Practical Narrative Therapy

Returning to Hot: Continuing on with important conversations

2011-07-22T21:20:00.000-07:00

How do you have a conversation that helps you better understand and address the complexities and difficult patterns of your relationship when those same complexities and patterns can jump up and derail the conversation at any time? Further, how do you have such a difficult conversation when life interrupts you every time you get started?

STOPPING

In an earlier piece I wrote about a couple who developed their ability to STOP when a difficult-but-familiar pattern was threatening to take their marriage down a painful, destructive path. Their considerable efforts helped them to recognize, earlier and earlier, when they were headed in a direction that could easily spiral out of control. They learned ways to signal to each other that a break or time-out was needed, and they learned to reconnect when both of them had established a greater sense of calm. Their ability to do all of this helped establish a greater feeling of trust in themselves and one another: They could see one another making significant effort to protect the relationship rather than tear it down in a few moments of fear and fury.

CONTINUING

In this piece I’m focusing on a skill that seems to go in the opposite direction of the “stopping” skill: the skill of continuing – that is, the skill of carrying on or continuing a conversation over time, picking it up again after interruptions. And it’s not just any conversation, but the kind that dives into the complex, often difficult patterns of the relationship. I’m thinking here of “hot” conversations. The kind that are so emotionally charged that if you come near them, one or both of you is likely to end up “burned.”

One of the couples I work with in therapy, I’ll call them Marie and Edward, drew my attention to this skill by something they did in their relationship that didn’t seem all that remarkable at first. They had a “hot” conversation and continued it over the course of two or three days: a conversation that arose in the midst of, and focused on the emotion-laden, painful patterns that had so often tripped them up. The kind where they seriously irritated one another, where one was irate with the other for “doing that smirky thing again,” or for “always seeing me in the worst possible light,” or for “coming on too strong with the kids,” or feeling completely deflated and hopeless because the other was “distant and remote” again.

In the earlier part of our work together it was these kinds of conversations that would often precede Marie and Edward’s visits to my office. They’d have become stuck because of how one or the other had said or done something to “push” the other’s “buttons.” In short order, their responses to one another had led them to an all-too-familiar and all-too-painful impasse. Easy conversations would cease. Tension would pervade their relationship and then blanket the entire family. Unease and fatigue would stay with them throughout the day, and even their jobs provided little relief. Over and over again they’d make progress – they’d gain an understanding and make commitments to one another about how they would manage their emotions and be more thoughtful and open with each other – and then, after feeling better and working together for a while, they’d get caught again by “hot” patterns and feel demoralized all over again, wondering if they had ever made any real progress at all.

COMPLETING A CONVERSATION

But then one evening in our therapy session, Marie and Edward described a “hot” conversation that didn’t get derailed by their strong emotional reactions. Nor did interruptions bring their conversation to a permanent end. Instead they were able to return to the topic three or four times over the next couple of days. The result was that they reached a point where they actually felt like they completed the conversation. They reached a conclusion or finishing point, like they had closed a chapter. They experienced a very satisfying sense of having talked it through, of having spoken and listened, of hearing and being heard, and of the conversation having moved them to a better understanding. This was in contrast to the more typical patterns of either ending the conversation in exasperation and the hopelessness of arguing the same point over and over and over, or ending the conversation by one feeling like they had to capitulate, saying something like, “okay, okay, okay; I get it; you’re right, I shouldn’t have done what I did; I won’t do it again,” which may have brought the conversation to a close, but left neither of them with much confidence that any progress had been made.

Three things stood out for me as Marie and Edward described those couple of days:

1. First, they found ways not to get stopped by overwhelming emotional responses to their difficult patterns.

2. Second, they were able to pick up the conversation again and again after interruptions, from work, the phone, sleep, dinner, kids, e-mail, etc.

3. As a result, they gave themselves the opportunity to actually unfold and investigate some of the complexities and intricacies of their relationship, something that is nearly impossible to do if a conversation is cut short by strong reactions, or if insufficient time is given for a thorough look at complex patterns in the relationship. And they gave themselves a chance to finish, to reach a conclusion, to agree in a peaceful, kind, calm way, that they had achieved a better understanding and were in a better place together.

HOW? A NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Marie and Edward put a whole lot of effort into their relationship which helped them develop this ability to continue a “hot” conversation. From a narrative therapy perspective I’d say that, overall, their efforts added up to a different picture of their relationship: a picture that allowed each of them to respond differently than usual to their “hot” conversations. In particular, their efforts helped them to “see” or experience one another with more friendliness, more empathy, and more kindness, and helped them NOT to see each other as a threat against which they had to defend themselves.

Their friendlier, more empathic and kinder pictures of one another led Marie and Edward to experience less threat in one another’s comments and questions around the “hot” topic. Feeling less threat enabled them to avoid the types of interactions that historically had increased the heat of their conversations – for example, by “being defensive,” “making accusations,” “shutting down,” “yelling,” or “pointing fingers” – and would end any chance of making progress on the issue. INSTEAD, they treated each other’s comments and points-of-view as “worthy of consideration” because they could acknowledge one another’s “good intentions” and “genuine care.”

For example:

- Instead of seeing Marie as “demanding” or “controlling,” Edward could see that she was trying to express a fear or concern.

- Instead of seeing Edward as “moping” or “stuck in self-pity,” Marie could see that he was feeling lost and heavily burdened by obligations and responsibilities.

SOME STEPS

These changed pictures, simple as they may seem in the descriptions above, resulted from intentionality, risk-taking, and learning-from-mistakes by both Marie and Edward. Here’s a partial account of their efforts, highlighting just a few of the steps they took. (Note, these are just summaries of their efforts, rather than an attempt to document all of the steps that went into each of these changes; they describe where Marie and Edward “arrived” through their efforts, which helped them to be able to “return to hot.”)

Edward avoided assuming and guessing, and learned to ask questions instead.

-- Historically, when Edward would get nervous about something Marie was saying or doing, he would quickly jump to his own conclusions about her: about what she was feeling or thinking or wanting, etc. He then would respond to Marie, not based on what she was expressing, but on the basis of his own conclusion. Not surprisingly, this left Marie feeling misunderstood and trapped by Edward’s impressions of her. This tended to make Marie feel even more frustrated and raised the intensity of her reactions.

-- Instead, Edward learned to notice when he was headed off toward his own conclusions and assumptions. He learned to stop himself and ask Marie questions instead. And his questions were open-ended, so that Marie could explain herself and what was really going on for her, rather than having to answer either “yes” or “no” questions rooted in Edward’s assumptions.

-- The result: Edward was able not to jump to the “worst-case scenario” in his assumptions, and not become quickly panicked, afraid and “reactive/resistant” to Marie. Marie felt more understood and treated like a real person with legitimate emotions, thoughts, wants and needs, and not as some monster-like figure that had to be defended against.

Marie avoided keeping track of fairness.

-- Historically, especially as she was growing up, Marie’s life had far more than its share of unfairness. She was also someone who worked hard to help others, especially in her family. But, having been taken advantage of in the past, and continuing to live with the residual fear of being hurt by others, Marie learned to pay attention to “fairness,” and “equality” in her marriage. And although this had helped her in many respects, Marie noticed that in her relationship with Edward, the focus on fairness was leading her to keep track of “every little thing.” She was keeping a tally, and she noticed that it made it hard to actually stay connected to Edward.

-- Marie decided that the way she became more distant and critical of Edward when she “kept track of fairness” wasn’t what she wanted in her marriage. But she also didn’t want to leave herself overly vulnerable: to being the one who would give and give and give, regardless of what she received in return. Nonetheless, she decided to take a chance. Instead of “keeping track” only in her head, she started doing two things: First, when she felt “unfairness” showing up, she would stop and write a note to herself about what the unfairness was; second, after writing it down she would think about the particular unfairness and rather than “keep track” she would decide how much it mattered. If it was important, she would speak up and talk about what she wanted from Edward. If it wasn’t important (like, if it was a “feeling” of unfairness that upon closer inspection was based more on “fear” or “habit” than on anything that was actually happening), she would intentionally “let it go” and not “keep a running total of unfairness” in her head.

