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.