How Couples Counseling Works

Here’s what you can expect in your first couples counseling session:  after a few minutes of state-mandated disclosures, we will dive right into what needs to change in your relationship. You will each tell me what you want to be different, and then we will get to work changing those things. 

A relationship is made up of two people who want to love each other, but don’t necessarily know how to do that. How often did you see your parents confronting each other in a calm, collaborative way when you were growing up? My job as relationship therapist is to figure out who, between the two of you, is more ready to take the first step forward into a new, more collaborative relationship. 

The first thing you will learn is that resilient relationships require more conflict, not less. I’m talking about calm, collaborative conflict, where you tell your partner what you see and what you want in a kind, courageous way. We will practice this kind of confrontation in session, and I will challenge you to put your new skills to work at home. 

We will also look into how your relationship dynamics are influenced by the family you grew up in, and how you related to your parents when you were young. As adults, it’s important to let go of behavioral patterns that served us well when we were young, but aren’t helpful now that we’re grown up. 

In between sessions, I will encourage you to write down conversations you have with each other, and to write down imaginary conversations you would like to have with each other, with your parents, and with other important people in your life. We will also role-play these conversations in session, focusing on improving communication patterns, decreasing anxiety, and improving conflict resolution skills. 

Why Marriage is So Hard

Marriage exists at the edge of human capability. No one is born ready to create a happy, thriving marriage; we have to develop that capacity. It’s like playing the piano or climbing a mountain or ballroom dancing:  possible, but not easy. 

If your parents were exceptionally good at loving each other, you get a free head start on the path to creating a really good marriage. If you had normal parents who weren’t very good at loving each other, you get to start back here with the rest of us. Welcome to the real world. 

Your brain is primarily designed to handle a child-parent relationship, not an adult relationship. Your relationship with your parents was a survival-level priority when you were a child. You didn’t have the option of choosing different parents, or asking them to change, or asking for parent-child relationship therapy. Instead, you just had to do the best you could with what you had. 

As a child, you were incredibly vulnerable. When your parents failed to love and protect you, it had a significant impact on you. If you grew up in a soft nest, where you were treated kindly, your brain developed soft programming that was appropriate for childhood, and could then be adapted to thrive in adulthood. If you grew up in a hard nest, your brain developed hard programming to help you survive in a hostile environment. This kind of programming is difficult to rewrite, and it is not compatible with marriage. 

When you were a child, your parents had all of the power in the child/parent relationship. You needed them to survive, and your brain was programmed to stick with them no matter what. You were also programmed to see your parents as good people, even when they weren’t. If you grew up in an abusive home, your brain was programmed to see your parents as more benevolent and less sadistic than they really were. 

Most parents enjoy hurting their children at least some of the time, and children are not capable of understanding that their parents like hurting them. If you grew up with sadistic parents, your brain twisted that sadism into normal, acceptable human behavior. You became blind to sadistic behavior in your parents, in yourself, and in others. This blindness causes the cycle to be continued, generation after generation. As long as you are blind to sadism in your parents, you will also be blind to sadism in yourself and in others. 

Most of us grew up in families where anger and conflict go hand in hand. Did you ever see one of your parents take a strong stand against the other with love and kindness in their eyes? We learned that you stand up for yourself with anger, or you don’t stand up for yourself at all. 

There are only two ways to overcome fear:  anger and courage. In a normal marriage, when my partner is pressuring me to do something I don’t want to do, my default response is to get angry. My anger helps me stand up for myself and hold firm on my boundaries. It helps me take action even when I am afraid. As a child, anger was my only solution to these kinds of situations, because children are not capable of the kind of courage it takes to stand up to someone with love and kindness. 

Imagine silence on one side of a continuum, and anger on the other. Most of us feel trapped in this spectrum, seeing only two choices:  either speak up with anger or remain resentfully silent. There is a third choice:  speak up why kindness and courage. This third choice requires a level of emotional maturity that most of us never reach in life. We might be able to do it at work, but we generally can’t do it at home. 

Marriage is hard because it activates childhood behavioral patterns that were designed to help us manage difficult child-parent interactions. We learn about human relationships as three-foot-tall beings who have no power and great needs, and then we try to use what we learned to create a thriving adult relationship. We have to radically re-wire our brains to create thriving, long-lasting adult relationships. 

Your brain is wired for childhood, not adulthood. You can rewire your brain, but it takes deliberate, intense effort. If you just allow your brain to do what it wants to do in marriage, it will continue to behave as if you were a small, vulnerable child, and your partner was an unkind parent. 