-- The result: Marie felt relief both from not having to keep so much in her head (that is, keeping a running total of how fair-unfair or balanced-unbalanced things were in her marriage), and from being able to actually address, “in the moment,” the things that really mattered to her. Edward also felt relieved. He felt less like Marie was “holding something over” him. And he proved to be much better at hearing Marie’s concerns “in the moment” than when they were brought up well after the fact. Addressing “in the moment” concerns – when they weren’t yet “too hot” – helped them to change course, or to do things differently, if needed, or to apologize, if necessary, and to work together toward better understanding.

A NEW PICTURE

As Marie and Edward experienced success in these ways they were able to update their picture of what they wanted from each other. In one of our final sessions they each described and elaborated on this shared preference, a preference that now had become more and more of a reality in their marriage: a preference that helped them “continue on” – to see difficult conversations through to conclusions, despite interruptions. The picture was of a rock – a massive boulder that couldn’t be moved or blown away or shaken; against which one could rest; a steady, reliable presence.

Forgiveness - Moving on from Hurt

2010-09-26T09:17:00.000-07:00

Thomas had an affair

Gina has embarrassed Carlos in front of their closest friends

LuAnn learned that Raymond wasn’t completely honest with her about the cost of a recent purchase

Royce looks on several years of marriage in which he’s felt prohibited from pursuing his interests

Renee finally has a “voice” in her marriage, but is realizing how much resentment she’s built up for not feeling “seen” or “heard” for over 20 years

Many of the couples I work with have experienced some painful incident that keeps them from “moving on” with their relationship. In therapy these couples often say, “We want to move on, but we don’t know how to get past this. How do we put this behind us?”

They often mention forgiveness as the key to moving on, but also reveal what a difficult task this can be:

“I try to forgive what happened and let it go, but it keeps coming back up.”

“If he keeps holding this over my head, if he can’t forgive me, I’m not sure I can stay in this marriage.”

“I’ve asked for forgiveness, and she’s even said she forgives me, but nothing’s really changed.”

The elusiveness of forgiveness can make it seem like a secret code: hard to decipher or hard to repeat.

So what’s actually involved in addressing a hurt or injury in a relationship and coming out on the other end feeling like it’s no longer coming between the two partners? How do both people feel good about the process and the outcome? What does forgiveness even mean in such situations? How does a couple actually “do” forgiveness?

DOING FORGIVENESS

One of my assumptions is that most couples have experienced some degree of success with the “two-step” of “I’m sorry” followed by “I forgive you.” It may take a variety of forms:

“I’m sorry,” followed by, “thanks, that helps.”

“I really screwed up,” followed by “thanks, but I really made things difficult for you: I’m sorry too.”

“I really was out of line tonight, I apologize,” followed by, “well, it didn’t feel very good, but I could see that you were trying. It’s okay.”

For many couples such two-steps may be exchanged non-verbally, through certain looks, gestures or touches, in which both partners experience a shift: Something that has come between them is no longer there.

CONFUSION

I also assume that the success of the “two-step” can make it confusing for couples when the same steps are used on other occasions but don’t make a difference. In therapy, clients may say to me: “I’ve apologized and she says she’s forgiven me, but nothing’s really changed.” Or, “I still think he’s holding it over my head, even though he’s told me he forgives me.”

In some ways, these challenges are at the center of therapy with couples: How do we move on in a way that really makes a difference, especially when our lives are intertwined in complicated ways, and when any one particular hurt or injury occurs in the context of a whole history of interactions, both good and painful?

“I may be able to forgive you for this particular incident, but the fact that it happened has me wondering and re-considering a lot of other things about our marriage.”

“I’m truly, genuinely sorry about this, and I appreciate that you’ve forgiven me. But now that it’s on the table, I realize that there are things that I’ve needed to talk to you about for a long time. Maybe now we can start to have those conversations.”

“I really want to forgive you, and in some ways I do, but I just don’t feel like I can let this go yet.”

So, what to do when the healing of forgiveness is desired but complex? What do we do when the seemingly right words have been exchanged (“I’m sorry,” “I forgive”) but they don’t make a difference?

I don’t have an easy answer. Sorry!

But, I wanted to pass along something I read several years ago that helped me considerably by providing me with a framework for thinking about forgiveness.

A CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

In his book, Conflict Mediation Across Cultures, David Augsburger explores how conflict is understood and addressed in cultures around the world. He highlights how some aspects of conflict may be unique to a given cultural context while other aspects are similar across cultures. In the book’s final chapter he examines reconciliation rituals that, he says, exist in every culture. Key to reconciliation across cultures is the process of forgiveness, which he describes as follows:

Forgiveness is the mutual recognition that repentance is genuine and right relationships have been restored or achieved.

Augsburger highlights four concepts or processes that are associated with forgiveness across cultures. It is these concepts that may offer some insight about how forgiveness works, and what gets in the way at times. I often share these ideas with my clients as a way of offering an additional lens for considering forgiveness. The four concepts are Confession, Contrition, Restitution, and Reconciliation.

Confession

Augsburger says confession “is the authentic recognition of responsibility for one’s acts and their consequences.” It “is not ventilation, dissipation, justification, or flagellation” (p. 281).

Based on Augsburger’s description, I see confession as a sincere acknowledgement of what I have done and how this has affected my partner, regardless of what my intentions were. So I might say,

“I see now how I actually affected you, regardless of my intentions. I get it now. I’m sorry.”

Or statements like, “this is how I’ve hurt you,” or “this is what I’ve done,” can be key in a process that “owns up” to one’s part in having hurt the other or the relationship.

I think of confession as a non-defensive acknowledgment of the facts of the hurt or injury or damage I’ve done – “I see that I’ve done this …” But even such a sincerely felt acknowledgment can fall flat or feel unconvincing without the second concept or process of forgiveness: contrition.

Contrition

Augsburger describes contrition as “appropriate sorrow for one’s wrong behavior and consequent grief-work for the injury to the relationship; such grief-work has genuine reconciliation as its goal.” It is “not punitive self-condemnation, obsessive remorse, manipulative kowtowing or expiatory groveling” (p. 281).

If confession is an acknowledgement of the facts of the injury, contrition brings in the feeling of it. To the statement of “this is what I’ve done and how I’ve affected you,” it adds emotion: “and I really feel bad about it!” Further, “I’m so sorry about what I’ve done that I’m committed to taking steps to help you, myself, and us heal.”

How do we determine “appropriate sorrow”? There seems to be a more subjective element to contrition than confession, so it may be easier to get stuck here. “Does he really feel bad?” “Is she really sorry?” And the even more difficult question: “If you are really sorry, why did you do it in the first place?!?”

The subjective nature of contrition raises the question, how do we convey to our partner that we really are sorry, we do feel bad about what we’ve done, and we want to make things better? For some of us there is such a sense of shame or failure in these words that they are almost impossible to utter without falling into self-recrimination or, conversely, wanting to blame the other for the injury. One of the biggest challenges couples may face in this area is finding a “contrition language” that they share – a way of speaking and behaving in which one’s intended contrition is actually received by one’s partner as contrition: “I can see that you feel bad about this. I believe you.”

You might pause for a moment here and consider:

What are your ways of speaking and behaving that convince your partner that you are contrite?

What does your partner do or say that helps you know he or she is contrite?

Restitution

Of course, one of the most powerful ways to convey contrition may be in our efforts to make amends, to make things right, to repair the damage that we’ve done. Augsburger’s third concept of forgiveness is restitution, which he describes as “the reestablishing of mutual justice (resolving guilt and responsibility)… It is the creative, responsive work of seeking justice between wrongdoer and wronged” (p. 281).

