Manchester Psychotherapy

Counselling in Manchester

Are There Lizards In Your Relationship?

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Your Brain and Your RelationshipWhen workign with couples I use Imago Relationship Therapy. Imago places a great emphasis on safety. An Imago couples counsellor will work hard at keeping both partners safe and ensure that they keep each other safe as they are talking. This post looks at why it’s important to feel safe in our relationships and how this allows growth for both partners.

Let’s start at the beginning, and I mean the very beginning for us humans. We are going to talk about the human evolutionary journey. There is now plenty of evidence to suggest that our brains formed in three stages;

  • First our lizard brain formed (the brain stem) – we were pretty basic creatures at this stage so needed tactics to stay alive. When under threat this part of our brain tells us to fight, run away, freeze (think rabbit in headlight) or submit.
  • Next came our mammalian brain (the limbic system) – this allowed us to have emotions, become social animals and form relationships (think wolves in packs).
  • Finally our logical brain (the cerebral cortex) – this is our thinking part, the only animal with a bigger cerebral cortex than humans is the dolphin (so don’t play chess with them ‘cos they will beat you). This is our speech, writing, maths, time and logical process centre. It’s the part of the brain that allows us to make decisions and veto those biological urges we have that may not be useful for us, e.g playing dead when sitting examinations has never been a great strategy if we want to progress up the education ladder!

I guess you can see where this post is now heading! When we apply this model to our relationships it becomes obvious that shouting at our partner is not going to get us what we want. If they get scared then old lizard brain kicks in and you may as well be talking to a gecko! Their brains are not going to have the capacity to think things through and they are just going to be focusing on survival. Logic and mammalian brain are switched off and they get ready to run away, do nothing, attack back or just agree with everything you say in an attempt to shut you up. Been there? I know I have!

Everyday strategies to avoid lizarding your loved one!

Many of these techniques are naturally built into Imago Relationship Therapy, but you don’t need to be working with a therapist to do them. Try the following:

  • Book an appointment with your partner when you want to talk about something important to you. It may be that they are ready to listen to you right there and then. If not, agree a time when both of you are in the right frame of mind to discuss the issue.
  • Avoid criticism, contempt, stonewalling and defensiveness when talking to your partner. Once you introduce any of these bad boys into the conversation you are going to be talking to a lizard faster than you can say “Godzilla”! Check out my post on these four relationship wreckers here.
  • Stick with “I” statements. Talking about yourself rather than your partner is much less confrontational and will keep your partner safe.
  • Have a soft start up. Ease your way into the discussion rather than hitting your partner full in the face with your demands! “I realise you are working really hard to bring money in for the family and I miss you when you aren’t around at dinner time” feels very different to “you are always bloody late for dinner you selfish pig”! John Gottman found that he could predict the outcome of an argument from the first sentence very accurately. Soft startups allowed discussion to happen (lizard free), whilst harsh startups pretty much always rapidly descended into arguments where both partners felt hugely wronged.
  • Repair as you go along. Once more, Gottman found that couples adept in the art of repairing whilst arguing stayed together. It was one of the most common skills found in couples that had been happily married long term. A repair attempt might be something like “yeah – I could see how you would think that, I was pretty grouchy yesterday” or “I know you are stressed at work at the moment and you don’t mean to snap at me”. It’s basically putting yourself in your partner’s shoes and validating their point of view.

If you can do a few of the suggestions above you are well on the way to a lizard free relationship. You’re not going to get it right all the time, no one does, but these techniques can make a significant difference to the feel of the relationship and make it a safer place to be. With safety comes the potential for change and growth for you both.

Imago Relationship Therapy – Empathy

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relationship therapy in ManchesterIn this series of article I have been discussing my view of the Imago Relationship Therapy Dialogue process. This process forms the core of all Imago work and the first thing I will teach when couples counselling. The framework is there to provide safety for both members of the couple. When we feel safe within our relationship we have full access to all parts of our brains land we are less likely to revert back to survival behaviour such as shouting (fight), withdrawing (flight) or stonewalling (freeze).

I have explained each stage of the process in detail in previous articles but as a quick recap they are;

Making an appointment

Sticking to your role, either sender or receiver

When the sender has finished a send, the receiver mirrors and checks the mirror using “I heard you say”, “did I get you?” and “is there more?” questions

When the sender has finished the send the receiver summarises, validates and empathises.