How to Raise a Narcissist in Four Easy Steps

Do you want your kid to be president? Start by helping them develop these nine narcissistic traits:

1. A grandiose sense of self-importance

2. Preoccupation with fantasies of success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

3. A belief that they are unique and special

4. A Need for excessive admiration

5. A sense of entitlement

6. A knack for manipulation

7. A lack of empathy

8. Envy of others or a belief that others are envious of them

9. Arrogance

It’s super hard to outgrow narcissism, so your child will probably be a narcissist for life. This will definitely destroy their personal life, but it might help them excel in their chosen profession.

It takes considerable effort to successfully raise a narcissist. Be sure to include these four steps in your parenting plan:

Parenting Step 1:  Crush your child’s authentic sense of self as soon as it starts to emerge

Narcissism develops as a defensive mechanism when a child feels unloved, unwanted, and unworthy. When you see your child starting to develop a healthy sense of self, squash it with these time-honored parenting strategies:

• Tell them they are lazy, dishonest, and incompetent.

• Blame and shame them for normal childish behavior

• Compare them to to others

• Act like you are offended or hurt by their behavior

• Withhold attention, affection, and emotional support

• Make your family rules arbitrary and lopsided.

• When they misbehave, it’s their fault.

• When you misbehave, it’s their fault.

• When they feel bad, it’s their fault.

• When you feel bad, it’s also their fault.

Parenting Step 2:  Make your child reliant on you for approval and validation

• Emphasize that you’re the only one who sees how smart and capable they are

• Defend them when teachers or coaches offer legitimate criticism.

• Put them on a pedestal

• Use the “tear and repair” cycle build them back up after you tear them down

• Make it hard for your child to have healthy friendships and dating relationships.

Parenting Step 3:  Model narcissistic behavior

Children learn more from what you do than what you say, so you will need to use your own behavior to show them what narcissism looks like. For example:

• Make sure they know that you’re better than everyone else. Use derision, contempt, judgment, and condescension liberally.

• Pretend you don’t care what anyone else thinks.

• Talk about how your family is better than other families.

• Talk about how most people are idiots

• Be judgmental and condescending.

• Demonstrate these three methods of interpersonal manipulation:

• Control your child by withholding love and affection if they don’t do what you want

• Control your child by threatening intense emotional responses if they don’t do what you want

• Control your child by threatening physical violence if they don’t do what you want

Parenting Step 4:  Don’t give up

Keep working even if your child starts developing a solid, authentic sense of self despite your best efforts.

• Protect your child from the positive influence of relatives, teachers, and coaches who might be show genuine care, affection, and concern for your child’s wellbeing.

• As they get older, provide even more false validation to keep their ego inflated. Constantly remind them that no one else will ever love them as much as you do.

Conclusion: if this was how you were raised, give me a call. I help couples overcome narcissism, deception, gaslighting, and manipulation.

Sex, Money, Parenting, and the In-Laws

These are the four that tear couples apart:

1. Sex

2. Money

3. Parenting

4. The in-laws

The first three are all issues where compromise is difficult, and where each partner has a lot of power to affect the other in a negative way. The fourth happens because we’re more blind to our own parents than we are to our partner’s parents.

The key to resolving the “big four” is personal growth. The uncomfortable truth is that you already have the relationship you are capable of having, and you have to grow yourself up if you want a better relationship.

We all want to believe that it’s the other person’s fault, but the reality is that we all partner up at our own level of personal development, and we stay evenly matched throughout a relationship.

When you look at your partner and see significant emotional immaturity, it’s best to remember that there are different, but equivalent, immaturities on your side of the relationship.

Relationship therapy can help you resolve these immaturities. When you grow yourself up, your partner is likely to follow. You might even find that your own immaturity has been enabling and encouraging your partner to be immature as well.

At Roseville Couples Counseling I offer one free session of marriage therapy to any couple who wants to start improving their relationship. Learn more at https://jamesmchristensen.com

Why You Can’t Stop Arguing

Close your eyes and imagine the wildlife that surrounds a coral reef in tropical waters. Shimmering fish swim in schools, darting in and out as the gentle currents move plants and animals in a delicate dance, bathed by the warmth of the sun as it filters down through the water. Here, all is alive, warm, colorful, and. There is a delicate interplay of hundreds of species, all coming together to create a beautiful web of life. 

