‘third realm’ between people, and not on what people are doing to one another. …A major principle of the alchemical attitude is that it is not hierarchical. No matter how much one person seems to be doing something negative or objectionable to another, one still looks for the ‘unconscious couple’ the two people share. (p17)
Another major feature of the alchemical attitude is the respect for chaos. In a sense alchemical thinking parallels the recent discoveries in Chaos Theory in science….chaos has always been central to alchemy. The alchemical attitude learns to embrace and suffer chaos without reaching into reason to dispel and dissociate from it. Moreover, the alchemical attitude recognises a transcendent dimension of existence without which the process of transformation cannot proceed. (p17)
(We plan to tease out these ideas further, in future pages on the site, when we discuss the alchemical work Rosarium Philosophorum.)
The image at the top of this post is Plate 2 of the Rosarium Philosophorum, an alchemical text that was a favourite of C.G. Jung, and that describes stages in a relational alchemical process (either between two people, or between two parts of an individual).
Plate 2 shows the start of the process. (There are 20 plates.) The image is sometimes referred to as the “Left-handed Contact”, because the couple hold hands with their left hand: they are unconscious of much of their connection (a situation which can be fraught with difficulties).
We say in this situation that the Family of Origin issues that the two people have brought into the relationship are alive and activated (and are often out of the awareness of both people).
Yet, some kind of structure is already in place (the crossed branches), and a holy dove is shown descending: some kind of illumination is possible, but is not yet in effect between the persons of the relationship. There is hope!
One of the big themes we see in Counselling and Psychotherapy with both couples and individuals is a difficulty in accepting and dealing with difference, and the conflicts associated with this.
This post is a short meditation on difference.
Here are some examples from Counselling that could be signs of underlying difficulties in accepting difference:
Usually difference itself is not the problem.
Difference is what creates attraction, but it also creates tension. It can be what makes us complementary or the thing that tears us apart.
Usually difference itself is not the problem. The problem is that we struggle with how to handle difference. We become uncomfortable with it.
Generally, to deal with our discomfort around difference, we try to:
When we change ourselves we lose our authenticity and sense of meaning.
When we try to change another to be like us we are not seeing the other wholly. We may feel threatened by their different way of thinking or being.
Not only do we see these attempted solutions playing out in personal relationships, but we see it in business and even global political situations. And countries are very ready to go to war over political/religious difference.
The image we’ve chosen above is of a carved wooden monument set in a place of honour near the house of a clan elder in Madagascar. The idea is that it becomes a focal point for acceptance of changes – important events in village life where accepting difference is required for changes such as puberty.
(The monument is in the Met Museum, Fifth Avenue, NYC.)
As the description says:
Set side by side, these figures engage the viewer with their intense expressions and deeply recessed eyes. Their subtle stylization simultaneously unifies them and amplifies what makes them different, producing an eloquent statement on the fundamental complementarity of man and woman.
As the centerpiece of circumcision rights performed to promote the virility of each generation, the couple emphasizes the importance of the male-female partnership in assuring the community’s future.
The figures’ nudity, striking in a region where textiles are a fundamental element of identity, serves to further underscore these timeless and universal themes of fertility and regeneration.
The quote suggests complimentarity is an important aspect of the life of the community. (The bolding on “different” above are ours.)
Moving to a Taoist viewpoint (and continuing our recent theme on the Tao), here’s Chuang Tzu on difference:
Fish can live in water quite contentedly, but if people try it, they die, for different beings need different contexts which are right and proper for them. This is why the ancient sages never expected just one response from the rest of the creatures nor tried to make them conform.
Titles should not be over-stretched in trying to capture reality and ideas should be only applied when appropriate…
(Chapter 18, Perfect Happiness, in The Book of Chuang Tzu.)
Chuang Tzu was interested in the issue of difference in 300 BC, and even then referred to “the ancient sages”. We are dealing with a very old concern!
The paradox is that connection can only be felt with a space for distance. There needs to be an ability to come together and to pull apart (without breaking), to feel the full range that is a healthy interaction.
Imagine there are two wholes – nothing missing: these can meet and connect and not have to merge. There can be an experience of sharing without losing anything. To know another in this way, as different from you and whole in themselves, is a powerful experience.
To know another as different from you and whole in themselves is a powerful experience.
It is enriching to learn and grow through difference. It means interactions stay fresh and exciting because the other is not like you. There is a possibility for some new insight or experience.
