Resolving the dilemmas of promoting independence and dependence in couples therapy Bruces confusion Standing up for himself Vs empathising and caring In practice he found these approaches worked against each other much of the time ID: 329545
Download Presentation The PPT/PDF document "Leaning on your own two feet:" is the property of its rightful owner. Permission is granted to download and print the materials on this web site for personal, non-commercial use only, and to display it on your personal computer provided you do not modify the materials and that you retain all copyright notices contained in the materials. By downloading content from our website, you accept the terms of this agreement.
Slide1
Leaning on your own two feet:
Resolving the dilemmas of promoting independence and dependence in couples therapySlide2
Bruce’s confusion
Standing up for himself
Vs
empathising and caring
In practice he found these approaches worked against each other much of the time.Slide3
If you become too dependent on your loved ones, you may become less effective in your wider relationships and activities.
In order to truly love another person you must first learn to love yourself
We must mature as individuals in order to improve our relationship, not the other way around.Slide4
The Age Old Argument
The
Intrapsychic
Vs Interpersonal
The Attachment Movement
The Systems MovementObject Relations Vs AttachmentSlide5
SELF IN RELATION TO OTHERS
“There is no such thing as a child” (
Winnicott
, 1965)
There is no such thing as an individual.
Internal Working Model of Self and Other (
Bowlby
)
Corollary for Individual Wellbeing
Feeney’s study
Slide6
In Couples Therapy
Approaches that emphasise promoting individual growth
VS
Approaches that emphasise promoting the growth of mutuality and dependence in the relationship
Exemplified by the approaches of David
Schnarch and Susan JohnsonSlide7
David Schnarch
Passionate Marriage, Crucible Approach
Reflected Sense of Self
Emotional Gridlocks –
crystalised
by competing and mutually exclusive need eg.Bring Focus to own part in gridlock
Emotional differentiation
Bowenian
approach to increasing anxiety tolerance to favour personal integrity over relationship
equlibrium
Growth CycleSelf Validated IntimacyTwo-Choice Dillemmas
Acting from the best part of oneselfSlide8
Susan Johnson – Emotionally Focussed Therapy for Couples
Safe Haven and Secure Base function of couple
Difficulties due to defensive secondary emotions and reactions
If primary emotions (attachment related emotions) are brought into relationship and met by partner, therefore problems will lessen
Engaging Withdrawer
Softening of BlamerReaching Out to Spouse
Intimacy Slide9
Common
Attachment Fears
Common Attachment Needs
being rejected
acceptance
being abandoned
Closeness
Not measuring up, being a failure
understanding
Not being accepted or valued
To feel important
Being unlovable
To feel loved
Being over-controlled
Boundaries, differentiation
Being burdened by other’s needsSlide10
STAGE ONE: DE-ESCALATION
1. Assessment
2. Identify negative cycle / Attachment issues
3. Access underlying attachment emotions
4. Frame problem – cycle, attachment
needs/fearsSTAGE TWO – RESTRUCTURING THE BOND5. Access implicit needs, fears, models of self
6. Promote acceptance by other – expand dance
7. Structure
emotional
engagement – express
attachment needs.STAGE THREE: CONSOLIDATION8. New positions / cycles – enact new stories – of problems and repair
9. New Solutions to pragmatic issuesSlide11
Two paths to an
Agentic
Self
- continuous acts of risking separateness
- experiencing self-definition through empathic attunement and mirroring by an important otherSlide12
Making Bridges
Feeney (
et,al
2008) demonstrated that a person’s attachment style determines how they engage in and shape new relationships with people – in both social and work environments.
Secure attachment (AAI) protects adolescents from risk-taking behaviour (Wills & Cleary 1996)
Adolescents with secure attachment patterns with their parents are more able to launch and create interdependent adult relationships (Allen&Land
1999,
Noom
et,al
1999). Adults who experience secure and reliable dependence with their spouse are more able to explore and perform independently away from their spouse (Feeney,2007; Elliott, 2003).
Secure Base, Springboard to ExploreSlide13
Dillemmas For Therapists and Clients
How much do I take a stand for my own personal integrity? How much do I care for and validate my partner’s competing needs?
How much do we encourage our clients to take a stand for their personal integrity? How much do we encourage our clients to care for and validate their partner’s competing needs?
When do we change from one approach to the other? Why do we? Why would we expect clients to not become confused? Slide14
Lisa and Brad had rarely had sex in the last ten years of their twenty year marriage. Brad was the more dejected by the standoff. Lisa felt bitter about it as well but was ambivalent as to whether she could find herself wanting Brad the same way she once did.
