William Doherty is a nationally recognized authority in marital therapy who has written a host of really helpful books – my favorite being Take Back Your Marriage. Doherty came to speak to the annual conference of the Washington Association of Marriage and Family Therapy on 3/3 and introduced a room full of raptly attentive marital therapists to Discernment Counseling. “How do we deal with the couple,” Doherty asks, “where one partner is leaning into the marriage and the other is leaning out?” To attempt conventional marital therapy in such situations is an invitation to disappointment on everyone’s part. So Doherty has devised a powerful approach in which he works mostly separately with each partner. The referral often comes from divorce lawyers and in situations in which the “leaning out” partner is feeling done, but is willing to at least speak to someone because some ambivalence (if even ever-so-slight) remains. The partners agree that divorce will be off the table for six months as they work to see if reconciliation is even possible. The benefit of this kind of work is that that therapist can have open and very candid conversations with each person about the consequences of divorce; their own role in bringing the marriage to its current state and whether each is willing to make an all out effort to see if the marriage can be brought back. Studies have shown that of divorcing couples, fully 30% have at least one partner who is ambivalent and in 10%, both parties are. For more information, you can check out Doherty’s Couples on the Brink website.
In the Grip of the Cycle
It’s hard to adequately describe the poignancy and pain of people who are
locked into a chronic, demoralizing, soul-sapping cycle of conflict in their intimate relationships. John Gottman observed that couples enter relationship counseling, on average, after they have experienced serious problems for six years. That’s a lot of painful grinding on each other. No wonder the couples we help in couples therapy start out so painfully estranged that they are all but hopeless when they sit in our offices for the first time. And yet, I have no doubt – none – that unions that are challenged, with wrenching conflict, can be healed, set right and made stable for good. It doesn’t happen overnight and so people who engage this process need to be patient, courageous and kind to themselves. The first step, as Dr. Sue Johnson describes in her brilliant work setting out the approach of Emotionally Focused Therapy is to recognize and then get control of the cycle of conflict that is sparked automatically with distressed couples.
It is amazing to be in the room with people who go from zero to 100 mph (emotionally speaking) in a millisecond. To witness this instantaneous transition is to respect forever more the power of the amygdala and emotional circuits of the brain. Time and again, I see this sad and painful drama spark in my office – one partner will say or do (or not say or do) something that will have deep attachment significance to the other and the reaction will be instantaneous and explosive. Both people are swept up into an agonizing dance. Each is reacting to the other – and reacting from a deep, frightened, exquisitely human place within. To the outside world – and to their partner – this pain is seen as anger, judgment, withdrawal, defensiveness – so many things that make it hard to reach out and provide the comfort, assurance and safety that both people hunger for at their core (especially when the connection with their partner seems shaky). The first step in good relationship therapy is de-escalation of conflict. Understanding those triggers that sweep each of us, instantaneously, into this cycle is the first step. It doesn’t happen overnight, but the relief it brings is as palpable as the heat generated by the conflict.
Reaching Out – The Power of Repair
All relationships have conflict. We will wound each other, often withtout even realizing the depth of the hurts we inflict. When our partner protests, often with anger, we recoil and defend ourselves. We think, “You’re saying I’m a bad person. You’re wrong and here’s why.” We so want to protect ourselves from the bad feelings that arise when our partner protests, that we can’t hear their own pain through their anger……and so it goes, until each of us reacts to the other’s anger or withdrawal, distancing ourselves further from the one person who can provide us safety and care. How can we slow and reverse this distancing? Many suggest that it is through the power of Repair. What is Repair? One way of thinking about it is that Repair is the word, act or touch that says, “I don’t like what’s happening to us, here. I don’t want to be hurt, angry or distant.” It can be stated in those simple words. It can also be the soft touch of concliation or gesture that moves towards the lover rather than away (helping with a task; making a cup of tea; giving a small, but thoughtful gift). It can be with humor. It can be with an admission of our part in the painful exchange. A colleague, and therapist trained in Gottman’s work suggested to me that the most powerful of John Gottman’s ideas is the power of repair. This is a useful idea in this time of gift giving.
