Resolve issues or dissolve them?

Couples often come to us wanting to ‘resolve their differences’.

They instinctively know that these differences have within them the power to create chasms that can pull them apart, so it makes sense that their goal is to resolve their differences and once again feel as if they are on the same team. When I invite them to consider that the differences can be dissolved rather than resolved they often can’t see the difference. 

For them resolving something is about arriving at the place where they can both agree on a way to look at a particular issue and in agreeing will receive the gift of connection again.
Dissolving issues means that the stories we attach to any given issue dissolve and we are invited into a new place where two opposing realities can live together harmoniously. 
One way i.e.: resolving can promote enmeshment and the other, i.e.: dissolving can promote differentiation. 

This is ,to my mind, a subtle but important difference.

Mirroring with Heart

Intentional dialogue regulates reactivity through mirroring and allows for the experience of connection, which integrates the brain and integrates the self. This thought came out of some notes from a conference and it struck me as very true – and yet!

How often have I supported a couple in one mirroring another only to find that the insights and information flow don’t seem to bring about much long standing change. It seems that more is needed then just the practice of mirroring and I call it mirroring with heart. 

What do I mean? Mirroring with heart is an intense form of mirroring that slows down to give both the person being mirrored and the person mirroring the chance to consciously feel the effect of the words, emotion and energy in the space. Given that science tells us that it takes 7 times longer for words to hit the emotion centres than just understanding the meaning of the words themselves, then it makes a lot of sense to slow down the whole process.
In this way a remarkable amount of implicit memories can surface and be integrated into the hippocampus thus becoming explicit and lost parts of ourselves come back online. 

This is, I think, what transformation looks like!

What is Love?

“…Love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and enter another. Passion dies and is brought back. Pain is chased away and surfaces another time. To love means to embrace and at the same time withstand many endings, and many, many beginnings - all in the same relationship.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Emotion Focused Therapy vs. Encounter Centered Therapy

For quite a while I have been interested in and studying informally EFT (Emotion Focused Therapy) as I am interested in the similarities as well as the differences between EFT and Encounter Centered Therapy. It seems to me that both are trying to create the conditions for more compassion and acceptance between couples and to slow down and invite them to softer, more emotional responses.

Perhaps one of the differences is that EFT, coming from Attachment theory, sees the absence of a safe emotional bond as the thing that causes distress and emerges as conflict. While I think this is certainly part of it, I add that the couple have been attracted to each other in the first place in order to recreate these moments. Implicit in the seeds of that distress is the hope of experiencing that safe connection so that whatever got ‘stuck’ in early history might be resolved and a new sense of integration experienced. One thing EFT and Encounter Centered Therapy both offer is a useful map or structure to guide both therapist and clients through the murky waters of change. This combined with an open curiosity promises a more hopeful outcome.

The Shift in Relational Healing

What then are the implications for therapy if we truly understand and respect this oscillation between the self and the relational paradigm?

Relational healing is shifting from looking at individuals as relational beings to seeing being as relational. Given this, then when we sit with clients or a couple we sit with the profound understanding that in every moment our ‘self’ is being formed fluidly moment by moment - what potential for change!!

We now know so much more about how this is actually happening in our body-brains through things like mirror neurones and Limbic resonance and the Brain Bridge. It seems that it is not just our conceptual selves that are being formed minute by minute but our body states too. Which affects how we experience things… and then what stories we make up about the moment to make sense of it … and so what feelings we have about it … and then what actions we do…well, you get the story!

"I am, because we are"

So thinking a little deeper into this oscillation between the concepts of the individual paradigm and the relational paradigm, the article I was reading goes on to say that for some people the self doesn’t exist as a separate entity that can be studied on its own. Now that I can agree with!

For me the self only comes into focus through the lens of the relationships it is embedded in. And likewise the relationship only comes into focus through the lens and co-creation of the individuals – back to two sides of the same coin!

I think Africa captures that exactly in a proverb saying: 

‘I am, because we are.’ This is a fundamental philosophy of African Ubuntu.

The fiction of the "self" - Relevant or not?