“Reestablishing of mutual justice”! What is mutual justice anyway and how do we reestablish it? How do we seek “justice between wrongdoer and wronged”? How is the debt of injury repaid?

First, asking ourselves the question, “What can I do to make things just or fair?” is a crucial question in this forgiveness process, and may be particularly effective when the injustice is obvious and concrete. If I’m really sorry that my negligence around the house has created more work for you, then I can start to repair the damage by doing that work myself, by noticing rather than being negligent about messes and routine cleaning work. I can start to make amends by doing those tasks that I haven’t been doing, and perhaps by taking on more than “my share,” to re-establish equity.

But what do we do when the injustice has been of the less tangible sort? For example:

When I’ve caused harm by my hurtful attitude or insensitivity?

When I can stop a hurtful behavior, but there’s no obvious way to make up for what I’ve done or balance the scales?

When I’ve damaged my partner’s reputation?

In many situations we don’t actually know what it will take to achieve restitution: We don’t always know what will make a difference. So it may require some creative experimentation, some trial-and-error. On a very practical level, restitution might begin with some questions. One partner might ask:

Are there words I need to hear, or actions I need to see, that can start to repay the hurt I feel?

Similarly, the other partner might ask:

Are there words I need to say, or actions I need to take, that can start to repay the hurt I’ve caused?

If such words and actions can be identified, and if they can begin to be expressed in a “heart-felt” manner, they can make a tremendous difference in moving toward healing.

As I reflect on the complications of restitution I realize that much of my work in therapy with couples is about helping them “reestablish mutual justice.” Our conversations, although we don’t always use the language of “justice,” are often in that territory:

How can we make things right?

What is good for this relationship?

How can we restore, or strengthen, the things that give both partners a sense of fairness and equality?

In those conversations we usually find that relationship justice results from a combination of words, actions and emotions, carried out through time, such that the relationship starts to feel right, equitable and fair.

Recognizing that there may still be some challenges in determining if meaningful restitution is possible, I want to move on to Augsburger’s fourth concept, to get a sense of where this forgiveness process leads.

Reconciliation

Reconciliation “is a joint process of releasing the past with its pain, restructuring the present with new reciprocal respect and acceptance, and reopening the future to new risks and spontaneity…. As both persons accept their appropriate ratio of responsibility and share the redistribution of guilt, anger, suffering, and estrangement that have been between them, the situation is reframed, the pain reviewed and released, and the two reconciled to the past and to each other in the present” (p. 282).

Augsburger sets before us a challenging final step in the forgiveness process. One of its challenges is that it’s a “joint” process requiring effort from both people involved. Consider this loaded phrase: “Both persons accept their appropriate ratio of responsibility.” Accepting such joint responsibility might look like this:

“I really stepped over the line there.”

“True. But I didn’t help by coming on so strongly.”

And consider this phrase: “Both persons … share the redistribution of guilt, anger, suffering, and estrangement that have been between them.” Perhaps these three statements capture such sharing:

“All along I’ve been thinking that I was the only one who’s been hurt, that I’ve been suffering while you didn’t give a damn. But I’m starting to see that you’ve really paid a price too; that the guilt has really weighed you down, and my distance has been very frightening for you.”

“I’m really relieved to be able to tell you that I’ve been angry too. It means a lot to me that you’ve acknowledged that. It helps me feel like a real person in this, that I’m more than just ‘the guy who screwed up’.”

“I keep wanting to argue that I’ve suffered more than you, but I don’t know if we can really measure our suffering. It seems, now, like you’ve probably had just as much pain as I have, but that we’ve shown it in very different ways.”

If my example statements seem a little too tidy … well … they probably are. Our reconciliation efforts may be conveyed as much in gestures and non-verbals, in tones-of-voice and touches, and through stop-and-start sentences, as they are by the kinds of statements above. But hopefully these statements capture the feeling of what couples are trying to convey to one another when they both participate in accepting “appropriate … responsibility,” and “redistribution of guilt, anger, suffering, and estrangement.”

Augsburger’s picture of reconciliation is also challenging because it involves transformation: The present is “restructured” with “new reciprocal respect and acceptance,” and the future is “reopened” to “new risks and spontaneity.”

To illustrate, consider a dirty car going through a car wash. Even though it’s covered with grime, or even caked-on mud, the car emerges on the other end shiny and clean. But it’s still the same car.

In contrast, following Augsburger’s notion of reconciliation, imagine that same dirty, car going through the car wash but now it emerges not only shiny and clean, but it’s actually a different car. Maybe it’s just a newer version of the same car, or the same car that’s changed from an automatic to a 5-speed. Or maybe it’s changed from a family van to a sports car, or vice-versa. Maybe it’s a hybrid. The point is, it’s transformed. It’s new! It’s not just a “clean” version of the same old thing.

The “joint” aspect of Augsburger’s definition of reconciliation indicates that it is not just the one who is seeking forgiveness that has changed, but also the one who is on the receiving end of those forgiveness efforts. Because, to follow Augsburger’s argument, the forgiveness process itself becomes not simply one where one person’s a petitioner, asking for forgiveness, and the other decides whether or not to grant forgiveness (though it may begin with these roles). Instead it is a joint process in which both persons reconsider (i.e. consider again; think about; take a new look at) the relationship and one another; and both persons learn about themselves, the other, and the relationship. Reconciliation ushers in, in some ways, a new relationship: a relationship updated based on what was experienced, and learned, and worked through in the forgiveness process. A relationship in which both partners can say:

“So this is who we are now, and this is how we want to relate with one another, and this is what we’re moving toward together.”

FINAL THOUGHTS

Not the Only Way

One of the thoughts that was with me throughout the writing of this piece was my hope that these four concepts not be seen as The Correct or The Right way of doing forgiveness. Guided by the principles of Narrative Therapy, I’m reluctant to imply that any step-by-step approach to relationships is the right way to do it, or the standard that should be used to judge oneself or one’s relationship. I’ve presented these ideas here because I think they have a lot to offer us when we feel stuck in our relationships; when we believe forgiveness is in order but we don’t know how to proceed or our usual ways aren’t working. But this isn’t the only way of doing forgiveness. I’m sure there are many other “forgiveness ideas” and “forgiveness stories” out there that could also provide us with hope, inspiration and guidance in times of difficulty.

Language

Narrative therapists pay a lot of attention to people’s language and how that language creates “realities” or “truths” about life (“language” refers to the broad range of ways we express or communicate with one another: through words, gestures, tones of voice, grunts, touches, etc.). One of the main challenges of forgiveness (after, perhaps, the emotional challenge) is the “language” challenge. If I want to confess, what words and gestures can help me express myself accurately? How do I convey to my wife that I am actually trying to confess? And how do I accurately convey the extent of my contrition? What language will help me say “I’m sorry” that actually reflects how sorry I am? How do I confess, or “own up” to what I’ve done, and express it in a way that says I really mean it?

Further, if I find language that works for me, will that same language work for her? Will it sound “genuine” to her or will she hear it as just an attempt to rationalize or defend myself, or just an opening salvo that will ultimately result in my blaming her for what has happened?

Complicating things more, is the history of the relationship. Have my past confessions proven true through time, or would my partner say that what sounds like a confession at the beginning proves to have a short shelf-life? Have I become “the boy who cried wolf” in my contrition? Do words and gestures that used to evoke softness and openness in my partner, now just put her on guard, waiting for “the other shoe to drop”?

Forgiveness Stories

An implicit question of all of this talk of forgiveness is, what are the “forgiveness stories” held by the two partners? That is, from their experiences, what are their pictures of what forgiveness is and how it’s supposed to happen? How do those stories shape what is said and done, and the steps taken? How do they influence each person’s understanding of what it means, and looks like, to “truly” be sorry for what one has done? It’s not hard to imagine that much of the work for a given couple may be just in deciphering the forgiveness stories they’ve brought to their relationship, and then figuring out a forgiveness story or forgiveness language that works for both of them.