The Brain’s Emotional Circuits
Lots has been written in the past 20 years about the brain and how its wiring directly impacts our emotional states. One writer pointedly drew the distinction between the “mind” and the “brain” – that collection of billions of neurons, each with numerous axons that connect with others to create networks. These networks are the pathways for our thougths and mental associations, as well as our most gripping emotions – Rage, Fear, Lust, Sexual Lust, Connection with Others, Seeking (exploring the environment for its rewards….basic aliveness and vitality). Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp has identified the specific neural networks where these feelings track. Scientists for years have been able to experimentally stimulate areas of the brain and produce angry, fearful, lustful, exploring and anxious behavior. Substantial evidence exists for the notion that chronic feeings of irritation or anxiety, for example, are actually reflections of a low-grade, constant activation of these neural networks. This is perhaps, why neurofeedback therapy has been clinically found to ease these distressing states.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
John Gottman, Ph.D. has observed that when couples come in for their first appointment with a marital therapist, their relationship has had serious problems for, on average, six years. I often tell couples that it is rare that two people will sit across me me and say something like, “We’re basically doing fine. We just need some help with communication.” Much more likely, I am sitting with two very wounded people, their feelings rubbed raw from years of conflict, pain and emotional distance. Dr. Sue Johnson observed years ago that the intensity of the conflict – the very sense of being out of control – is tragically understandable – as each person’s deepest need for connection has been unmet. This “attachment” need (see earlier posts) is so deep it is felt, literally, on a cellular level. People are just so emotionally exhausted and strained when they first enter marital therapy that any therapist who blames either person, rather than compassionately trying to understand the particular wounds and needs of each is doing more harm than good. Emotionally Focused Therapy, among many things, is like a balm to people’s psychic sores. I am on the EFT community’s list serve and I am frequently moved by the deep care and compassion of these attachment therapists. It is a pure and fine form of therapy. The abiding belief of this community is that healing of even the most strained relationships can come to us if we are patient and give care rather than judgment.
The Four Horsemen
Relationship conflict isn’t a bad thing – to be avoided whenever possible. Ask any couple who’s been together for years and years and they will tell you that their time together has not been without conflict. As U.W.’s John Gottman assures us, the problem isn’t conflict, it’s the way we deal with conflict. According to Gottman 69% of marital disagreements are durable. We’ll never get them to agree with our view and we’ll certainly never agree with theirs. Think of it….69%. If we really think that the way to end this particular conflict is for one of us to come over to the other’s side, that’s a heck of a lot of frustration we’ll be dealing with. So what happens when we are grinding on each other without a sense of resolution? Well, the risk to our relationships, again, isn’t the fact of those perpetual disagreements. It’s our tendency to slip into one, or more, of the negative relationship habits that Gottman terms The Four Horsemen of relationship apocalypse. These are Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness and Stonewalling. Criticism: When you don’t just have a complaint about something your partner did or didn’t do, but you criticize their character. It’s not, “I’m really angry that you promised to take out the garbage but didn’t and it didn’t get picked up.” It’s, “You always do this. You are unreliable (or lazy or uncaring or selfish, etc.). Contempt: When you begin to nurture an attitude that you are superior to your partner. Gottman observes that contempt is incredibly toxic for a relationship and if it is allowed free rein inside a person’s psyche, he can almost guarantee divorce. Stonewalling: When one partner shuts down and refuses to engage. It may be the result of emotional flooding that feels overwhelming, but the period for that is fairly limited and the stonewaller shuts down and doesn’t re-engage. It leaves the other person hanging out there, exposed. The stonewaller thinks their behavior is passive and doesn’t understand that it is experienced, usually, as much more painful and aggressive by their partner. Finally, Defensiveness: No matter what I say to you about my concerns, you have a reason, defense or counterattack. I feel unheard and unacknowledged. It is a terribly frustrating and painful experience and will cause me to withdraw to protect myself from feeling so invisible. There are definitely ways to manage perpetual conflict, or conflict on topics that forever seem to defy solution, and these will be brought up in a later post. For now, however, the point is that we need to be ever vigilant for the introduction of any of The Four Horsemen into our relationship when we experience the emotional fatigue and discouragement of disagreements that seem not to have ready solutions.