Now join me on a journey as we descend into the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. As we pass one thousand feet, the water turns a dark blue. At two thousand, there is just a faint glow of light remaining. At three thousand, we enter complete darkness, and our journey is just beginning. 

As we descend through the inky blackness, the pattern of life starts to change. Fish and other creatures wanter alone, instead of swimming in schools. Every creature focuses on eating and not being eaten. The rhythm of life is harsh, food is scarce, and there is no time for friendship or love. 

Dr. David Schnarch uses this difference as a metaphor for understanding what happens when we argue with loved ones. It’s easy to let your most important relationships start drifting into the Mariana Trench. Schnarch calls this regression, and he divides it into steady-state regression and acute regression. An acute regression happens when you experience overwhelming emotion that makes it hard to function well. Steady-state regressions can last months or years, making it difficult to create lasting relationships. 

Dr. Schnarch encourages us to do two things:  first, admit we are regressed. Saying “I’m regressed” is a critical first step on the journey to getting better. Then, you start swimming for the surface. If you’re not sure whether you are regressed or not, you probably are. If you’re still not sure, take a look at your most important relationships:  do your loved ones feel comfortable expressing their opinions around you, or asking for what they want? Would they be afraid to say something critical to you? Is anyone walking on eggshells around you? 

The process of swimming for the surface involves looking into childhood experiences that contribute to your regression. Regressions are often related to difficult childhood experiences, especially those involving parents. Dr. Schnarch proposes two methods to help your brain recover:  revisualizations and written mental dialogues.

Revisualizations help you reprocess difficult memories by moving past your verbal memory into your visual memory. Allowing your adult brain unfettered access to unprocessed visual memory is a powerful way to calm leftover childhood fears. 

1. Start with a scene that involved one of your parents. Include as much sensory information as possible:  sights, sounds, colors, textures.

2. Try to picture it from multiple camera angles.

3. What was the expression on your face and on your parent’s face?

Written Mental Dialogs help you see your parents more clearly and respond to them with confidence.

1. Start by writing down the conversation you need to have but have not yet had with one of your parents.

2. Focus on making it clear that you see what really happened in the past and what is really happening now.

3. Make sure you are the one in charge of the conversation.

Dr. Schnarch’s last book, Living at the Bottom of the Ocean, is available as a free PDF download at this link. If you’re interested in curing regression and helping your brain function better, I can’t recommend it enough!

The 80/20 Rule

80% of the distress you experience in your adult relationship is an emotional flashback to childhood. The human brain is more optimized for survival in childhood than thriving in adult relationships. In childhood, your brain formed around whatever behavior was needed to coexist with your parents or caretakers. In adulthood, the behavioral patterns you learned are still with you, and they tend to make themselves known in adult romantic relationships. 

In childhood, it was really important for you to manage and maintain your emotional bond to a parent or caregiver, and your brain made sure you did that by making you feel really uncomfortable when that bond was less than secure. As an adult, you still feel the intense emotional distress associated with this childhood programming, but it no longer serves you because you can now take care of yourself. 

The solution is to take good care of yourself as an adult by allowing your body to feel whatever distress it needs to feel, and remembering that because you are an adult you don’t need to act on that distress. For most of us, this distress shows up as a tightness or pain in the throat, chest, or stomach area. In the early years of my marriage, I felt intense physical distress when my wife was upset at me. I felt like the only solution was to try to get her to not be upset at me, but I was wrong:  as an adult, the best solution is to learn to take care of myself in this situation, and to learn that my distress is an emotional flashback, not a well-calibrated response to what is actually happening to me as an adult. 

My marriage improved dramatically when learned to associate my emotional distress with leftover pain from childhood instead of blaming it all on my wife. The level of distress I experienced makes sense for a small, helpless child who depends on a parent for love, protection, food, and shelter. It does not make sense for a fully-grown man to feel that same level of distress in an adult relationship, but that was my experience. As I learned to care for myself well and to open my heart to the distress I felt, the distress itself gradually diminished. I still feel it, but it’s not anything like what it used to be. 

How to Calm your Inner Critic

Everyone has an inner critic, that voice in your head that says you’re just not good enough, you need to try harder, focus more, and get more done. We learn to talk to ourselves this way in inner adolescence, when we’re making the transition from being told what to do all the time to making our own decisions about what to do.

The development of an inner critic is an important step in human development, but it’s not the final step on the journey. It’s important to grow out of constantly criticizing yourself, and the best way to do that is to learn self-compassion.

