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!