26/01/2019
The Stories We Tell
Believing is Seeing
In our early work with couples it was a source of continual amazement how two obviously intelligent people could have such completely different takes on the same shared experience. It wasn't until we became more sophisticated in how the brain actually operates that we could make sense of this anomaly. While it is not our desire here to dive too deeply into the neuroscience of relationship, suffice it to say that there is always method to the seeming madness. By and large most couples in this culture are overly guided by the thoughts in their heads. When we over-rely on our ability to think abstract , linguistic thoughts we take one giant step away from fully embodied experience. Let’s say that Terry notices that Owen appears to be upset. She sees that look. Her body experiences a fear reaction to this awareness but almost instantly she goes to the thought “He must be angry at something I did.” She desperately searches her memory to try and figure out how she upset Owen. Had she simply remained with her body reaction she could have responded very differently. She may have said,”Owen I notice you look upset. Am I correct?” Or, she may go on to tell him that she gets scared when she sees that look. This is the place where intimacy happens.
Why then do we turn to story, or what Marcia and I will refer to as “narrative?” Our stories, or narratives have an important role in our capacity to walk through life with some sense of order. Narrative creates a sense of safety and control. It provides us with coherency. In many ways it allows us to create meaning in our lives. Yet, at the same time our narratives often get in the way of being with our fully embodied relationship to each other and to life. We learn to explain life rather than experience it. Our body and it’s emotions are more wild and unpredictable. The tale we tell can easily be controlled; our feelings, not so much. Often, even in therapy, the story supplants the person’s lived experience. This is typically done to help us feel normal rather than to simply help us feel.
For instance, Mark tells his therapist that he stopped having s*x with Octavia because she put on weight. The therapist helps the couple to see the connection between Mark’s s*xual avoidance and the fact that his father used to humiliate his mother and openly blame her for their lack of s*x. A valuable insight indeed, but nothing really changed. This narrative helps both Octavia and Mark feel less self critical, but actually has no effect on their s*x life. Mark was never encouraged by the therapist to enter into the uncomfortable truth of how he actually feels when he is making love to Octavia. HIs judgment of her body was only the tip of an emotional iceberg.
Beneath his chilly veneer, Mark was angry about Octavia’s indifference to his advances, fearful of his own performance, hurt by her criticisms of him, and very remorseful for what he saw as his shallowness. Additionally, he loved her and found it difficult to be both erotic and “heart centered” at the same time. Love and lust were experienced as incompatible. Only after he was able to connect to and express these very crucial emotional truths were they able to begin breaking through the s*xual impasse.
We only make headway in our relationships when we are feeling connected. Connection, as we highlighted in the previous chapter, is one of the three grand human needs. As we develop our capacity to create narratives we tend to experience less connection with others. All the analyzing, all the reading, all the contemplating we do has precious little impact on our connection to each other. Connection is a resonance of energy that happens most fully through our senses and our emotions. It involves the surrender of our intellectual craving to justify and rationalize in favor of the mutual vibration of soul and sinew. That is, our basic nature is connection. As primates we have a deep need for each other. Too much emphasis on words often only serves to create greater distance. We need touch, and we need emotional attunement or empathy.
At best, sharing our thoughts and narratives creates “connection lite.” We understand each other a bit better and we have a common frame of reference, but that’s as good as it gets. We can detail and catalog our issues and problems but there they remain. More frequently our narratives leave us confined to our history. In our narrative world, believing is seeing. That is, our preconceptions force us to see what we want to see. Thus we see our partners as we predict them to be. We truly come to believe our narratives and consequently miss the experience of connection. As Ben Franklin aptly said, “The most exquisite folly is made of wisdom spun too fine.”
