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Is Love a Tameable Force?

Death like birth is a one off life event. We cannot learn through our experience of either to “get it right” next time. Love on the other hand (or the act of ‘falling in love’) is an event amenable to repetition. As such it is also available for re-definition by the forces of culture – political, philosophical and economic.

We no longer imagine or indeed contract for that (romantic) notion of love “till death do us part.” A vision in part predicated on (now outdated) kin-ship structures. These days it seems we care less to tie ourselves into lifetime contracts, or at least not without the freedom to change provider.

Love in a consumer age

One factor involved in the consideration of any investment is the risk attached. The ‘hookup’ model of relationship is a way of keeping (emotional) risk to a minimum. Its strategic focus is on convenience and short term satisfaction. It requires a particular vigilance to any (unruly) emotional undercurrents, with cost/benefit analysis consistently calculated and reviewed. When the initial (emotional ) investment is small there is protection against future insecurity in what can be a highly volatile market.

In his book, ‘The Art of Loving’, Erich Fromm describes how satisfaction in love cannot be attained “…without true humility, courage, faith and discipline” a vision at odds with the consumer age. Now the structures and forces of the market place promise something different. We can barely move for ‘expert’ relationship advice and books, articles and podcasts abound to coach us in the practice of relationship consciousness. In the online marketplace, the otherwise busy consumer may choose from an extensive menu of mouthwatering relational options. Available with an ease of access (and exit) and an abundance of choice, previously unknown. The new ideal of instant satisfaction takes the wait out of wanting with all risk insurance and money back guarantees there to catch us if we fall.

Love and uncertainty (uncomfortable bedfellows)

Love though is an unruly force and resists attempts at mastery or design. Love finds its own meaning in a continual state of becoming. Its creative forces are fraught with risk and like any creative force, we may never be sure where it will end. When we ‘fall’ in love, we enter into a great unknown, we  feel untethered from our usual moorings and suddenly vulnerable in the force field of another’s freedom. Indeed, love navigates a fine line between security and freedom and is threatened by both. ‘Too much security’ may feel like fusion or possession, stifling the creative urge. ‘Too much freedom’ (and a deficit of security) may lead to an overwhelming and agoraphobic sense of uncertainty.

There is then an inescapable duality in love and any attempt to surmount it ends only in its destruction. This paradox lies at the heart of loving. Eros forever haunted by Thanatos like an iron hand clad in a velvet glove.

Love seduces and emboldens us (at least in its opening gambit) to dive into the uncharted waters of ‘otherness’ and engage with the unknown. Love as an antidote to death soothes the ever present human dilemma of separateness. The blessing and the curse of individuality makes a mockery of us and all lovers seek to foreclose the space that separates them from their beloved. It is though in this very act that the death knell to love is sounded. Whatever else love might be a commitment to it inevitably involves the certainty of uncertainty.

To love is to risk and there is no algorithm to square that particular existential circle. The last word on love may perhaps always be best left to the poets.

Source – Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving(1957; Thomson’s, 1995)

 

Gerry Gilmartin is an accredited, registered and experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor. She currently works with individuals (young people/adults) and couples in private practice. Gerry is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Gerry Gilmartin –

Why does empathy matter?

What is Intimacy?

Love, commitment and desire in the age of choice

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Paying attention to stress

We are evolutionarily wired for stress.  For our early ancestors, inhabiting a natural world beset with predatory dangers the flight/fight response was crucial to survival.  The same alarm system exists today for the same survival purpose evolution originally intended. 

What is different is that today the more likely sources of threat ( at least for those of us living in the industrialised world) are emotional.  Our biology, psychology and physiology are interlinked in subtle and complex ways, all with implications for our health and well being.

A stress response is activated when an event, physical or emotional is perceived as threatening.  As human beings we make multiple assessments via our central nervous system to interpret a stimulus and prepare ourselves to respond. Our response will be a combination of physiological and behavioural adjustments commensurate with the perceived degree of threat.  What is “commensurate” varies from person to person.  Each stress event is experienced in the moment but may have resonance from the past.  Our personal histories as well as our dispositions influence our response to a stressful event.

Acute v chronic stress

Whilst on the one hand stress can be understood as a physiological event vital to survival, on the other it is increasingly understood to have a corrosive effect that impacts negatively on our long term health.  Here it is important to distinguish between acute and chronic stress.

Acute stress triggers immediate discharges in the nervous, hormonal and immune systems, activating flight or fight reactions that help us survive imminent danger.  These are highly adaptive and highly effective responses.  In the case of chronic stress, the same systems are activated(over and over) but without resolution.  The effect is elevated cortisol and adrenaline levels which can damage tissue, raise blood pressure and undermine the integrity of our immune functioning.

For many people, functioning with chronically elevated cortisol and stress hormones is normal.  The circumstances of our early lives, including our attachments may have necessitated a state of hyper arousal and vigilance.  Without any conscious awareness our bodies stress responses can remain highly active.  Indeed it may be the absence of stress that creates unease in the individual habituated to its hormonal high but such a state of addiction to our own stress hormones may have serious implications for our long term immune functioning and health.

