As such, I believe it is essential our clients are consciously aware of those insecurities and the behaviour they drive.  Failure to get clients to make that connection leaves them looking in the wrong places for solutions – either blaming their partner or collapsing into shame and self-blame – neither of which will solve their relationship issues.

Since writing that blog, I have had many conversations with colleagues discussing how hard it is to accurately identify core insecurities, especially when clients are reluctant to accept the impact of their upbringing on their present-day behaviour.  Where their answers to my final four questions in the previous blog are superficial or dismissive. Many clients seem offended or contemptuous if you suggest they are still being affected by less-than-ideal circumstances in their childhood (probably as sign they feel ashamed or exposed by your suggestion). 

Their tone and manner suggests they regard still being under the influence of childhood events as a moral failing rather than an inevitable truth of the human condition.  Ironically, this is often a reflection of, or result of, the kinds of core insecurities their upbringing created. The strong emotional reaction they are having is probably rooted in exactly the shame that you are trying to get them to track (and that is causing difficulty in their relationships). There is often also a sense that being open to the idea that their childhood was anything less than “fine”, “normal” or “good” is being unappreciative and disloyal to their parents or family.

Reflecting on those conversations, I realised I have a four-pronged approach to clients like this

• Psychoeducation about the neuroscience of the developing brain (esp pre-adolescence), emphasising how self-centred kid’s minds are because of their cognitive limitations
• Exploration of their childhood with me highlighting how seemingly unimportant or “normal” events might have had more impact than they realise.  Showing them how the theoretical concepts I have discussed in #1 might have played out in practice in their life.  Sometimes this is done in the face of great scepticism from clients (often hiding their fear of exposure).  But I am setting the scene for…
• Stressing the reflexive ways they are protecting themselves in the present (ineffective self-protective behaviour) and demonstrating how those behaviours were adaptive in the context of their upbringing but are damaging to their current relationship(s).
• Accompanying this all the way through is an emphasis on self-compassion.  Clients need to understand that, while they are responsible for their behaviour as adults, they were NOT responsible for the events that shaped them in childhood.  That when we recognise that we are reflexively doing unhelpful things, the useful response is to be kind to ourselves and try and attend with love to the parts of ourselves that are still hurting because of what we came to fear all those decades ago.

I think the key is persisting in showing them how this way of understanding themselves opens up new possibilities for changing things.  How being vulnerable instead of shut down draws their partner closer.  How being assertive instead of appeasing allows their partner to become more attuned to them.

Many people will not easily follow your lead – you will have to be tenacious and back your knowledge and experience.  A lot of clients equate self-compassion with self-indulgence and vulnerability with weakness.  Others have been trained to blame themselves and take responsibility for things that are not their fault.  Those clients need help in understanding where they learned such unkind and self-destructive beliefs.  It’s vital that we don’t let those beliefs stand unchallenged in our therapy. 

It is a situation where we need to lead, not follow, our clients.  To have the confidence that, in this respect, we therapists see more broadly and deeply than they do, because their core insecurities blind them to seeing their true worth. Hence, our perspective is much more likely to give them hope and a path towards achieving the intimate relationship they crave.

At the heart of most relationship difficulties are self-protective strategies that were learned in their formative years.  The client who hears criticism where it’s not intended or over-reacts to a small complaint.  The client who behaves like a small mistake by their partner is a big rejection or evidence that “I don’t matter to you”.  The client who shuts down and withdraws because they were misunderstood.

These sorts of strategies arise because of the way the child or adolescent has processed the experiences of their upbringing (remember it’s not just their “family of origin” who shape them – peers and other adults like teachers, coaches, pastors etc can sometimes be influential).  Kids’ brains are limited and self-centred – they don’t finish growing their frontal lobes until they are in their mid-twenties.  So the younger they are, the more likely they are to take (inappropriate) responsibility for events that are actually under the control of the adults in their lives.

So when you take a history, especially when you enquire into someone’s childhood experiences, it’s important not to get too caught up in the events.  As therapists, we are not so much interested in what happened but in what meaning the person, the child, made of the events.

Imagine your client says, “Mum was very strict, always telling us off, and Dad was never home (and when he was, he was doing chores or working on his car)”.   This is probably significant information, but its significance comes from what the child made these facts mean about themselves.