When I hear a critical voice in my own head, I respond by saying “I hear you, little guy” because the part of me that criticizes that way is actually very young and just wants to be loved. There is a part of me that’s capable of providing the kind of love and support my younger self yearned for, and what I need to do is to help those to parts of my brain connect with each other.

The 50/50 Principle

I’ve worked with hundreds of couples and I have yet to meet a couple where one person was a lot more mature than the other. As a general rule, we tend to be romantically attracted to people who are at least as emotionally mature This means that long-term relationships end up forming between two people with similar levels of emotional maturity. Once a relationship forms, couples tend to grow or stagnate together, so it’s quite rare to find a couple where one person is significantly more mature than the other. 

Most of us think we’re more mature than our partners, but it’s just not true. You might be immature in different ways, but you’re not operating on a higher playing field. Your total immaturity is equivalent to your partner’s immaturity, it just has a different feel to it. 

The 50/50 rule is useful because it’s easier for me to see my wife’s immaturity than to see my own immaturity. When I do see significant immaturity in my wife, it’s worth remembering that I have equivalent immaturity on my side, I’m just not as good at seeing it. 

Relationship Therapy is like Dance Class

My wife and I take dance lessons together. The goal of every lesson is to dance a little bit better than we did at the beginning of the lesson. When we go to marriage therapy together, the goal is the same:  to dance with each other a little better at the end of the session, than we did at the beginning.  That means that we’re more capable of collaborative conflict, effective communication, and compassionate caring than you were when you walked into your therapist’s office. 

Relationship therapy is so hard that It’s not uncommon for therapists and clients to accept the idea that no progress will be made in many sessions. This is unfortunate, because a relationship therapy session without progress is a session wasted. If you can’t make progress with the help of a trained professional, how can you make progress in between sessions on your own?

I measure my effectiveness as a marriage therapist by how much difference I see in a couple at the end of a session, compared to at the beginning of a session. I want my clients to practice participating in collaborative conflict, revealing their true thoughts and emotions, letting go of defensiveness, and stepping into more compassion, kindness, love and courage. When they do, I point out what they are doing, and I tell them to keep doing it. It’s not easy, but it is definitely possible. 

10 Principles for Making Marriage Work

Physical Safety

If there is any ongoing threat of physical violence in your intimate relationship, you will be hard-pressed to step into the kind of collaborative conflict that is necessary to help the relationship grow and mature. As an adult, it’s your responsibility to do everything you can to ensure your physical safety, especially if you are threatened by an intimate partner. 

Emotional Safety

Children are not capable of regulating their own emotions so they need adults to help them feel emotionally safe. It’s tempting to continue this pattern in adulthood, but doing so prevents you from enjoying intimate relationships. As adults, we’re capable of ensuring. 

Surviving Childhood

Your brain is optimized for surviving childhood and falling in love, not for thriving in a committed adult relationship. What we’re doing here is rewiring the brain to do well in adult relationships. 

The 80/20 rule

80% of your relationship distress is an emotional flashback from childhood. The rest is a response to what’s happening right now. 

The 50/50 rule

You and your partner have similar levels of emotional maturity, and you grow or stagnate as a couple. It’s incredibly rare to see a relationship where one person is significantly more mature than the other. 

The Speed Bump Principle

You are not responsible for your partner’s unwanted behavior, but you are responsible for your own contribution to that behavior. You play a role in constructing the environment your partner lives in, and that environment affects how they behave. This is called the speed bump principle because you can’t control how fast your partner drives around your neighborhood, but you could ask the city to install a speed bump there. I can change the way I behave in a way that creates a “speed bump,” making it less convenient for my partner to keep doing the thing I don’t want them to do. There is a big difference between having a real speed bump in the road, and having a partner who says “slow down” all the time. 

Resentful Accommodation

You gradually build up resentment when you accommodate your parter against your better judgment. There is a significant difference between accommodating out of love and kindness, and accommodating from a sense of requirement or pressure. 

The Third Way

Most of us never saw our parents engage in calm, collaborative conflict where they stood up to each other in a kind way. What we saw instead was long periods of avoidance punctuated by angry outbursts and arguments. The third way it so stand up for what you want in a calm, collaborative way. It’s the key to creating lasting love. 

