Divorce in 40 Words

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Recently, Huffington Post asked readers to tweet them one word for Divorce and then published the top 40 responses.  The list:

Pivotal; Painful; Torture; Heartbreaking (even though I initiated it); Rebirth; Freedom; Ex-marry; Destructive; Draining; Eye-opening; Sweet; Death; Overcomplicated; Hell; Option; Fate; Bittersweet; Blessing; Sobering; Brutal; Tragedy; Unending; Bye; Vengeful; Solution; Necessary; Expensive; Hard; Calm; Heartache; Amazing; Amputation; Numbing; Trying.

The best: Supercallifragalisticfreakinsuckadocious.

Words from lawyers and coaches (from their twitter names): Transition (from a divorce lawyer); Empowering (Twitter name: Gradual Wisdom); Endinning (Ending and a beginning) (from a divorce lawyer); Evolution (Twitter name: Divorce Party Gal):  Peace (Twitter name: Living Happily After).

Therapy Metaphors from Movies

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In Emotionally Focused Therapy, we speak of a cycle which captures the couple in distress.  Often there will be a partner caught in the cycle who will experience deep, visceral anxiety over being left alone.  That feeling of utter isolation has brought to my mind an iconic scene from Kubrick’s classic 2001 – A Space Odyssey.  Frank, one of the two astronauts on the craft which is run by the malevolent computer, HAL, is performing repairs outside.  HAL manages to cut Frank’s life-line and we see this desperate figure floating out into nothingness.  The spot we see on the right is Frank, struggling for air….unmoored……lost.  This is the image that strikes me when I hear of the desperation of the partner who feels emotionally abandoned in the relationship.  She (not always, but often she) will struggle against this panic.  It is Frank’s panic as he disappears into a vacuum.

So often, when one partner experiences the panic of isolation in the void the response will be heightened protest – a very intense effort to achieve some connection….some oxygen.  This may be experienced by the other partner as attack.  His (not always, but often his) experience brings to mind the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan.  The thousands of landing craft approaching the beach.  Reinforced steel doors shield the soldiers from any assaults.  Then, with a spin of a locking-wheel, the door swings down to create a ramp for the the soldiers to disembark.  However, many of these men are decimated by machine gun fire before they can move a muscle.  It is a violent assault and you want to swing those doors back up to protect the men.  People who experience themselves to be the target of the anger and desperation  of their partners, tend to (emotionally) curl up in a self-protective ball.  Often, withdrawal to “safety” is the only conceivable step.

Thus, begins the cycle of pursuit/protest and withdrawal/protection that so many couples bring with them to couples therapy.  The task we face is to slow down this rapdily spinning cycle.  Over time, if we can slow it down, we can begin to create some safety in the couple’s interaction.  One will feel less dismissed/abandoned/despised and the other will feel less attacked/demeaned/despised.  Slowly we begin to incorporate a positive momentum in couples interactions.  We create a positive cycle.  I imagine a propellor on the Titanic.  The scene from the movie can be accessed on the web.  In a panic, the watchmen phone down to the engine room.  These people have no time to reverse the course of the great ship.  We watch the propellers slow to a stop and then reverse themselves.

The hope of the work we do, is to support couples in their passage from propellers spinning in their cycle at full speed  – slowing to a stop – then picking back up at full speed, supporting a positive cycle.

Thank you James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick – marital theorists all!

 

Divorce and Negative Thinking

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“Criminal lawyers see the worst people at their best; divorce lawyers see the best people at their worst.”  (Attributed to Thomas Concannon, Jr., Former Mayor of Newton, N.J. and Family Lawyer)

Many of us struggle with habitual negative thinking.  This was understood many years ago and gave rise to one of the most powerful, effective approaches to psychotherapy and counseling, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT.  It is a favored psychotherapeutic approach for depression, in tandem with appropriate medication.  David Burns’ books are excellent starting points for anyone struggling with depression.

