Polyamory, page 19
When I am preparing to communicate something difficult to someone I care about or helping a client do the same, I like to be intentional about the process. Just jumping in and hoping for the best is not as good a strategy as thinking carefully about what you want to say and how you want to say it. I often hear people say they are “waiting for the right time” before bringing something up with their partner, which often results in the conversation never happening or coming up in an angry burst when things really come to a head. I think the timing of difficult conversations can be important but less so if the person who is bringing up the topic becomes skilled at preparation. I consider a conversation to be successful if the person who is bringing up the topic is able to actually say what they intended to say and hold steady while doing so. (Notice that I do not think the success of the conversation to be based on avoiding disagreement or uncomfortable feelings.) To accomplish that, it is important not to communicate from an emotionally activated state or without thought about how you can take full ownership of your own perceptions and avoid blaming, shaming, defending, judging, and other sure-fire reactivity-inviting behaviors. I think preparation helps a lot with this, so I developed a worksheet to guide a fairly involved sequential process (see the “Preparing to Communicate” worksheet in appendix C).
Exercise: Rehearsing Tough Conversations
I oftentimes rehearse my own hard conversations ahead of time, and I recommend you and your clients do the same. Whether you are bringing up a difficult topic with a friend, partner, or family member, or presenting a new exercise or intervention in a therapy session and are uncertain about how it will go, rehearsal can help you sort out what you want to say, actually spit it out, and then work through how you want to respond if things go sideways.
I do this using two chairs, and it is a fun and frequently used strategy in my therapy room. Accessible for self-help, I also use it myself at home. It gives me the opportunity to explore how I might want to respond if the other person becomes upset and results in considerably lowering my anxiety about the conversation because I have explored all of my worst-case scenarios ahead of time (see the “Rehearsing Tough Conversations” worksheet in appendix C).
The Third Aspect of Differentiation: Can You Hold Steady and Engage Actively when Someone Shares Their Truth with You?
The third part of differentiation is holding steady and accessing curiosity and empathy while someone else expresses their thoughts, beliefs, and preferences to you, even if it is hard for you to hear or you don’t agree. It requires cultivating curiosity but also the ability to hold two different perspectives simultaneously, which is just about as hard as it sounds.
When someone is struggling with the third aspect of differentiation, it might show up in some of the following ways:
Getting angry and defensive or going on the attack.
Withdrawing emotionally or giving the cold shoulder: “Well, I don’t want to hear about this anymore, I’m just going to bed.”
Losing focus and engaging elsewhere, like checking e-mail, leaving the room, etc.
Catastrophizing, for instance, creating a story about what a disastrous situation they’re in or making dire claims about themselves, their partner, or their future: “You don’t love me anymore, I’m a terrible person, this relationship is doomed . . .”
Becoming defensive and trying to explain why their partner’s perspective is incorrect, whereas they are blameless and/or misunderstood: “Well, that wouldn’t have happened if you had just remembered to . . .” or “You totally missed that I had already done that! You’re blaming me for something that isn’t even true!”
Minimizing or explaining away their partner’s feelings: “You’re just grouchy because you didn’t have your coffee this morning.”
Scrambling to “fix” the situation too quickly, conceding everything and making ill-advised promises: “Of course, you’re completely right, whatever you say, I promise never to do anything you don’t like ever again.”
Agreeing to something they know they can’t follow through on, don’t believe in, or don’t want.
When people don’t know how to sit quietly with an uncomfortable emotion, they often do the first thing they think will dispel their discomfort, often unconsciously. That might mean creating a smokescreen or distraction to change the subject or take attention away from the topic at hand. It might mean shutting down or becoming more activated and going on the attack. However this looks in the moment (and there are an unlimited number of variations), these are ineffective coping strategies that protect from vulnerability. These strategies also prevent the conversation from moving forward in any useful way. Few of us have had great role models for actively engaging with differing viewpoints, and it can take quite a bit of practice to grasp that there are options available and that those options really work well.
To be able to actually hear what a partner is saying and listen long enough to get the full, nuanced picture, you will need to be able to tolerate your own discomfort and possibly also your partner’s discomfort. You’ll also need to be able to deeply engage with your partner’s perspective without abandoning your own (and without even engaging about your own for the time being). That’s a project that involves a few different pieces:
Identifying the benefits to you of deeply understanding your partner’s perception, preferences, and situation.
Recognizing your own emotional reactions and patterns, in particular, their earliest signs, so that you notice your defensiveness kicking in and manage it before you react in a damaging way.
Learning how to self-soothe, so that you can successfully modulate your reaction and control your response, thereby staying with the conversation more productively and for longer.
Disrupting the cycle of negative meaning-making, so that you hear what your partner is telling you without it being distorted by your fears and assumptions.