When there is a merging there is a loss of identity, loss of needs, and often loss of passion. Many of us like the idea of merging and feeling completed by another but the reality is that we lose sight of the other and lose our own boundaries and sense of self if we do this for too long.
There can be no real connection without the ability to see another as whole and from a distance.
Disconnection happens when we move too far away. Here are examples of when this may happen:
In any experience or emotion it is though contrast that we know it exists. As Gestalt Psychotherapy says, experience is at the boundary between self and other.
For example, if you put your hand in a bowl of water that is exactly blood temperature then you do not know it is in water. There is no difference between hand and world (water).
And human connection is felt through our experience of the opposite. We understand joy because we have experienced sadness or sorrow.
If we can allow ourselves to understand another wholly, not diminishing their difference, and not trying to change them, we can feel connected, whole and invigorated by our relationships.
(The Madagascar Couple is at the The Met Museum. The quote from Chuang Tzu is from The Book of Chuang Tzu, tr. Martin Palmer, Penguin Books.)
Something we’ve found very useful when working with clients is getting them to tune into themselves to understand when they are getting triggered. We use the word “triggered” to identify when someone has an emotional reaction which may be unproductive (and is usually based on old patterns), in any situation, and then acts based on that trigger.
The best way to start dealing with this is to raise awareness about where the trigger comes from, what is most likely to be a trigger for a particular person, and then, of course, what to do about it.
This post is about how to notice things before they blow out of proportion and how to address them – to catch them at the beginning.
Continuing the theme from our last post on Wu-Wei, there’s a nice Taoist background to this. In Chapter 63 of the Tao Te Ching it says:
The difficult problems of the world
Must be dealt with while they are yet easy;
The great problems of the world
Must be dealt with while they are yet small.
And in Chapter 64:
Deal with a thing before it is there;
Check disorder before it is rife.
Sometimes it helps to understand where triggers come from. Looking to the beginning of our life might be a way to uncover how we operate in the world. But for the most part we can just work with what is here now, and not have to dig to find the origins (if in fact there is even a single cause).
(This latter way of working, in the here-and-now, is more the Gestalt approach.)
Working with the here-and-now we can start with each beginning: the beginning of a feeling, the first thought that arises that is negative, the first sensation that tells us we are uncomfortable. When we get awareness around this then there is a possibility of a different action. A new choice becomes available to us.
Looking at the picture (above) that we took in Tasmania, we see a quiet perfection. This we could say is our natural state. Many things through a life can pollute our sense of ourselves or the environment and change how we perceive and react to our world. This photo represents for us a canvas on which we project our lives and concerns.
If we take stock and can find a sense of our natural state (through therapy, meditation, art) then we can notice the disruptions to this natural state. We can watch for the changes no matter how minuscule they may appear. Attend now.
When we see the faintest ripple on the water, check in. If we notice an intrusion to the natural scene, check in. We need to do this with ourselves and, if in relationship, with the other person.
You may be interested to read about some practical ways of exploring this internally and in relationship by reading our Three Simple Sentences post and our page on Meanings and Behaviours.
Once we understand that there will always be ripples that come and go then we can attend to looking deeper and can make choices to do something different (or just let the ripples settle), rather than letting things build up or reacting too quickly.
This is a creative process and it can become a habit that is well worth practicing.
We suggest this as an alternative to working on “anger management”; an alternative to feeling disconnected, feeling resentment and experiencing a range of other problems that we see in therapy – when people have just let feelings and thoughts go unchecked and unnoticed.
The Tao Te Ching translation is by Lin Yutang.
We awoke one night at Lake Como this (Northern) summer to a powerful storm with endless rolling thunder. The air was lit with bright sheets of lightning, the rain hammered down, and the power in our apartment was cut off. This went on for hours, and all we could do was wait until morning, to get the power turned on again. (The picture above is from the balcony, the following morning.)
This waiting, this “not doing”, we could see as an example of the Taoist idea of Wu-Wei. That night, “not doing” was all we could reasonably have done.
As Alan Watts said:
Wu-Wei, as “not forcing”, is what we mean by going with the grain, rolling with the punch, swimming with the current, trimming sails to the wind, taking the tide at its flood, and stooping to conquer. (Alan Watts, Tao, The Watercourse Way.)
Interactions in couple relationships are always rich, often complex, and sometimes confusing and bewildering. Perhaps we think we’re just talking… but actually we may be pushing. Or maybe we think we’re just listening… but actually we’re not: we’re defending, we’re pushing back.
And these dynamics in the couple can be lightning fast, highly triggering, and beset, also, with thunderous words.
