Learner therapist (18)…… systemic communication improvement in relationships
Torrey Orton
May 14, 2012
Tools for talk …and how therapists could help them do it.
Motivating hope
One thing that's hard to sustain, not to say increase, is productive motivation. A useful starting place is to assess the couple's motivation for the improvement of the relationship. I usually do this early on by asking both to assess their present hope on a 1(near nothing) to10 (totally committed) scale. It is a gut-feel judgement which later provides a shared benchmark for progress, especially if the first assessment is quite different between them. This activity also outs the unspoken doubt between them about where they really stand at the moment. The level of motivation is felt as the level of present danger to the relationship.
Another pathway to motivation is the couple's needs, especially their shared ones. Some couples are a bit short on shared needs, apart from those involved in building a home. Such goals are often divvied up on an implicit, gendered expectation set: boys take care of X and girls of Y, as has been the case for millennia. Exploring needs is a next step in the session process. But the path is often blocked by unspoken wants.
Getting started speaking the unspeakable…
Speaking which is constrained by the threat of repeated dysfunctional communication is hard to do. It is even harder if there are secrets imbedded in the undiscussables which have been withheld for fear of the dysfunction. Secrets often include personal hurts acquired in the relationship and never acknowledged to each other – experiences of disrespect, lack of interest, disdain: the stuff which gives "dissed" its power.
So, how to get started outing the unspeakable between them? I use a strict approach. It goes like this:
'We're going to start looking at the issues which need resolution for the relationship to improve, survive, or deal with its failure (there's no escaping having to talk, even in failed relationships).These issues will be recorded in language as close to your own as I can get it. The record will be kept in public view and will be available for you to take away with you….
The process is simple, but rigid. Each of you will get as many chances as you need to make contributions to the list of issues. You can only make one at a time, sharing turns back and forth. Here's the hard part: everything either of you want to say will be included on the list; the other may not contest or engage with any issue at this time; nor may you.
However, you may request an example if you are not clear (most couples seldom need examples – they know what the issues are for each other and many of them are shared, with slightly different meanings, and even if they have not been spoken openly to each other before.
Clear? OK…
Then, take a few minutes to consider what issues you want to raise. It's really helpful to be very specific. For example, it turned out for one couple that a kitchen renovation project was the forum in which they could explore their respective perceptions of being unrecognised by their partner for contributions they make to the family! This had been going on for months, but the needs driving it had not been heard, or sometimes spoken, or even clear to the couple themselves.
So, who wants to go first?'
Having finished for the session, I give them a copy of the chart and the suggestion they add new items as they come to mind over the week, refine existing items to sharpen their clarity and order them in their shared view of the items' importance. This last step yields the starting place for the next session and, often, who will take the lead, since issues are seldom held with the same intensity by both members of a couple.
Without such a tool there's little way to shift the burden of mutually animated distress from a divisive to an engaging motivation source. That distress has two origins: one, the perception of the unfair, inappropriate and so felt to be punishing behaviour by the partner; and two, the frustration of being unable to effectively parry or contain the perceived threat of punishment. The frustration is the more dangerous and less discussable of the two, hence often inaccessible while being the primary motivation of the moment. Not knowing what / how to do something effective is more threatening than doing something wrong which at least counters the threat, even though reigniting it! The cycle is understood and sustainable…often for years. It is the systemic communication dysfunction.
Another system - systematic communication: start with flagging
To break through the systemic dysfunction a systematic approach is necessary. The Wants and Needs exercise makes a start. What follows is another piece of such an approach, a piece which helps break the surge of threatening feelings that characterises the dysfunction for each couple. Common triggers may be either an outburst of anger or a joint withdrawal into a throttled silence.
'Here's a technique for getting a grip on the feelings yourselves before they get a grip on you! It's called flagging. It involves letting the other know when an inflammatory feeling (as defined in the investigation above) is on the horizon. Sometimes one of you knows when such a feeling is emerging before the other; you can feel it in their body language, or in your own. Being able to identify and express such feelings is the most important skill for your future (it will apply across your life). This skill allows interrupting the dysfunctional cycle and, eventually, pre-empting it – keeping the dysfunction at bay by reducing and eventually removing the uncontrollably conflictful conditions in which it thrives!
Flagging is simply mentioning that a disruptive feeling is on the horizon of your talk as early as it comes into view. Like the sun, it will be hard to see because it is so bright and oversized at first sight. Eyes naturally shutter. Defenses naturally stutter.
We'll do regular work on this technique because it provides the basis of shared facts to anchor difficult discussions. At this point what's shared is the fact of having disruptive feelings. What you will learn is the skill to control feelings by sharing them rather than hiding them. Agreeing that a conversation is likely to be difficult provides a safe space you both can retreat to in the process. The 'flag' marks a need to retreat so it can occur without feeling like and being an assault on the other.'
Content problems – incomprehensible experiences of others, or ours
Some communication dysfunction arises from unshared experience. There is a special kind of talk content problem, namely when the couple's original injuries are from experiences the other has never had, or could never have. Under the pressure of long-term perceived disregard between the couple (re-injuries of old injuries, plus new ones acquired as adults in failing relationship(s)) it is difficult not to hear the other's special needs as another ploy in the competition for attention and control. The perceived claim of the ploy is that the speaker has special needs which justify their demand for attention at this moment. These 'ploys' are repeated regularly in the couple's life, which the other reacts to in a patterned way (in turn perceived as 'ploys'), reinforcing the sense of disregard…and so on it goes. The shared part of such experiences is the fact of feeling unheard. The source may be incomprehensibly different life experiences.