Lisa felt resentful at Brad’s tentative and “unmanly” attempts to skirt the subject. She harboured an accumulated resentment that Brad needed her to be in a burdensome mother position, always having to make him okay. She was also left feeling disappointed that he would give up so easily, wishing someone would continue to want her regardless of any obstacles she might place in their way. In other words, Lisa wanted sex but only if Brad wanted her the way she wanted him to want her.
The lack of resolution tacitly suited Lisa. By not effectively and openly wanting sex herself, she did not have to confront her anxiety about facing the needs of important others; a situation she had learned from childhood to be burdensome.
Brad, on the other hand, desperately wanted more sex and general closeness but was vigilant of Lisa’s criticisms. Moreover, the pain of rejection was something that he learned to avoid. He only approached the subject indirectly, unwittingly guaranteeing Lisa’s annoyance. In short, he needed Lisa’s permission before he would want openly.
The lack of resolution tacitly suited Brad. By not effectively and actively wanting intimacy, he did not have to confront his anxiety about being criticised or rejected. Indeed he had learned from childhood that confronting an important other with his needs risked a schism in his attachment – a scary and disorganising experience for Brad.
The situation came to a head when Lisa began to experience the attractions of men at her workplace. Slide15
DISCUSS
Focus on the Individual
VS
Focus on the relationshipSlide16
Leaning On Your Own Two Feet
1) ability to
mentalize
- perceiving with accuracy the intention behind the other person’s defensive behaviour, understanding your own reactions and the intention behind them as well as how the other person experiences these
2) emotionally differentiation, internal sense of self
3) Solomon – becoming an expert at providing partner experience of being loved – knowing what particular attachment need spouse is trying to get met and getting good at addressing them
4) strategic accessing of spouse for self-object needs
5) able to soothe through the other and by self
6) meta-communication
7) (for the therapist) not requiring radical alteration of people’s schemas/IWMs – not trying to change dismissive into a preoccupied – the IWM IS the secure base –
i.e dismissive style is safe – makes the world predictable
More important to promote acceptance of the other person’s style, needs, and vulnerabilities (no.3 above), and to reach out for own needs (no. 4 above)
Persist in wanting especially when the other does not want you to want
Freud – a need acknowledged is more important than a need met
Solomon – meeting relational need of other 1
st
in order to get what you need from the other – not visa versaSlide17
INTERLOCKING VULNERABILITIES
Surface Behaviour & Non-Verbals
Underlying Feelings & Vulnerabilities
Surface Behaviour & Non-Verbals
Underlying Feelings & VulnerabilitiesSlide18
Facilitating Meta-Conversations
Lisa, in counselling, talked about her anxiety around somebody else being needy. She was able to connect this to her childhood experience of feeling burdened by the neediness of her mother, and resentment at having to be the functional one for them both. On hearing this Brad could see that her prickliness was not actually about him. He could afford to be less defensive and could afford to become empathetic about her feelings.
Brad wanted Lisa to understand how he felt about her stonewalling his attempts for closeness and her withering dismissive behaviour.
He opened by saying he wanted to talk about his despair at feeling blocked. Lisa’s eye-raising non-verbals had the potential to derail him, but he kept in mind his insight that Lisa pushed back when she felt anxious.
By keeping an awareness of Lisa’s anxiety and activated vulnerabilities, he was able to maintain his equilibrium (
Schnarch’s
, 2002, “holding onto yourself”) and persist. He was even able to let her have her defensive response – as an understandable expression of her vulnerability of feeling burdened by the other- without reacting back to her.
By experiencing that Brad did not require her to be different while he was authentically expressing his softer vulnerabilities, Lisa was able to engage with Brad’s experience. This time, she didn’t feel she was going to get lumped with making him okay.Slide19Slide20
SEX!
Schnarch
and sexual desire
VS
Johnson and sexual desireSlide21
Esther Perel
Need distance, need to be a stranger in some sense to our partner
Warmth and emotional intimacy is not correlated with more satisfactory sex
Need to accommodate love, warmth, affection AS WELL AS anger, hatred, desire to hurt and annihilate the other (at a psychic level)Slide22
Eagle 2007
The attachment system is entirely separate from the sexual system, AND that they –at least partially – are antagonistic to each other.