The Progression of Anger

Anger is the second act in a three-act play. First, you feel unsafe, insecure, or threatened. Second, you get angry, Third, you act on your anger, turning it into aggression. Anger is a feeling, and aggression is action taken in anger. For most of us, the progression happens so fast that we become aggressive as soon as we feel threatened. Relationships are much better when we stop the progression at the first or second stage. Aggressive behavior always harms intimate relationships. 

Reveal, don’t convince

Tell your partner what you see and what you want. Here are some examples:

• You spoke to me unkindly last night

• I don’t believe you

• I want you to spend more time with me

• I want you to care about my wellbeing

• I think you prioritize your work over our relationship

The key is to state your perception and preference clearly, without trying to convince your partner that you’re right. They will probably disagree, and that’s ok — the point of relationship communication is to reveal, not to convince. 

Crucible Relationship Therapy

Overview

Developed Dr. David Schnarch, Crucible Neurobiological Therapy helps couples overcome the most difficult relationship challenges. Crucible therapy focuses developing each person’s capacity to love and value each other. It recognizes the difficulty involved in rebuilding a broken marriage, and provides a reliable framework for personal and relationship growth. 

How it works

Crucible Therapy focuses on the ability of each partner to show up in a kind, and loving way in the relationship. There is less focus on getting validation from your partner, and more focus on growing up and becoming a person who is truly capable of love. 

Crucible Training for Therapists

The Crucible Approach trains therapists by increasing each clinicians ability to help couples escape from entrenched patterns of deception and manipulation. It also  encourages a right-brained, intuitive approach where the therapist forms a complete mental image of what is actually happening in the relationship before intervening. My crucible trainers coached us as we took turns role-playing difficult situations that come up with couples in session, focusing on how to handle deception and manipulation while maintaining a posture of kindness and a solid collaborative alliance. I have attended in-person training with International Crucible Education Center instructors Lacy Stump and Natalie Westera, and I also participate in monthly Crucible training and consultation groups. 

Recommended Reading

Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch

Brain Talk by David Schnarch

Intimacy & Desire by David Schnarch

International Crucible Therapy Education Center

4 Steps to Better Relationship Communication

Step one: calm down

Anxiety kills relationship communication. When you're anxious, you can't calm down enough to listen to what your partner's saying, because you're too busy thinking about what you want to say next. If you want to have a productive relationship talk, start by taking a few deep breaths, and invite your partner to do the same. If you start to go into fight or flight mode, take a break and continue the conversation once you've calmed down. Calm is contagious, and anxiety is also contagious. The more anxiety you bring into the conversation, the less progress you'll make.

Step two: share your feelings carefully

The best way to share your feelings is by saying three words: I feel ______ (insert feeling word here.) What usually happens instead is a complicated process of trying to make your partner accept responsibility for what you are feeling. If you want to talk about a feeling in the past, you can say "I felt (something) after you did (something)." It's important to not make your partner responsible for what you feel. There is a connection between what your partner does and what you feel, but your feelings are still your responsibility.

Step three: find the truth in what your partner is saying

If you disagree with 90% of your partner's position, the 10% you agree with is the most important part. Your partner knows things about you that you don't know about yourself, so it's important to acknowledge things that you think they are right about. Focus on what you think is true, not what you think is false.

Step four: reveal more, convince less

Revealing yourself to your partner is more effective than trying to convince your partner to see things your way. "This is how I see things, and this is what I want" is always more helpful than "you need to see things how I do, and you need to want what I want." Once you have identified disagreement, accept that the disagreement is real and that it's OK. If you need your partner to agree with you to be OK, you will never be able to enjoy your relationship.

Four Steps to a Better Relationship

Step One: Your Partner Is Not the Source of Your Distress

When you feel abandoned or overwhelmed, you might blame your partner for these feelings and the physical sensations that accompany them. In reality, this distress has more to do with your childhood than with your partner. While your stress is related to your relationship and your partner contributes to your distress, they are not the cause of it, nor will they be the solution. As a child, you had to maintain a close emotional relationship with your parents to survive. That’s why your body experiences so much distress when you feel abandoned or overwhelmed by your partner. These feelings are not an accurate reflection of what it means to be an adult; they are just emotional flashbacks from childhood.

Step Two: Someone Has to Go First in Initiating Relationship Improvement

Because you might feel like your partner is the cause of your problems, your instinct may be to try to manipulate them into initiating change. In reality, both people need to change for the relationship to improve, but one person usually takes the first step, and the other follows. It's uncomfortable to be in a relationship with someone who is a lot more mature than you are, so your partner will likely follow your lead. Most relationships consist of two people who treat each other poorly, so it's essential for you to step up, go first, and start treating your partner better. This doesn't mean coddling; it means being honest, brave, kind, and standing up for what you want in the relationship.

