What are You Trying to Say?

There’s a quote widely attributed to the great Maya Angelou that resonates with many of the people that I meet: “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.” Often, it’s used to point out when we give others the benefit of the doubt even when they do something that seems hurtful. For me, it’s a good reminder to listen to my instincts; instincts are trustworthy and wise even though we often don’t give them credit. As a therapist, it is critical for me to constantly work on developing that part of me that is in touch with my inner voice. More often than not, I find that there is something there worth listening to. It’s not perfect. Still, in session, it serves as a starting point for a conversation that often allows me to dig deeper into the root of the problems that my clients are really talking about.

In life, as in session, when we ignore our instincts, unfortunate things can happen.

When I work with couples, it’s seldom because things are going really well. Instead, it tends to be the case that couples therapy begins at the lowest point of a relationship. It’s not uncommon for these couples to be perplexed about how their relationship has deteriorated to such a point. Still, the same couples often will say that things have been bad for years and that they’ve never engaged with a therapist to help them work through their issues. All along, there was a clear inner voice that spoke of the condition of their relationship but there was also always a reason to disregard it. The intuitive self is often clear but rarely is it convenient. One of the many distractions – work, family, kids – often take priority and we take for granted that there will always be a tomorrow to work with our spouse to make things better. We even employ doubt or denial that things are as bad as they appear as a defense. It is in this situation, needing a significant amount of healing that couples most often show up at the therapist’s office.

When I work with these couples, I almost never tell them what I’m about to tell you now. At least not right away. It’s not that they don’t need to hear it; it’s simply that now is not the time. For them, there are many more pressing things that need to be said and heard. For you, though, if you’re in a relationship, these are words that are critical for the long-term health of your relationship. It’s a corollary to Angelou’s famous quote that we started this conversation with and it goes something like this.

If your spouse tells you that your relationship is in trouble, believe them.

By no means is this meant to be an I told you so sort of statement. Serious relationship issues, though, seldom come out of nowhere. There are almost always signs or symptoms, usually present for months or years before they reach a point that we would call serious.

To our credit, these messages are not always clear. Unless you’ve had the best mentors and examples of what it means to communicate in a healthy way, it’s rare to be able to communicate what you need in a healthy, productive way or to receive something from your spouse without feeling defensive and disengaging from them. Maybe you’ve heard phrases like “I miss you!” or “I just want to be alone!” Has your spouse ever said, “It feels like we’re roommates!” or accused you of only thinking of yourself? There is no situation in which these phrases are easy to hear, right? It’s not like these statements are made to make us feel better about ourselves.

Yes, these phrases are hurtful and just because your partner may not be able to communicate them in a way that is easier for us to digest, it doesn’t remove our ability to hear them. To compensate by the pain that these phrases elicit, we often deny them (e.g. “That’s just not true!”) or nullify them (e.g. “You’re just being emotional!”). Otherwise, we have to believe them. And, in believing them, we have to face the pain or anxiety or uncertainty that accompanies them.

You see, in hearing your partner say that they just want to be alone recalls every memory of being alone or abandoned in your past. It brings up the questions about self-worth if the person you love the most would rather be alone than be with you. The things that are said to us are not painful in isolation. They are painful because similar things have hurt us in the past. They’re painful because they might represent a threat to our closest relationship. We become defensive, outwardly, towards our partner because of a feeling that emerges from complex circumstances inside us.

Simply, I believe we listen exclusively to the pain inside of ourselves and miss the importance of what our partner is trying to tell us about our relationship. It’s difficult because if for no other reason, we’re most familiar with the messages that emerge from inside of us. We are wired in such a way as to listen to our own inner world first before taking in perspectives from outside – even when those outside perspectives come from the person who we love the most. When we look inside first, we are all prone to locating problems inside of us. There is something flawed about us and that thing is to blame. When that’s the loudest message, we feel the need to vindicate ourselves and to make the case that we’re not that bad. It can be an overwhelming urge because it’s so deeply primal.