Let’s imagine four different people who reported a family situation like this.  For person A, the frequent scoldings from mum and the inability to earn praise or attention from either parent were interpreted as “It’s my fault Mum’s always angry and Dad doesn’t want to be around me”, leading to lifelong core insecurities (a.k.a.
“shame”, “negative stories” or “drivers”) like “I’m bad, I’m a problem”. 

For person B, their parents’ behaviour was interpreted as “I’m in the way of the important things my parents need to do”, leading to insecurities like “I’m not important, I don’t matter”.

Person C’s child brain understood Mum’s criticism as “You never do anything right” and Dad’s absence as “You’re not worth bothering with”, – Leading to insecurities like, “I’m not good enough, I’m unworthy.”

Person D’s young brain might have gone, “Mum’s so unfair, and Dad’s useless”, and left home with a belief, “I’m on my own; no one is there for me.”

Note that these four people could be siblings, growing up in the same situation but making quite different meanings of it. 

Our job in enquiring into someone’s past is to help them make sense of their behaviour in the present.  Often, this involves drawing to their attention experiences that remain unresolved, that need healing. Their experience is always subjective –often, when people look back on childhood events, they see them with adult eyes.

We need to help them connect with the child’s subjective experience.  A world where the adults are all-important and all-powerful while the child struggles to understand and is essentially powerless.  A world where they have no capacity (cognitively) to see it from anyone else’s point of view, and that means they are the cause of all that happens.  Where if mum is sad, dad is angry, or teacher/coach/pastor is disapproving, it’s my fault. 

So next time you ask about what happened in someone’s past, make sure you ask follow-up questions like:

What was that like for you?

How did you feel about that happening?

What did that make you think or feel about yourself?

What did that mean to you, back then?

That’s where the crucial information for your therapy will come from.

As relationship therapists, we strive to be even-handed and explore each partner’s contribution to the dynamics and difficulties that affect their relationship. However, when it comes to dealing with infidelity, I would argue that those rules don’t work very well. At least initially, it’s essential that the therapy is more focused on one person than the other. (For the sake of argument I’ll talk as if there are only two people in the relationship, but the same issues can apply in polyamorous relationships).

In an earlier blog, I suggested that infidelity was about someone knowingly breaking the relationship contract and then concealing that fact from their partner. By this definition, one of the key features of infidelity is that it is action taken unilaterally. One person is solely responsible for breaking the rules, doing it in a way that their partner had no chance to influence their choice.

One consequence of this unilateral action is that, when it is discovered, it creates a disproportionate level of vulnerability for the person whose trust has been betrayed (remember the definition of vulnerable is “more likely to be hurt”). If they wish the relationship to continue, they are forced to extend trust to someone who has been proven to be untrustworthy. It’s not surprising that people in this situation are frequently agitated, with disturbed sleep and erratic behaviour. They typically desperately and repetitively ask questions, seeking reassurance that their partner is unable to give, no matter how honestly they try and answer the questions.

In my experience, what is most likely to help someone in this situation settle down their mind and physiology is for the person who broke trust to make themselves vulnerable. Specifically by providing deep, psychologically coherent explanations for their choice to lie, cheat and deceive, coupled with a credible plan for dealing with the issues they uncover. To achieve this outcome, the initial phase of couple therapy following a major betrayal of trust can be seen as individual therapy with the contract breaker in the presence of the partner.

It’s not easy to get people who are full of guilt and shame to go deep and uncover their real motivations. They often want to “move on” to avoid engaging with painful insecurities and self-deception. Typically, they want the reassurance of immediate forgiveness the moment they apologise, rather than facing the inevitable long-term consequences of their behaviour. Sometimes they want to justify the infidelity by blaming their partner. It’s in situations like this that our ability to empathise with the underlying emotional pain and engage at that deeper level is essential to helping people restore trust. It’s the sort of work that typically is associated with individual therapy but can be powerfully healing in a relationship therapy context, post-infidelity.