Step Three: Remember That You're Already Safe in Your Relationship

As a child, you relied on parents or other caretakers for physical and emotional safety. As an adult, you are responsible for ensuring your own physical and emotional safety. Most relationships are physically safe, and if you find yourself in one that isn’t, it's your responsibility to do something about that. Adults can't outsource their safety the way children can. Emotional safety in adulthood is about taking good care of yourself. It’s not about trying to control other people. If you’re not safe, then do what you can to create safety in your life. If you are safe, start learning to let go of the illusion of danger that is making it hard for you to love your partner.

Step Four: Remember That You’re Already Free in Your Relationship

The illusion of control is almost as common as the illusion of danger. As a child, you were not free because you had to exist within the constraints imposed by your parents or caregivers. As an adult, this is no longer the case. As with safety, there are some relationships that involve real control and manipulation, but most of us are actually much more free than we think. In an adult relationship, you make all of your own choices, and your partner does the same. If you're blaming someone else for a choice you made, you're failing to acknowledge what’s actually true about your situation.

Exercises for Couples

Touch

1. One partner is the giver and the other is the receiver. We will switch roles after few minutes.

2. When I am the giver:  take a deep breath and allow my body to settle down. Search my soul for the love I still feel for my partner. Reach out and communicate that love through a gentle caress on the hand or arm. This requires me to let go of the tension, anger, and hurt I have been holding on to.

3. When I am the receiver:  settle myself enough to receive my partner’s touch. Reach out with my heart to receive what is being given. Accept my partners’ gift without judgment.

Gaze

1. Sit or stand opposite each other. Take a deep, slow breath together.

2. Look into each other’s eyes for few minutes. It’s easier if you pick one eye, so you’re not jumping back and forth between them.

3. Notice what happens in your body when you look into your partner’s eyes. Anxiety is a part of intimacy, and you probably feel some anxiety when looking into each other.

4. Notice how you respond to your partner’s anxiety. Try to make room for it so you can focus on calming yourself.

Hug

1. Hold each other gently for five minutes.

2. It’s ok to lean on a wall or other support to make this more comfortable

3. Focus on calming your own body while you are in contact with your partner’s body

Talk

Roles:  speaker and listener

Preparation:  sit or stand facing each other. Include eye contact if you can. 

Take a deep, slow, breath together. 

Speaker:  share a short preference or perception 

preference:  “I want you to. . .”

perception:  “I think you. . .”

Take a deep, slow breath together

Listener:  “I understand that you. . .” 

So the process goes like this:

1. Breathe

2. Speak

3. Breathe

4. Respond

Tips:

• You don’t need to defend or disagree. If your partner says something that you disagree with, just respond that you understand that they are saying what they said

• Be concise, it’s impossible to repeat back a whole paragraph.

• You can talk about your partner, but you don’t have to

• You say things that might upset your partner, but you don’t have to

• You can also say things that might help your partner open their heart to you

• You can trade places between listener and speaker after a minute, five minutes, or whenever you want to.

• Fight the urge to defend or disagree. Your partner is talking about their perception, not your perception.

• If this exercise devolves into friendly conversation, that’s fine. If it devolves into unfriendly conversation, go back to following the structure.

Dance

Slow dance

• Dance to your favorite slow song with your partner

• Notice any anxiety or unpleasant feelings that arise

• Make room for those feelings to be part of your experience

• Resist the urge to blame your unpleasant internal experience on your partner.

Partner dancing

• Learn and practice swing, waltz, or latin dancing with your partner.

• Attend a class, find a teacher, or use online resources to learn.

• Learning and practicing dance can be a frustrating experience. Focus on calming yourself down.

Family Card Games

I often encourage parents to play card games with their children. Some of my favorites are Cover Your Assets, Skull, and Coup. I especially like games that don’t take a long time to play, involve bluffing, and have lots of opportunities for guessing what other players are going to do. These games create intense emotional situations and allow children to practice guessing who is bluffing and who is telling the truth. This mind-mapping ability is important in adult relationships, and helps children develop more confidence in their ability to understand what’s going on. 

Children who do not get enough positive emotional engagement from their parents sometimes turn to disruptive behavior as a way to attract negative emotional attention. Family card games, especially games that involve bluffing and guessing, help children learn to tolerate intense emotions, self-soothe, and enjoy emotional interactions with family members.