We begin creating our narratives early on in life. These narratives, as I already suggested, serve a vital function of lending coherency to an otherwise chaotic exposure to the world around us. The human brain develops generalizations as a way to navigate uncharted territory. (“This person is safe.” “Dogs are dangerous.” “If I eat this cookie I’ll be punished.” “Aunt Sally is fun because lets me play in the mud.”) The development of narratives, however, can leave us trapped inside firmly held beliefs that rob us of our spontaneity. Further, it is through our narratives that we begin to develop our judgments, and prejudices.
In researcher Howard Gardner’s study of multiple forms of intelligence (Quoted in Chilton Pearce 2002), he discovered that nearly all young children before age four tested at the genius level. By the time the children reached their twenties, the percentage attaining genius level plummeted to two. This shocking result, according to Gardner, was due to humans’ internal “Voice of Judgment.” Stated another way, our analyzing mind learns to judge its own performance (as well as everyone else’s). These judgments rob us of our child-like self expression and natural creative tendencies.
Marcia and I have learned that by connecting to our vital emotional and body wisdom we can transcend the Voice of Judgment. We remain separate from each other when we are ruled by the parts of the brain that create our linear, story- based thinking. Couples lose each other in the narratives each partner develops of the other. Much of the work we do with couples is to open each partner up to different ways of relating, beyond the discursive mind.
We open up to wondrous possibility as we learn to expand our repertoire of experiencing life. Thus, much of our couple work is devoted to the creation of “emotional literacy” and “bottom-up wisdom.” Narratives are a form of “top-down” intelligence. For instance: 1st Partner - “You are terrible with money.” 2nd Partner - “You’re cheap.” When a couple argue from top-down judgments, there is no space for connection, only conflict.
As partner’s learn to access what bodily reactions are trying to tell each of them, a whole new world of connection opens. As an example, Carla responds with angry judgment to Daniel when she catches him ogling a younger woman. She harbors a narrative that “All men eventually cheat.” and this foments here judgments of Daniel. Creating a connection begins, not with correcting Carla’s judgment but with helping her to listen to her body signals as a way to make contact with how she feels. This involves recognizing not only her angry judgment, but all of what she feels - or what we refer to as “full emotional self-expression. It is nearly impossible to overcome attachment to a narrative without accessing this emotional “bottom-up” wisdom.
In Carla’s case, she had developed the narrative of the “universal male cheat,” because her father and grandfather had both done just that to her mother and grandmother. Consequently, she pounces on Daniel using interrogation tactics. She tries to get him to confess to what she already believes to be true (remember in our narrative world believing is seeing). He would rather be with another woman. Her judgmental anger is, in this case, her misplaced rage at the men in her family.
By having a place where she can express these long-denied feelings and the insecurity grafted to them, Carla is better able to distinguish Daniel from her male forbears. She can begin to see him more clearly - that is beyond the narrative. The story her narrative tells rules out the possibility of genuine connection to Daniel. The word “story” comes from the same root as “storage.” We “store” our ideas about others and the world and call upon them to explain what is happening. But then we are left operating from our history (also rooted in the same word as story). We miss the vitality and possibility presented to us in each moment when our narratives rule our perceptions.
Neuroscience has revealed that humans have two primary sources of memory: implicit and explicit. Implicit memories are what we commonly refer to as “body memories.” They are felt memories - sensations and emotions that we cannot attribute to any consciously recalled event. These body memories often lead to what seem to be overreactions in our marital relationships. Contrary to some schools of thought it is sometimes important to allow for the expression of these body memories. Such implicit memories may show up as rage, terror, or deep grief. Or they may show up in our anxieties and insecurities. The human body does best when there is adequate space to express the implicit memories.
Carla, for example, feels strong reactions of rage and revulsion coursing through her body when she sees Daniel eying the younger woman. These reactions were wired long ago. Hoping to convince her that Daniel is safe without addressing the implicit body memories is wishing upon a star.
Explicit memories are the narratives we develop, beginning in earnest in the third year of life. Brain science tells us that explicit memory isn’t fixed and static, but is continually influenced by life experience. This is why, for instance, a person who was exposed to inappropriate touch may only come to “remember’ it as bad later in life after learning about the harm such an experience can cause.