I was reading an article on the relational paradigm and how it is developing conceptually all over the world when I came across this thought that we should acknowledge the fiction of the ‘self’ – that this concept of the individual is no longer relevant to therapy. I found myself agreeing and yet uncomfortable with the statement and it’s taken a few days to put my finger on what it is that makes me uncomfortable, and it is this:

The wording to me implies the abandonment of one concept, ie: the individual in the favour of the concept of the relational paradigm. I see it more as a spectrum oscillating between the individual and the relational – two sides of the same coin as it were. To abandon one of those indivisible sides in the favour of the other puts us surely right back at square one which is a concept, rather than concepts in relationship to each other…just as we can be seen as individual humans rather than humans experienced in relation to each other!

Rekindle the Light

This quote by Albert Schweitzer comes to us via Hedy Schleifer:

"At times our own light goes out and it is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has great reason to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."

This quote resonated with me because there have been so many instances of  ‘re-kindler of the light’ in me! As I reflect on this quote I can see that this not only beautifully demonstrates that we are all, as relational human beings, connected energetically – we can either quench or relight each other! We can turn away from each other or turn towards each other. We cannot not be connected and influencing those around us and I believe that in our essence people want to lighten others' experiences and paths. 

My personal challenge is to increasingly stay aware of this as I move through my own life inviting myself to both stay a giver and receiver of light…

Wired for Connection

“Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.” Sir Isaac Newton

So I was watching the hour long video that Hedy Schleifer has released on her website, www.hedyyumi.com, and she was talking about a natural law that we all know about to do with magnets, called the law of attraction. She talks about how when a couple are in their survival dance with their neurochemistry set on ‘anxious’ setting they end up repelling each other - even when the intention is to get through the conflict and stay connected.
And she talks about how, by using the brain's wired-in need to connect relationally, we can invite two people to turn from repelling each other to being drawn and attracted to each other again. In a sense we as couples therapists - and I think, as individuals therapists, are in the trade of helping people to build bridges back to connection. Connection with themselves firstly and then increasingly, connection with others in their lives.

We as humans just don’t do well when we are feeling the perception of disconnection. We are wired for connection and get distressed when we feel out of it.

Trust, Participate and Be Grateful

Recently I participated in one of those lovely peer group gatherings that nourish and strengthen me. A simple gathering of 4 humble, wise women of ages ranging from 40-70 that comes together to create a slow, sacred space where we flow organically around whatever comes into the space. We are all increasingly trusting that whatever questions, clinical cases or reflections are presented, that a common thread evolves which draws us together wondrously resonating with four very different lives and women.

The thread yesterday emerged simply and powerfully from a book one of us had been reading, a book of Buddhist type reflections that invited the reader to follow three energies with awareness:
To Trust that life is happening just as it must; to Participate and turn towards what life is inviting you to; and to be Grateful for all that supports and enriches our lives moment by moment.

This came as a gift to us all in the complexity of all that living our lives with vision calls us to – a map that lights the way ahead….

Our Social Brain and the Web

So back to my ipad. 

We can’t stuff the genie back in the box that is the web. We can however stay curious and vigilant with our growing understanding of how our social brains function to grow practises that will allow us to have the multiple benefits of the web, and at the same time help us grow in a new mindfulness or meditational practise of slowing down and bringing our full presence to the moment.
Any ideas out there about all this?!?

Slowing Down for the Sake of Our Social Brain

Part of ‘flaming’ is the acceleration of time that e-interactions give us – and what a blessing that acceleration can be! Yet there is a different quality to that sort of interaction than to real-time interactions. So here is the vital question that occupies my mind as I consider all this:
How can we have the benefits but also give our social brains what they hunger for?What practises can I develop in myself that will help me do e-interactions with more social awareness?

All I can think of is training myself to slow down and imagine the other person and bring my full presence to them – before I begin to respond.

Wait…. this sounds familiar!! Don’t I teach this with couples - slowing down and consciously bringing your full presence to yourself and then the other in order to have a connection….?

E-communication and Our Social Brain

Well, the vision board was back in March and I forgot all about my ipad wish…funny that! Then my new son-in-law was selling his ipad and had heard that I might be interested and so suddenly I was face to face with my nemesis!To cut a long story short we got the ipad and with mixed feelings I am beginning to learn all about it. It’s been great to Facetime my daughter who moved to Switzerland and friends and family in South Africa but beyond that I am still slowly incorporating it into my life. 