Before employing this tool, you may need to reflect on whether it’s okay for you to make your clients uncomfortable.   Some clients find an exercise like this very exposing.  It gives you invaluable information about the way they operate in a very short space of time, so it’s in your client’s interest – it will save them time and money.  However, the therapist has to have a level of Differentiation to tolerate their discomfort with being asked to expose themselves in this way.  Make sure you get their consent to experiment with something different.

It’s a good idea when you do this exercise to warn people that you are going to be giving them some specific instructions and then you’re NOT going to explain any more, so they need to listen carefully.  In the beginning, to help you analyse the exercise, you might want to record the conversation (with your client’s permission).  Makes for great reflection in supervision!

The format

Taking a blank piece of A4 paper you turn to one person, hold up the piece of paper, look them in the eyes and say “This piece of paper represents something important to you. I’d like you to take a minute and think about what this piece of paper represents to you. You can pick anything that’s important to you except for your kids and your relationship.”  That is, you are asking them to imagine that the piece of paper IS the important issue.

Then pause and keep looking at them to give them a moment to process and take in your request.  You can ask “Have you got something?” or “Can you think of something like that?”.  When they have thought of something then you turn to their partner and repeat the exact same process with the exact same words.

Once they both have thought of something that the paper can represent that is important to them, then you ask each of them to hold onto one end of the piece of paper and say  “I’d like you to hold this paper between you and I’m going to give you up to five minutes to decide who gets this paper without ripping or tearing it. You can do it verbally or non-verbally. You can do it any way you like, but at the end of the five minutes, I’d like you to decide who gets the paper without ripping or tearing it.” It’s important to note there is nothing in these instructions preventing people from saying what they want and why.

I will usually also add that I’m going to give them a one minute warning before the five minutes is up and repeat that I’m not going to give them any further instructions or answer questions, that I want to see how they deal with the situation I have set up for them without me interfering further. 

Some people will really try and engage you with questions because you’ve created a projective type of situation that’s unsettling for them and they’re going to want you to structure it for them.  It will undermine the value of the exercise if you give in to the pressure of their anxiety. I keep saying back to them, “You can do it any way you choose and you have up to five minutes to decide who gets the paper without ripping or tearing it.”

Then you sit back and watch what they do.  You can literally move your chair back to indicate they are on their own with this.

After the 5 minutes is up make sure you thank them and give them positive feedback about doing the exercise. Ask them how they are feeling having done it.   It’s always good to ask them if what happened is typical of how they deal with conflict at home.  If it’s not typical, then explore why they behaved differently in this session than they usually do.

The asessment

You will get very different behaviour depending on the developmental level of the couple.  With some very symbiotic people, this is a very quick exercise because they are so panicked at the thought of a conflict one of them immediately gives the other the paper, without any discussion. 

Below are 6 questions you can ask yourself about what your clients did.  Each question points to a different aspect of the developmental stages.

1. Do the partners self-define?

The first thing is are they able to say what they want?   Very Symbiotic people won’t say or be really vague about what the paper represents to them.  Expect Symbiotic clients to blame you when you point out they didn’t say what they wanted – they will say you implied they shouldn’t say what they wanted (this is part of why sticking to the carefully ambiguous script when introducing the exercise is so important). Others will be very defensive or apologetic about saying what the paper represents.

• How do they manage boundaries? Are their boundaries rigid or overly permeable?

Once someone defines themselves by saying what they want, what happens?  Do they rigidly defend or collapse & give up easily??  Do they merge (I change what I want to join with what my partner selected)?  Do they look angry or upset that their partner wants something different from them?  It tells us about the level of Differentiation and also will be congruent with the Attachment Style.

• Do they show awareness that their partner is separate and different from them?

Shown in asking a lot of questions about what the other person picked – why is that important to you? Why does that matter to you?  If you took it could I ever share it back? Those who don’t engage at all tend not to have much awareness that the partner is separate and different from them

• How do they manage conflict? Is it avoided, escalated or acknowledged and handled?

If one collapses and the other accepts this then they’re both avoiding the conflict.  If they do have the conflict,  how  do they have it.  What is the emotional tone of the conversation – can they stay open, friendly and collaborative or does the presence of conflict make one or both of them closed, hostile, anxious etc?  Are they willing to hang in there even though the time is nearly up or do they foreclose on the conflict. A lot of people who are quite solid in their development won’t be able to resolve the conflict in 5 minutes and this is an indication that they are able to tolerate conflict productively and manage their anxieties.