My challenge to couples is to work on understanding these urges to protect themselves and how these urges can impede our ability to actually hear what our partner is saying. Your partner might be telling you that they’re scared or that they’re confused or that they’re lonely. They may not tell you that directly; it might be packaged in a way that feels emotional or intense, but the message is there nonetheless. However they tell you, though, our conversations will be more effective when we learn to moderate that inclination to step back and defend. It’s a foundational part of who you are so we’re not trying to get rid of it. We’re simply saying that it’s possible to be aware of that desire to defend and to also realize that there is more going on for us to hear.

Listening with that sort of awareness is hard, no doubt. For many couples, it’s the kind of thing that a few sessions with a therapist may help with. Couples therapists can help you really start to master the communication skills that are fundamental to helping relationships thrive. We can help you truly hear what your partner is saying even when they may not be communicating in the clearest way. You can learn how to reflect on your own communication and become more aware of how you can learn to be more clear about your needs and desires, too.

It can help you really hear what your partner is trying to say?

Marriage: Impossible?

We’ve all heard commentary about marriage and divorce rates. Even if it’s not technically true, people generally hold the widespread belief that about half of all marriages end in divorce. Commentators have made the case that this indicates a deeper moral decline: individuals today are less driven by values and more by their own impulses; people are selfish and are afraid to commit and settle down. It’s common for such comments to lament that people are rejecting long-held Judeo-Christian beliefs about marriage.

What about you, though? What does any of this matter when you’re in a relationship that feels overwhelming more often than not? Do you care about any of this commentary when you’re trying to make your marriage work while simultaneously making sure the kids are getting to all of their activities, the finances are solvent, you’re having the right amount of sex, you’re working hard for your next promotion, and you’re keeping up the appearance of having it all together for the Joneses across the street?

I take issue with a lot of the commentary about marriage that gains the most publicity. My biggest concern is that it locates the major source of the problem with marriage as inside the married individuals themselves. When people are the problem, marriages fail because people fail. Maybe we mess up. Maybe we give up. Maybe we simply stop caring. Either way, the reason these commentators would have us believe that marriages fail has something to do with a lack of effort. We aren’t strong enough to withstand the pressures of marriage. If we could only give more, or commit more, or do more, then our relationships would start to thrive. Instead, it would seem that a full half of the population chose partners poorly or decide that they couldn’t care less about their vows and would rather move on to the next adventure.

This seems ludicrous to me.

What if framing the high divorce rates as a problem with individual people is, in fact, part of the problem itself? What is the divorce rate has far less to do with anything going on inside of us as individuals than we’ve been told? What would that mean? First, it would probably mean that people could be freed from the sense of guilt and failure that often co-occurs with the decision to divorce. It means that there would be less blame to be used as ammunition. It would also mean that we would need to come up with a new, more complex explanation as to what’s happening. We might even have to admit that marriage as we have designed it, is nearly impossible.

The Modern American Marriage

Margaret Mead may have given us the most accurate portrayal of marriage in the west. She said, “The American marriage is one of the most difficult marriage forms that we have ever attempted.” It’s not exactly an optimistic view but it is full of realism. Wherever it exists in the world, marriage emerges from a complex cultural context. Whatever surfaces in your mind when you read the word marriage today, you can be sure that these ideas didn’t simply arise from a vacuum. As a concept, modern marriage is the continuation of a story in the process of being written for thousands of years. The expectations that we hold about marriage today are not simply our own but are the product of generations of relationships, commentary, and conversations with in-laws.

It is true that many of these expectations, at least in the West, flow directly from specific faith influences. Some of the most prevalent interpretations of the Christian Bible assert that the formula for marriage involves the life-long commitment of one man to one woman. This interpretation is best exemplified in one of the two Christian creation stories. Eve was said to be crafted from Adam’s rib bone to be a companion for him. With this story as the starting point, we’ve since deduced that all romantic relationships are governed by a sense of destiny – that a divine being has arranged a soulmate for all of us and that part of our time here on earth is about discovering that person. We use phrases like meant to be, and the one. It can feel as if we don’t even have a choice.