And here is the underlying resistance: 
Brain research is telling us that our powerful social brain functions best when we are face to face where it can add powerful subtexts of voice cadence, micro expressions and emotional cues to the words. Yet much of social technology does not allow that, leaving our social brain starved of vital data and our bodies reacting to the lack of information, often in reactive ways. The social brain is not being allowed to do its' constant job just out of our awareness helping us move forwards smoothly.

When there is no channel for the social brain to attend to then the orbital frontal cortex, which hunts for that information and helps us inhibit reactivity, is flying blind.

Daniel Goleman wonders if this is not a big part of the problem of intense e-interactions called’ flaming’.

Technology and me

I am having an ongoing love-hate relationship with social technology. Recently I did another vision board at my talented friend and colleague, Shelley Whitehead’s Vision Board Day. We started with an exercise of moving through some questions about yourselves and capturing your responses in one-word descriptors. In response to one of those questions an  ipad popped onto my list. No one was more amazed than myself as I have been bringing myself into the 21^st Century with a startling lack of grace! My husband’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when I told him what had happened…

And so it went on my vision board, a lovely picture of a woman of around my age sitting looking very happy, relaxed and confident smiling at the camera.

And there in that picture lies my dilemma – because what creates huge resistance in me is watching people busy on their devices in social situations totally engrossed in the screen and life, connection and relationships are passing them by. It’s so sad… and alarming. And I was not sure that I could win the battle to keep the seductive screen in proportion to my life and my goals.

Could I keep metaphorically looking at people-could I bring my full presence if there was an ipad in my life?

The Growth Mindset - how does it look?

So now I’m more interested in the growth mindset! What does that look like?

Well, it turns out, a growth mindset will lead to;

• A desire to learn and therefore a tendency to
• Embrace challenges
• Persist in the face of setbacks
• See effort as the path to mastery
• Learn from criticism
• Find lessons and inspiration in the success of others
• As a result reach even higher levels of achievement

Some weeks ago I watched Andy Murray win Wimbledon and as I listened to him talk about his journey to that trophy I could clearly hear a growth mindset. I know which mindset I would like to inhabit!!

The Fixed Mindset - how does it look?

So what does the difference between a fixed mindset and growth mindset look like in somebody’s life?

Well, a fixed mindset will lead to:

• A desire to appear smart and therefore a tendency to
• Avoid challenges
• Get defensive or give up easily
• See effort as fruitless or worse
• Ignore useful negative feedback
• Feel threatened by the success of others

... and as a result plateau early and achieve less of their potential.

I found myself thinking about all sorts of situations where this had some resonance at times - I’m pleased to say less now then a decade ago – but still challenging to consider!

Mindsets

I have been reading an interesting book lately, ‘Mindset - how you can reach your potential’ by Dr Carole Dweck. It explores two basic mindsets that we as humans have and how they shape our lives. 

The one is a fixed mindset where we believe that basic things about ourselves can’t change, for example our intelligence. The other is a growth mindset where we stay curious and keep learning and exploring through every experience.

It’s an interesting book because it challenges some fundamental beliefs I did not even realise I had - such as the intelligence I was born with was in essence a fixed ‘quantity’ and therefore put a ceiling on how far intellectually I might go. Now with neuroplacticity we know that this is just not true and that new neural networks can form with attention to something particular and that we CAN learn to be more intelligent and skilled - we can indeed change. What a gift to know that!

Does it mean that I can be a world class mathematician...? Probably not!

Parenting and Presenting!

We had a Parenting Day last week and I had the experience of co-presenting with a lovely man who I admire a lot. But here’s the thing….we have never presented together before and in many ways it was a wonderful metaphor for two people plunging into the adventure of parenting with both people confident and anxious!

I found myself wondering at times if what I was saying might be different to what he believed or practised - especially given that he was, in my mind, by far the more ‘expert’ one.

To do this adventure together we had to come face to face with both our expertise – together we had 9 children, 8 grandchildren and some 45 years jointly as therapists in relationships of all sorts – and our sense of inadequacy both as parents and presenters.