Wu-Wei suggests an alternative. Wu-Wei suggests what we were forced to do at Lake Como: slow down, breathe, accept that any action we might take during the storm would be pointless.
How this could look, in an interaction with our partner, is hard to generalise. But it could have the same quality of “not doing”, of switching to another perspective, another way of seeing the interaction.
I regularly want to convince my partner about my latest great idea. I know how great and ground-breaking it is (as my ideas always are), so I just need to convince them to go along with it.
But we always end up in this same situation, me working hard to get my point across, to show how great this idea is. And them pushing back and highlighting the flaws in the idea and really niggling me. It’s exhausting!
However, reflecting on Wu-Wei, I might realise that having delivered my marvellous idea it might be better to “not do”, to “stoop to conquer”; to give my partner their freedom to process my idea, in their own way, and to allow them to respond when they are ready and, again, in their own way.
Maybe this will work better. Maybe then my partner will enjoy me having these great ideas!
When I try the Wu-Wei approach, my partner doesn’t say much for a while. They say they need to think it through and will get back to me. Sometimes they come back hours later or even the next day.
But when they do get back to me, I realise they’re now quite an expert on the idea, and guess what? They make the idea even better than what I’d thought of!
I get to see that two heads are better than one. PLUS I get to see that our relationship can be creative and have great ideas, not just me.
The only way to see how a Wu-Wei approach could work is to try it. This is the experiential way: we shouldn’t be too theoretical about it. We can start simply by being open to the possibility of “not doing”, in any heated moment.
Wu Wei is like the Shift from Perceiving Two to Three Dimensions
In fact, as Alan Watts says, what’s really needed is just a simple shift of perspective. He uses the example of suddenly “getting” the three-dimensional perspective in a drawing, with just some simple extra lines being drawn with the pencil.
What’s needed is just a simple shift of perspective.
As Watts says:
In line with Lao-tzu one might say “Superior Wu-Wei does not aim at Wu-Wei and so it truly is Wu-Wei.” (Tao, The Watercourse Way.)
In other words, don’t overthink it. Instead, see if you can experience it!
The Taoist sage Zhuangzi saw the connection between Wu-Wei and emotions. This is relevant in couple dynamics.
The idea of following, of going along with, is something we can experiment with in our intimate interactions. Again, it can require just a simple perspective shift, as though from two dimensions to three, using observational tools (our awareness) which are as simple as the pencil.
As Zhuangzi says:
In the case of the body, it is best to let it go along with things. In the case of the emotions, it is best to let them follow where they will. By going along with things, you avoid becoming separated from them. By letting the emotions follow as they will, you avoid fatigue. (From The Mountain Tree, in Burton Watson’s translation of The Complete Works of Zhuangzi; our emphasis.)
Letting the emotions follow as they will is an example of Wu-Wei. If we can observe the emotions in our partner and let them be, this can help us ride out the storms in couple interactions. We can breathe through them, can enjoy the perspective shift and can stay refreshed in, and refreshed by, our dialogues with our partner.
We might find we’re actually seeking out more dialogues with them, more creative conversations and connections. As always, let us know if you’d like help with this!
In this post we hope to convey the subtle power of reflective listening – a safe and simple technique that couples can learn with us and practice at home.
When couples come to us saying they have communication issues it is usually due to one or two of the following reasons:
Here we’ll describe a simple method we teach to our clients that addresses the third issue above, communication itself.
If something is important enough to fight about this means it is important for the couple to work on. A healthy couple listens to their partner’s concerns. If it matters to one person then it is worth the time needed for the other person to understand.
Simply put, in bad communication we spend most of our energy getting our point across, or defending ourselves. We don’t listen to the other person. And since we already know what we think, we are learning nothing.
If the other person is upset it usually means we don’t really understand what is going on for them at a feeling level.
Reflective Listening is about getting to the heart of the misunderstanding, and finding out (underneath this) what’s actually happening for the other person.
In Reflective Listening done well we can have the uncanny feeling of suddenly coming to the position of a third person, of breaking through an impasse. The “argument” becomes dissolved because we’re no longer in it – we’ve dropped beneath it in a simple yet subtly powerful way.
As one partner might say (in a relieved and positive voice) “I had no idea you we’re thinking that!” or “I had no idea and it makes me really sad to hear you felt that way”.
Reflective Listening is effectively a slowed down conversation requiring time and attention.
This exercise can help build trust if used correctly.
Because it’s a conversation there’s a speaker and a listener. One chooses to speak first while the other listens. (Later, you’ll swap roles.)