Additionally, our memories can become fixed generalizations about “the way life is.” Our narratives are colored and flavored by the limits of our understanding at the time they were formed. Again, in Carla’s case, she may have reacted to how she witnessed her mother’s reaction to her father’s cheating and developed an over-generalized narrative that all men are cheats. This narrative help her protect, she believes, against the strong emotions of fear, hurt, and disgust that reside in her body memory.
The heavy price we pay for the presumed control that we think our narratives afford us, is the loss of potential for genuine human connection to the person we share a life with. If Carla stays accusatory toward Daniel, she will be met with a self-protecting response from Daniel. If she is able to express how much fear and hurt is triggered by his being attracted to another woman, she creates the space for empathy and caring from Daniel. For, in the geometry of the committed relationship, the shortest distance between two points is empathy.
In the remainder of this chapter we will identify some of the more important characteristics of narratives so that we can appreciate how they impact our ability to go all the way in creating an exceptional relationship.
Narratives are created, in part, to protect us from the raw, unfiltered emotions that are part of our human condition.
Strong emotions need a container. Good parenting allows children to have their feelings without shame or fear. But for the vast majority of us, our childhood experience did not allow us to develop this container. Instead, we either removed unwanted emotions from both expression and awareness, or we became ruled by feelings such as anger fear and sadness. Simply put, when we learn that we are bigger than our strong feelings, we trust in our capacity to experience them. A child who expresses unfettered emotions without any semblance of parental support will grow to fear her impulses and doubt her capacity to have the feeling without “becoming” or merging with the feeling. We learn from the abundant literature on Attachment Theory that parents who are adept at being with a child and can feel what that child needs even when she is distressed, help that child develop a strong container. Conversely, when a child’s parents crush his spirit through shame or intimidation when she is experiencing strong emotions, that child learns to withdraw from her internal world. She suppresses his life force and in a different way has not learned to contain her feelings. She exiles his emotional world and lives cut off from her bottom-up wisdom.
Our narratives, then, reflect how we learned to manage our undefended emotional reality. For example, one man recently described how his mother was hospitalized for depression when he was four. This was a devastating experience for him, but there was no one who helped him feel his emotional pain. The narrative he devised was that he was too much trouble for his mother. Thus, in his mind, it was his behavior that drove her to needing hospitalization. The narrative allowed him to imagine that if he just behaved differently he could control his mother’s availability. In his marriage, he carries this narrative that if he is “too much” for his partner, she will abandon him. As a result he never expresses need or displays emotions to his partner. As this man became more able to connect to his undefended feelings of emotional pain, helplessness, and fear of abandonment he began to trust that not only would his mate not abandon him, but that she actually opened her heart to him in ways he could not have imagined.
It is a vital aspect of developing an exceptional relationship to be able to recognize our narratives and to ask ourselves “What emotions does my story keep me from feeling? Often our narratives result in the formation of judgments toward our partner and toward ourselves. As we will see in the next section, these judgments keep us from seeing ourselves and our partner in the fullness of who we really are, with all our emotional complexity.
Narratives formed in childhood are over-generalizations that are typically mixed with magical thinking
As adults we are continuously forming new narratives. The formation of new narratives are the way our brain continues to sort and assess the never ending bombardment of information and stimuli. For instance, a fairly new narrative I have taken on is “I am an introvert.’ The awareness of this has a positive impact on my relationship with Marcia. Giving a name to our behavior often helps us to be more compassionate with ourselves. But it is also only a partial truth. I am not just an introvert. I am more complex and nuanced. When we rely on our narratives too rigidly we miss opportunities to see what else might be present.
Many of our narratives are developed in our formative years. The establishment of these early life narratives result in conclusions we draw about the world and ourselves that are simplistic and black and white. Our early life narratives are typically sweeping conclusions that leave no room for nuance. Additionally, the child’s brain has less capacity to distinguish fact from fantasy. So, some of our earliest narratives are riddled with superstition and the belief that one can influence the outer world merely by thinking.