While going through some old papers recently, I came across a page entitled Irrational Thoughts and it contains six mistakes we make in our thinking that will always bring us down.  If we understand these thoughts as not truth but simply as examples of negative thinking, we can spare ourselves a good deal of avoidable pain.  We are engaged in mistaken negative thinking when we:

1.  Turn wants or preferences (including strong ones) into absolute vital needs.

2.  Convince ourselves that if the need isn’t met, it will be awful, terrible, catastrophic, unbearable, and the end of the world.

3. Draw incorrect conclusions.

4.  Not consider the evidence.

5.  Automatically attribute negative motives to other people.

6.  Focus exclusively on self-deprecating thoughts.

When we are depressed, we truly and honestly believe the truth of many of our fears and negative thoughts.  When we emerge from our dark place, these certainties do not seem all that certain any longer.  Such is the power of unreined negative thought.

It’s Always Something…..

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Dan Wile, Ph.D. is a remarkably gifted – and funny – couples therapist who has written a number of fine books on the realities of joining our lives together.  Two of his classics are After the Fight and  After the Honeymoon.  Here is what Wile has to say about the inevitable differences that arise  between us in relationship:

                “Paul married Alice and Alice gets loud at parties and Paul, who is shy, hates that.  But if Paul had married Susan, he and Susan would have gotten into a fight before they even got to the party.  That’s because Paul is always late and Susan hates to be kept waiting.  She would feel taken for granted, which she is very sensitive about.  Paul would see her complaining about this as her attempt to dominate him, which he is very sensitive about.  If Paul had married Gail, they wouldn’t have even gone to the party because they would still be upset about an argument they had the day before about Paul’s not helping with the housework.  To Gail when Paul does not help she feels abandoned, which she is sensitive about, and to Paul, Gail’s complaining is an attempt at domination, which he is sensitive about.  The same is true about Alice.  If she had married Steve, she would have the opposite problem, because Steve gets drunk at parties and she would get so angry at his drinking that they would get into a fight about it.  If she had married Lou, she and Lou would have enjoyed the party but then when they got home the trouble would begin when Lou wanted sex because he always wants sex when he wants to feel closer, but sex is something Alice wants when she already feels close.”

 “…there is value, when choosing a long-term partner, in realizing that you will inevitably be choosing a particular set of unsolvable problems that you’ll be grappling with for the next ten, twenty, or fifty years.”

Divorce and Assertiveness

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“Criminal lawyers see the worst people at their best; divorce lawyers see the best people at their worst.” (Attributed to Thomas Concannon, Jr., Former Mayor of Newton, N.J. and Family Lawyer)

Studies conclude that divorce is life’s most stressful challenge.  When we experience high stress in our lives, our automatic, often painfully limiting, behaviors rise up and overtake us.  What is your own idiosyncratic behavior when you are under stress?  Do you become habitually angry…depressed…isolated….workaholic…sugar addicted?   Those of us who tend to lose ourselves in another, may become so fearful of asserting themselves and their needs that they will swing between the extremes of abject passivity and righteous anger.

There is, however, a middle ground that is far more self-supportive and that is the stance of assertiveness.  Back in the 1970’s assertiveness was first highlighted in books and mental health trainings and it has fallen out of use as a theme since then.  However, we are well served to revive some of the tenets of assertiveness when struggling with the dynamics of divorce (and, of course, if we have an intact relationship as well).   Lange and Jakublowski in their classic, The Assertive Option – Your Rights and Respoinsibilities list Eleven Fundamental Assertive Rights which we should all hold close to us when facing intense interpersonal stress and conflict.  They are:

1.  The right to act in ways that promote our dignity and self-respect as long as others’ rights are not violated in the process.

2.  The right to be treated with respect.

3.  The right to say no and not feel guilty.

4.  The right to experience and express your feelings.

5.  The right to take time to slow down and think.

6.  The right to change your mind.

7.  The right to ask for what you want.

8.  The right to do less than you are humanly capable of doing.

9.  The right to ask for information.

10.  The right to make mistakes.

11.  The right to feel good about yourself.

If we can keep these basic personal rights close to our minds and hearts, we will have less occasion to roll over or become explosive in our interpersonal conflicts.