"Anger Issues," "Prioritization," and the "Christmas Tree"

2010-04-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

“Anger issues” is how Ben explained why he was in my office looking for help. Ben’s wife had passed away four years earlier, leaving him to raise their two sons on his own. Lately, he said, he had become “very short” and “lacked patience” with his teenaged sons. He connected his current difficulties to a much longer term “problem with anger” and was eager to get a better understanding of his anger and develop some strategies for dealing with it.

In our first session he named his preference for how he’d like to handle difficult, frustrating situations with his sons: with “patience,” taking “time out” before responding, and seeking to “understand the situation better before judging.” Ben connected these preferences to skills he was already using at work – being calm, listening, asking for an explanation, and explaining his own perspective – and by identifying them the skills seemed to become more accessible to him as a father.

Ben’s Strategies

Ben worked hard and started reporting progress right away. By our fourth session he described several strategies that he was finding helpful when he would start to feel angry with his sons. He described these as follows:

“Keeping it on my side” – was Ben’s way of reminding himself not to immediately see the other person as the one with the problem; instead, he was trying to understand how he, too, contributed to the difficulties.
“Thinking it through” – instead of reacting immediately, Ben would take some time to try to understand how he felt “crossed,” and to respond to the other only when he had a better understanding of this.
“Taking a deep breath” and “chilling” – were both parts of a larger collection of actions aimed at getting himself to “relax more” and “take time.”
“Listen, don’t speak” – was Ben’s reminder to himself at those times when he thought “this is a potential blow-up situation.” He said this reminder helped to keep him from “rolling his eyes” and saying to himself “here we go again.”
“Stepping outside of the role of ‘Dad’” – described Ben’s strategy for not subjecting himself to some impersonal set of standards about how a dad should be doing things, or about what should be happening between a son and a father. Instead, he tried to observe, listen, and “think things through with his boys,” focusing on what was rather than what should be.

Along the way, Ben reflected on the demands he felt as a single-parent and provider, and how those demands often put him in a position of feeling less patient when things “mounted up” and when he had a lot of “balls in the air,” making it difficult for him to “find consistency.” These observations helped him to notice when the demands were having too much of an influence on his life and he was improving his ability to intervene to establish a calmer way of being. In stepping back, Ben was also was able to reflect in a different way about how much his sons had been through with the loss of their mother, and how all of them had been affected by not having two parents around who could work together “as a team” to create a “safe haven.”

I was inspired and impressed by Ben’s progress and was touched by Ben’s description of how he was becoming more of the father he wanted to be.

A Different Description of the Challenge

In our final session I asked Ben for his take on how he was able to make progress. In response, Ben mentioned several of the strategies described above and said these had really helped him manage his “anger issue,” his original reason for seeking therapy. As he said the words, “anger issue,” it occurred to me that it might be helpful for Ben to have a more specific description of this particular challenge. I didn’t doubt that Ben felt angry at the difficult moments he had described. But I thought the phrasing, “anger issue,” seemed abstract and somewhat removed from his actual experience – like a catchphrase that had been useful but may benefit from an update. It didn’t really capture the details of his experiences and I thought it might be useful to him to come up with a new name or description of the problem that more closely matched his experience.

So I asked Ben to describe what he was doing differently now with his sons than he had a few weeks earlier. He said he was “dealing with things that bug me,” and that he was “trying to understand how important” a particular issue was before reacting. It was about “prioritization,” he said, about where the particular difficulty with his son fit in his perspective of what’s important and what’s not so important.

I asked if it might be more accurate and more helpful to describe this problem as a “prioritization issue” rather than an “anger issue.” Ben said it would, and then commented that in the past he had been treating every difficult interaction with his sons as a high priority, when most of them were not really that important.

A Picture of “Prioritization”

In our conversation we started playing with images a little to create a more vivid description of Ben’s prioritization challenge: to paint a picture of “prioritization.”

Our first image was of a priority list. What kinds of things were high on that list and what were low?

That led to talk of the color scheme used in the U.S. to describe threat levels, with red being the highest level of threat, then orange, and so on. Ben observed that he had been treating everything as a “red” level of alert. He was responding to every difficulty as if it were the highest priority, as a crisis-to-be-headed-off or met head-on, so he found himself always on high alert – not a posture that was very conducive to the kind of calm he had described as his preference.

The imagery became more tangible as we switched to the familiar red-yellow-green of traffic lights. I observed that during Ben’s difficult interactions with his sons there seemed to be two sets of traffic lights, side-by-side. On one side was Ben’s “emotions light” – the light that turned red when Ben felt “worked up,” “stressed,” or started to get “angry” with his sons. Next to it was Ben’s “priority light,” with red flashing for the highest priority issues and green for less significant ones and non-crises.

Up until recently, when the emotion light flashed red, the priority light automatically turned red. But with Ben’s recent work he was able to separate these lights and make a distinction between them such that being worked up did not automatically make something a high priority: A red emotion light did not automatically trigger a red priority light. The imagery described an important process that Ben was already practicing: being worked up, agitated, or angry, was now serving as an indicator that there was something to pay attention to, but not necessarily something to get “worked up” about. Ben was using the flashing emotion light as an indicator to pay attention to his priorities.

Drag Racing

The discussion led to one final fun development. I was thinking of traffic lights, but Ben was taken back to memories of drag racing, and the “Christmas Tree” lights used to count down to the start of the race. He regaled me with his own experience of drag racing and the excitement of anticipating the start of the race. The lights would flash through their sequence, down the Christmas Tree, until they reached green and he could, literally, push the button to unleash the enormous power of his dragster. We ended our session buoyed by that rich imagery, and its connection to important distinctions Ben was making in his life, and the changes he was enjoying as a father.

Change is Always Happening

2010-03-07T08:51:00.000-08:00

Nearly two years ago I had the privilege, along with about 200 others, of being with Michael White in San Diego for a conference on Narrative Therapy. Sadly, it was the last time we would get to be with Michael, as his heart failed that night and he passed away later that week (you can read more about his remarkable work and its effects on people around the world, here).

Michael was inspiring that day as he talked about the ideas and practices that comprise the familiar core of the narrative approach and as he shared the cutting edge of his own thinking about narrative. I was, as always, spellbound watching the brilliance of his videotaped work with clients (or the people who “consulted” with him, as Michael would have said it). Michael’s meticulous attention to the details of people’s accounts of their lives, and his ability to ask questions that brought out hope-filled alternative stories, was in full force, and the results for the clients were obvious and life-changing. We were witnessing an artist at work. (Michael wanted those of us who followed his work not to place him in an exalted position, and worked diligently to deconstruct his own work such that we could see the step-by-step, disciplined approach, that we all could master. And yet, watching him was still quite magical).

Theory of Change

Someone asked a question that day about narrative therapy’s theory of change. I’ve taught narrative therapy for years, so I immediately tried to think of an answer that I might give to a student. Michael’s answer was simpler, yet more elegant and profound than what was forming in my head. My notes have him saying:

“Change is always happening. Conversations accelerate change, but it’s always occurring.”

As Michael elaborated, here’s some of what I captured in my notes:

Change is ever-present.
We are constantly constituting life as we give expression to our experience of life.
As therapists we can ask, “Where is a certain expression taking a person?”
We are constantly constituting and re-constituting our lives. (As an example) “These aren’t the same tears as last time.”
Who are we becoming in our acts of living (what we say, do, feel, etc.)? How are we different than we were five minutes ago?

Michael contrasted this belief about ever-present change and the “re-constituting” of our lives with other approaches to therapy that try to “uncover” people’s “authentic self” – something that’s fixed and relatively unchanged through time – and with approaches that subscribe to a “repressive hypothesis” where “our job is to throw off the repression to become who ‘we really are’; to get back to the original.”

Hope in Change

I remember how Michael’s response to the question about change rekindled my sense of hope. It is this belief that change is always happening that gives me confidence in my work as a therapist. If change is always happening, then the question in therapy is not, “How can we create change here?”, but:

How can we notice and build on changes that are already happening?