• Do they have the capacity to move the conflict forward?

If they avoid it you won’t see this but if they are at the rapprochement stage you would expect them to be exploring options to see if there is a way they can resolve this without either of them giving up what they want.  As a rule of thumb, the more developed, the more creative and collaborative they’ll be in their exporation of potential solutions.

• Is each partner able to give and/or receive?

Interestingly people who are in the Rapprochement or Synergy stages are likely to end up doing something that Symbiotic people do, with one of them giving up the paper for the other.  However the pacing, tone and meaning of this is VERY different. It’s not done quickly to avoid anxiety, but after lengthy discussion where one of them decides “Hearing what it means to you I’m happy for you to have it”.

It’s a matter of clinical judgement how much of what you observe you feed back to your clients and when.  This exercise can be a good opportunity to explain the notion of Developmental Stages and indicate to each of them where you think they are at and what the developmental tasks are they have in front of them.

We all have blind spots, and, for some of us, one of our blind spots is the inability to acknowledge having blind spots.

In my spiel in the first session explaining to my clients what therapy is going to be like, I sometimes say something like this:

“All therapy, whether individual or couple therapy, is about helping you see and understand things about yourself that you don’t already know.”

I define therapy as helping them investigate their “blind spots”.

When a couple comes for therapy, they are usually feeling stuck.  One or both will often report that they have “tried everything, and nothing has worked”.   They are looking to us for answers.  Of course, we can’t fix their problems for them; we can only show them where they might find new solutions that they have to make work for themselves.

Most of the time, those solutions lie in their blind spots.  In the aspects of their behaviour (and thought and emotion) that they aren’t seeing accurately or understanding fully.  So, all we have to do is point out the things they’re missing, and it should all be right, right? Of course, nothing is that easy about therapy.

The second part of that spiel I give them in session one goes like this:

“The trouble is that things about yourself you don’t already know… tend to be things about yourself you don’t want to know.  So basically, you are sitting here paying me to tell you things you don’t want to know.”  This usually gets a laugh, but it’s a good way of warning my clients that therapy will be challenging.

Some people welcome that challenge or are at least used to the idea of their own fallibility and can tolerate the discomfort necessary for growth.  However, some people have learned to protect themselves by being “right”, “in charge”, or only ever trusting their own judgement.  These people will find it hard to have the humility to engage in therapy.

These clients are often “difficult” and often challenge us, our methods, and our competence.  We need to be able to see and have compassion for their defensiveness and find a way to access our empathy for their pain. 

They will often struggle to reflect on the experiences in their upbringing that shaped them.  They experience a therapist’s implication that they had a less-than-perfect childhood as a criticism of their person.   Yet suppose we gently persist in our inquiries. In that case, we will find an explanation for the difficulty accepting their blind spots: the father who was grudging with his approval, the mother who was too overwhelmed to be attuned, the teacher who was shaming, the brother whom they were made to feel “less than”.  They will minimise and deflect the importance of these formative experiences. But if we keep linking present behaviour back to early learning, often, they will start to make the connections.  “I don’t know if you are aware, John, that when Sila asked if you had made the booking, your whole body went rigid.  To me, you looked like a kid who was frightened he was in trouble with Dad again.”

For those for whom any admission of error, fault or failing is a confirmation of their worst fears about themselves (“I’m no good”, “I’m a loser”, “I’m a failure”), it requires a confident, empathic and patient therapist to help them accept that they’re allowed to be human and have blind spots just like the rest of us.

As I say to my clients, “Making mistakes, being reactive or insensitive is part of being human.  No one should be judged for that.  It becomes an issue of character in how readily you can recognise and take responsibility for your mistakes.  When your insecurities and fears drive you, when you are too scared of being a failure to own your mistakes, that’s when you’re letting yourself and those you love down.”

If we are patient and persistent and pace our interventions carefully, even those whose blind spot is about their blind spots can be helped to grow and change.