Now it’s time to swap roles. The speaker becomes the listener and the listener becomes the speaker.
Once the second speaker is done, the first speaker may want to go again.The process continues in this open-ended way until both partners have completed what they wanted to say and both feel they have been listened to correctly (from the feedback they’ve received from the listener).
Essentially, it’s checking in with ourselves, because we have the time to think about what is most important to say. We are really listening and giving time to understand each other more deeply.
This process may take anything from 5 minutes or 30 minutes.
Once you have mastered the skill of Reflective Listening then you can use it in daily interactions, as a single sentence (“So what I’m hearing you say is…”). Just check in when you are not sure you understand what is happening for your partner.
Or you can ask your partner to reflect back what you have said, if you feel it is important and want to make sure they are not making assumptions or jumping to conclusions.
Couples who take the effort to follow the steps of Reflective Listening carefully can be in for some positive surprises. They feel differently after the process. It may take some time and practice at the beginning but it is well worth the effort.
Once a couple gets familiar with the practice and knows that talking is safe it can be used just to check that you really have understood what is happening for the other person. It ultimately saves a huge amount of time arguing and the pain of feeling misunderstood.
Reflective listening is simple but takes practice. It is a way of showing that you want to resolve an issue and not just “have your say”.
Reflective listening is a way of showing that you want to resolve an issue and not just “have your say”.
Some couples struggle at the beginning to break their negative habits of interrupting, dismissing and rushing in to fix a problem with a practical solution – rather than staying with their partner while the real answer unfolds. But keep practicing!
We are of course happy to help couples practice Reflective Listening, but you can also try this at home.
As we approach the summer holiday season (in Australia at least) it’s worth remembering that even in the best of times, with few exceptions, we as couples need to practice the principles of couple security.
In this post we’d like to comment on some of these principles, as 10 tips for secure couples.
The need is even greater for some when on holiday, with the potentially added complexities of increased time together and extended family.
With that in mind, here are some great examples of secure principles from the book Attached (Amir Levine and Rachel Heller), one we recommend to couples looking to find out more about Adult Attachment.
And we wish you a happy holiday!
This tip’s aimed more towards Avoidant types, who might think that, with potentially more family interactions, they need more “alone time” as a balance. And perhaps in some ways they are right, feeling that things (maybe including their partner) are too demanding, too busy, too noisy.
The key for an Avoidant type at this time is to communicate openly and honestly to their partner what’s happening for them. An Avoidant needs to be open and emotionally available even if only for some moments.
With the stress of organising social events, an overtly Anxious partner may decide it’s time to “check in” repeatedly on their possibly Avoidant partner. (Is all this stuff going to get done?) This action is likely to be counter-productive, and will reduce the trust the Avoidant person feels for the situation and for the couple’s security, because they’ll be overwhelmed.
The key is to make an agreement about how and when check-ins will occur, an agreement that suits both styles.
Especially in times of high family expectations, it’s easy to fall into defensive strategies such as belittling, acting hostile or disdainful, and minimising emotional sharing. Yet at this time there are huge bonuses to be had in acting encouragingly and in a supportive way.
A common Avoidant response is to find a partner’s advances needy and pathetic. The Avoidant tries to gain distance by discouraging and by trying to keep the partner “in their place”. The effect can be devastating on the other partner and on the relationship.
Alternatively, the Avoidant can practice finding the positive in the other. This ironically helps them too!
Knowing what your attachment style is a useful pointer to where you’ll be vulnerable to ineffective communication. What are the situations that trigger you, especially at this time of the year? How does your attachment style then play out? How do you lose out by following the game plan of your style?
Effective communication comes out of challenging the assumptions you’ve made.
This is another way of saying: Don’t act out. Don’t fall into the trap of engaging in secondary arguments that are about point scoring and winning or losing. These secondary arguments often leave the underlying issues completely unaddressed.
It comes as a surprise to some people that they can take responsibility for the well-being of their partner, and often (without a huge amount of effort) powerfully increase the sense of well-being in that other person.
This in turn increases their own sense of well-being, when they see they can evoke such positive effects. Another way of saying this is “Have each others’ back”.
Be courageous and honest in your interactions. Dig into feelings and be available to share them. The Three Simple Sentences are a great way of doing this.
Having a sense of partnership in solving a problem – be it who’s going to be invited to a social event or how the household chores are going to be done – not only solves the problem but builds couple security.
Stick to the issue – which is usually about one or both partners feeling under-resourced and not attended to.