The more secure and safe we try to make our relationships, the less desire is found.Slide23
SEX = MADNESS
Fonagy
2008:- we are all prone to borderline mental states when it comes to sex
The emotional roller coaster
Feelings spinning out of control
Idealization of the otherLoss of
boundariedness
, identity diffusion
Explicit and implicit controlling an manipulation of proximity
Loss of sense of the other as separate from the erotic object
Developmental absence of mirroring with sexual experience.“…..uncontained self-states create disorganisation within the self and have to be projected out to be regulated.”Slide24
Dangers of valuing one approach to sex over others.
The IWM/ attachment style IS the
persons’s
secure base
Solomon - getting partners to respond to each person’s attachment needs – experientially, including the
avoidant’sC.F. “engaging the withdrawer”
Fonagy
- The
embodiedness
of the mind – not all psychic matter is
interelationalSlide25
Two paths to an
Agentic
Self
continuous acts of risking separateness and self-definition
VS
experiencing self-definition through empathic
attunement
and mirroring by an important otherSlide26
Sex as the prime exemplar
Fonagy
– because sexual experience is not mirrored back early in life, it becomes disembodied and must projected outward and experienced as if the other is having that experience, at least in the fantasy mind of the projector. By the other being open to contain that sexual experience, it can be mirrored back and reintegrated by the projector.
Both solid self and secure attachment essential
Differences between men and womenSlide27
Personal robustness and relationship security
necessary for one partners to initiate and for partners to consider being the container of the other’s sexual desire and to allow themselves to resonate with that sexual desire
Partners need
robustness and boundaries
to consider being a receptacle of erotic advances without becoming preoccupied by negative meanings that they may be prone to place on their partner’s advances
Sensate focussed activities are useful in practicing this robustness and boundaries in a graded, calibrated steps.
Partner Shaping – the trap of the Spontaneity Command
Solomon – meeting the erotic need of other 1
st
in order to get what you need from the other – not visa versa
MentalizingSlide28
One Couple’s Homework
She was to ask for sexual touch and to draft a statement for him to repeat that expressed desire and wanting. They were not allowed to proceed to intercourse during this exercise.
He was to seek out non-sexual touch (foot rub) and focus on his own enjoyment. He was to just notice when his thoughts turned to whether she was resentful or unhappy with the activity, question these meanings, and return his focus to the touch and the pleasure of it.Slide29
The Erotic Mind
Fonagy
and associates – The Ontological Stage of
Mentalization
Development
Allowing the Erotic to be held in m ind and in fantasy and to be shared and experienced in the relationship in this wayMore flexibility for a couple, less powerlessnessSlide30
Failures in Mentalization
(
Fonagy
et.al 2008)
Psychic Equivalence Mode World=Mind, ideas are too “real”
constructs are not distinguished from external reality that they represent
eg
. dreams, flashbacks, paranoid delusions
Pretend Mode
ideas are not real enough authentic feelings do not accompany thoughts
Feelings and thoughts are role-played
can make wild assumptions about mental states of others, “
hypermentalizing
” “destructively inaccurate
mentalizing
”
Teleological Mode
Mental states are compulsively acted out
Only actions and their tangible effects count
eg
. self harm, violenceSlide31
Lisa and Brad had rarely had sex in the last ten years of their twenty year marriage. Brad was the more dejected by the standoff. Lisa felt bitter about it as well but was ambivalent as to whether she could find herself wanting Brad the same way she once did.
Lisa felt resentful at Brad’s tentative and “unmanly” attempts to skirt the subject. She harboured an accumulated resentment that Brad needed her to be in a burdensome mother position, always having to make him okay. She was also left feeling disappointed that he would give up so easily, wishing someone would continue to want her regardless of any obstacles she might place in their way. In other words, Lisa wanted sex but only if Brad wanted her the way she wanted him to want her.
The lack of resolution tacitly suited Lisa. By not effectively and openly wanting sex herself, she did not have to confront her anxiety about facing the needs of important others; a situation she had learned from childhood to be burdensome.
Brad, on the other hand, desperately wanted more sex and general closeness but was vigilant of Lisa’s criticisms. Moreover, the pain of rejection was something that he learned to avoid. He only approached the subject indirectly, unwittingly guaranteeing Lisa’s annoyance. In short, he needed Lisa’s permission before he would want openly.
The lack of resolution tacitly suited Brad. By not effectively and actively wanting intimacy, he did not have to confront his anxiety about being criticised or rejected. Indeed he had learned from childhood that confronting an important other with his needs risked a schism in his attachment – a scary and disorganising experience for Brad.
The situation came to a head when Lisa began to experience the attractions of men at her workplace.