Clients will choose to make themselves vulnerable if they believe that the rewards are worth it. Emotional vulnerability is an essential part of intimacy and feeling truly loved. Everyone has ways to reflexively protect themselves from emotional hurt. For example, your client might be smiley and pleasing (so they don’t offer any threat), or they might be stony-faced and grumpy (so they look tough and dangerous). They are hiding their deeper thoughts, feelings and desires from view so that people can’t use those thoughts, feelings or desires to manipulate or hurt them. They feel vulnerable, so they act defensively.

Remember, the more important someone is to you, the easier it is for you to feel hurt by them. When a stranger ignores, rejects or attacks you, that’s bad enough; but when an Attachment figure does, the pain is so much worse. That pain causes your amygdala to see your loved one as a threat. In a committed relationship, you organise your life around an Attachment figure. A rupture in that relationship threatens not just your feelings but also your living arrangements, your financial security, and your connection with your children (if you have them).

So, when their partner is upset, insincere, grumpy or withdrawn, your client may feel very vulnerable to hurt. Their instinctive response is to protect themselves. But when your client puts up their walls and acts defensively in turn, this is an ineffective way to try to care for themselves. It destabilises the Attachment relationship, making them more open to significant hurt in the long run.

To maintain their connection, they must accept their vulnerability to their significant other rather than fight it. Being vulnerable is part of acting with integrity. Consciously sharing what’s happening inside you does give their partner information they could use to hurt them. It’s a risk. But they are far better to take that risk and find out whether their partner can meet them, as well as whether they can look after themselves when their partner is unavailable.

Being vulnerable requires being Differentiated — knowing and showing how it is for you at the same time as being accepting of and interested in how it is for your partner. Being vulnerable also requires effective management of your neurobiology, i.e. good self-regulation. Your client’s impulse to protect themselves will arise and require managing. Remember, tolerating vulnerability is a hallmark of those who are Securely Attached. If they’re just ‘acting Secure’, then learning how to be vulnerable, rather than focusing on the anxiety of how vulnerable they feel, is a crucial component. The script below offers your clients a structured pathway to being vulnerable with their partner. Feel free to use it in your practice.

Here is a step-by-step guide for how to respond when you feel vulnerable or hurt.

I feel VULNERABLE
(maybe because I have been hurt)

↓

Triggers reflexive impulse to self-protect or act out, distract, feel numb, etc.

↓

Recognise the impulse for what it is, allow self to feel the VULNERABILITY and don’t let yourself act impulsively

↓

Go slow and self-soothe — attend to VULNERABLE or hurt feelings (including reaching out to friends and other supports)

↓

Organise your thinking — maybe write some notes, or practise talking out loud to yourself or a friend, so that you have clear, non-judgemental language to describe what’s going on for you

↓

Be VULNERABLE
Open up to partner about the original VULNERABLE or hurt feelings (use non-blaming descriptions)

↓

Compassionately explore and discuss the VULNERABILITY, focusing on meanings you make, your interpretations and insecurities (not the same as justifying self-protective behaviour)

↓

Be sure to talk about how much VULNERABILITY and hurt is from your upbringing rather than focusing on what your partner did

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When I have made a mistake, got something wrong, or behaved in ways that are hurtful to my partner, my self-protective impulses often prompt me to talk about why I behaved that way. Usually, this involves an attempt to minimise my responsibility. The most common way to do this is to try and excuse and justify my behaviour.  For example, “I only shouted at you because you were being so rude”. 

That focus on what my partner did to “cause” my behaviour usually comes because I struggle to feel OK about myself, so recognising and accepting that I have got it wrong can feel devastating; like I am confirming what a bad person I am.  For example, I unconsciously fear that when I am aggressive I am like my domineering father.

In those moments when I am making excuses for myself, I am more in relationship with my insecurities than I am with my partner. My distress at the triggering of my fears about myself makes it hard for me to recognise, let alone accept and respond to the impact of my behaviour on them.  My partner is likely to feel twice wounded if I come across as justifying the behaviour that hurt them

If being a good partner is my top priority, then I need to aim to repair the “rupture” to the relationship caused by my ineffective self-protective behaviours asap.   Remember that John Gottman’s research showed us it’s the speed and effectiveness of relationship repair that separates the happy from the unhappy couples.  Explanation is often part of repair, but the timing of it matters. This is what our clients so often get wrong!