The Power of Fear
We never make our best decisions from a place of fear. The amygdala, that little guy in the middle of our brain kicks in – and we can just forget about it after that! Our left brain might as well have hopped a jet to Katmandu, for al thel impact it will have. When our fear is triggered, we automatically shoot into basic survival, fight-or-flight mode. Relationship stress – the terribly painful conflicts with which we struggle – activates the amygdala as sure as the saber toothed tiger coming across the path of our uber-ancient forebears. Marital therapist Brent Atkinson in his excellent Emotional Intelligence in Couples Therapy speaks about as well as any of the intensity with which we are swept up in the reactive and painful fear that infects both people in the throes of intimate conflict. While it is usually easier for us to say we are angry rather than fearful, it may not matter how you characterize these intense emotions. Either way, the right brain and amygdala dominate our mental process, our left brain shuts down and our ability to manage conflict is reduced to zero.
All Things Shall Pass
It has been quite a time since the last post. Spring and Summer have been a rich and transitional time. Today I read with sadness the word of Steve Jobs’ resignation as Apple’s CEO. I’m not a techie by any stretch. But I’ve admired this man’s innovation and impact on our culture. I love my iPhone. I have joked for the last couple of years that if I had to give up my family or my iPhone……well, I’d be weighing the options. Such cleverness. Such usefullness. The drive behind that creativity is falling to his physical limitations. We are all dust, after all. I, as we all, embrace the fiction that we…. WE…. are special in some way. We will live long and healthy. If we have not achieved our dream, we have time yet for that. If we have achieved our desires at the various stages of our lives, we feel blessed. Somehow God touches us. We don’t know why or how but it is our abiding knowledge.
Who among us would be more blessed than Steve Jobs? But today, he succumbs to illness of the body. Steve Jobs, whose mind is so beautiful as a creative engine, which touches us all – whose body is so mortal. 
When I was a kid, I loved the giants of Folk Music. I’m going to date myself here, but I loved The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary. The power and DRIVE of their music inspired and empowered me. In the last few years, Nick Reynolds of TKT and Mary Travers of PP&M died. Here are pictures of each at the height of their power and in age and infermity.
Mary: 
Here’s Nick: 
r’
The people whose passion and life force energy can inspire and touch us are gifts. Be they Steve , or Mary or Nick (as they do me) or Barack Obama, Rick Perry, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, or any writer, singer, innovator, crier, screamer, tickler, we all pass through these stages. Our task is to love ourselves and one another as we pass through this universal course. None of us gets out of this alive, but we can strive, always, to find the love and passion that makes us alive.
Law as a Healing Profession
I was fortunate recently to be asked to write an article for the Washington State Bar monthly magazine about the new trends in law and how they contribute to civility in the profession. I thought I’d reproduce it here because the theme of law as a healing profession is so important today.
Starting in around 1960 and continuing through the ‘80’s, the practice of law was marked by the ascendancy of litigation as both the engine of economic growth in the profession and the prevailing ethic. Competent, smart, hard-working and, above all, tough – these were the values which permeated our professional world. Aggressive was good, results (measured in monetary terms) were paramount. Adversarial litigation exploded as a practice form, and with it came the concomitant rise in interpersonally destructive behavior. The oft-referenced rise in incivility among lawyers was both striking in its metastatic growth and often shocking in its brazenness. Isolated voices would express concern about the law’s shift from a “profession” to a “business” and its effect on the well-being of both the lawyers and the clients they served, but during this time they remained just that – isolated. But in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s, these voices coalesced into what law professor Susan Daicoff has called the “Comprehensive Law Movement.”
If there is one driving force behind this, now formidable, movement within our midst, it is the recognition that law should not be an instrument for inflicting avoidable personal (and interpersonal) damage in the service of reaching a specific “legal” objective. Indeed, if there is one theme which is shared by these approaches to practice, it is that when we can manage to turn down the heat generated by adversarial conflict, we are actually able to arrive at solutions which are far more satisfying to our clients. It is about the ascendancy of civility in how we conduct our affairs – not just to be “nice” but to achieve effective results. The various “vectors” of this Comprehensive Law Movement include:
• Collaborative Law: Arising 20 years ago from the creative mind of Stu Webb, a Minnesota family lawyer, Collaborative Law is predicated on the notion that the last place to resolve disputes between wounded, divorcing individuals is an adversarial litigation process. In Collaborative Law, all professionals and the clients sign a contract explicitly abandoning litigated adjudication as the means for resolving disputes. There is a generous use of neutral professionals to support the individuals in managing their emotional challenges, making parenting decisions and untangling their financial community.