When we are unaware of what is happening in our bodies we are unable to act in self preserving ways.  The same is true of our emotional states.  If we are unable to identify what it is we feel, we will struggle to communicate it.  Our capacity to identify our emotional states will largely depend upon the messages that were conveyed to us early on by significant others.  A child may conclude that “I am not ok when I am angry” for instance, based on the blatant or subtle (verbal and non verbal) responses of a parent/ group of which they are a part.  In order to prevent the threat of rejection or shame the child will learn to shutdown or repress the unacceptable expression of anger.  This repression if it is to remain successful will require constant vigil and adaptation, such that overtime the legitimate expression of anger will be compromised and confused.

Self awareness

We need to develop a degree of emotional competence and fluency in order to protect against the hidden stresses that can pose such a (ticking time bomb) threat to our health.  This means being able to identify and express our emotions effectively, to assert our needs and maintain healthy (physical and emotional) boundaries.  It means being able to distinguish between past and present realities such that we cultivate awareness (and compassion) for unmet childhood needs.  Remaining disconnected with these aspects of our personal histories can contribute to hidden stress with potentially serious implications for our physical and emotional health and well being.

 

Gerry Gilmartin is an accredited, registered and experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor. She currently works with individuals (young people/adults) and couples in private practice. Gerry is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Gerry Gilmartin –

Why does empathy matter?

What is Intimacy?

Love, commitment and desire in the age of choice

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Why does empathy matter?

When you begin therapy you enter into a particular (perhaps peculiar) type of relationship, one with well defined boundaries and ethics. Beyond its method and structure, at the very heart of this relationship lies empathy.

As a therapist empathy means doing all you can to understand your client from inside their own experience. It requires an ability to communicate this understanding in ways that are sensitive, meaningful and useful, both verbal and nonverbal.

It is a powerful experience to feel understood, listened to, cared for and respected. Over time it can make it easier to have empathy for yourself, to take your own personal pain and suffering seriously, to judge it less, as trivial, stupid or simply a product of your own personal weakness.

When we begin to take our own struggles seriously, we gain access to another layer of empathy: compassion for the child that we were, often a child who made sense of what troubled them by deciding that there must be something wrong with them – that they were the problem. In the context of an authentic and empathic connection with another human being the shame or disgust or guilt that has become so entangled in our sense of self can begin to make way for new feelings. Sadness (perhaps) for what was lost and loving regard for the child who did the best they could at the time.  When there is more space in our imaginations for the reality of our own struggle, we can begin to see other people differently too. When we experience the power of feeling understood we may also experience greater internal space for new thoughts and feelings, both about ourselves and about others.

The therapist as client

All psychotherapists have had their own experience of being a client in therapy. Sharing the most intimate and often painful moments of someone’s life is made possible when you have felt and expressed your own. It is not that as a therapist you become an expert on life (not even your own) but that having undergone your own therapy you will be more equipped with the clarity to differentiate your separate self and experience from that of another.  To understand whose feelings are whose and to have the versatility  and flexibility to step into and out of another person’s shoes.

The circuitry of empathy

Empathy is a complex system of mutual cues and responses that regulates each persons experience of self and other. We observe this very clearly in parent/ infant interactions. How attuned a parent is to the (myriad/micro) communications of an infant will inform the infants reciprocal response to the parent.

It is not that in an ideal world infants and young children would be perfectly attuned to at all times. Over-attunement can be stifling and intrusive. What’s more important is the experience of an ongoing relationship in which misunderstandings and mis-attunements can be repaired.

Emotional neglect and emotional intrusion are flip sides of the same coin. Anyone who has suffered either will have good reason to believe that they may never be understood.

As a therapist we cannot “know it all” for our clients, we cannot tell someone how it is they feel or what is true for them. What we can provide is an open ended, respectful curiosity for our clients and a willingness to share in the important project of “getting it.”  Paying close attention to the unique form of connection that exists with each client means understanding empathy as a mutually influencing system. From this perspective, the communication of empathy becomes much more a mystery to engage with than a tool to master.

 

Gerry Gilmartin is an accredited, registered and experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor. She currently works with individuals (young people/adults) and couples in private practice. Gerry is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

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What is Relational therapy?

A central idea of relational psychotherapy is that our thoughts, feelings and behaviours (healthy and unhealthy) are directly related to our interpersonal relationships. It is therefore about our self-with-other experience. We are all creatures of familial, social and political contexts, continuously formed (and forming) through our interactions with others.

Relational therapy can be an effective treatment for a whole range of psychological and emotional problems, understanding as it does that so many of them are rooted in troubled relationships past and present. Telling one’s own relational story in the presence of a carefully attuned empathic listener can be a powerful experience, generating shifts in self-understanding and ultimately in symptoms.

Not a medical model.

A relational therapist is not a doctor, there to administer a cure to someone’s emotional pain. This may seem disappointing to some clients. Rather s/he is a fellow human being, ready to engage with and understand the longings and the losses, the hopes, fears and struggles that might have brought a client into therapy.