My Two Big Beefs – Part II

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Beef No. 2 – Martial Therapists are not umpires.  Their job is not to hear each person’s complaints and to decide which one is more right than the other.  It is this belief that both clients and some couples counselors embrace that makes couples therapy the least successful therapy with the highest failure rate.  However, those trained in a specific approach to couples therapy (of which there are a handful), are remarkably more successful.  Clients enter couples counseling with both a great certainty and a great fear.  The certainty is that the problems the couple are experiencing are mostly because of their partner.  The fear is that they, themselves, will be blamed.  Blame and shame – these are the boulders on the shoulders of the individuals commencing couples therapy.  Any therapist who tries to impart to each person, “If you do a little more of this or a little less of that you will improve your relationship,” will ultimately do more harm than good.   What a shame that therapists (mostly trained in individual therapy – and often quite good at individual therapy) create an environment of blame and defensiveness that will usually result in one person feeling more identified as a problem, unheard, shamed and definitely unsafe.  This doesn’t have to be, but couples therapists have to avoid becoming overly engaged in the tangle of content.

My Two Big Beefs – Part I

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There are two subjects that always make me jump on my soapbox.  (I might even wave my hands around like the little guy here.) 

First, the court’s are an atrocious forum for resolving marital disputes.   After all, how are lawyers trained?  Law school is a three-year course in “the case method” of teaching law, which is over 100 years old and still going (fairly) strong.  In this model, students read written opinions from appeals courts and learn how to support each side.  Our legal system is based on this “adversarial method of conflict resolution” in which each side  promotes their side aggressively, secure in the fact that they don’t have to worry about the other side because they have their own representative promoting their side aggressively.  Well, suffice it to say, if I were ever charged with a crime, I’d want one aggressive individual fighting for me.  Yet, when intimate couples fracture their relationship, the intensity of individual vulnerability and wounding on both sides his breathtaking.  The triggers that caused each person to become flooded by anger – or fear during the marital fights are no less sensitive when they commence upon the road to divorce.  If anything, the vulnerability is even more exquisite.  How cruel, then, to subject these poor people to the violations that are inherent in legal advocacy.  Making the private pains public – subjecting individuals who are going through the soul-searing doubt of divorce to public revelations, criticism or outright attack is nothing short of torture.  Adversarial lawyers speak of protecting their client’s rights.  I would say, “protect from what?”   The answer can only be the other person who had been their intimate partner.  This is the individual who has seen us at our least guarded; with whom we shared sexual intimacy and who knows our deepest fears.  We thought this person would hold this information in trust and yet they become weapons to persuade a person in a robe to give them what they seek.  The minute we tell someone we will “protect” them from this other person, we have created an environment of paranoia which, in most cases, can only do ill.  Courts are a too-blunt instrument for the exquisitely sensitive task of helping people dissolve their intimate bonds.

Two Conversations

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I think couples in conflict often engage in two conversations.  One is overt, constantly repeated and endlessly frustrating.  The other is almost always unsaid – and unacknowledged.  If we can get to that second conversation, we can find the peace and connection we so desperately need in our intimate relationships.  Instead, we get all tangled up in the conversation that doesn’t go anywhere. Like birds flitting back and forth above us, what we see is that which transfixes us and grabs our attention.  I have seen it over and over again in my office – the sad, ever-so-discouraging dance of the upper conversation that almost guarantees that both people will just….feel….bad and not feel heard by the other.  This conversation is always about something.  “You don’t help around the house …..I do too help.  What about last week when you were tired and I vacuumed downstairs…..Oh great, thanks a lot – am I supposed to bow down because you vacuumed once?”   “How come you aren’t even trying to go back to work to bring in some money?…..I have tried.  You just don’t know what it’s like out there….You aren’t doing nearly enough….You have no idea what I have done.”  These conversations don’t go anywhere because they aren’t’ about what’s really going on inside for each person.