• Therapeutic Jurisprudence: In 1990, law professors David Wexler and Bruce Winnick began to write about the various psychologically destructive consequences of legal action. They explicitly joined the social sciences of law and psychology in an effort to enhance the therapeutic possibilities inherent in both legal process and result. Starting in the mental health courts, TJ (the subject of more than 600 articles and 18 books) has had a significant impact in such diverse practice areas as workers compensation, sexual orientation law and business negotiation.
• Transformative Mediation: First discussed in a 1994 book by law professor R. Baruch Bush and communications professor, Joseph Folger (The Promise of Mediation) this form of dispute resolution seeks to fashion a resolution that reaches beyond a settlement of the legal issues between parties. Baruch and Folger emphasized the promotion of each party’s empowerment and voice and the recognition of each party and their concerns by the other. TM, at its highest expression, explores the power of empathy and forgiveness, making mediation a vehicle for growth and reconciliation.
• Restorative Justice: More than 25 years old, RJ is founded in the criminal justice system. It is an avenue for healing between the criminal offender, the victim, and their community. It is founded not on adjudication of guilt and sentencing, but rather upon dialogue, future problem solving and, critically, the offender’s acceptance of accountability for his/her conduct and the damage which has resulted. RJ seeks to heal the deep rift which arises from the commission of criminal acts.
• Holistic Justice: Again, from the single seed from the brain of attorney Bill van Zyverden, Holistic Law seeks to “promote peaceful advocacy…encourage compassion, reconciliation, forgiveness and healing.” HJ emphasizes the spiritual elements of dispute resolution. The International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers is a vibrant, 20 year old organization.
• Humanizing Legal Education: Florida State law professor, Lawrence Krieger, authored an influential research report on the destructive impact of the law school environment on the well-being of law students in the early ‘00’s. His observations found a very enthusiastic audience in the legal academy and today there is a section on Balance in Legal Education which seeks to encourage and support avenues for law students to strengthen their resources for dealing with stress and deepen their interpersonal skills.
Back in 1974 we used to talk about law school as training to become “high speed legal tools.” This led to troubling blindness to a fundamental truth – we, lawyers, are people. Our clients are people… with dreams and troubles and a fundamental need for connection. During the last 20 years, our colleagues, by the thousands, have striven to sculpt a new and different profession which is wiser and more civil – not because it is nicer, but because it is a return to our roots as lawyers as counselors and supporters of our clients’ lives and endeavors.
Buddy
We said good-bye to our sweet golden retriever, Buddy, three nights ago. He was 10 1/2 years old. He had cancer all throughout his body. As he lay on the floor, with the three of us sitting around him, stroking him and holding him, the drug was administered and he quietly left us. From the time our, then, 7-year old daughter picked him out from an array of six-week old puppies sleeping in our backyard (a young 4-H fellow was breeding retrievers and brought a dozen little fellows to frolic in our back before, one-by-one, they plopped off to sleep) to this week, our Buddy had been the sweetest, most loving of companions. Happy (happy?…..In heaven) to have his ears massaged – never more content than to be under our dinner table while we ate, my daughter’s toes tucked under his belly or resting on top of his body – loving to shimmy on his back on top of a new scent in the grass. Oh lord, the open, complete love that he gave. He’d stay with a good friend when we’d be away and she told us she loved his company, he was so mellow. She joked that he just needed an easy chair and a smoking jacket to fill out the image. I loved taking him for walks off leash – he never, but for a couple of times in all those years, roamed and always stayed near as we approached an intersection in our neighborhood, would sit until it was time to be released to run across the street. He was our happy, loving boy and the warmth he brought to our home will be sorely, sadly missed. I wish I’d walked him more, given him a few extra goodies, somehow prolonged his time on this plane – but that’s over. We lit a memorial candle inside his collar placed beside his picture and we’ll keep that for another few days. So here’s to the love in our lives, wherever its source. We often don’t know how it fills our hearts until it’s gone.