On top of that foundation, we’ve added all sorts of other constructs. Decades of rigid gender roles have influenced the tasks typically assigned to men versus women. Society, as a whole, places these expectations on men and women as individuals and they’re reinforced in traditional view of marriage. Even with significant progress towards gender equality, it was essentially a generation ago that these more rigid roles were dominant in how we thought about relationships. I hope we never go back to those days but it’s important to point out that this legacy has been formative on our view of marriage and how it is supposed to work. The fact that same-sex marriage was legally prohibited until very recently in American history underscores the idea that our cultural ideas about marriage are about more than the love that two people have for one another.

Today, marriage is loaded down with overwhelming expectations. Partners are expected to fall madly in love with their soulmate. Engagement (with a ring that will cost two months of salary) is soon followed by a wedding (that will cost you a kidney, a leg, and part of your soul). Both partners are expected to work and to climb their respective corporate ladders. How long should you wait to have children? According to your parents, probably mere days. You should buy a house. You shouldn’t have much debt but you also really should have nice things. When the kids are old enough, you need to make sure you’re living in the best school district. When was the last time you took a family vacation? Make sure that you make time for your friends and for play dates and for date nights.

We could go on.

With all of these expectations, doesn’t it sometimes feel like we’re living Marriage: Impossible? Think about the political clichés about how the family is the cornerstone of civilization. Think about how difficult it is to have a single-income household today while still living up to the expectations of broader society. Then there are those movies that portray true love in a way that causes our hearts to flutter for ninety minutes and sends us out wanting to find the person to whom we can say, “You complete me!” Those movies are literally the worst.  The pressure is immense. These are the expectations to which we should aspire. Notice that, to this point, we’ve only really discussed the ideas that we adopt from society at large. We haven’t even begun talking about what we want from our relationships as individual human beings.

Can you see how absurd this whole thing seems to be?

You Don’t Complete Me

As much as I don’t want to, let’s go back to that god-awful phrase from Jerry McGuire. I don’t blame Jerry for saying “You complete me!” I get that the script was written by people who seem to think that marriage is about two broken people coming together to find wholeness in a special someone. As a couples therapist, that quote represents how messed up our view of marriage actually is. On top of all of the cultural expectations that we’ve already talked about, so many of us enter a relationship with this sentiment in mind. The person that we are pursuing has something that we are missing from our own lives. That person has characteristics and capacities to give us something that we are unable to give ourselves. In addition to the overwhelming experience that is American life in 2018, we ask our partners to give us even more. I like to say that we ask them to be superhuman – literally to be more than a single human being – because that’s what we have always been told that our partner will be for us. We ask them, with as little effort as possible, to meet the wide-ranging societal demands of being an excited lover, a pragmatic parent, provider, and project manager, who is adept at keeping our homes intact. We ask them to listen like a therapist and provide support in every-which-way we can imagine while being for us the things that we’ve never believed we could be for ourselves.

If they could be in shape, that would be great too.

And then we ask them to be the things that we are not. Be the calm to my anxiety. Be the joy to my sadness. Be the direction to my wandering.

Be superhuman.

When I hear couples describe this dynamic, I immediately think of at least two responses individuals tend to have when met with an impossible task. The first is the idea of learned helplessness. Realizing what they have been asked to do is impossible and sensing no other alternative, the individual resigns themselves to be tossed about by circumstance, accepting everything that comes with it as the new normal. This is a life-sapping condition that no one would ever want to find themselves in: forever discontent with no hope in sight. The second response people exhibit when recognizing the implausibility of a task at hand is to cut their losses and to divert their energies into something more productive and rewarding. There is no point in continuing on the current path so let’s start to develop plan B. They abandon plan A, learn from the situation as best they can, and move on to whatever is next.

With the bar for marriage set so unattainably high, it is no surprise that these relationships are ending: they’ve been set up to fail from the beginning. Here is where the problem of seeing divorce as an isolated relational event contained within an individual couple becomes clear. From this perspective, when my partner can’t be everything that I need her to be, I see that primarily as a failure on her part instead of the excess of expectation that the world and I put on her. Maybe it is I who failed by not weighing all of the social pressures for her to be superhuman. Maybe I have demonstrated a tacit acceptance of these demands. Regardless, since she cannot be all of the things that I’ve been told she should be, I become disenchanted with her. Our relationship suffers and because I believe that she is no longer completes me in a way that is complementary to my needs.