The real conversation – the one that can get somewhere – is the attachment conversation.  It is about our needs that are deep and tug at our hearts.  These are also needs that can be satisfied once there is a safe way to express them.  They can be the need to feel truly cared for – or to feel competent and valued – or to know your partner is not going anywhere.  They are almost always about the need to be actually seen and still loved and accepted.  This most critical and meaningful conversation can be very difficult to have without the help of a relationship professional.  My bias (and observation) is that Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy is a wonderful platform upon which these “conversations for connection,” in Sue Johnson’s words, can occur.

Life of Pi and Therapy

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This from a message to an old friend:

Neil, you’re in my thoughts this morning for two reasons.  First, I am listening to my Telemann Pandora station and I will forever appreciate your turning me on to him those many years ago.  Second – we saw Life of Pi yesterday.

 Years ago you went on and on about how much you loved that book and I tried to read it but could not get too far.  It wasn’t grabbing me.  So last week, thinking I wanted to see the movie, I picked up the book again and loved it.  I didn’t quite get the part about making you believe in God until the night after I finished it, I was putting together a dinner for some friends the next night and Mark l was over helping out (he was visiting from So. Cal. for a week) and he had just seen the movie.  We compared one to the other and suddenly I got what Martel was trying to say.  I started talking about how I was so swept up in the story until he became blind and then came across the other guy on a boat that the tiger ate and I thought, “Whoa…wait a minute.  That is pretty incredible.  (It was left out of the movie.)  The whole part before that was very detailed and you could absolutely get how it could all actually occur.  But another boat in the middle of the ocean?  And then, of course, the meerkat island.  Suddenly I began to feel differently about the story – I lost interest because I didn’t find it credible any longer.  Then at the end he tells this very troubling story and he lays it all out for you (and of course there are those little bones on the boat) .  Which story do you want to believe – neither is provable.

I think it is also relevant to therapy work.  People come in with such worries and hopelessness about their future.  But just as with Pi’s story, the future is unknowable and unprovable.  Clearly, when people come in and talk about a future of loneliness or loss or failure their present is wracked with anxiety and they are preoccupied with their distress.   If a person has some faith in the future, trust that they can be content and satisfied, their present distress abates considerably.  So, just as with Pi, which story do they want to believe?

The movie was a bit of a let down from the book, insofar as the basic theme above is concerned, I thought.  The book format allowed Martel to create a very credible story of how Pi was able to survive – and the whole early parts about animal behavior was essential to that task.  So, with the exception of the island, you could believe that story…well I could believe that story.  Ang Lee didn’t have the time or space to make the survival story as credible, I think.  But my oh my was that a beautiful movie.  I think it is the most enchanting cinema experience I have ever had.  It is watching an absolute master at his craft and an impeccable use of 3-D.

Anyway, just thinking of you on this chill, foggy, still and beautiful Northwest morning.

He/She Said THAT??

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I hear it so often in my office.  One partner or the other (usually both) will report that in the height of some nasty fight they escalated into, one of them said something so wounding that the target is still bruised.  He or she struggles with how to make sense of a world where they are supposed to be working on their relationship and at the same time things are said which couldn’t feel more destructive.  It’s heartbreaking to see the pain that good people can inflict on one another when they have escalated to the outer reaches of their own cycle.   It is an inescapable fact that when two people are reacting to each other from the raw and vulnerable places inside – and they are swept up in their cycle of fear, anger and reactivity, they can spin so fast (almost instantaneously) that both feel out of control.   It is for sure that these deeply hurtful statements aren’t made during a placid dinner conversation right after, “Please pass the peas.”  These missiles that are launched almost always occur when the cycle is spinning so fast, that the centrifugal force of both people’s emotional reactivity throws them to the extreme edge of their experience.  So, rather than mull on the thing said, it’s far more helpful to view the statements as symptomatic of a cycle that has gone from “zero to 60” in a nanosceond.  The path to healing is to begin to find ways to catch ourselves at the very beginning stages of this emotionally reactive cycle – to slow it down at the outset and step out of this tightly choreographed automatic dance.