Family table-top games (board games and card games) have come a long way over the last twenty years. Old-fashioned family games like Monopoly last hours and aren’t much fun. Many modern games take 10-15 minutes to play and offer lots of fun interaction along the way, with lots of people engaged in the process. 

Focusing on the Physical World

When I’m anxious, I tend to get sucked into imaginary worlds. I might start thinking about what my wife is feeling, or what some other person thinks of me. None of these things are very real, they are just creations of my own imagination.

My favorite way of working through anxiety is to focus my attention on my place in the physical world. This starts with what is happening inside my own body: if I’m anxious, I probably have a sense of pain or tightness in my chest or stomach. That physical sensation is more real than the imagination games that feed on my anxiety, so it’s a good place to start. I notice what my body is experiencing, and open myself up to it: it’s OK for me to feel what I’m feeling right now.

Next, I imagine a flashlight shining on the bottoms of my feet, and try to notice any sensations there. I move the light up to my ankles, then continue upward to my torso, pausing at each segment of my body. Sometimes I focus on noticing what I feel in each place on my body, and sometimes I practice feeling grateful for how each body part supports and helps me. This exercise works because it takes my attention away from my anxiety, and into the physical world.

Rebuilding Relationship Trust

It’s not easy to rebuild trust in a relationship once it’s been lost. The following is a practical guide to rebuilding trust when your partner has betrayed you in some way. 

Accept your new reality

You can’t plot your course until you accept where you’re starting. If you have been betrayed, it’s important to accept the reality of your relationship as it stands right now. Don’t try to trust someone who has recently deceived you. It doesn’t work, and it makes everything worse. 

Love and trust aren’t the same thing

You can still love someone even if you don’t trust them. Part of loving a person is accepting all of them, including their weaknesses. If you try to pretend that a person is more trustworthy than they really are, it will make it harder for you to love that person. 

Develop trust in yourself

When you lost trust in your partner, you also lost trust in yourself. You learned that your powers of discernment are not what you thought they were. Luckily, discernment can be developed.

Accept responsibility for your choices

You are the one who is choosing to stay in your relationship. Leaving might be difficult, inconvenient, embarrassing, and painful; but it is probably not impossible. Accept responsibility for the choice you are making:  the choice to be in a relationship with someone who has betrayed you. To be clear, it’s probably not a bad choice. We don’t get to go out in the world and select from a long list of perfect partners. Instead, we have partners who are human, and humans make mistakes. 

Learn and grow

Like other relationship difficulties, a breach of trust is an opportunity for personal growth. Take the chance to re-evaluate what kind of person you’re in a relationship with, and how good you are at determining how trustworthy they are. In the end, it’s more important to trust yourself than it is to trust your partner. 

The Childhood Survival Bond

We learn about human relationships in childhood

When we were children, we were vulnerable to being abandoned or overwhelmed. We regulated our emotional state by trying to increase connection with our parents if we felt abandoned, or trying to decrease it if felt overwhelming. Our brains were programmed to maintain a reasonable level of connection with our parents, because we needed it to survive. 

Our bodies used intense, unpleasant physical sensations to make us take action in those situations. As adults, we still feel those sensations, especially in relationships. Have you ever felt a tightness in your chest or stomach when you  want more (or less) attention from your partner? This physical distress makes sense in a child/parent relationship, where the child needs the parent for survival. It doesn’t make sense in an adult relationship, but it happens anyway. Our bodies are telling us lies. 

Childhood instincts drive adult behavior

When you were a child, intense physical sensations led you to seek appropriate levels of parental attention. The child part of your brain still needs that kind of attention, but now it can only come from yourself. The next time you feel emotional distress, try to locate the accompanying physical sensation in your body, and then offer kind, compassionate energy to the part of you that hurts so much. Care for the part of you that feels distressed, just like you would care for a small child, or a small animal, that was suffering. 

Put your hands on your heart and whisper “I got you” or “I’m here for you.” When you do this, you are building connections in your brain. The part of your brain that was wired for childhood survival is connecting with the part of your brain that knows how to protect a child. When you create these connections in your brain, you are learning to feel safe in adult relationships. 

Notice, Accept, Love

You can think of this as a three-step process:  notice, accept, and then love the part of you that hurts the most. As you do this, you will no longer feel the need to take external action in response to these unpleasant sensations. Your body is crying out for parental love, and you are providing that parental love yourself. 