These early-life narratives have been referred to as “life scripts” because they can color all future decisions we make based on our firm belief in the. truth of these scripts. In some ways, the global conclusions we draw from our childhood experiences so limit our self-expression that we can never fully mature. Some typical childhood narratives include:
“The world is a dangerous place.”
“Strong feelings are bad.”
“Mommy is perfect.”
“If I am bad daddy will drink.”
“All girls are untrustworthy.”
“All boys are selfish.”
“if I express need, I’ll be let down.”
“If I am not always on my guard, someone will take advantage of me..”
“Life is all about performance.”
“My impulses are evil.”
You can see how these early-life narratives can lead to limits on how we operate in the world and how much we can actually connect to our partners. When we bring these narratives into our committed relationship, we see our mates through a very filtered lens. If I believe that expressing need in my relationship will result in being hurt and disappointment, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As we will see in the next section, I will come to view my partner as incapable of meeting my needs and develop a “negative narrative” of who she is. We are then prone to seeing our partner as “always being this way” or “never being that way.”
Narratives emphasize certain aspects of the world and our relationships and marginalize or diminish others
What we mean when we say that narratives result in marginalizing important informations that we humans tend to focus on all the data that reinforces our narrative and tune out contradicting information. Let’s look at a classic example - the battle of the toilet seat. As the perennial battle unfolds, wife exclaims, “You never remember to put the seat down!” and husband retorts, “What do you mean? I always put the seat down!” So, how can two intelligent people have such widely disparate memories? Her narrative that he never puts the seat down is based on her paying attention only to the times the seat is left up. These instances sear in her brain and reinforce her narrative of her husband as “unthoughtful.” The times he does put the seat down go unnoticed by her, because they simply don’t stand out. Her memory is only of those times that reinforce her narrative. Husband, on the other hand, distinctly remembers whenever he puts the seat down, but when he forgets to do so, he simply doesn't register this fact. Thus, in his mind all he remembers are the times he puts the seat down and is baffled by her narrative that he never does. Marcia and I have worked with countless couples who argue endlessly about recollections that vary widely because of their respective narratives.
Let’s take another example. Ethel has been dating Julius for three months. She is convinced that he is the most compassionate man on earth. She marginalizes all those nagging instances when he is controlling of her behavior. She says to herself, “He does it because I am so important to him.” She developed this narrative in childhood as she witnessed her parent’s interactions. She learned that “Control is a sign of love.” But she marginalizes her own troubled responses to his need to control and it is likely this will come back to haunt her down the road. Julius, conversely, holds a narrative that if he is not ever-vigilant, Ethel will find somebody better. His mother constantly teased him about his desirability and compared him negatively to his brothers. His insecurity reveals itself as controlling behavior. He can only see threat when Ethel is not under his watchful eye. So he marginalizes all the ways she compliments him and shows how attracted she is.
Most couples will develop a “negative narrative” of each other
As relationships evolve over time, each partner is apt to create a fixed story about the other. Even in well functioning relationships, there is a tendency for both parties to develop a “negative narrative” of each other. Because the human brain tends to organize around what doesn’t work more than what does, there is a likelihood that our narrative will cast our partner in an unflattering light. Even as we may love this person, these narratives can cause relational misery and mayhem.
If one spouse sees his mate as selfish, his mind will lock into every example of her behavior that reinforces his “selfish” narrative. Every time she she engages in a behavior that he deems selfish, it solidifies his belief. The long-term result can be that, in his eyes, this becomes the dominant narrative of who she is. When we mentor couples we are, very early on, trying to ascertain the existence of the couple’s negative narratives. One strong clue comes in the form of absolutes in each person’s description of the other. “He always…” She never…”
Here are some typical examples of what we look for:
“He’s a workaholic. He always puts the family last.”