Further, in the therapy setting, and outside, the assumption about change helps us be curious in several ways:

Are there changes in our lives that might be “small” and easy to overlook, that may hold promise, and that may be change in the right direction?
How do such changes reflect, reveal, or shape our desires and hopes?
What are the conditions that most foster these desired changes?
What steps have we already taken to help bring about these changes?
What is the potential in these changes? In what direction are they leading us?

Red-winged blackbirds

In her book, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard has a wonderful description that speaks of unexpected change. She writes of hearing the “racket” of migrating red-winged blackbirds near her home, and going to explore. As she walks toward the Osage orange tree that seems to be the source of the noise, she sees nothing but the tree and its leaves. Then, as she moves closer, a hundred birds “materialize” and take flight. Just as quickly, the tree returns to just branches and leaves.

She steps closer and another hundred birds fly away, surprising her again. Thinking that all the birds have left the tree, she steps to its trunk only to see the remaining hundred birds take to the sky. She writes of her experience: “It was as if the leaves of the Osage orange had been freed from a spell in the form of red-winged blackbirds; they flew from the tree, caught my eye in the sky, and vanished.”

Dillard’s experience, combined with Michael’s ideas about change, have me wondering:

What is present all along in our lives, that is beautiful, helpful, or life-giving, that is hidden by our perspective, assumptions, or stories?
What changes do we start to notice when we look from a different angle, from a closer-up inspection, or when we allow the possibility of change?
What red-winged blackbirds are there all along behind the leaves and branches of our lives, waiting to appear?

Describing my Work with Couples

2010-01-24T09:06:00.000-08:00

Recently, a client in couple’s therapy, who was obviously struggling with our work, asked me about the purpose of therapy and how it works. I thought it was a good question, and, surprisingly, one that I had been asked directly only a handful of times in my 20-plus years of working with couples. With his wife also in the therapy session, the three of us discussed his questions, but it was a brief conversation and left me wanting to give a more complete response. That led me to begin thinking more about how I would describe what actually happens in couples therapy and how I would capture that in writing. Below is my attempt to do so.

I think of this as a draft that will continue to be re-written and updated through time. Having articulated these ideas, having put them on paper, lets me step back and consider them from a little distance. It gives me the opportunity to edit and refine them as I think about my work, as my work changes through time, and as I continue to learn from clients about what is helpful and unhelpful to them. I welcome your feedback and questions, too.

What is the Purpose of Couple’s Therapy?

Although the purpose of couple’s therapy changes according the specifics of the clients’ situation and their goals, in general it is to help couples improve their marriage or relationship; to help them live together in ways that are more satisfying and meaningful, or just easier than what’s currently happening in their relationship. The exact nature of what a couple would find more satisfying, meaningful, or easier, depends on the couple, so I can’t say, except in general terms, what “improvement” looks like. But I do have as one of my primary goals, helping the couple describe what “improvement” looks like for them, so that we have a reasonably clear understanding of what we’re working toward. This also lets us check in along the way to see if we’re making the progress they desire.

How does Couples Therapy Work?

Therapy works or happens in a variety of ways depending, again, on the interests and abilities of the couple. In a very basic sense, couples therapy happens by talking and listening; by exploring, thinking, and feeling; and by the partners making changes in behavior, in ways of thinking, and in emotional responses. More specifically, the following processes or goals are components of nearly all the work I do with couples.

Understanding Concerns or Problems

I work with couples to try to develop a clear understanding of the concerns or problems they have about their marriage or relationship. For most couples, some of these concerns are shared by both parties, and some are seen as a problem by one person but not the other.

Through conversation we explore how these problems “show up” or what they “look like,” and try to understand their effects on the couple, as individuals and on their relationship. I try to get beyond the common labels we often use to describe problems in our relationships, to get a detailed understanding of how the couple actually experiences these problems or concerns and the impact they have on their lives.

Understanding Preferences

We work together to identify the couple's “preferences” for their relationship. How do they want their relationship or marriage to “be”? What do they want it to “look like”?

For example: How do they want to show or give affection? How do they want to make decisions or plans for the future? How do they want to divide up housework? Who should earn income, one or both? What principles do they want to guide their raising of children? How do they want to manage their finances? What are their preferences for religious or spiritual practices? How about friendships, in-laws, vacations, play?

There are many aspects of a marriage or intimate relationship, and some matter a great deal to a given couple, while others matter little. My goal is to understand what is preferred by a particular couple, what their hopes and dreams and deepest desires are, and why those matter to them.

Listening and Acknowledging

Because problems, concerns and preferences can be difficult to talk about and can elicit strong emotions, it can be a real challenge just to listen to one’s partner talk about such things. And yet, it’s very difficult for couples to improve their relationship if they don’t feel “heard” and if they don’t believe their partner really “gets” or understands them.

So my work with couples often involves helping them develop their ability to listen to one another with interest, compassion, and empathy: to try to put themselves in one another’s “shoes,” and let themselves be affected (be “moved” or “touched”) by the other’s concerns, fears, hopes and dreams.

Often such intentional listening leads one or both partners to want to acknowledge or “own up” to the effect they’ve had on the other. Such acknowledgment can be a powerful step toward creating a different atmosphere or spirit in the relationship, one that can open the door to more effective ways of being together as a couple. So we might spend time figuring out how one or both partners can provide meaningful acknowledgment to the other.

Developing Strategies

In light of the couple’s preferences and concerns, we work together to develop strategies to help their relationship become more like the relationship they want it to be. This might involve a discussion to identify times when the relationship has “worked” better, to develop an understanding of how that was possible. It might involve identifying the skills that could be used to bring about more of those “preferred” qualities. And it might involve “borrowing” strategies and abilities that have worked in other areas of the couple’s life, and put them to work in the marriage or relationship (e.g. strategies from work or friendships, or from involvement in sports, the arts, clubs, or other organizations). The strategies usually have practical implications that the couple can put into practice outside the therapy setting, so they can add to their repertoire of ways to build their relationship.

Clients Working Outside of Therapy

The research is pretty clear that the biggest factor in therapeutic change is the effort made by clients outside the therapy session. So at the beginning of each session I try to check with couples to see what kinds of changes they’re making: what kinds of skills they’re developing, what new ideas or strategies they’ve come up with on their own, how they’re currently thinking about their relationship, and what’s working and not working for them. The developments and insights that come from clients’ efforts “on their own” then influence how we proceed in therapy.

Agreeing to End our Work or Take a Break

Ideally couples reach a point in their therapy work where they are pleased with their progress and are experiencing the kind of marriage or relationship they want. At that point they may decide they want to focus on other areas of the relationship in therapy, or they may decide to slow the frequency of therapy into more of a “check-in” or “maintenance” mode (meeting every few weeks or months), or they may decide that we’ve completed our work together.

In the decision to end therapy, I want to be guided by my clients’ thinking about what’s best for them. If they decide to end, then I hope I get to hear from them about what they’re “taking with them” from the therapy experience (e.g. the insights, skills, helpful perceptions, “stories,” goals, self-understandings, and strategies they plan to utilize in their marriage), so that I can learn from them about how I can improve my work as a therapist.

I welcome your thoughts and questions.

Name the Game

2009-12-04T14:22:00.000-08:00

I loved recess in elementary school. It was all about playing games for me, and the games usually involved a bouncy red rubber ball.

Between my 2nd-grade and 5th-grade years the volleyball-sized red rubber ball was the only piece of equipment needed for several of the games that occupied most of my recesses. With it we’d play games called two-square, one-square, dodge ball, and kickball. In a pinch, the red rubber ball could also be used as a basketball or soccer ball or to play three-flies-up.

Because it could be used for many purposes, just being in possession of the red rubber ball on the playground at the beginning of recess did not give a clear indication of the game to be played. Unlike a football or basketball, which mostly spoke for themselves, your intentions with the red rubber ball had to be announced, in words or actions. You had to “name the game.”

