Polyamory, p.21
Polyamory, page 21
The great news about emotional contagion is that positive emotions can be contagious, too. This means that a strong self-regulator and communicator can stabilize the system, simply by holding steady. Sometimes this involves setting their perspective aside and getting deeply curious about another person’s perspective, even to the point of expressing empathy for an opinion or viewpoint opposite their own. Sometimes it involves resisting the impulse to change one’s viewpoint in a conflict-avoidant reaction to a partner’s discomfort. If this sounds like the job a therapist does every day, you’re right. But you can also do it in your personal relationships. It is a superpower well worth cultivating, and that is accessible to everyone and of benefit to all.
When I used to be a midwife, I used my own emotional state to regulate others on a regular basis, and quite deliberately. Before I entered the house or room where the birth was taking place, I would pause and adjust myself internally in preparation for whatever was about to happen. I would intentionally down-regulate, so that when I entered the situation, I could set a calm tone and bring down the anxiety of anyone who might be feeling a little wound up. My speech was soft, calm, and grounded, and I was very conscious of cultivating and sharing that calm with those around me. I use the same skills as a therapist, and also a partner and friend. When things are feeling tense, I get as grounded as possible. I do what I can to stay calm and communicate my calm, without minimizing anything that is being said. As a therapist, you get plenty of opportunities to practice these skills, and I’ll bet you’re already pretty great at them.
The next step is to let your clients know it is possible for them to do this too, and practice it in your own relationships. I tell my clients that no matter how badly their partner is behaving, they always have choices to make about their own behavior and emotional response. They always have the ability to shift the course of the conversation toward the light. They can choose to be a leader and turn the tone of the conversation toward generosity of spirit, curiosity, calm, and validation. In extreme examples, they can choose to take a time-out in a loving manner to end the toxic interaction. In the words of Peter Pearson,
It’s easy to be considerate and loving to your partner when the vistas are magnificent, the sun is shining, and breezes are gentle. But when it gets bone-chilling cold, you’re hungry and tired, and your partner is whining and sniveling about how you got them into this mess, that’s when you get tested. Your leadership and your character get tested. You can join the finger-pointing or become how you aspire to become.
EXERCISE: TIME-OUT, OR EMOTIONAL REGULATION FOR DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS
Having a time-out strategy in place is crucial for managing escalation in difficult situations and hard conversations. We all have a limbic system and a lizard brain, the parts of the brain Dan Siegel describes as the “downstairs brain,” or “thumb,” and brainstem, or “palm,” in his hand model of the brain. These are the parts of the brain that store emotional memory; scan for danger; and cause us to immediately fight, freeze, or flee when something potentially life-threatening happens. These parts of our brain are responsible for the survival of our species; they motivate us to save ourselves at the expense of others, if necessary. Without this lifesaving capacity, our ancestors would have been eaten by predators long ago, and we wouldn’t be here today. When our self-protective brain perceives threat, it dumps a cascade of stress-related chemicals into the bloodstream so you can outrun a tiger or lift a boulder off your foot. This part of the brain is not smart, just reactive. It has no logic and no empathy. It’s not interested in being polite.
In the 21st century, we don’t have nearly as many saber-toothed tigers, but our self-protective brains are still fine-tuned for life-threatening danger. Remember, your lizard and limbic brain’s jobs are not discernment. They will respond in less than a millisecond to anything that might in some way resemble a memory of trauma, embarrassment, disappointment, or pain. So, when your spouse snaps at you, you get a dump of stress hormones that makes you respond as if they were a guy with a machine gun coming at you fast. Your self-protective mechanism doesn’t discern between an embarrassing moment and a life-threatening one. It helps you avoid all perceived threats.
When triggered, you can no longer access the parts of your brain that use logic or, possibly more importantly, empathy. The thinking, connecting, and processing parts of your brain are disconnected in this stressed-out state. It takes quite a bit of time to metabolize all those stress hormones and once again become able to access logic, curiosity, and empathy. In a relationship context, the pivotal moment is the one when a discussion turns into a fight. Voices are raised, fingers pointed, and doors slammed, and you see your partner as “them” rather than “us” and go to war. You or your partner are likely to say hurtful things that you will later regret.
Later, if you try to remember exactly what happened during the fight, you’re going to remember every bad feeling and every hurtful thing that was said. So will your partner, but they will be remembering the things you said, and the two of you probably won’t be able to agree on the sequence of events that led to this situation or exactly what happened. Once that discussion became a fight, your self-protective brain took charge of focusing on every negative feeling or perceived slight, and the logical and connecting parts of your brain couldn’t establish a coherent sequence of events and store it in an orderly fashion. This is why it is not productive to go back over an old fight blow by blow.