Yet it is exactly this blend of expertise and inadequacy that makes both parenting AND presenting such an adventure!

Individual Paradigm vs Relational Paradigm - Where do you fall?

So back to the exploration of the difference between the Individual Paradigm and the Relational Paradigm.

Is the locus of control in the individual who pursues healing and growth through insights as they are relevant to his or her world? Or are those experiences of growth and healing more readily available in the interaction between two people – in the space between?

I like what Dr. Dan Siegel has to say about this:

‘And as a ‘we’ is woven into the neurons of our mirroring brains, even our sense of self is illuminated by the light of our connection.’

Helping Create Conditions for Healing and Growth

In his thought-provoking book, Mindsight, Dr. Dan Siegel says:

‘The brain is a social organ, and our relationships with one another are not a luxury but an essential nutrient for our survival.’

How does accepting this new neuro-biologically driven insight change the ways we sit with our clients? For me it puts the focus squarely on the fact that the brain is the only organ that can be regulated from the outside eg. by another human being. We grow best in relationship to others and we can grow stunted in isolation. 

Given that, then surely the primary goal of the therapist/coach is to continue to find ways to increase their attuned presence with another knowing that in doing this we help create the conditions for healing and growth.

So Let's Find the Locus of Growth...

So where is the locus of growth - does it reside in the individual or does it reside in the interaction, the space between two individuals?

There is an assumption that underlies the individual paradigm i.e: each individual, in a committed relationship or not, needs to become autonomous, differentiated and self-reliant. While these characteristics can contribute to healthier individual functioning, they ignore our fundamental neurobiological wiring for connected interpersonal experience. In light of this, a broader approach incorporating the relational paradigm is called for.

So how does the relational paradigm as I am talking of it, differ?

Well this relational paradigm has an understanding that it is only in meeting you, loving you and being triggered by you that I meet myself. In other words, we experience ourselves in the connection with another – and indeed neuroscience is rapidly and thoroughly providing evidence for this.

The Locus of Growth

“The dominant cultural paradigms and therapy practises continue to support the primacy of the individual as the locus for change and growth.”

So says Surrey and Jordan in their thoughtful book ’ Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy’. 

This sentence really echoed in me because the more I work in the relational paradigm the more I see how en-cultured we are with thinking and acting in the individual paradigm.

So what is the difference between the two paradigms and surely as relationship therapists / coaches we know how to be relational and how to help others to be more relational?! And my answer to that is a resounding,” Of course we do!”

And yet ….it’s such an important question,” Where is the locus of growth?”

What are you imagining?

I read recently in a NLP book that we actually experience everything twice - once in the imagining / thinking of it and then in the actual doing of it. Although it initially sounds a bit exhausting (!) I can see what they are saying. 

We automatically think that something happens out there to us and then we respond to the happening. Buddhist practitioners will say that whatever happens is just what happens - it's our stories about what's happening that makes it good or bad....and  that's how  we construct the world around us.

I got curious about just how true this is in couple work, that in essence so much of what the couple has experienced comes from their stories that exist inside them and often the imagined becomes the real. 
The irony is that in the early days the imaginings are so positive and full of hope but by the time a few conflicts have happened then a different reality is beginning to grow between them. 
Focusing on the positive that is there alongside the negative can have a powerful re-balancing effect in the couples bodies and in their minds.

I have a choice in what I imagine and what I create...it sounds so simple! Why would I create a double negative of imagining then doing.....it's quite a thought!

Checking your Horizon

So what are the ways I could keep training myself to notice where my horizon is? Well, I would love to know how other people do it, but here are some of my mini ways of checking in:

• Go back to my breathing which helps me connect to the here and now.
• Feeling anxious to then asking myself, 'Where is your horizon on this?'
• Asking myself, 'What's really important here?'
• Feeling negative...'What am I appreciating in this?'

Maybe that's all any of us can do in this tug of war that goes on between our experience and our attention, but I would love to hear your ideas!

Where is your attention wandering to?

'Your experience of life is not based on your life, but on what you pay attention to.' (Gregg Kretch)

Reading this in a mindfulness book this morning struck a chord. If there is one thing we therapists and coaches know, it's that how we pay attention to an experience and make sense of it, defines what we do with that experience.