CONVERSATIONAL “GAMES”

The idea of “naming the game” came to mind recently as I was thinking about a fairly common pattern I see when I work with couples. It’s a pattern that begins with a discussion between them about a particular issue of concern, that quickly grows in complexity, frustration and tension. After a few minutes it becomes unclear to me, and usually to the couple, too, whether they’re still talking about the thing they started talking about.

Those conversations had me thinking about the value of taking a moment to “name the game,” to pause and reflect on the following: If the conversation you’re having with your partner had a title, what would that title be? How would you name the conversational “game” you’re engaged in? What’s its purpose? What are its rules? When is the game over?

NAMING THE CONVERSATION

In a recent session with a couple, we were in one of those conversations that started in one place and was quickly drifting into several new areas. What had begun as a difficult discussion about spending money on a vacation or home improvements was, within 10 minutes, bouncing around among several conversations, and becoming more complicated, confusing, and more laden with emotion. Before getting too overwhelmed we agreed to pause the discussion to see if we could name the various conversations that were occurring. Together we listed on the white board the names of the conversational games we were noticing, including:

Worry about debt: How are we going to dig out of our growing burden of debt?
Competing values: What is most important, investing in our home, spending time away as a family, or digging out of debt?
Comparing financial faults: Whose financial “flaw” is worse, his lack of planning ahead or her always feeling anxious and worried about money?
Longsuffering: Who has waited the longest for something that really mattered to them? Who is more “due”?
Troubling family legacies: Whose family-of-origin had worse financial habits?
Is my work valued? Are our contributions to the family’s finances valued equally?
Who decides? Do we have an equal say in how this decision will be made?
Hurt: Who feels hurt, in what ways, by past conversations about money?

Until we paused to name them, most of these conversations were only implicit. That is, the only conversational “game” that had really been named was the Vacation vs. Home Improvements one. All of the conversations above just seeped into the discussion. The effect of their presence, however, was to increase confusion and emotional intensity, and create a growing sense that there was a mess here that was going to be difficult to fix.

My primary point about naming the game is not that the couple should have stayed on topic and not “strayed” into these other “games” – we live complex lives and so our financial decisions are often intertwined with our histories and emotions. My point is that when we feel captured by such complexity and are suffering in its grip, or when we have a sense that one conversation has become too many, it may be helpful to pause and name the conversations. Once we name them, at least three things may become more possible:

We may gain a better understanding about why the conversation feels so messy. Without necessarily knowing it, we may have been playing several games at once, each with different “rules,” roles and objectives (from a narrative perspective we might think of these as multiple or competing stories).
We have the opportunity to evaluate the relative importance of each of the conversations we name (What are their effects? How do they help or hinder us? Why do they matter?).
And we can start to identify our preferences for the conversation(s) we want to have. We can ask, for example, “Which of these conversations seems most important to our relationship?” or “Which one seems like the best place to begin? (are some conversations contingent on others?)” or “What do we want to accomplish and which conversation(s) is(are) most likely to help us get there?”

We might then decide to focus first on the conversation about getting out of debt.

Or we may decide that before we move on to talk about money, hurts need to be repaired or fears addressed.

Or maybe we reach an understanding that this is complex territory (not a simple choice between two options). So we agree that we’ll set aside time to talk, we’ll do some homework to get the facts we need, we’ll move slowly, and we’ll make sure that we show respect to each other even in the midst of confusion and difficult decisions: The name of this game might be “Staying close to each other in the face of life’s complexities.”

Quick Note - An Anniversary

2009-11-09T21:34:00.000-08:00

Hi friends and faithful readers. You may have noticed that I haven't posted in a while. Alas, life has conspired against my finding much time to write. But I didn't want to lose any good will I may have gained with you, so I wanted to send this little note to say that I'm working on some more pieces and aim to have the next one posted by the end of the month.

I'm pleased to say that I just passed the one-year anniversary of my first post. I started this blog as a vehicle for writing about some of the interesting things I get to experience as a narrative therapist. Writing in such a public forum has been important to me as it's required that I think about my writing from the perspective of others: people real and imagined, known and unknown, critical, skeptical, open, curious, or just having stumbled in. The main benefit to me, in addition to trying to imagine the many responses a given piece may elicit, has been that by "going public" I "get to" face the challenge of working on a piece -- revising, refining, throwing out and starting over -- until I feel good about having others read it. So, thank you. The fact that you're reading, and that some of you are even responding, questioning and engaging the ideas, is very helpful to me, and makes this whole process extremely satisfying.

Metaphors - Part 3

2009-08-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

THE BOOKSHELF METAPHOR: SIDE-BY-SIDE UNDERSTANDINGS OF GRUMPINESS

Instead of arranging the different ideas about Dave’s grumpiness in a hierarchy, with one key underlying cause, in the bookshelf metaphor the ideas or explanations are arranged side-by-side, like books. Below are the items from the layers of the mining metaphor, now shifted 90 degrees to become books on a bookshelf, with slight name changes to move from “causes” to book titles:

[These titles are also listed at the bottom of this blog entry, along with the original list of causes from the mining metaphor blog entry]

From a narrative therapy perspective this simple change from a top-to-bottom to a side-by-side arrangement of these items can prompt some important shifts in our thinking about a problem situation.

BOOKS AND STORIES REPLACE “CAUSES”

First, what were “causes” or “underlying causes” in the mining metaphor now become “books” in the bookshelf metaphor. The imagery and idea of books tends to evoke an interest in stories, drama, action, plot, and character, which I don’t usually think of when I see causal statements like those in the mining metaphor. And whereas calling something a “root cause” tends to function like a period at the end of a sentence (“It’s been explained, conclusion reached: It’s all over!”), calling it a “book” functions more like a comma, and elicits my curiosity: I want to know more. I’m drawn to learn about the chapters of the book and the details of the story, to see how it was developed and where it goes.

As an example, let’s look at one of the “deeper” causes we named as part of the mining metaphor:

"Dave's unresolved anger toward his parents keeps him unclear about the direction of his life and uncomfortable as a father."

When I see this idea presented as a cause, two or three thoughts occur to me rather immediately:

The word “unresolved” jumps out at me and makes me think that it’s a problem that the anger hasn’t been “resolved.” I don’t know what “resolved” means or what it would look like for Dave, but I wonder what’s wrong with him, and how messed up his family is, that he hasn’t been able to resolve this anger.

It seems that it’s imperative that Dave resolve this anger issue if he is to have any hope of being less grumpy at home.

As depicted in the mining metaphor, in Part 2 of this series, there are even deeper issues than “unresolved anger,” so I suspect that Dave will be unable to resolve his anger until he addresses those deeper issues: introversion, insecurity, and fear of intimacy. And when I think about this, I start to feel overwhelmed for Dave, and lose hope that he will ever make any real change in his grumpiness at home.

In contrast, when I see the book on the bookshelf, “Anger at My Parents: Effects on My Parenting and Life’s Direction – by Dave,” I feel much more curious about Dave and his experiences with his parents. Instead of being pulled toward the elusive imperative of “resolving” something, I want to know more about Dave, his family, his experience of anger, and the effects of anger on his life. Some of the specific questions I start to have are:

What experiences have led to this particular story about how anger is affecting Dave’s life and parenting?

Who holds this story? Is it Dave alone, or did others help in putting together the different events and experiences of his life to build the story about anger at his parents? Does Dave find that the story fits his experience?

How does this story help to make sense of Dave’s relationship with, feelings about, and experiences of his parents? And how does it tie in with grumpiness?

Under what circumstances are the anger and its effects most pronounced, and when are they least noticeable, powerful, or influential?

Are there experiences that Dave has had with his parents that don’t fit with this “anger” story? If other stories were told about those events, what would the titles of those stories be?

If these other stories were added with the anger story, would this become a richer, more complex story overall, and how well would the “larger” story fit with Dave’s own experience?