When you get triggered during an argument with your partner, anything you say or do is likely to damage your relationship. When you’re triggered, your choices boil down to fight, flee, faint, fawn, or freeze. If you fight, you will say hurtful things you can’t take back. If you shut down or leave the scene, your partner will perceive it as abandonment, which may be less dramatic but is just as damaging.
Because you love your partner and don’t want to say or do hurtful things, or create a messy tangle that is hard to unravel later, everyone concerned must agree on a strategy that reminds you to stop talking, interacting, and causing damage, and start self-soothing, dialing back the stress, and getting some calm under your feet. This is much easier said than done, but I can’t stress enough how important it is not to continue fighting once triggered. Damage is the only possible outcome, and once caused, this type of damage is difficult to mend, because we are so brilliant at hurting those we love in exactly the ways that will do the most damage.
I created a handout describing the time-out exercise in detail, including the aforementioned information and going much further, including the actual steps to take to come to a full stop and get grounded again, and reengage in the discussion at hand. I give this handout to clients who struggle with taking breaks, slowing down, and controlling difficult conversations or anyone who recounts a story of a fight, rather than a productive discussion (see “Time-Out Exercise” in appendix B).
CHAPTER 9
Using the Initiator/Inquirer Process to Support Differentiation and Move Toward Decisions
THE INITIATOR/INQUIRER PROCESS
Relationship therapy relating to polyamory is a combination of providing information and debunking myths; facilitating conversations; and, eventually, supporting decision-making. Ideally all of this happens seamlessly, while increasing understanding, deepening connection, and increasing security between partners even as they explore their differences. Hopefully as this unfolds, partners discover new and richer layers of love and respect for one another, many times as a direct result of better understanding one another’s unique perspectives, challenges, and strengths. Sometimes, you will find that clients awaken or reawaken sexy connections between them in the process; after all, the world wouldn’t be very exciting if we were all the same. Sometimes the spark flickers and almost goes out from years of avoiding difficult conversations or molding ourselves to be as similar as possible; once you start exploring differences, particularly with some depth, the spark can revive as a beautiful and semieffortless side effect of curiosity, good attention, and deeper exploration.
It is helpful to have some tried-and-true strategies for managing difficult conversations in increasingly differentiated ways and helping others do so. The therapeutic tool I use most often for this is the initiator/inquirer (I/I) process from the Developmental Model of Relationship Therapy. On the surface, it is a structured way of communicating, much like active listening, but with a few crucial twists that take it to the next level. It’s one of the most powerful tools in my kit, serving simultaneously to support differentiation and take note of where specific skills are in need of strengthening. Since most people could use some help building the complex skill set of differentiation, I end up using the process frequently, personally, and professionally. For many of my clients, the bulk of their sessions are spent using the I/I. If you are doing a self-help skill-building project, I think you will love the I/I. Without a facilitator (coach or therapist) present, you will have to self-monitor to discover where you are experiencing challenges or getting stuck, but it is helpful to be able to identify where to focus your efforts. Most of us can make significant changes but not all at once. Focus your efforts on building one skill you would like to develop that will make a difference to you and your relationship. Eventually that skill will become easier, and then it is time to add another.
While some of the components of the initiator/inquirer process seem simple, they actually require substantial development, so be patient with one another, your clients, and yourself. Take note of small, incremental progress, and celebrate the successes.
I’m deeply grateful to Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson for developing this tool and generously permitting me to share it with you.
Setting Up the Initiator/Inquirer Process
When I introduce the I/I in therapy, I start by explaining the two roles, which I do with support from the handouts in appendix D. First, I give each partner the handouts that describe the roles (one for initiator, one for inquirer) so they can follow along as I explain the particular tasks and challenges associated with each role.
The Initiator
The initiator is the person who has something about themselves or their experience, preferences, or feelings that they want their partner(s) to understand. They will try to take their communication to a deeper level than they have previously by talking about themselves, their perceptions, their emotions, the meanings they are making of the situation, how it is getting under their skin, and where they are stuck. This is quite different from blaming or finger-pointing; it is a complicated project that starts with figuring out what you think, feel, and prefer separate from what anyone else might want from you. Then it moves into sharing that information with a partner, as the initiator.
I want the initiator to have the experience of feeling heard and feeling like their partner “gets” them. For this to happen, the inquirer has to be able to stay present with difficult material. The initiator has a role in making that more likely; if they make it clear they are expressing their perceptions, it will be easier for the inquirer to hold steady and hear what they are saying. If they blame, shame, or indict the character of the inquirer, it will be more challenging for the inquirer to hear what they are saying and access curiosity and empathy. I encourage initiators to do the following:
Get clear on what they want their partner to understand about their own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions before they start talking.
Focus on one thing at a time.
Use language that will make it easier for the inquirer to hear them. For instance, they should avoid exaggerating or using words they know will distract or upset their partner.