Honestly, she never could.

This is why, even as a couples therapist, I find myself advocating for the end of the modern American marriage. Yes, it is time for marriages like this to end. I believe that the apparently tepid faithfulness that we have shown as a society to the institution of marriage is less about the slipping away of some long-standing value set and more about a rejection of the absurdity of the expectations we have put on the institution itself. We are no less drawn to the ideas of love and fidelity than our parents were. We have simply gotten to the point where we no longer see the value of adhering to such a list of irrational demands. We no longer want to be complicit with a structure that has been used to impose particular expectations about which relationships are valid and which aren’t. We are deconstructing and truly interrogating our relationships. We are not interested in making extreme demands that require more from our partners than they are humanly able to provide.

I am not saying that divorce is the answer. Ending a relationship with the hopes of starting fresh is pointless if there aren’t changes we pursue in ourselves. Instead, I am saying that there is the opportunity to reframe the issues that we have in our relationships and to see them with a fresh perspective. Are you relying on your partner to be something for you that you’re unable or unwilling to be for yourself? How often are you or your partner having to play the role of superhuman and when do you get to be your unassuming alter ego? Where are the areas in our lives where we are expecting more than our partners can give? Are those problems with our partner's ability to meet the expectations or a problem with the expectations themselves?

If I were being pushed beyond my limits every single day, I would want to reject that reality, too. We all would. Maybe the problem is not with my inability to keep up. Maybe the problem is that keeping up is simply impossible.

Three Thoughts That Might Help

I believe that there are at least three ideas that could be helpful in adjusting to this emergent view of marriage. First, it’s OK to not like how things currently are. Whether in your own relationship or across society as a whole, I want to validate and normalize your instinct that there is something wrong here. There is something wrong here. That something is probably not you. It’s also probably not your partner. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and that the marriage you find yourself is not the marriage you signed up for, it makes sense and it’s OK to feel that way. Marriages can never deliver on the expectations we seem to have for it.

If that describes you, maybe it’s time to reject the idea of marriage in its current form within your own relationship. Being frustrated with your marriage may require your to tear it down and to rebuild on a reasonable foundation of things that are, for one, humanly possible. Rejecting marriage in this way doesn’t require a divorce. On the contrary, if you both agree that you want to fight these expectations together, you might need your partner more than ever. You’ll need to know how to communicate well and provide feedback. You begin to see each other teammates in this scenario, united against the common rival that is the impossible marriage, rather than each other.

We are taught that doubt is bad in relationships. We are taught that apprehension is poison for marriages. Shouldn’t we be in love all the time? It’s important to know that doubt and apprehension are absolutely normal. They’re not symptoms of the impending end of your relationship. They’re clues that something may be wrong. But, that something may be fixable if we think about it in the right way. Doubt is OK. Apprehension is OK. These are not things to avoid but things to lean into and to learn from.

The second thought can get a little more personal. If all we had to do was to figure out how to team up with each other to reset the expectations about our marriage, the process would be relatively easy. When we recognize that there is a problem with the way that marriage has been packaged and sold, though, moving towards a stronger relationship requires us to figure out a different way to accomplish what we had hoped marriage would accomplish for us. In other words, now that we’re releasing our partner from the expectation to be superhuman and meet our personal needs, we need to find a way to meet those needs for ourselves. We can’t expect them to be responsible for our anxieties. We can’t expect them to be the one to cheer us up when we’re feeling down. They cannot be an endless salve for wounds from other parts of our lives. Building a new foundation of marriage will require us to heal our wounds for ourselves.

