THREE VERY USEABLE SKILLS FOR BETTER RELATIONSHIPS

 
In my mind we are all designed to be relational. As Terry Real says, “Intimate connectedness is our birthright and optimal state. The cure for emotional problems is intimacy.”

The relational therapists at the Stone Center in at Wesleyan College in Massachusetts talk about the “self” really being an entity of “the self in relationship.”  They often refer to Carol Gilligan's revolutionary work in psychology. Terry was very lucky to have worked on a project with her and references her a lot.

Since his model, Real Relational Solutions, is the one I'm using with Couples, I think I will illustrate a few skills we all can practice and use.

Even when I work with an individual, I still do relational therapy. This means I am always asking questions about how their beliefs, decisions, and behaviors affect their spouses or anyone else in their life.

1. One popular assignment in relational therapy is to write or talk about what the experience is of your Significant Other in being married to you.

A  lot of times we get stuck in what it's like for us. This assignment is very conducive to
taking us out of our natural self-absorption and making us think more relationally. Also, this assignment can bring us to a very important place: it moves us from what we feel is a reality—what we believe is true for both of us into a perception—our particular filter or take on reality.

Resolving problems can often be made easier when we remember that our reality is really just our perception and that our spouse may have a very different one.

Ex: Jill's husband, Steve, tells her on Sunday night that he bought chicken salad for the lunches on Monday.

Monday morning, Lauren sees that there is a leftover ham sandwich her son had not eaten and wraps that up for him. She fixes the chicken salad for her Steve.

Steve is frustrated, in a rush, and gets angry. He tells her that their son didn't want the leftover ham. He wanted chicken salad, too.  When Jill responds by saying she didn't know that, he says, well I told you I bought chicken salad for lunches. To Steve, this was explanation enough. For Jill, it wasn't.

Now, you might be saying, “well, why can't Steve fix the dam lunches if he's so certain about what everyone wants?” But that is not the point here. The point is, they both had very different perceptions about what was being said. Realizing and being specific about your perception and not just assuming that someone else gets it too can go a long way.

When both partners do this assignment they begin to address everything they bring to the table, both productive and not. Usually, they begin to think about where they learned some of their most “un-relational” traits such as the Five Losing Strategies:
            1. Being Right
            2.Controlling Your Partner   
            3.Unbridled Self Expression
            4.Retaliation
            5.Withdrawal

The next relational exercise that gives the weekend training, “Couples Boot Camp” its name is Exercise #2:
                        Core Negative Image (C.N.I.)
Each partner is asked to write a description of this:
“Who your partner becomes to you in those most difficult, irrational, least loving moments.”
As you can imagine there are usually teary moments when these are read back to each other. Most often a listener gets teary when they hear a kernel of truth in their partner's perception.

Using the C.N.I's to help your relationship necessitates:
                  1.Make each others C.N. I explicit and specific

1. Acknowledge the truth in each others C.N.I.'s
2. Identify C.N.I. Busting behaviors
3. Use C.N.I. As your compass.

This exercise must be done within the safety net of a therapy session. Why? Well, first of all, it can only work when the C.N.I. Description is explicit and specif, not global. Phrases like “you always,” “you never,” “all you ever do” are generally too broad and therefore, not true.

Secondly, the exercise must be done in terms of “my perception of you” and must be tracked to separate out projections from authentic observations and experiences. Third, it cannot b done accurately when one partner is angry, frustrated or otherwise “in the Red.”
And also, the listener must come down from the Red if s/he starts to react.
Red=Triggered Reaction of Adapted Child
Green=modified response of Functional Adult.

Often, each partner is first instructed to write down, “What I imagine His or Her C.N.I.
Is of Me. Our self-criticisms are worse than what our Significant Other thinks of us.

#3. C.N.I. Busting Behavior
a, listen with a healthy boundary (an egg with a door that opens and closes)  wrapped around you
b. take the kernels of truth and change those behaviors
c. reapir your self-esteem. Good esteem comes from you internally, not externally.
d. change your communication style from complaint to reasonable request
e. change your listening style to listening with an open mind.:
            put yourself aside
            put “Objective Reality” aside
            what is your partner's experience?
            Get fascinated, inside your egg, at their perception=who are they and
            can you see how s/he feels as they do?
f. empower your functional adult. Learn how to go from the Red to the Green
g. learn these Five Winning Strategies:
            1. go after what you want
            2. speak to make things better
            3. listen to understand
            4. respond with generosity
            5. cherish what you have
           
Remember projections; remember we are the apple that hasn't fallen that far from the tree and the demons from our Family of Origin may be completely intertwined in your perception of your partner.

Here's a metaphor I often use to illustrate this:

Moses spent 40 years in the desert because the first generation of slaves had to die out in order to for him to get accurate ass3essments from his scouts. The slaves would scout and see their enemies has huge, horrifying and unbeatable. The next generation saw their enemies as tough, fierce, but beatable.

We all can move into more healthy Adult perceptions. Our partner is not our enemy, Remember love.

Wendy Allen, Ph.D., MFT is the only certified psychotherapist in Santa Barbara to provide the specific Real Relational Solutions model of couples therapy. This is a comprehensive and compassionate model to help both members of a couples get unstuck and find solutions from problems through cognitive and behavioral change and repair that lasts.