Cultivating curiosity, so that you can encourage your partner to share the most nuanced version of their perspective.
Setting aside your perspective and engaging with theirs in a deep and open manner, including both being open to seeing it their way and not fearing that seeing it their way will obligate you to abandon a position that feels important to you.
Managing difficult discussions in a thoughtful way by taking breaks when necessary and intentionally building pleasant, connecting time together into your schedule.
Postponing a need to reach resolution, building understanding from every angle, and cultivating empathy and appreciation for your partner’s experience and opinion rather than moving prematurely to decision-making.
To tune into what your partner is really saying, you need to be able to set aside your own reactivity, imagined stories, past slights, defensiveness, or desire to argue about “what really happened.” This requires holding multiple realities at the same time: your perception of what happened and their perception of what happened. It is also helpful to be aware that you can love someone and express that love while still disagreeing about something or even feeling angry, scared, or disappointed.
This is a challenging project, and it requires going against the brain’s automatic defensive responses. During periods of stress, the self-protective part of your brain wants to fight, flee, or freeze; these reactions are helpful in a life-threatening situation but unhelpful when you’re just trying to have a tough conversation with a loved one. If a person aspires to respond from their heart with compassion and love, and from their rational brain, which is able to think and experience empathy, they will need to cultivate multiple strategies for managing these automatic responses.
Understanding Automatic Responses and the Self-Protective Brain
I’ve found a little psychoeducation about neuroscience to be one of the most effective interventions for increasing emotional regulation, regardless of the cause. Learning the basics of neuroscience as it relates to automatic self-protective responses, emotional regulation, and creating change has also made a huge difference in my life; I can personally recommend the project. If you are interested in becoming a happier person, responding in ways that connect rather than distance, and developing new habits or ways of being, you are in luck. With amazing developments in the field of neuroscience in the past 20 or so years, there is a lot of information now available about how to actually accomplish these things.
It is so depathologizing to realize that when you have an out-of-proportion freak-out response, it’s just the brain’s way of trying to protect you from having something bad you experienced in the past happen again. Our brain, in its effort to keep us safe, remembers every negative thing, so that it can scan for look-alike disasters. But it skips over a lot of positive things, which can leave us with a perception of overarching negativity. When that is applied to our perception of our spouse or our relationship, it can really undermine or prevent a feeling of security, safety, or connection.
It is also helpful to realize that the degree of danger we perceive is generally far out of proportion to most of what we actually encounter these days. We are talking here about the part of the brain that is responsible for the survival of the species. Every single one of us is the most recent descendant of a long line of survivors. The part of our brain that causes us to spot and escape from a predator has been extremely successful in each of our genetic lines—that’s why we survived. Eons ago, when the self-protective mechanisms of the brain evolved, there were life-and-death dangers everywhere. Now, we still have the saber-toothed tiger level of freak-out, even when we’re in much less danger.
That means, in my opinion, we are all wound way too tight when it comes to perceiving threat. The part of our brain that saves us when we are in danger evolved in times when there were saber-toothed tigers, but evolution is a slow process, occurring gradually in a span of millions of years. We still respond in essentially the same way, with a burst of stress hormones that increase our heart rate, sharpen our reflexes, and give us a lot of strength and intensity with which to save our lives. That works out well if someone is coming into your house with a machine gun or you need to single-handedly lift an automobile off of a child, but it’s a little bit out of proportion when the threat is actually just your partner pointing a finger at you and saying, “I can’t believe you did that!” or your boss getting annoyed with you when you arrive at work 15 minutes late; therefore, most of us experience a lot of disproportionate worry, anxiety, and reactivity until we learn how to control our automatic responses and counteract our natural negativity bias.
I am deliberately painting a vivid image of how this aspect of survival works. I want to acknowledge that when I suggest we might take the more relational stance of managing our automatic responses to get curious in the face of perceived threat, what I’m suggesting feels impossible. It feels impossible because our very survival up to this point has depended on us doing just the opposite. Nonetheless, this is the project that must be undertaken to feel connected, create a secure connection with your closest loved ones, and build a strong teamwork-driven relationship.
The Importance of Motivation
So how does someone go against their most potent survival mechanisms to get genuinely curious about what their partner experienced in yesterday’s fight? Well, it takes a lot of self-control and determination. No one ever does this without a very good reason.
Imagine this: Your partner is angry. They are pointing a finger at you and yelling. You feel wronged, like they don’t understand you. What they are saying doesn’t agree with your perception of what is true. You feel flushed, and you feel the urge to point your finger back at them and defend yourself. Instead, you remember the kind of relationship you want to create. You remember that you want to feel heard when you are upset and that to experience that, you will need to provide that for your partner as well. Besides, it is the kind of person you want to be. You want to be someone your partner can talk to about anything. So you make a decision to go against your strongest instincts in this moment. This is when the rubber meets the road. You bring to mind an image or word that reminds you of your strongest motivation, you take a deep breath, and you say, “I can see you are very upset. Can you tell me more about what has happened to upset you? What did I do that got under your skin?” As you listen, you nod. You can actually relate to what they are telling you. You say, “I can see how that would be very upsetting. I can see how that thing I did really didn’t work for you, and now that I understand how that looked from your perspective, I get it.”