The title of a book by Dr. Richard Schwartz captures the idea here: You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting for. Rather than putting the burden of meeting those needs on someone else, Schwartz makes the compelling case that we have the innate capacity of managing and mastering our internal world where parts of us can be simultaneous drawn to and distanced from our partner. We are multidimensional and complex. When we commit to understanding and responding to our internal world, when we understand our impulses, we can better address our own hurting parts and not need someone else to be that for us. Then, we get to interact with our partner in a way that is less demanding and more inviting. When we take on the responsibility of managing our internal world ourselves, we need so much less from our partner and they can come to us without the pressure to perform or to meet some unspoken expectation. Rather than beg them for help, we can invite them to enjoy.

After teaming up with one another and developing your own ability to meet your unspoken needs, you’re ready for the third idea: to name and reject the expectations in your relationship that are causing problems and to collaborate on what you want your new marriage to look like. You can choose a marriage that celebrates each others’ individuality rather than attempting to form them into a crude implement to shore up those places in your own life where you feel less secure. We can invite our partners into a relationship that we co-create and that honors who we are as individuals and as a couple. In such a relationship, we no longer need our partner to be a missing piece or the treatment for a deep wound. We get to choose to turn towards our partner rather than feel as though we must desperately cling to them.  Instead of spinning our wheels trying to meet someone else’s expectations, we can decide for ourselves those things to which we aspire for our relationship. We can move more deliberately towards them.

This third idea can’t easily be summed up in a single paragraph. It’s not something that can easily be framed with an expected timeline applied. The process is lifelong; it’s never-ending. It requires ongoing self-awareness and checking in with each other to monitor the condition of the relationship, too. It might require working with a couples therapist to support you both as you move towards what you want marriage to be. What I hope you’ll find is that this third idea emerges naturally when you activate the first two.

To say that you don’t like your marriage is not to make an indictment of your partner. It is absolutely acceptable to not like the current state of your marriage and thinking that does not require you to blame yourself or your spouse.

We all have those hurting elements within us that can become surprisingly energized when our partner says or does something that feels similar to the source of our wounds. This is normal. Our partner may be able to temporarily play the role of superhuman to meet our needs in addition to their own but this is not sustainable. We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for and we must be the ones to relieve those parts of ourselves.

We can be free to collaboratively construct how we want our relationships to be. When we commit to monitoring and managing our internal world on our own, we can be more authentic in the relationship with the person we love. We aren’t bringing conditions to the table that must first be met. Instead, we’re coming with more energy to dream and reflect and to move forward.

It’s true that overcoming Marriage: Impossible will require energy. It will require both partners to commit to understanding and taking leadership of their interior world. It requires time and dedication. Unlike the poorly-set expectations around marriage, there are no guarantees. But, it may be possible to reconstruct a relationship that is life-giving and rewarding. It can be something that you choose to enjoy forever.

The Child Inside

Sometimes, we just feel silly. If you're reading this, chances are your a fully (or mostly) grown adult, but we often find ourselves giggling or feeling playful. We might crack up at some low-brow humor. And silliness can show up in other ways, too. We might try to figure out why we got so upset at something that is so seemingly insignificant. Why is whatever happened such a big deal to us? Whether we're getting irrationally upset or we just feel like dancing, it can feel like there's a younger part of us that temporarily takes over. 

One of the things that I often say to my clients is that we can't control our emotions. We don't have the power to choose which feelings we experience at any given moment. It's simply not how we are wired. Our emotions emerge from a combination of experiences and norms and biological processes. It can be hard for us to recognize this and there is something about it that doesn't feel mature. Maybe we have a sense that we shouldn't be sad about something that has happened. It can be tempting to label that sadness as juvenile which can carry a negative sentiment. It's as if to be an adult means that we have to put away childish things – things like feeling sad or dancing or having hurt feelings. We seem to think that being an adult is somehow above being a child.

I don't believe that's true. I think that we all have inner children who can help us feel more fully whole if we truly allow them to find their voice. In an idyllic sense, we have a notion that to be a child is to be unencumbered by the pressures of the adult world. They aren't concerned about the judgments of other people. They express their inner feelings more directly without all of the extra layers of rationale and comportment and others' expectations to get hung up on. 