All too often I find myself with my eyes fixed metaphorically on a negative horizon which is drawing my energy towards it and creating just the thing I am anxious about.
And if that happens so easily to me, then how must it be for a client who comes in being held hostage to their own thinking/ horizon! 

It seems to me that it's not enough to know about and agree with the concept of choosing where I put my attention, but more importantly, to find ways to train myself to keep checking where my attention has wondered to.

And of course, that's not bad advice for a therapist sitting with a client either...

The Importance of Repair Tools

'The underlying philosophy is consistent with research, which shows that lasting success in relationships requires a combination of increasing positive regard in relationships, and ability to use repair techniques in conflict.'

This statement really resonated with me when I read it a few weeks ago - its clear focus on increasing positive regard captures something of the challenge of working with two people who are in a relationship but have come to see each other as dangerous on some level. 

Right now I am working with a couple where the love is clear in the room yet through the conflicts and experiences of the past he tells himself that she is toxic to him and she tells herself that he will never change - and so they look longingly and hopelessly across the space at each other.
This couple have had repair techniques in conflict that have clearly not served them well!

Part of the magical, absorbing work I do is introducing them to a new 'repair technique' that does what it says on the box...it repairs after conflict. The conflict that makes them experience each other as dangerous and cuts them off from whatever positive regard they do have can now be worked with by them with gradually increasing confidence.

I LOVE my work!

Of course...they do have to use the repair tool-and there in lies another adventure!

Are you paying attention?!?

Dan Goleman is one of the few people I open up on Linked in as I find his thoughts interesting, clear and to the point! He started his last piece with these thoughts...

"Leaders today are beset by overwhelming demands – scheduled every 15 minutes through the day, with an incoming barrage of messages via phone, email, texts, and knocks on the door. Who has time to pay full attention to the person you’re with?

And yet it is in the moments of total attention that interpersonal chemistry occurs. This is when what we say has the most impact, when we can come up with the most fruitful ideas and collaborations, when negotiations and brainstorms are most productive".

Now I know this on so many levels as a wife, mother, friend and therapist and yet it is one of the hardest things to consistently do! When somebody is expressing their own thoughts and I sense my own thoughts and sensations getting activated, there comes that moment where I have a choice - choose to stay present to them and relax into the here and now....or add my piece onto their thoughts and speed the interaction up. 

More and more I realise that the fast pace of life that seems so ingrained into me, (and most of us, I imagine!), robs me of the richness of truly visiting another and letting their world impact mine opening up new fields of thoughts and knowing.

From the knowing to the doing...therein lies an art!

Brainspotting

As some of my friends and colleagues know, I became intrigued by a powerful new way of helping clients process issues called Brainspotting.

The development of Brainspotting is being headed by a wonderful man called Dr.David Grand who originally trained as a psychotherapist and added, among many skills, EMDR. It was in the course of exploring his own developments in EMDR, (Natural Flow EMDR), that he began to discover the link between where we look in the visual field and brain processing, opening the door to his discovery of Brainspotting.

This is a rapidly developing field of, I think, great significance as it offers a way for therapists using any number of skills to greatly enhance and speed the healing in a client. Indeed my own experiences of using some of the tools have provided both my clients and myself  with some extraordinary experiences! Indeed, I would love more time to experiment and explore these fascinating new tools. However what I am doing is experimenting with couples on the Bridge and where they are looking with some deeper insights and an even deeper curiosity.

Those interested might note that the Basic 2 day training and Advanced 2 day training take place for the first time in London on the 5-8 June 2013. Details can be found on http://www.brainspotting.pro/

Changing your perspective - give it a go!

How do I persuade myself to see whatever is happening that is upsetting me as ‘real but not true’?

Well, one of my favourite ways is from Byron Katie’s work, ‘Loving what is’.

She says you are either attaching to your thoughts or inquiring. There’s no other choice.

 

Her four simple questions have re-grounded me many, many times and continue to be a powerful tool for me:


1. Is it true?

2. Can I absolutely know that it’s true?

3. How do I react when I think that thought?

4. Who would I be without that thought?



                                               Turn it around.


If you haven’t already tried it then give it a go…..the adventure is on!