When I accept that I have done something unhelpful or hurtful then I will first acknowledge that without justification.  I will take responsibilty for my behaviour and focus first on repairing my connection with you; things like apologising and doing what I can to make things right.  “Sorry, I came on way too strong there.  I didn’t need to shout like that.  That must have been scary for you”.

Somewhere in that process it is likely to be useful for me to be able to understand why I acted in ways that were contrary to my values and against my intentions to be loving, kind, supportive etc to my partner.  My focus will be on myself, my insecurities, my upbringing and training around intimacy, and my present circumstances.

Working out what was going on inside me, why I interpreted my partner’s behaviour the way I did, is important for me to make effective plans for acting differently next time something like this happens.  “What I think happened for me was…”          

When clients offer this kind of in-depth, self-exploratory explanation of why they did something unhelpful it is going to make any assurances they offer about not doing it again much more believable for their partner.  It also is an example of the sort of intimate, vulnerable communication that builds trust and respect. 

So next time you are trying to help a couple resolve a conflict where one person was trying to explain why they behaved the way they did, make sure they focus on taking responsibility and repairing the relationship before they worry about “why”?  Make sure they are not looking for shame-driven excuses but, instead, are able to find a deep and self-aware explanation that will help them change their behaviour and build their partner’s trust and respect.

Once they can do that, talking about the reasons behind their behaviour becomes an explanation, not a justification.   It becomes an opportunity for intimate reflection and connection that helps both of them understand what makes one person “tick”.  It’s also a chance for both of them to show some compassion for what drives that person to be self-protective.  Processing ruptures this way is a vital plank in building a relationship that both people will want to be in.

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In childhood, many boys will have the experience that if they show emotions they are punished (in the Classical Conditioning sense). Sometimes the punishment is violent and brutal.  As a client of mine recently said “I grew up as a boy in NZ and if you showed emotion you got beaten up”.  Note this is a boy from a middle class family who went to a few different schools. Sometimes the punishment is as subtle as the frown on a parent’s face or a “you’ll be alright” which is meant to encourage but actually invalidates.   Especially when, as happened to a different client, the kid actually needs eight stiches.

The trouble with this approach to parenting boys is that kids are bad at NOT showing what they feel.  So when boys are punished for showing feelings, they have to learn not to have them or, more accurately, not allow themselves to notice they are having them.

In Pavlov’s experiment, the dogs ended up salivating at the sound of the bell.  Repetitve punishment means many men feel fear or anxiety the moment they experience an emotion.  Having a feeling is an aversive experience for them.  So when their partner’s criticise and, often, shame them for being unresponsive or emotionless, they are inadvertently adding to the aversive conditioning.

To make matters worse, fear and anxiety are, of course, feelings.  So what what can the men do about their fear, then?  If they can’t avoid, suppress or deny it, they project it outwards as anger and blame.

Recent research out of the University of Auckland’s “REACH” relationships lab ,stresses that men who are behaving aggressively usually feel disempowered.  

As therapists, it is easy to become frustrated with shut down, walled off, unempathic male clients.  And to be appalled at the toll of emotional and physical harm they leave in their wake.  Yet, if we can’t find a compassionate understanding of how they got that way, we are unlikely to help them to change and that does nothing to help the people who love them who are being hurt by them.

I recently worked with a hetero couple like this.  What made their conflict more potent was they have three teenage children, so this was a disagreement that had implications not just for their personal safety, but for that of their family.

This situation was challenging for me as a therapist in two ways.  First, I had to really watch my bias.  Personally, I strongly agreed with the woman about the value and importance of vaccinations, not just for personal safety but for the good of the wider community.    It as a challenge to my Differentiation as a therapist to listen to the man and treat his concerns with equal validity.

Secondly, the level of frustration in each of them meant that they both resisted my attempts to focus on their process.  They both wanted to keep re-stating their arguments for their position.  Inevitably, this only served to dig them deeper into their entrenched positions,  making the atmosphere in the relationship more difficult. This presented a real challenge to my leadership of the therapy.