Childhood is usually a time of freedom and seeing the world from a positive perspective. It's life at its most authentic. We live out what we feel inside. When we're excited and energized, we run. When we're upset, we cry. When we're overjoyed, our emotions spill out as laughter and dancing. What an incredible spirit! At some point, though, our spirit can become obstructed. This obstruction shows up as messages that our emotions are inappropriate or unwelcome. They aren't proper. We're told that there is a set of expectations that we should be trying to live up to. Mature people don't dance when they're happy, after all.

"You're having too much fun."

"Real men don't cry."

"Why are getting so angry?"

It's important to point out that others of us experience this obstruction in more drastic ways. We learn that our emotions are dangerous because they seem to evoke corrosive power in other people who have influence over us. These are wounds and they can be intense in their power. We learn that we need to suppress the things that we feel – to make sure that they don't spill out – as an act of self-protection. 

In all of these cases, our inner child can get grounded – sent to their room indefinitely. Some of the most profound healing that I've had the opportunity to witness so far has been the result of people choosing to end the punishment. When we stop penalizing these parts of themselves and begin to see them and care for them as we would any child, amazing things can happen. We realize that joy or sadness or anger that we felt as children were OK; it wasn't something to be ashamed or embarrassed about. These inner children are actually cute and exuberant. They simply want to be free and live in the moment the only way they know how. They inject our lives with joy and a refreshing simplicity that we all too easily forget.

How unfortunate that we've been told these precious children – our younger selves – are liabilities instead of treasures! All these inner children need is someone to take care of them and to love them for who they are. They just need someone to reassure them that they are OK.

Maybe that someone is you.

I love helping people do the kind of work that connects them with these younger versions of themselves. I love when an individual is able to look back and see that inner child – that inner representation of themselves – as good and whole and important. When we hear the inner child and can respond to their unmet needs, we can unleash a joy and an excitement that can powerfully impact our lives and our relationships. When we are curious about them, we get the privilege of seeing our world in ways that we had otherwise forgotten.

Our inner children are not liabilities. They are not inconveniences. Perhaps, we need to replace the idea of being juvenile with being free, or more child-like, or being unconcerned with how others see us. To be free is to be unaware of the short-comings that people place on us. Maybe there is value in celebrating our inner child.

Just maybe, when we feel joy, we should invite our inner child to dance.

Of Two Minds

An Introduction to Internal Family Systems

When I was growing up, there was an expression I would often hear people in my family use to describe their experience of wavering back and forth on a decision that had to be made. The situation usually wasn’t anything significant, but they at least weren’t super settled on what they actually wanted to do. When that was the case, someone would often say, “I’m of two minds about that.” I’ve realized, of course, it’s one of those regional idioms that might vary from place to place – I’ve heard the of replaced with in or on depending on where a speaker might be from. Either way, it speaks to the inner conflict that we all often feel at some point or another. Maybe you picture the classic cartoon scene of a character with an angel speaking in one ear and a devil speaking in the other.

Two voices. Two perspectives. Two motivations.

Who wins?

As a therapist, I find inner conflict incredibly interesting. This is partly true because I often practice a type of therapy that isn’t very far removed from this very idea. No, we don’t speak about angels and demons on your shoulders, but we do recognize that we often have these inner dialogues and debates. Even if you’ve never said, “I’m on two minds” about something, you might have recognized that “There’s a part of me that wants to say yes, and another that wants to say no.” What are these parts? Why are they so conflicted? How can we get them to come to a resolution? When you can’t come to a resolution, which part wins?

This approach to therapy (called Internal Family Systems Therapy, or IFS) embraces the idea that these parts represent aspects of ourselves. Noticing these tendencies in himself and his clients, Dick Schwartz founded and developed IFS into a truly effective approach to working with clients. You’ve probably recognized that your thoughts and behavior is contextual. Depending on the particular situation, it can feel as though a different version of yourself shows up. For example, it might feel like you’re generally a happy, friendly person who enjoys having fun and getting to know people. But what happens when you have to sit in a meeting with that annoying coworker? You become cold. You give curt answers. You might even be mean to her. It is as though a different person is sitting in your chair.