Leaving the Negativity Bias Behind

As I think about this negativity bias and the challenge of consciously working with it in both my own life as well as my couples, I can see that it is a delicate balance. Inviting someone out of their negative story and experience and into reconnecting with all that is going well can have some knee-jerk reactions!

I think it was Tara Brach, another Buddhist orientated therapist, who said that the experience/story that is so negative and painful is ‘real but not true’.

By that she means that it is really the conversation we have with an event that determines how we experience it - or put another way, it is the story we attribute to the event that generates the body reactions, emotions and subsequent behaviours…

The Negativity Bias - do you practise what you preach?

So Rick Hanson, who has done a lot of research into the science of happiness, explores the brain and how the human brain hangs onto lessons learned from negative experiences. As a neuropsychologist , he is particularly interested in the intersection of psychology, neurology, and Buddhism and has some interesting ways to help us understand how we are wired to notice the negative and ignore the positive…after all, it’s the negative that potentially threatens us!

Working with couples I explain this to them because without them knowing this they don’t stay connected with all that is still working in their relationship. I try to practise what I preach and this one is a real challenge for my own life! But if I can’t hold the hope for my own life how am I going to hold it for couples in the face of their own pain and negative bias!

Why do we focus on the negative and forget the positive in our relationships?

We all know how powerful positive thinking can be, so why do we naturally tend to focus on the negative?
This is an important question for us as therapists and coaches to answer on some level because our clients will unwittingly invite us into a negativity bias! Now while we want to be with the clients emotions, thoughts and experience, we also need to find a way to resist getting sucked into the negativity ourselves AND help them to move towards their natural strengths and competence that are also there lurking in the background of all the negativity.

Rick Hanson has done a lot of research into the neuroscience of happiness and has found that we can credit our innate negativity bias to our ancient ancestors. I found this very useful for both myself and my clients to understand, so click here to view a video clip of Rick explaining the evolution of the negativity bias, and how the human brain hangs onto lessons learned from negative experiences.

The moment before you light that flame...

Interestingly many of us in the field working with people and social dynamics are finding ways to package these skills in user-friendly ways that invite people to slow down and notice-and make different choices.

So Daniel Goleman says about flaming:

"When you’re tempted to hit send when angry or frustrated, try this instead:

- Save the message as a draft.
- Take three deep breaths.
- Return to your email.
- Envision yourself as the recipient of the message.
- Would they think the message has a positive or negative tone?
- Revise as you see fit.

Taking an extra few minutes to reflect on your intention and message in an email could save you a couple of hours, days, or even weeks of headache and trouble."

This particularly appeals to me because it applies to communication in the relational space and the intentionality of noticing the body-brain at work!

Flaming...how not to get burned!

Although I didn’t know the word ‘flaming’ I certainly came across this with the couples and individuals I work with!

Very often in face-to-face interaction you get an impulse to do something or say something and your social brain says, “Uh-uh-uh! That’s not going to be effective.” But that message never comes back to you when you’re sitting writing an email, because there’s no feedback loop.

The result is what’s called flaming. Flaming has been known since the earliest days of email. It’s when you’re worked up about something, and you sit down and you furiously type up a message and hit send. For a split second you have a feeling of satisfaction, and then this morbid sense of, “Oh no, why did I do that? Why did I say that?” comes over you. That’s a flame. It’s a disaster. And it’s a disaster that would not have occurred face to face, most likely.

For me there is something here about a wider issue and that’s impulse control in a time where we have increasingly high expectations of both technology and how life ‘should’ go. More and more part of my work with clients has been to invite them into learning and using self-soothing skills to slow and calm their bodies and minds. For me this skill has gone from being a desirable skill for clients (and myself!) to have, to being an essential one in the face of stimulation bombardment!

E-mail and the Negativity Bias

Not only are we missing huge amounts of vital information while e-mailing, but Daniel Goleman tells us:

‘And there is an actual negativity bias in email where senders think that a message was positive, but that’s because they assume all the other cues were clearly received. It’s an unconscious assumption. Receivers think that positive email was more neutral. When the sender thinks it’s neutral, receivers tend to think it’s more negative. In other words, there is a general negativity skew to email.’