This last article in the series is about empathising with your partner. Once more in the dialogue process you will be doing something the opposite way to how you usually behave in an argument. Usually it’s all about how you feel, how you are angry, sad, disappointed etc. Your partner will also be focusing on how they feel. In Imago terms you are both on your own Island and there is a huge gulf between you. With imago when you empathise with your partner you are going over to their island and checking out how they might be feeling. You are moving over to their world and this encourages connection.

How might this look? Well imagine your partner has just sent that they are annoyed at your constant lateness. You have summarised and validated their feelings. The empathy stage is to simply have a guess at how they might be feeling “I guess you might be feeling frustrated, is that how you feel?” You may or may not choose the correct feeling and as long as you have had a serious attempt at empathising with them it doesn’t really matter whether you have guessed correctly or not.

The sender will then agree or clarify what feelings are happening for them. This stage also encourages you both to talk about your feelings. If I’m going to point the finger I would have to say that us men are pretty rubbish about discussing feelings and that makes sense given that we have covert and sometimes overt messages as we grow up from numerous sources that we should “be strong” and not tell people how we feel. The empathy stage of the dialogue process encourages sharing of feelings and breaks this pattern.

Once all stages have been completed then the couple swap roles, the sender becomes the receiver and vice versa. You may think that this is a slow way to have a conversation but I disagree. If you take into account the several hours of bad feeling, sulking and withdrawing that often results from a badly ending argument done without using the imago dialogue process then the imago way looks positively sprightly. Discuss, move closer, understand each other and built a stronger relationship.

Read the book: Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix explains the Imago relationship theory in full.  It’s an easy read and will help you understand how to move from the power struggle to a conscious relationship.

Imago Relationship Therapy – Mirroring

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Imago Relationship Therapy Manchester MirroringMirroring is a fundamental skill in the Imago dialogue process. In this article, I will explore the why’s and wherefores of mirroring and I hope to give you some insight to its importance in the process. If you have marriage counselling with me then you will have heard much of this before in the session, if not I hope the post helps!

Why mirror?

When you are the receiver in the couple’s dialogue process your role is to mirror back what you have just heard your partner say. The mirror is important because it makes sure that what you heard and what was said are the same. “How could they not be?” I hear you say. Let’s take the following example;

Sender: “I make up in my head that you are interested in another man”

Receiver “So I heard you say that you are accusing me of having an affair”

The receiver put his own spin on what was said by the sender and made the sentence into something that it was not. We do this frequently in conversations with our loved ones, especially if they are becoming heated. The mirror prevents this and encourages us to stay on our partner’s island.

Did I get you?

A better mirror for this sender would be;

Receiver “I hear you say that you make up in your head that I am interested in other men. Did I get you?”

In this example we are staying on our partner’s island and seeing what the world looks like for them. They are different to us. They are separate and they think differently. The last part of the sentence is essential to the process. “Did I get you?” Notice the words. “Did I get you?” means exactly that. It’s more about understanding where your partner is coming from than repeating the words back exactly. It’s asking “am I in tune with you?”

Next steps

Next we go to the sender. The sender will either confirm “yes, you got me” or resend the parts of the send that were missed “you got most of it; I’d like to resend this bit more clearly….”

It’s important that the sender checks that what was sent was mirrored accurately and corrects it if it was not (in the nicest possible way of course, after all, if you are having someone come visit you on your Island you don’t want to sucker punch them in the guts, they’re unlikely to want to come back if you do!)

Once the send is confirmed as correct then the receiver will ask “is there more?”

Is there more?

Ah those beautiful words! “Is there more?” When you say these words to your partner as the receiver you are asking to be taken further into their world. You are giving them an opportunity to explore their thoughts and feelings about the issue to a deeper level. As the dialogue deepens then the connection between you and your partner does too. You get to find out what it’s like being them and empathise with the thoughts and feelings they are having. This puts the frustration they may be having with you in context.

The next two stages of the process of Imago dialogue are validation and empathy. I will talk about them in the next article in this series. Until then, if you have any questions about the Imago process or any thoughts or observations please get in touch using the comment box below and let’s dialogue about it!

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