In the language of IFS, we all have a unique collection of these parts of ourselves. Different parts assume internal leadership roles based on past experiences and other factors. This leadership is as much about managing your internal, emotional state as it is navigating how to deal with the annoying coworker. In our example, it’s most often the friendly part of you that is in the manager’s chair. The presence of your coworker requires a colder, vindictive part to take control.

Another phrase that I love within the therapy room is that “Everything communicates” and the fact that this leadership role shifts in the presence of a particular means there is probably something worth listening for. Why does the vindictive part come out when this person shows up? If this vindictive part could talk, what would it say? Everyone’s situation is different, of course, but for the sake of our example, let’s imagine some scenarios. This part might say that your coworker reminds them of someone similar from your past who got the promotion that you wanted. It might say that there is something about the way that she talks or smiles that reminds you of the bully from middle school. Or, maybe you were vulnerable with someone who used flattery and friendliness and who then used that information to manipulate or take advantage of you. A vindictive part in this situation might list any of these scenarios, but what they have in common is that it is about protecting you from getting hurt again.

Of course, from a distance, we can recognize that a vindictive approach may not be the healthiest, but it does have the effect of keeping the other person – and the associated negative memories – at bay. IFS is about listening to what these parts have to say and exploring the implications. Like people, parts often just want to be heard and noticed.

For people that engage in this kind of work, it’s not uncommon to begin to uncover all kinds of parts. There are parts that are loving and kind. There are parts that focused on helping others or about finding definitive answers to questions. There are parts that may be spiteful, or full of pride, sadness, or shame. Some parts seem to have a temper and don’t seem to care who might get offended. At the core, all of these parts want to ensure our physical and emotional safety, but sometimes, we get into unhealthy patterns and let parts take on more of a leadership role than they actually should.

There are many different ways to understand ourselves more deeply and to improve the quality of our relationships. One of those ways is to get more acquainted with these members of our internal family. These parts have so much to teach us about how we see the world and our place in it. When you engage with a therapist in this kind of way, they can help you identify the parts of yourself that lead and the parts that have been forgotten or pushed aside. It is about honoring the complexities of who you, about helping you learn from your past experiences, and about integrating your parts in order that you can lead yourself through the world in a brand new way.

Photo Credit: "Tin soldiers standing at attention" by Nic McPhee is licensed by CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Most Important Characteristic?

Often, people come to our office and ask what they can do to improve their lives, to fix their relationship, or to make the work experience more rewarding? It is not an easy question and there certain are no easy answers. Everyone has their own unique experience that we explore in the counseling process.

Still, over the last several weeks, there has been an idea that has been surfacing for me around some of the things that I have been reading and listening to. One book even said that it was the most important characteristic for people looking to develop their leadership skills. I'd argue that it's probably true for anyone trying to make changes in any part of their lives. 

That characteristic? Self-awareness.

So much of our lives are lived by reflex. We respond harshly when our partner asks us a question or uses a certain tone of voice. It's not something that we are aware of – it just kind of happens. If we make a mistake, why is that that we can be so hard on ourselves? Many people – myself included – have to fight a real sense of shame when that happens. We can think things about ourselves that we would never say about other people. 

In the space between every experience we have in the world and the way that we choose to react, I like to think about a space. It's really a window of opportunity. When we react in a reflexive way, that window is very small; it's almost non-existent. But what happens when we start to look inward and figure out what the real motivations are behind the things we do? How do things change when we start to open up that window of opportunity so that there's more space to think and to act in a more self-controlled way?

When we work towards our own sense of self-awareness, we can change the way that we respond to our loved ones. When we understand our emotional space and motivations, we can have a more compassionate stance towards ourselves.

When we increase our level of self-awareness, everything can change.

Desmond Smith is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist Associate. He and his wife, Kristy Yetman, run Yetman Counseling Services and provide therapy for individuals, couples, and families.

Photo Credit: "Home" by Kevin Doncaster is licensed by CC BY 2.0.