This is a little like looking right at a saber-toothed tiger and saying, “Here kitty kitty, let me help you get that thorn out of your paw. Where exactly does it hurt?” You would have to believe it was possible or at least worth taking the risk of things going badly. You would need some really gritty personal motivation. You would probably need enough calm, grounded energy to both manage yourself well and share some with the distressed tiger.
Exercise: Accessing Motivation If you, or your client, aren’t able to get in touch with internal motivation (that is, any really good reasons of their own) to manage automatic emotionally reactive responses, this will create big problems in relationships and enormous blocks in relational therapy. In my practice, this type of motivation is one of the things I assess early on, because I’m not likely to have much luck helping with difficult partner interactions and tough discussions if one or both partners are not really interested in tackling their emotional reactivity.
If you are interested in learning to manage your own automatic reactions more effectively, the first step is to take a good look at why a part of you is interested in doing so. “Because my partner wants me to” is usually not a good enough reason when the rubber actually meets the road.
Personally, I had to do a lot of work to learn how to manage my automatic reactions. I really understand how hard it can be, and also how worthwhile and rewarding. Here I offer a few ways I can think of that I benefit from managing my automatic emotional responses, in the hopes my reasons might help you get in touch with your own unique motivation.
I really want to know the truth. When I am skilled at hearing the truth from my partner and can get to the point of encouraging difficult disclosures, I have much more confidence that my partner will not hide, distort, or omit the truth. Plus, then I feel like I know my partner better, not just the easy parts, but all the parts. And that helps me feel love for my partner, including their struggles.
When I have more control of my reactions and act in the way that I choose, not the way determined by my stressed-out, freaked-out lizard brain, I feel like I’m acting more in accordance with who I truly am. I have less to apologize for the next day and feel better about myself as a person. I experience much less misery; there is nothing more miserable than feeling totally freaked out and triggered. It is fabulous to have some real strategies for getting there less often and out of it more easily when it happens.
Acting on assumptions wastes a lot of time and emotional energy. I would rather spend my energy understanding all of the perspectives that both of us have (frequently there are more than two; one person can hold more than one perspective). It actually feels creative and kind of intellectually stimulating to consider a lot of possibilities, once I remove myself from worrying about the eventual outcome.
When I fully understand what is going on for my partner and more deeply understand what is going on for me, too, we are able to make more thoughtful decisions. We always make great decisions together as a result of having a deeper understanding, so this definitely benefits me. We function well as a team, and we both have one another’s interests at heart. Together, we can solve any problem. But to solve a problem well, we both need to understand every facet of the issue.
For a worksheet that walks you through finding your own motivation for change, see the “Accessing Motivation” worksheet in appendix E.
HOLDING STEADY: DIFFERENTIATION GLUE
Let’s start the discussion of holding steady by assuming that we are describing smart, insightful people who truly care about one another. I believe that if people can manage their automatic responses, access genuine curiosity, ask excellent questions, draw one another out, and work together for a fuller understanding of a topic, without rushing to any conclusion or decision-making outcome, they will be able to figure out solutions that work for both of them. But first, each will need to understand not only what they think and feel about the topic, but also what their partner thinks and feels. This requires considerable skill with holding steady.
When I use the term holding steady, I mean getting grounded, managing emotions, controlling automatic reactions, and remaining calm enough to express yourself effectively and put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is necessary in every aspect of effective communication. There is no part of differentiation that doesn’t require holding steady. If you believe in individuality and the strengths associated with diversity of thought, opinion, and experience, there is no relationship structure that isn’t strengthened by differentiation.
Dan Siegel developed the concept of a “window of tolerance.” It’s a construct that can help therapists and clients understand and manage their emotions, particularly the emotions that accompany difficult experiences and interactions. The window of tolerance is the level of emotional arousal in which we are still able to think, get curious, and respond congruently. A person can be outside their window of tolerance either in the direction of hypoarousal (checked out, shut down, disassociated) or hyperarousal (angry, acting out, yelling). When a person is outside of their window of tolerance, they will have difficulty interacting or expressing themselves in effective ways. First, they need to get back within their window of tolerance. Clients with a history of trauma or attachment wounds often have a much smaller window of tolerance than other people, meaning they have more difficulty regulating their emotions and are more likely to feel unsettled to the point of having difficulty thinking, processing, and responding.
