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.
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!
“…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
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.
