I am reminded again of the role that “learned helplessness” plays in our lives and our inner sense of self-contempt. That way we have things before us that require our effort and attention, and that frozen-in-amber feeling where we can’t find any good feeling associated with doing what needs to be done. And then the way that we avoid what’s before us, and then live with a daily feeling of things hanging over our heads. And then how we then don’t feel free to fully be in the moments of our days. And then the “inner failure feeling” that then starts to create a chronic feeling of self-reproach and wounded self-esteem. This whole pattern throws of us off in our lives… and at its worst, can leave us feeling like we barely have a life at all.

Coping with vulnerability and the threat of vulnerability is a fulcrum around which our lives revolve. It is also at the heart of difficulty in many marital relationships because one person’s strategy towards safety are often anything but safe for the other. Two strategies, in particular, stand out. Some among us will tend to feel safer in a relationship when they have a sense of an escape hatch or exit which reassures them that they will not be trapped in a relationship situation that hurts them. In essence, they are not reassured by the other, they are reassured by their ability to leave.
This is in contrast to others who are reassured by assurances that no one is going anywhere, that we are in this together, for better or worse. For persons of this ilk, their partner’s holding onto the exit is predictably intensely threatening. Commonly they will respond to this sense of threat with escalating or confrontive behavior, which is actually a young attempt to get their more distancing partner to come forward and reassure them. The opposite typically happens, with the distanced partner becoming more distant and self-protective. This kind of conflict is often at the heart of a couples negative cycle. Both begin to see the other as emotionally dangerous. And both seldom see that it is actually the same at the heart of it for both in the relationship… the overriding need to feel safe, only two different ways of creating the feeling both want.

Sitting in a cafe, I noticed myself drawn towards someone else in the cafe who happened to remind me of my first love 45 years ago. I instantly banished and shut down my thoughts, noticing that my creative flow instantly shut down as well. I tried to recover my original feeling but could not. Sitting with my thoughts as I ate my breakfast I became aware… “oh, this is the stuff of psychoanalysis, inner conflict.” Part of me was drawn to that person I glimpsed in the cafe, and another part of me felt threatened by my feelings of attraction. My defensive system instantly shut down my feelings of attraction, leaving me momentarily numb. Opposing impulses, internal conflict, and defenses is the raw stuff of psychoanalysis… and one of it’s many contributions to psychotherapy in general. I found myself musing about how this contribution squares with current day attachment-based psychotherapy. And, of course, it didn’t escape my notice that I coped with the emotional conflict through the well-worn defensive pathway of “intellectualization.” (to be continued)

Commonly, when I am in a rutt with myself where some negative state has overcome and captured me… in addition to trying to sort out the events leading up to the stuck emotional space, I often find it valuable to do some form of “thought experiment.” First, I feel into the state that I am in (which is often a global undifferentiated kind of feeling), and then I imagine some part of the picture as as different, that is, I factor out some part of the picture, or change it in some significant way… and then I check back in with myself and observe if and how my mood shifts as I imagine this or that piece of the picture as different. I am repeatedly surprised how this simple procedure can powerfully shift my perspective and clarify my mood. As a result the mood becomes less global and I am often able to emerge out of it.

This process can be hugely clarifying. Most “out-of-sorts moods” are global states, with huge overgeneralization in the negative direction (mixed in with “learned helplessness.”) The thought experiment takes down the overgeneralized global state and replaces it with a more differentiated landscape. This alone can often shift a mood into a more realistic state that has hopeful prospects. And the clarification that comes with this process can open up an awareness of action that one can then take to improve the situation.

So much of the wounding we look at in therapy is in the area of “needing and wanting but not having.” And what this forms inside of us. And then what happens to us, when through changed circumstances of a relationship, the “needed and wanted” is now within our reach… when we have long ago formed core beliefs about ourselves and others based upon the assumption of “not having” what is “needed and wanted.” Commonly, the core belief that “I don’t have what I need” persists even when contradicted that I now have what I need. This, I think, is at the heart of so much of our work in psychotherapy.

So often, when we form a core belief about ourselves and our relationships with others, new experiences that that contradict the core belief, do not necessarily change or update the core belief. The new and better experiences are often internalized to create a layered belief system, with the new experiences being used to support a positive outside defense against the core negative belief, but largely leaving the internal belief unchanged at an unconscious level.