“She is lazy. Unless I constantly remind here, nothing would ever get done.”
“All he thinks about is s*x. He doesn’t really care about me.”
“My wife is totally forgetful. I can’t trust her with keeping track of anything.”
“He is boring. His idea of a good time is to read the newspaper.”
“She’s obsessed with what other’s think.”
“He’s so insecure.”
“She never shuts up.”
“He’s completely self absorbed.”
“She is a lousy lover.”
These are just a smattering of possible negative narratives partners develop toward each other. Most narratives will hold some small degree of truth to them. He indeed may be overly focused on work, or she may lack initiative. But the global assessment of the other will inevitably result in our failure to see anything that doesn’t fit with our narrative. Thus, any example of him not being self-absorbed often goes unnoticed. Likewise, if he identifies her as being “totally forgetful” he will become unable to notice those times when she has be thoughtful and caring.
It may be that we adhere to our negative narratives for a couple of reasons. First, we often get hurt by our partner’s shortcomings and personality traits. It is easier to develop a negative narrative than to constantly have to feel the hurt of, say, his focus on work. Hence, as discussed above, our narratives protect us from unwanted and vulnerable feelings. Judgments of the other are easier to manage than painful feelings. Second, it is also likely that we garner some secret pleasure by diminishing our mate. This “darker” part of our human nature results from our need to feel safe. When we criticize our partner, we gain a certain sense of superiority. It is a very useful exercise to contemplate your negative narrative of your partner. Once you have established what it is, it is worth asking yourself “What purpose does it serve to see my partner in this light?”
There is a heavy price to pay for our adherence to our negative narratives. Over time our capacity to see our mate in the fullness of who she diminishes. We are left with an ever decreasing capacity to appreciate and enjoy all of her goodness and “higher self” qualities. We lose our capacity to experience Eros when we put our partner in a box and only see what we believe. This is a tragic occurrence indeed. Marcia and I have seen relationships go down in flames because each person has come to see the other in the most narrow and negative ways.
If she sees him only as a “workaholic,” she misses all the ways he actually considers her and the family. Perhaps his work is his way of offering a good life and he feels like he is sacrificing for a larger cause. When he settles on the belief that she’s a lousy lover, he is likely missing all the ways his criticisms inhibit her, or he fails to be curious about her history of abuse. Or, maybe what arouses her is threatening to him. In other words, negative narratives turn our partners into two dimensional figures with no depth. If we really want to create an exceptional relationship, it is our responsibility to challenge our fixed stories and not only see that our partner is more than how we define him, but also to see the ways we have co-created the story. Getting past our narratives means trusting our bottom-up wisdom. What’s involved is stepping away from what we think, and listening to our emotions and the energy of our bodies. Wisdom comes to us then through more subtle and uneven channels. We rely more on vague sensibilities, incomplete ideas or intuitions, and nagging gut reactions.
To go this route requires greater emotional literacy. Listening and honoring the normally untapped flow of information that comes through these seemingly back channels is the stuff of an exceptional relationship. When couples are in conflict, and their respective autonomic nervous systems are in high arousal, there is a far greater likelihood that each will resort to his firmly established narratives rather that to stop and listen to his body signals. Thus, he may say, ‘You never want to make love!” To which she replies, “All you want to do is go right to s*x. You never act romantic!” From these opposing narratives, the conflict will continue until exhaustion sets in. Empathy and compassion are not within reach.
Imagine how different it might play out if he said, “I feel so hurt when you reject me s*xually. I am afraid you don’t desire me.” Or, she shared, “It’s hard for me to warm up to you s*xually when I don’t think you notice me or appreciate me for other things.” This kind of emotional literacy is where the seeds of empathy reside. In our negative narrative we are more apt to attribute sinister motives to our partner. “She’s withholding s*x to punish me.” “He sets me up to say no so he can criticize me.” Only as we claim our body-based emotional truths can we discover the best of who we are.
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