FREED FROM THE SEARCH FOR “ONE TRUTH” – FINDING PERSONAL AGENCY

Second, and what may be the most helpful for me, the bookshelf arrangement of these ideas frees me from the almost impossible search for the “one truth,” “one right answer,” or one core, essential explanation of the problem. I’m freed from trying to make distinctions between “core causes” and “surface manifestations.” I’m freed from trying to reach definitive conclusions about whether a particular explanation is true or false. Instead, I can think about the different books or stories on the bookshelf and consider the specific ways each is helpful and unhelpful. The downward pull of the mining metaphor, to find the core cause “underneath it all,” is replaced by a less pressured desire to examine the different books to see what’s in them and what each has to offer.

What may be most valuable here is a sense of personal agency: the feeling of having the authority to decide, through my own thinking and conversations, how a given story is helpful and unhelpful for my life. In contrast, answering the question of whether a particular cause is true or false, or is, indeed, the root cause of the problem, seems to require either the “objective” evaluation of an “expert,” or making a fairly arbitrary choice among alternative explanations. And because the mining metaphor often carries with it the “requirement” that I “get it right” and address the “core issue” before moving on, it’s easy to remain stuck (paralyzed by the nearly impossible challenge to define the “one truth”). Identifying what is “helpful” seems much more within my grasp. I feel more freedom to “take action” or “move forward” based on what I find helpful rather than waiting until I’ve figured out “real causes” and “core truths.”

FINDING PREFERENCES ON THE BOOKSHELF

Third, the bookshelf metaphor is a much better fit than the mining metaphor for thinking about preferences (which is where we first met Dave and grumpiness several months ago – click here to read more about the practical value of preferences). Several features of the bookshelf metaphor help to create a context for thinking about preferences:
By portraying the explanatory ideas as existing side-by-side rather than top-to-bottom, it helps us to more easily consider them all as legitimate alternatives, rather than having one explanation be true or core and the others be false or “surface.”

So I can ask, if there are several legitimate ways of understanding or making sense of my difficulties, which explanations (or “stories”) do I find helpful, and which do I prefer?

By leading us to think in terms of “stories” or “texts” rather than “causes,” the bookshelf imagery invites us to explore the experiences, events, plots, dramas, chapters, and details that have helped shape particular understandings of our problems and our lives.

So I can ask, of the many experiences contained in these stories of my life, which have I found to be most life-giving, most exciting, and most desirable? In light of this, which do I prefer?

By helping to free us from waiting for an expert to determine what’s really true about our lives (or who we “really” are), we can feel more authority to consider which stories about our lives matter most or most reflect the values and commitments we hold.

So I can ask, which stories, ideas, or explanations do I prefer because they provide me with a focus or direction that fits with my values and commitments?

By helping to free us from the search for the elusive “one true cause,” we can focus on what we already know about ourselves, and we can draw on our experiences to name our preferences.

So I can ask, if I have expertise about my own life, and can draw on the wealth of experience I already have, how do those experiences lead me to a better understanding of what I prefer?

By evoking images such as libraries with aisle after aisle filled with books, or a whole wall or room filled with bookshelves, we can imagine that there are even more possibilities than those that are currently visible. This might be especially valuable if none of the current batch of stories is particularly moving or compelling.

So I can ask, what book would I like to see on the bookshelf that would capture my preferences more accurately or powerfully? What is its title, its main characters, its plot? Why does it move me or draw me in? What does it make possible for my life and why do I prefer it?

SOME ALTERNATIVE STORIES FOR DAVE

With these questions in mind, and using a little imagination, the practical results of this kind of thinking, for Dave, might look something like the revised book titles below:

A CONFESSION

It’s difficult for me to write about mining and bookshelf metaphors and have them remain metaphors. As I write, they often stop being helpful representations and turn into hard, cold, essential realities. Quite often in writing this piece, I’ve had to step back and get some perspective, to remind myself that these are, indeed, metaphors I’m writing about. Mostly, I have to remind myself that it’s quite possible to use the bookshelf imagery to think about my life, but to have that bookshelf be just as confining and limiting as the way I’m portraying the mining metaphor here. It’s possible to use the imagery of books on a bookshelf to think about my problems, but then to launch into a frenzied pursuit of the “one true book” or the “real, essential story” of my life.
In other words, whether it’s a bookshelf or a mine – or a jungle or a machine or a box of chocolates – the metaphors that you and I use to help shape our thinking about our lives, our problems, and our relationships, can end up constraining our thinking and limiting our options, or they can provide us with alternatives, a sense of freedom and playfulness, the authority to know what we prefer for our lives, and the desire and will to act on that knowledge.
*****

Mining Metaphor "Causes"

"Dave's Problem - 'On the Surface': Grumpiness at home in the evenings"
"Underlying cause: Stress at work, compounded by Dave not knowing what he really wants to do"
"Deeper cause: Dave's unresolved anger toward his parents, keeps him unclear about the direction of his life and uncomfortable as a father."
"Deeper yet: Dave is an introvert. It's his personality type. It's painful to have to interact with others."
"Even deeper: Dave is a very insecure person."
"Root cause: Dave is afraid of and avoids intimacy because he hasn't accepted his real self."

Bookshelf Titles - Version 1 - Stories Related to Grumpiness

"Grumpiness at Home in the Evenings"
"Stress at Work: What do I Really Want to Do?"
"Anger at My Parents: Effects on My Parenting and Direction in Life - by Dave"
"Experiencing Introversion: Difficulty Interacting with Others"
"My Story of Insecurity"
"Understanding what Scares Me About Intimacy: Why I Avoid It"

Bookshelf Titles - Version 2 - Stories Related to Grumpiness ... With Preferences Added (in Orange)

"Why I Prefer Playfulness over Grumpiness at Home in the Evenings"
"How I Learned to Leave Stress at Work, And Paid More Attention to What Really Matters to Me"
"Anger at My Parents Taught Me to be Patient and to Connect with My Son - by Dave"
"Beyond Introversion: How the Night Sky Helped Me Engage with Others"
"My Story of Insecurity: Seeing It, Naming It, and Stopping the Pattern"
"Understanding what Scares Me About Intimacy: Remembering how Closeness and Calm Overcome All"

Metaphors - Part 2

2009-06-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

AN ILLUSTRATION: GRUMPINESS AND DAVE

In Parts 2 and 3 of this article I want to illustrate the mining and bookshelf metaphors by revisiting Dave and his dealings with grumpiness (from one my first entries in this blog). You may recall that Dave struggled with grumpiness in the evenings at home with his wife and two kids. He described grumpiness as a fog settling over his house and we identified the effects of the fog on Dave and his family (increased tension, distance, feeling “on edge,” a sense of heaviness and sadness).

Our conversation eventually helped Dave to name his preference: He preferred to be happy, upbeat, and pleasant rather than grumpy. He then was able to identify some skills and abilities he could use, and some experiences that reflected his preference, which could help him achieve the lightness, engagement, and playfulness he desired. But to explore our two metaphors, we’ll back up to when Dave was stuck in grumpiness.

THE MINING METAPHOR AND GRUMPINESS

If we look at Dave’s experience of grumpiness using the mining metaphor we think about layers, and digging down through them to get at that “core” or precious nugget of truth that lets us understand the cause of Dave’s grumpiness. From this perspective, grumpiness exists on the “surface” or top layer, but it’s just a manifestation of something more essential, deep down or at the core. So we might ask, “What’s really going on underneath all of this grumpiness?” We would probably think something like, “Grumpiness isn’t really the problem, we just have to figure out what the real problem is.” Or, “If we dig down through the layers of Dave’s grumpiness, we’ll find what’s really driving it.”

With our thinking guided by the imagery of layers arranged in a hierarchy, and an inner or deep-down, hidden truth, our answers about the causes of, and solutions for, Dave’s grumpiness might look something like this:

Dave has so much unresolved anger toward his own parents that he’ll never be at ease around his kids until he resolves it. His grumpiness is a way of expressing in his current family what he could never express with his parents.