Ok…so that’s interesting! It invites me to begin to think about my own use of texting etc. with more consciousness and I think I might just call more and leave texting for concrete information like an expected time of arrival – or to invite a chat time….

E-mails and Relationships

E-mails shape our relationships!

 

We all know this and have stories to tell but now, as Daniel Goleman and others are researching this phenomenon, we're beginning to understand why.

The social part of our brain that tunes into micro-expressions and emotions is crippled when we are using e-mails /texts/ Twitter/ Facebook etc....we just don’t have the wealth of background information to make sense of the words.

And yet these ways of communicating are so very useful and now embedded in the fabric of our daily lives. So the question is...how to enhance relationships using this technology and protect ourselves from the relational fallout?

Any ideas out there?!?

Weaving an Encounter

We all know on some level that when we sit with a client it is vital that we know how to be in our higher self - in our higher cortex where we can think, plan, integrate and observe relationally. We also know that at any given moment we can find ourselves triggered or drifting off in our attention and that the client picks this up on some level whether they speak about it or not.

Daniel Goleman talks about this:

'You have to put aside whatever else you're doing, and pay full attention to the person who’s with you. And that opens the way to rapport, where emotional flow is in tandem. When your physiology is in synchrony with someone else you feel connected, close and warm. You can read this human moment in terms of physiology – but you can also read it experientially, because during those moments of chemistry we feel good about being with the other person. And that person is feeling good about being with us.'

 

And that is exactly, I believe, the encounter where true transformation takes place!

Emotional Contagion

So relating with our clients without at least some understanding and awareness of this emotional contagion really would be working with one arm tied behind our backs metaphorically.

'In any human group, people pay most attention to – and put most importance on – what the most powerful person in that group says or does....Such emotional contagion happens whenever people interact...This contagion can happen because of our social brain, through circuitry like the mirror neuron system. Person-to-person emotional contagion operates automatically, instantly, unconsciously and out of our intentional control.

But we are only human - what happens when we are feeling tired, stressed or overwhelmed by any variety of things? And now we know that we are transmitting something else altogether! What an unsettling thought.

 

This last week I did a course where we were asked to play the role of supervisor with a supervisee and to focus on ourselves and do and say whatever we were feeling in the moment...a sort of stream of consciousness. Well it had some interesting effects! Being so in the here-and-now fed into the relational space a new energy and immediacy that had the amazing result of causing the client-supervisee relationship to be clearly re-experienced by the supervisee.

 

Hmmmm....I'm thinking of emotional contagion in all sorts of ways - how about you?!

Powerful People

So I was reading one of Daniel Goleman's posts on The Social Brain and he said something really interesting. He said:

'We are constantly impacting the brain states in other people. In my EI model, “Managing Relationships” means, at this level, that we’re responsible for how we shape the feelings of those we interact with – for better or for worse. In this sense, relationship skills have to do with managing brain states in other people.

This raises a question. Who sends the emotions that pass between people, and who receives them? One answer, for groups of peers, is that the sender tends to be the most emotionally expressive person in the group. But in groups where there are power differences – in the classroom, at work, in organizations generally – it is the most powerful person who is the emotional sender, setting the emotional state for the rest of the group.'

This has profound implications for those of us who provide any sort of service to others inviting them into better mental, physical , emotional and spiritual health. If we are aware of how our own brain-body pitches up in relationships then we are best placed to have that positive impact that we want and the client longs for.

Change?

It seems to me that coaching has a place in our modern world... in fact it may well have been going on in various forms in the past century in the form of pastoral advice, medical insructions and spiritual sessions!

We as therapists do need to change to meet the needs of the here and now – and yet find a way to walk with integrity in it all. After all... there is room for all of us. The “sexy” branded coach and the different work of the longer therapy – we are all needed. And if therapists are finding their diaries have too many open spots, then the adventure is to look at how to do what we do in a way that fits our context now.... and that, dear friends is another exciting story!

Fast food therapy?

So is coaching a kind of ‘fast food therapy’? Does it pander to what clients think they want but unwittingly leave them with out the substantial nutrition of more in-depth work? Am I colluding in sustaining something that is an indulgence - something that feels good but isn’t good for you?

And yet...who am I to rate human interactions and the immense variety of them as either right or wrong...good or bad...