A husband getting dressed and wanting a particular shirt, asks his wife if she has done the ironing that week (this being an agreed division of labour in their household). She responds snappily "You know what a busy week I've had with the children being sick and having to work that extra shift. Why don't you just iron it yourself?"
His huffy response is "I'm only asking if you have, I'm not expecting it should be done". She then retorts, crying "You're always nagging me about the housework. You have no idea what it's like to be a mother at home with the children all day!" He leaves the room, resentful, silently blaming her for being over sensitive, wondering whether it's "that time of the month". He doesn't ring her at lunch time like he usually does and is cool and remote when he gets in from work that night, and feels bad for the next couple of days.
In counselling, the couple unpack the pattern of this argument, and recognise its familiarity as one of a few patterns they follow. He asks for something (in counselling he admits there is a demanding quality to his asking, she reacts (feeling angry, but cries), and, responds irritably (or even angrily), he then withdraws from her.
Sometimes they cycle around the pattern a number of times before the eventual withdrawing occurs. They come to realise that once the pattern has begun, it seems almost unstoppable - neither of them can be any different with each other with ease. Even if they choose to behave differently towards each other - her not taking his request as being unappreciative of her life and him not stopping talking to her when she reacts - they are still left with uncomfortable feelings. So what is going on here?
Dr Leslie Greenberg, the Canadian developer of the evidence based Emotion Focused therapy, talks about the pattern of our arguments with our intimate partners being founded on our primary maladaptive emotional responses, and then being maintained by secondary emotional responses.
The foundations of this are our emotional systems which are rapid reacting, adaptive and survival based systems that are prime motivators of our behaviours.
So for example, when we see a snake, the message from the visual perception system first reaches the emotional processing part of the brain where the "flight or fight" response is activated (increased heart rate etc) even before the visual cortex of the brain has developed a conscious image of the snake for the person to respond to.
Whilst acknowledging that our cognitive minds can influence or even create feelings, he says that the majority of our emotional responses to our environment are based on the fast, automatic mid brain systems.
However some of these emotional responses are maladaptive: familiar bad feelings that constantly recur and do not change. They are not amenable to modification, even when we tell ourselves that we don't need to respond that way. Typically, these emotional schema come from our unfinished business with others in our lives.
Eventually, the couple above come to realise how their own "sensitivities" are fuelling this pattern. Her maladaptive reactivity is related to her primary anger about being the caretaker in the family she grew up in, constantly having to respond to the demands of her younger siblings, where her mother was chronically ill. Her constructed emotional schema from that situation react automatically when she perceives that demands are being placed on her. His resentful silence ironically has a similar history - he too had an unwell mother with depression - and as a young child was emotionally wounded by his mother's inability to respond to his requests for help. His current angry feelings are a secondary response to the automatic schema of shame and hurt that has been activated by his wife not responding to his request for help.
Greenberg posits that these negative interactions can be transformed by:
"¢ Discovering this emotional vulnerability and expressing it to the partner in a safe environment where the partner is able to understand and accept the other person's response.
"¢ A subsequent softening of the partner's response to the reactivity, and
"¢ Each person having the ability to recognise and deal with their own sensitivities, having the capacity to self soothe, and to seek self growth to transform the original maladaptive emotional schemes.
Greenberg would state that his model has humanist basis, but as Christians I believe we have much to learn from the description of influence of childhood on our adult selves.
At this point we need to take responsibility for our behaviour, and to seek the help we need in order to overcome it. For many of my clients, their capacity to be soothed when distressed, and being healed of childhood wounding, is deeply founded in their relationship with Jesus. As they become more aware of who they are, and wrestle with this in prayer, seeking the Lord's comfort, healing and strengthening, they are transformed day by day, and are more able to be in loving, authentic relationships with their partners.