Not individualism.

Relational therapy does not hold with the notion that each of us is responsible for our own happiness. It rejects the tyranny of self-help models that suggest that it is only by “working” on ourselves will we claim our power, increase our self-esteem, become fully evolved etc.

Instead it believes that we all need good connections with others in order to feel good about ourselves. Individual power, agency and wellbeing are only achieved in the context of healthy interpersonal connections.

Not Rationalism.

Relational therapy does not subscribe to rational, linear, cause and effect explanations of how change happens. We are complex systems of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, self-states and energies, all interconnected. Relational therapy takes a systemic, non-linear view of change. Having a new experience of oneself in the context of the therapeutic relationship may lead to new experiences of self and others outside of therapy as well.

Who needs Relational Therapy?

Anyone who has questions like “How do others see me?” “Am I good enough for them?” “Am I worthy enough?” might consider seeking a relationally oriented therapeutic approach. When your own answers to the questions above aren’t good, you feel bad about yourself and when you feel bad about yourself you are diminished.

A relational therapy will look at your everyday relationships with people in your life right now and seek to understand what it is that happens there that leaves you feeling bad about yourself.

Understanding the (repetitive) patterns of feeling bad in your life might be a reminder of earlier relationships. Consideration of these earlier relationships may help in developing an understanding of the sense you made of them, the sense of who you are and what you’re worth.

The here and now relationship between therapist and client is also kept in mind and attended to as part of a relational approach. As a relational practitioner I am always noticing the subtle shifts within and between myself and my client(s). The moments when a client might feel misunderstood or judged by me are important to “catch.” Understanding what goes on between “us” might be useful in understanding what goes on “out there” with “them.”

Therapy offers the possibility to reflect on what forms us and to make room for the changes we hope for. A relational approach understands the relationship itself between client and therapist to be a fundamentally important element in realising such change.

Gerry Gilmartin is an accredited, registered and experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor. She currently works with individuals (young people/adults) and couples in private practice. Gerry is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

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Finding Intent in Criticism in Couple Communication

Cultural context

We are at a particular moment in our cultural and political narratives of relationship and identity where democracy itself seems under threat.

The assertion in some spheres of the perceived “right” to not be offended is at odds with the right (principle) of free speech in which there is always a risk of offence. We live increasingly in an age of “safe spaces” “trigger warnings” and narratives of victim hood and oppression. Now more than ever we need a relationship culture in which giving and receiving criticism is understood as a way to deepen connection and intimacy whilst simultaneously fostering emotional and psychological resilience.

In my last blog I wrote about the evolutionary context of criticism. How criticism could lead to ostracism, posing a threat to livelihood and even life itself. Whilst killing the criticiser is part of an evolutionary survival instinct, so open and compassionate listening in response to criticism is now an essential part of our evolutionary future.

In myriad subtle ways as social beings we organise ourselves to avoid the (life threatening)sting of criticism. We seek approval from our social groups through acts of conformity or denial. It is more often in our most intimate relationships that we reserve the right to unleash our most critical and savage selves… all in the name of love. Where there is love there is dependence and where there is dependence there is power.Understanding the balance and imbalance of power as a fact of life and love is important.

Power dynamics

Focusing solely on the content of our routine and familiar arguments with our partners is a way of missing the expressions of power and the underlying vulnerabilities they obscure. A major theme often at play is that of fear. For some this will translate as fear of losing the other(abandonment) whilst for others the fear will be of losing themselves (engulfment). This may translate into a relational dynamic in which one person, fearing abandonment is more likely to pursue or demand more (contact,closeness etc) from their partner whilst the other, fearing intrusion (exploitation )is more likely to maintain distance. We all emerge from our childhoods with different tolerances for connection.

When we perceive criticism from our partner it is all too easy (natural) to react defensively. How, in these moments  might we become less reactive and more reflective, less combative and more collaborative?Firstly of course you have to decide that this is indeed what you would like to do…to lay down your weapons, so to speak, to relinquish the need to be “right” in favour of the desire to understand and value the other such that you might deepen your connection rather than remain locked in a state of division. When this becomes your shared intent you each take your responsibility for the health and well-being of your relationship.

Relational practice

When in conflict with your partner try holding in mind their best intent, hear them out , resist interruption or the desire for distortion. One voice at a time. Keep your energy on your partners story rather than your own defences. Imagine that your partner cares! Check that you have heard them by clarifying what you have understood. Be aware of your body language….are you listening or pseudo listening? Notice what happens, energetically ,in you, in your partner.

None of this is easy, but all of the above are relational tools that require practice to refine. Of course they also have the potential to become weapons to deploy. We are less under threat from criticism perhaps then we are of our failures to listen to the communications beneath. If we value democracy we need to practice it in our relationships.

Gerry Gilmartin is an accredited, registered and experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor. She currently works with individuals (young people/adults) and couples in private practice in Hove.Facebooktwitter

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