Talk about themselves and their feelings, perceptions, and meanings, rather than their partner.
Express themselves in a way that isn’t intended to make their partner feel bad about themselves.
Manage their tone of voice, intensity level, body language, and facial expressions.
The Inquirer
The inquirer is the person who is listening to the initiator. The inquirer is focusing their attention on understanding their partner in a new way. Their goal is to figure out what to say, ask, and do to encourage the initiator to keep expressing themselves, increasingly deeply and honestly. When this goes well, the inquirer learns a lot about how the initiator sees the world. When it goes really well, it is magical, because the initiator also learns more about themselves. I encourage the inquirer to do the following:
Focus on hearing what their partner is trying to express to them.
Stay in their own psychic space, meaning engaging in whatever self-talk is needed to stay clear that their partner, the initiator, is talking about their own experience and perceptions, and not take it personally even if it sounds personal.
Cultivate curiosity about their partner’s perspective.
Stay focused on the partner’s experience.
Avoid defensiveness, leading questions aimed to convince, and other reactivity.
Manage their body language, facial expressions, and tone.
Once I have described both roles and answered any questions, I ask the partners to identify where they think they might get stuck with a really tough issue and reinforce their motivation by going over whether they want to get past that, and why. Then I ask for permission to coach them if they seem to be taking a wrong turn on the way to their goal. This makes more room for me to be directive, which is often necessary. I want them to invite me to coach; that way, my frequent interruptions and clarifications can be framed as helping them reach their goal, rather than challenging or controlling them or saying they’re wrong.
Everyone in the conversation is encouraged to express what is true for them, even if it is difficult for the other to hear. They do this while still remaining relational, by which I mean fostering connection that doesn’t depend on agreement. The inquirer is challenged to access a deep curiosity about the initiator’s perspective, as well as tap into their empathy and express some understanding of the initiator’s viewpoint.
This is a pretty radical move for many people, because many people think that expressing empathy or validating someone’s perspective implies agreement. In the initiator/inquirer process, it is made clear that empathy does not require or even imply agreement. This process has nothing to do with compromise or even decision-making. Instead, it is about exploring the world through someone else’s eyes and allowing someone you care about to help you explore your own world more deeply than you otherwise might have by asking great questions and really leaning into curiosity.
However, the ability to hold two perspectives with love, curiosity, and respect, when one of those perspectives feels scary or unwelcome, is a very sophisticated developmental task. By that I mean, you have to develop the capacity to do it, rather than just following some easy steps. This is what makes it a growth process, an adventure, and a personal challenge. The rewards are many. One big one is the sense of personal empowerment that comes from knowing you can discuss anything without coming unglued. Another is the incredible feeling of expansion that comes from really showing up as the kind of person you want to be in a relationship—curious, loving, and a good listener, perhaps. And it is also wonderful to know you will be able to follow through on your agreements, because deep in your bones you know you can disagree with your partner openly and not have to go underground to avoid disagreement.
A lot of shifting can happen as this process unfolds, as empathy and increased depth often lead to new understanding and new possibilities. There is no way to predict the outcome, but in my experience it is crucial to postpone any decision-making until the issue can marinate and be nurtured by this process.
The I/I is a brilliant intervention, because it directly addresses every aspect of differentiation of self. You can immediately identify where each partner becomes challenged and see what ineffective coping strategies they use in times of stress. You can help them develop the three parts of differentiation separately, as well as the “holding steady” piece, and help them build skills in situ in your office so they have a new experience and a clear idea of effective next steps.
In the previous chapter, I discuss each part of differentiation of self in depth. The I/I is the primary tool I use to identify where each partner is struggling in terms of differentiation. As the partners discuss their concerns, I can coach them and help them avoid the pitfalls they have habitually fallen into, and learn new ways of being. I want them to begin to have a new experience; theory won’t build the neural pathway. But actually doing it in my therapy room will begin to create the new way of being that they can then strengthen in subsequent sessions and between sessions.
Skill-Building Using the I/I
When working with someone using the I/I, I want to help them to sharpen a number of skills and experience some increased awareness. If you are using it yourself in your own relationship, you can use the following list to guide you:
Accepting difference. Each partner is a unique individual, and their differences don’t make one right and the other wrong. There can be multiple perspectives, each of them valid, and partners don’t have to agree or share the same perspective to understand and empathize with one another’s perceptions.
Maintaining emotional boundaries. When Sally expresses something about her perceptions, feelings, and thoughts, she is saying something about herself. Even if she is saying, “It drives me nuts when you go out on a date with someone else, and I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she is saying something about her own preferences and desires. Dave gets to decide what, if anything, to do with it, but his first step is to understand her perspective, feelings, and experience more deeply.