What's such an experience difference look like? Here's one couple example. Just saying these facts to each other was only the beginning of the possibility of understanding their deepest automatic responses (defences) to perceived rejection.
She said, starting to cry uncontrollably: I remember being sent away for two months to summer camp aged 5 so my returned run-away 12 year old sister could "have space" as recommended by a social worker returning her…with the understanding for years after that I should "behave" or get into rouble from father for I knew not what; the reason for the runaway was never discussed…so the boundaries of expected behaviour were never clear, just implicit.
He said: (shaking with inner turmoil) I just remembered myself going down the hall of the hospital 30 years ago to see the back specialist in terror about the outcome (I was put in a body brace for 6 months) and mother (who was with me) not asking how I felt, and me feeling I couldn't say because she and father were unable to run the family themselves and I - aged just 14 at the time, eldest child - was carrying the load, down to doing the shopping, cooking and so on.
Another content problem – the unshared, cultural world view. Increasingly people marry, or couple, 'out' of their culture of origin, partly to escape it into something which feels more welcoming. Trouble is, they often do not know the other culture deeply and find some surprises which usually show up as deeply felt role guidelines for men and women. This is a similar, but other, matter to the unshared injuries above.
Treatment for a content problem – a little lecture
When there is impenetrable life experience underlying the dysfunction a structured set of 'lectures' by each member of the couple can be useful. Their subject is: 'how it is to be me with this injury I have'. Note that this step assumes the couple have acknowledged injuries and that these are not going away in the foreseeable future; they are conditions of the relationship. However, one of the coping mechanisms the psycho-socially injured use is to handle everything themselves, so it's hard to share the injuries without feeling they are masking a plea for special treatment or concern, or feeling they are opening themselves to re-injury. Catch-22.
Ensuring both have a go helps mitigate this defence. Negotiating the order of presenting, a detail in managing the process, also helps make it a shared event. Having had the experience of doing shared issues charts, the rules for this exercise are easy. The lectures are presented without objection or contention. Only questions of clarification may be asked or checks of clarity made by paraphrasing impressions to the speaker. A single session should do for two lectures. Follow-on homework could be to continue the exploration, roughly equally dividing time between them. All this is also practice in equal opportunity provision for hearing and speaking between them at all times – another shared platform for joint self-management.
4 systemic social dysfunctions contributing to couples' system dysfunctions
Finally, a systemic reflection. Each of the following social system dysfunctions warrants an article in its own right, so I'll just sketch them here. They are often active in couples' thinking as principles of dis-engagement. They are principles or assumptions in the background. So I call the bunch of them a 'theory'.
One dysfunction: there is a widely held and reinforced 'theory' that injuries can be moved on from; that just trying harder is all that's required; that getting help is a sign of weakness and is probably why one was injured in the first place. This 'theory' is promoted in many ways daily, often without specific intent to do so. Its component beliefs are just assumptions more or less inhabiting much contemporary social thinking, especially in the personal development fields…for example, "don't act the victim"; "that's victim thinking", and so on. The implication, often mentioned by patients, is that to attend to an injury is self-indulgent or a kind of covert pleading for advantage in the relationship – two faces of selfishness. In addition this theory encourages the very sort of behaviour which intensifies injuries: making them secrets.
Another 'theory' is the handmaiden of the first: that we are all responsible for our responses to others', actions regardless of what those actions are. That is, we can choose not to be angry, sad, etc. if we interpret the actions differently. To do so requires a disconnection from the early warning system of our self-protective feelings. It also cannot always be activated before a threat sneaks through to us, not even if we are very skilled at flagging because some of our life is emerging, not planned and scripted, nor scriptable. This responsibility theory implies our perception of hurt is our fault. Change the perception, change the hurt. Not easy when we are children. Not supported when we are hurt adults - see theory one above.
A third theory is that everything is just a perception, the handmaiden's dressing room clerk. Assertions that someone else's experiences are "just a perception" and so explicitly not worthy of receiving greater attention than any other perceptions (especially the speaker's) can be heard in everyday life. It is of course true that experiences are perceptions, so the assertion has the power of an accusation that the other is seeking special consideration for their experience. It also avoids, often intentionally, the challenge which is how do we share perceptions reliably, which we actually do in much of life.
A final 'theory' problem: everything in our culture encourages us to think as and be freestanding individuals, but we need the other to see ourselves. One definition of a psychopath is a person who cannot understand how others feel, and does not care. On the other hand, the socially phobic always care first about how other people see them. All of us may experience moments of feeling desperately exposed to or defiantly indifferent or rejecting of others' judgments. Driving our flights around this spectrum is the need to know and value ourselves – a need we cannot fulfil alone. The economic individual is a psycho-social figment. The therapeutic acknowledgment of this fact can be found in the growing awareness that major psychological trauma cannot be treated solely as an individual injury…it is a social one, too.
Next article will take up how to solve problems – turning issues into actionable matters. Or,
'So you've flagged a hot issue. Now what?'