Attend to your partner’s upsets before they escalate. Learn to attend to the moments in the other when their attachment style is triggered – and get in first to prevent the spread of fire.
Efforts spent in creating and maintaining secure couples attachment pays back dividends for all concerned (including other family members) and can be critical during holiday periods. We hope these 10 tips for secure couples are helpful!
We’ve been wanting a simple primer for attachment theory for a while, and while there are several really good books around, not everyone wants to read a whole book on the subject to get an idea of what it’s about.
We also wanted to give our view of this topic, after ten years of working with couples, and increasingly finding attachment theory to be a useful model for understanding what goes on in the sometimes mysterious interactions between partners in an intimate relationship.
So we’ve added a new page to the web site: An Adult Attachment Primer.
Couples often fight about how they fight. In doing this, they’re not usually fighting about the actual issues in the relationship. They come to therapy speaking of the “communication” issues that they have. This is often a pointer to the fact that they’re “spinning their wheels” on secondary concerns, while below the surface the the primary attachment issues are playing out and are remaining unaddressed.
These primary issues are often about how people handle stress and conflict in an intimate relationship.
The Adult Attachment Primer doesn’t describe everything we do with couples. Attachment theory offers just one model, but it can be a very useful one, particularly when two people’s attachment styles are very different (and even when they are the same).
The model can be very useful when two people’s attachment styles are different
For example, it can help to see how one person in a relationship might be driven to repair a disruption with the other, while the other person might be driven to withdraw from contact to reduce stress. The partners can start to see what the drivers are for themselves and for the other person.
Click here for The Primer, which explains the diagram at the top of this post.
If you’d like to understand how these issues may be playing out in your relationship, please give us a call.
We’re just back from the GANZ (Gestalt Australia and New Zealand) conference in Canberra where we gave a presentation on our eclectic approach to couples therapy.
It was gratifying to receive such positive feedback on our way of working, and a great opportunity for us to reflect on how we work and what it is that makes our approach to therapy so effective.
Not to be underestimated is the years of work we’ve done to achieve a quiet and grounded sense of happiness and security in our own relationship, and to see that something of that can “rub off” on the couples we work with.
In intimate relationships, so much of the interactions are rooted in out-of-awareness states, and this can work for couples in a positive way, grounding them in a real sense of couple security; as well as in a negative way when these interactions trigger disruptive patterns and cause suffering.
So here’s some background from the slide on “the cogwheels”, one that a member of the audience asked us to write more about.
It’s a simplified model that we find helps couples to figure out what’s going on in tense moments.
The large touching circles above represent the two partners in a couple interaction. Also shown is the cerebral cortex and the amygdala in each – the so-called two brains.
The cerebral cortex is the mammalian, developed, “adult” brain, responsible for higher functions such as sensory perception. It’s where we want to be in a couple interaction! The amygdala, on the other hand, is the primitive, reptilian brain, responsible for “fight, flight, freeze” reactions: it’s not where we want to be when interacting with our partner. (It’s the source of the “trigger” response, also called the “pathway of fear”.)
Lastly what’s shown in the diagram is the sensory thalamus: this processes incoming sensory data and decides whether there’s a threat involved.
If one partner experiences some kind of threat or danger in the interaction, the sensory thalamus can be quick to reroute nerve impulses to the amygdala. We say this person is “triggered”, and their behaviour is then usually a fast and reactive combination that is primarily defensive.
We say that one partner has taken the path of the “small cog wheel” (shown as the smaller dotted red line above). They’ve switched from large cog wheel to small.
The person is “triggered”, and their behaviour is then usually defensive.
The problem with this reaction (as well as the suffering it causes the person who’s switched) is that the reaction is quickly picked up by the other person, causing them to potentially also switch from large to small cog wheel. The situation quickly escalates and the intimate system becomes threatened (fighting).
When all’s going well, the “happy path” is shown by the larger dotted red line: the large cog wheel. A couple in this dynamic is doing well and both partners are enjoying their contact and interaction. The thalamus detects no threats on either side.
We can “catch” what’s happening in these couple interactions.
An important part of what we do in couples therapy is to “catch” what’s happening in the couple interactions, to bring these patterns into awareness, and to support the couple to use pacing and self-support to slow these interactions; to give the neocortex time to operate and to prevent amygdala reactions from controlling the scene. The experiential approach of Gestalt is well suited for this work.
(The cog-wheel diagram is adapted and simplified from Seidenfaden & Draiby, The Vibrant Relationship.)