However, I did keep re-focusing on how they were talking to and treating each other.  In keeping with the Developmental Model’s emphasis on giving people a different perspective, my first action was to direct their attention to where they did agree.  In particular, I highlighted how they both were placing the value of their family’s health at the forefront of their efforts.  They have “done the maths” differently and ended up with different suggestions about what is the best course of action, but both are operating from the same motivations.

Once they could each acknowledge the good intentions of the other, I could then get them to look at the process.  I suggested that this sort of agreement is a perfect example of the value of being able to show care and support for your partner, even if  you disagree strongly. 

I modelled for them how talking to each other from a place of care and empathy might look.  “I am sorry that my decision on this issue is adding to your stress about this whole COVID situation.  I can see how it does that, and I wish it didn’t” 

It was really only once I modelled this way of talking to each other that the light bulb went on for them that they could be handling this whole situation differently.  Sometimes you have to show people, they can’t work it out for themselves.  At that point the whole tone of the session changed and they realised that they had lost sight of the “Big Picture” of their relationship in clinging on to such polarised positions. 

I don’t imagine they were immediately able to go away and do that for themselves, but by giving them a different experience in the session, they now know that another way of engaging around differences, even extreme differences is possible and desirable.

Having a person like this as your client can be challenging. Enquiries about their emotions or the meanings they make of events are often met with an “I don’t know” response. Many of us were trained never to lead clients. If we are rigid about this it can leave us with few options at this point. However, there is a real danger in the client remaining unseen and unheard. If you are doing couple therapy there is also the danger of partners losing hope “See, even our therapist can’t get anything out of you!”

If you suspect your client DOES know but isn’t saying you can enquire about that. You can ask “Is that an “I know but it’s too scary to tell you” type of “I don’t know” or an “I have no idea how to process what you are asking me” type of “I don’t know”?”. If the answer is “too scary” then that opens up an avenue of exploring what are the feared outcomes of answering the question.

If the person doesn’t know how to process the question, consider what you know from their history about how likely they were to have been taught or have modelled for them how to think about nor talk about their emotions and internal experience. In most cases, they haven’t had the training, and so our role becomes to scaffold them up to the kind of emotional literacy needed to maintain an intimate adult relationship.

In a sense, our role becomes one of re-parenting. It requires patience and compassion from the therapist. It is so easy for these men to feel inadequate and ashamed. In many cases, they have had years of partners expressing frustration at their inability to be open and articulate. Therapy is a very scary and hostile environment for them and it is our professional responsibility not to add to the emotional burden they carry.

One tool to use is to use the Feelings Wheel – I focus on the 6 core emotions in the centre. Although I acknowledge that there is a downside to labelling emotions as positive or negative (all feelings carry useful information), at this level of education I find it valuable. In response to an “I don’t know how I feel” I ask, “Well, do you feel negative or positive?” Most people can answer this kind of simple binary question. Armed with this knowledge I get out the Feeling Wheel. Using the wheel they then only have to choose between 3 options. If they say it’s a negative feeling – is it Sad, Mad (angry) or Scared? If it’s a positive feeling, is it Peaceful, Powerful or Joyful? If they want to, they can then look further out on the wheel to refine their language. Breaking the question down into these three steps makes it less overwhelming. This is something that they can then use with their partners at home.

In other situations I won’t use the wheel, instead, I will offer them options of feeling words based on A) my knowledge of them and B) on my experience of others and C) my own life experience. In response to the “I don’t know” I will say something like – “In my experience, people in a situation like this might feel angry or hurt or overwhelmed” OR “If I was in your shoes I think I would feel anxious or unimportant or maybe angry” and then continue with “Do you think one or more of those feelings might be going on for you?”. If your client is not completely blank, you also have the option to say – “To me, you look like you are irritated or frustrated – would that be about right?

Using these kinds of strategies repeatedly I find that, over time, many clients become more self-aware and articulate. If they can do it in the therapy room, their partners begin to realise they can also expect it at home. There may need to be some discussion about inviting openness, rather than demanding on it (see the discussion of shame and inadequacy above).

Yes, talking in this way leads the client, and we need to be very cautious of clients saying something just to please the therapist. If we choose to guess, we also need to be attuned to subtle signals that our guesses are wrong. However, I would argue that the potential benefits to clients who are inarticulate in this way (and to their partners) outweigh the risk.