It’s easy for a child to be comforted by an adult, because the adult is larger, more powerful, and more mature than the child. It’s harder for an adult to be comforted or reassured by another adult, because the difference in maturity isn’t there. This is one reason you might feel disappointed when you try to get your partner to help you feel safe. 

Feel more, do less

If you want your relationship to thrive, take care of your own emotional distress. The tightness you feel in your chest is caused by your childhood survival instincts, not your partner’s behavior. You can handle your distress by just allowing it to be there, without needing to do anything about it. As an adult, you are capable of feeling everything  your body needs to feel. You are used to disconnecting from intense emotions because your nervous system couldn’t handle them when you were younger. As an adult, you can learn to just feel everything your body needs to feel. Lean into your discomfort, and allow it to be with you for a while. Open your heart to what you feel, even though it is uncomfortable. Notice that it feels like a survival situation, but it isn’t really,  As an adult, you can take care of yourself, both emotionally and physically. You are the one who is here for you. 

Mature connection

When you have calmed your body, invite your partner to connect with you as an equal. Most relationships have a dynamic where one partner feels overwhelmed by connection, and the other feels overwhelmed by disconnection. Practice leaning into mature connection by opening your heart to your partner, while you continue to take care of your own body. Practice being truly present with your partner, and pay attention to what comes up in your body when you do that. Learning to participate in mature connection can take years, but it opens up a world of relationship possibilities that are unavailable if we continue to use our childhood relationship management strategies. 

Somatic Acceptance

Somatic acceptance is the practice of noticing, accepting, and feeling kindness toward the unpleasant physical sensations that accompany intense emotions. By noticing the physical component of intense emotions, we can increase our emotional capacity and our ability to tolerate intimacy. The practice of somatic acceptance has helped many of my clients let go of their need to “do something” about intense emotions. 

Somatic Acceptance has three parts:

1. See

2. Accept

3. Love

I see you

The first step is to “see” or notice what is happening in your body.  Intense emotions are usually felt in the chest or stomach. Anxiety might feel like tightness in the chest, or fluttering in the stomach. Focus on the physical part of your emotions. 

I accept you

Imagine feeling the physical part of your emotion for several hours in a row? Your first answer is probably a resounding no, but if you think about it you will realize that you can actually handle feeling that way for a long time. The sensations feel unmanageable, but they’re not. 

We underestimate our ability to handle intense emotions because when we were children, we had a much lower tolerance for that kind of intensity. We learned to get rid of intense sensations by checking out, distracting ourselves, throwing a fit, or seeking comfort from someone else. Adults have ten times more emotional capacity than children, but we still relate to intense emotions as if they were completely overwhelming. The solution is to practice feeling hard feelings, and realizing that you can, in fact, feel what your body needs to feel. 

I love you

Imagine caring for a small, frightened animal. You would hold it with gentle, loving kindness. Now imagine directing that same energy to the place in your body where you feel emotional discomfort. This feels counterintuitive, but it is the best way to work with emotional distress. 

Why this works

Imagine two parts of your brain:  one focused on survival, and one interested in learning and growth. When you follow this protocol, you shift energy from the survival brain to the growth and learning brain. Each part of the protocol helps activate the growth and learning brain, while helping to calm the survival brain. 

Writing for Mental Health

During an intense, frightening, or dangerous experience, the brain shuts off higher-level thinking in favor of low-level survival protocols. After the event is past, there is an opportunity to reprocess what happened with the brain fully engaged.

Writing is an excellent way to do this reprocessing. Writing engages the prefrontal cortex and helps us add structure to difficult memories. This can move a memory from the survival category to the “something that is no longer a threat” category. When memories stay in the survival category, they trigger emotional flashbacks, also known as trauma responses. These are the intense feelings we get that have more to do with the past than the present.

1. Write a narrative (in the style of a movie script) of a conversation that was emotionally challenging.

2. Write a narrative of a difficult, unpleasant, or frightening memory.

3. Write a narrative of how you would confront a difficult person in your life.

4. Write about how you felt during a difficult event in your past, and how you feel about it now. Include emotions and physical sensations attached to those emotions.

5. Write a dialogue of how you would confront one of your parents about how they treated you as a child, or how they treat you as an adult. When you process these imaginary conversations with your adult brain, it helps you grow out of childhood attachment patterns that make it hard for you to see your parents clearly.

Further reading: David Schnarch’s book *Brain Talk* explores the process of growing out of childhood attachment patterns.