Patterns, Parts and Mindfulness Part 1

There is wide agreement that breaking up negative patterns is a common factor in effective couples therapy. Couples therapists work hard to help partners understand their individual roles in patterns using a variety of angles and entry points. This work is largely effective.

The patterns that couples fall into vary quite a bit. It’s tempting to reduce them down into pursuer/distancer, attack/withdraw, victim/victimizer/rescuer and competing hurts, but there are far more variations out there. It may be more useful to help the partners understand the parts of themselves that get activated and entrenched as a way to understand the patterns that occur.

We all commonly experience a variety of perspectives on the events that happen in our lives. For example, when I opened my private practice I noticed a part of me that was excited about it and a part of me that was worried about it. The worried part prompted me to stay on task and make sure that I got all of my tasks done. The excited part encouraged me to celebrate and share this good news with friends and family. Both of these are valid perspectives on the experience of opening a new practice. And if either of these parts of me had complete control over my behaviors, my practice would ultimately fail- maybe sooner rather than later, depending on which part was in control! If I only behaved based on the worried part, I’d likely burn out. If I only behaved based on the excited part, I’d likely not put in enough actual effort to get my taxes done.

The trick seems to be getting to know these different parts in ourselves and helping clients get to know the parts of themselves. Mindfulness is a useful tool in this regard. Mindfulness is a practice widely used in a variety of therapy models today. It evolved from Buddhist meditation practices. Mindfulness can best be experienced by focusing attention on one point of stimulation. I typically use the breath as a focal point and here is the exercise I do with my clients:

“Sit comfortably in your chair. Close your eyes.( I close mine as well). Put all of your attention on your breathing.

There is no right or wrong way to breath. You want to just notice your breath. Maybe you notice air coming in our out of your mouth or nose. Maybe you notice the rise and fall of your shoulders. Maybe it’s the rise and fall of your belly. Just notice your breath and focus all of your attention on one aspect of your breath.

Now, when you notice your thoughts drifting, bring your attention back to your breath. When you get distracted by a sound, bring your attention back to your breath. When you feel a sensation in your body, bring your attention back to your breath…bring your attention back to your breath… bring your attention back to your breath.

Now, bring your attention back into the room.”

I usually say, “bring your attention back to your breath,” after noticing that my attention has wandered away from my own breath. This happens a lot in the 3-5 minutes that we do the mindfulness exercise. It happens more frequently when I do the exercise on my own. The whole point of mindfulness is to notice your experience. To notice when your attention has wandered and to guide it back to a fixed point, your breath. Many people get intimidated by mindfulness believing that the practice is about clearing your mind from any thoughts. This is not the case. Mindfulness is about paying attention and focusing on one experience at a time, being present to one experience at a time.

As people begin to practice mindfulness

Supervision For AMFTs, or pre-license MFTs or LCPCs

Supervision as a couple and family therapist is important part of professional development. I've been an AAMFT Approved Supervisor for 5 years now and thoroughly enjoy working with professionals striving to achieve licensure. If you're interested in supervision and you're working toward your LMFT, or LCPC, I've got space available to work with you on developing your skills.

Contact me and let me know if you're interested.

Team Up Against Anger

I'm a big fan of the Narrative Therapy model. These theorists came up with the idea of externalization. It's a simple and powerful concept. We're not our problems, we're oppressed by our problems. If we can fight against our problems, if we can team up in families against our problems, we can bring all of our resources to bear and avoid shame and stigma.

Couples often engage in conflictual patterns that put both of them in a defensive/angry stance. They become flooded and say and do things that are damaging to their relationship and to each of them.

When couples team up against anger by agreeing to call time-outs on themselves (not on one another), they are effectively teaming up against anger. Stepping away to avoid flooding is the strongest move that an angry couple can make. Letting your partner step away when he's flooded can be difficult, but if you've both agreed that this is far more adaptive then engaging in an angry, explosive exchange, you'll come out ahead.

I always ask the person who has called the self time-out to come back to the table after calming down and re-starting the conversation.

You can slow it down. You can beat the pattern if you team up against the anger.

Nurture Shock

I'm a little late on this book, but I can't say enough about it. Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman have done a fantastic job of collecting the most pertinent and current data on child development and compiling it in a very entertaining way. Check out their website:

http://www.nurtureshock.com/

Private Practice Opening Soon

Starting later this summer, I will be opening a private practice in the Ravenswood neighborhood in Chicago. I'm continuing my 13 year career working with couples, families and individuals in a new setting. My work at The Family Institute at Northwestern was exciting and stimulating, but I'm very excited about the prospect of starting out on my own.

If you, or anyone you know wants to find out about doing therapy with me, or about my I Get You workshops, send me a message at jhetherington.lmft@gmail.com or call me at (773) 791-0469. I look forward to hearing from you.

Apology and Forgiveness

My next "I Get You" workshop is coming up on Saturday, Feb 12 from 9-12 in Evanston and as I prepare for this latest version, I'm struck by some of my findings on apology and forgiveness. These seem like such simple, fundamental repairative skills for couples and yet, there is a surprisingly low amount of research on them. There is a lot more on forgiveness than apology. It seems like these ideas would be completely mapped out by researchers. Maybe this is just a fantasy I have about research- that all meaningful topics are well covered.

I've been looking at apology and forgiveness for the last 6 months, or so, in preparation for another workshop I'm doing at the Illinois Marriage and Family Therapy conference in a couple weeks (the week after the next "I Get You" workshop).

Here's the best of what I've found in the research and clinical literature:

There are many definitions of apology and forgiveness. Forgiveness seems harder to pin down. The researchers have been able to come to some consensus on forgiveness, but there isn't complete agreement. Forgiveness seems to be a concept that may include different things for different people. I guess this should not be a surprise, but it does add an interesting layer of complexity. Forgiveness may be an event, or a process- although most clinicians and researchers (myself included) believe that it is a process rather than an event. Forgiveness may be a gift to the forgiven that is not deserved. It may be a gift for the forgiver, that allows the him to release energy that was tied up in revenge fantasies, or perpetual anger. It may mean that the forgiver lets go. It may mean that the forgiver happens upon the forgiveness, rather than seeks it out.

Apology seems a bit easier thanks to the work of Dr. Les Greenberg. He's found that couples going through an episode of EFT-C (Emotion Focused Therapy for Couples) have more likelihood of getting to honest forgiveness if there is an apology that includes shame on the part of the person who committed that emotional injury. Shame means the person feels badly because they've done a bad thing rather than just because the other person was hurt. There is some mounting empirical evidence to support this idea. A good apology means eating crow and admitting that you've done wrong. Showing your hurt partner that you realize that you've done wrong, and then working as hard as you can to not do wrong again.

These are interesting ideas that we need to understand as therapists and as people. We also need to understand how our clients think about these concepts. Apology and forgiveness are essential relational skills in my opinion.