Underneath it all, Dave is just a very insecure person, so he’s never really comfortable in his own skin. He just gets grumpy when he feels stuck in a situation that makes him feel insecure and inadequate. It’s his underlying inadequacy and insecurity that he has to address.

Dave is an introvert. He can take only so much “togetherness.” He can put on a brave, false front for a while, but then his real self, his real introversion, his inner need to be alone gets the best of him, and he starts being grumpy as a way of getting out of a painful situation.

It’s really Dave’s unhappiness with his job that is causing him so much stress and unhappiness. He’s never been good at knowing what he wants and being able to pursue it, so he just keeps finding himself in these work situations that cause him stress, and it’s that stress that seeps into his family life.

Using the mining metaphor, we might start arranging our different interpretations of Dave’s grumpiness in a hierarchy, from “surface manifestations” to the “deep-down-inner-core truth that is driving the grumpiness.” A visual depiction of one such arrangement might look like this:

The imagery of the mining metaphor both guides and reflects the thinking behind it: It leads us to think that to truly resolve grumpiness Dave has to get to the root cause, which is often hidden and deep (we might even use words like “denial” or “repression” or speak of the “Unconscious” to indicate how difficult it is to accurately identify such root causes). Once identified, the root cause must be “addressed” and the “issue” be “worked through” or “resolved” for Dave to have a real solution to grumpiness.

This kind of thinking is so pervasive that I’d be surprised if most of us don’t automatically go down the path of asking, “what’s at the bottom of all this?” when trying to deal with some personal or relational difficulty. And I’d be equally surprised if most of us haven’t gained valuable insights by applying such thinking. We’ve probably been helped by reaching conclusions like: “I wasn’t really mad at you, underneath it all I was just so stressed from being humiliated at work that I was really ‘on edge’ and taking everything too personally.”

I also assume that the mining metaphor has helped most of us by leading us to do the mental and emotional work of “excavating” our own lives: looking more closely at a tricky situation to understand it better, and sorting through possible explanations to find the one (underneath it all) that really rings true.

LIMITS OF MINING

Despite its potential benefits the use of the mining metaphor can be a real liability. Being convinced that there is one truth, and that it is hidden beneath other more superficial layers, can get us stuck in some frustrating patterns. Here are some of the limitations of the mining metaphor I encounter often, both personally and with the people who consult with me in therapy.

First, the “one truth” or “one root cause” perspective is usually unhelpfully simplistic and inadequate given the complexity of our lives. How does Dave meaningfully decide whether his grumpiness is “really” caused by stress at work, parenting challenges, financial worries, marital misunderstandings, physical ailments, family-of-origin memories, the latest news about war or economic meltdown, or some biochemical, neurological, or genetic factor, when the most accurate answer is probably, “all of the above”?

Second, to find that “one truth” in the face of so much complexity, we often engage in a process of dismissing as irrelevant many of the factors or variables that might be helpful. If there’s room for only one, the rest has to go, and we can easily dismiss something that could be quite helpful, just because it’s too obvious or not sophisticated enough, or because we don’t actually give it enough “airtime” to point us in a helpful direction.

A third limitation shows up often in my work with couples: the limitation of the zero-sum game. If there’s only one truth about the cause of problems in a marriage, then the table is set for nearly endless arguments about whose explanation is correct. Couples often show up to my office with the emotional scars and exhaustion of such battles. (I think one of the most important things I do with couples is to provide them a place in which the “multiple truths” of what they’re saying can be heard and respected by one another.)

Fourth, the mining metaphor can leave people feeling isolated. If there’s one true, real cause of the problem, it’s usually “located” inside the person. It’s an internal problem in his or her own “psyche,” or “personality,” or “unconscious,” or reflects an “unresolved issue” in the person’s life. The work, then, is for the individual: alone. The battle is an individual one of facing the truth and “working” on one’s issues. The shame or frustration of even having such an internal flaw in the first place, or the feeling that one’s friends don’t want to hear about it anymore, makes the isolation even more pronounced.

Fifth, trying to identify the one thing that’s “really going on” can take a ton of effort and is often exhaustingly elusive. Usually the people who consult with me in therapy have lots of ideas that help explain, and could even help solve, their current particular difficulty, but the underlying-root-cause-nugget-of-an-explanation remains elusive, and they continue to dismiss explanations that don’t quite explain it all. Often I see real suffering in people who have become desperate to find that one truth or root cause, pressing on in an earnest attempt to “get to the bottom” of the problem while also kicking themselves for not having already figured it out (or being ashamed for having such an entrenched problem in the first place, or for having to talk to a stranger/therapist about it).

ONLY ONE CORE TRUTH?

Since so much of what I see as the limitations of the mining metaphor have to do with its implication that there is one core or essential truth about ourselves and our problems, it would be fitting to ask whether the mining metaphor inevitably leads to this one-truth or one-real-cause kind of thinking. My answer is that I suppose not: it is, after all, a metaphor. We could, for example, use similar imagery of layers and digging down, but expect to find a “mother lode” of explanations or causes or perspectives rather than just one. And the literal layers of the mine don’t necessarily have to imply that the bottom-most layer is the most precious. I can imagine a literal mining situation in which one valuable mineral is found near the surface while another is found a few layers down.

But my use of the mining metaphor in this article is intended to reflect what I find to be that very common and almost automatic way of thinking that so frequently shows up in my therapy room: a way of thinking that makes distinctions between “surface manifestations” and “underlying real causes,” and that tends to believe that there is “one” truth or cause or “real self” underneath it all. It is that version of the metaphor that makes it hard to imagine “mother lodes” of explanations, or a multitude of precious nuggets. It is that version of the metaphor that so often has my clients feeling frustrated with themselves for not being able to resolve or fix their deep-down flaws and limitations, and feeling stuck in their search for helpful solutions to their problems.

I find the bookshelf metaphor a simple, but powerful, alternative – taking the useful ideas from the mining-led explorations, but turning them on their side to free up creativity and provide more options to people stuck in entrenched problems. In Part 3, we’ll look at Dave and grumpiness through the lens of the bookshelf metaphor.

Metaphors - Part 1

2009-06-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

Metaphors help us make vivid, colorful comparisons. They capture complexity in just one word, or a few. And the metaphors we carry around in our heads lead us down certain paths rather than others when we’re trying to think about our problems. They guide us toward certain ideas or beliefs about ourselves, and keep other ideas or beliefs hidden from view.

This article is about two metaphors we might use to understand ourselves when dealing with problems: the mining metaphor and the bookshelf metaphor.

THE MINING METAPHOR

The mining metaphor is the one I hear most often when I meet new clients and hear their perspectives on their lives and relationships. The metaphor has us looking at a problem as a surface-level indicator of some deep-seated cause or underlying issue: “Here’s what’s happening, but underneath it all, this is the cause.”*

The mining metaphor guides us to dig through many layers to try to unearth or uncover the truth about who we really are or the real cause of the problem. It has us thinking that the truth about ourselves is hidden, deep down, and hard to find. But once we find that truth we’ve uncovered a precious nugget. And that nugget is often “one” truth, one root cause, one drive or need or personality characteristic or underlying dysfunction that explains us and our problem situation, and promises a solution. We might depict the mining metaphor like this:

When we are guided by this metaphor we ask questions like: “What’s really going on underneath all of this? What’s the real cause of the problem? Who am I really, underneath all of my actions and words? And what does the truth say about what I need to do to change things?”

THE BOOKSHELF METAPHOR

The bookshelf metaphor turns the mining metaphor on its side.** The layers of the mining metaphor become, instead, books on a bookshelf: different options for understanding who we are or what’s the cause or solution to the problem. Instead of seeing a problem as about one thing (or requiring us to confront the one truth of “who we really are”) we can see the problem as having multiple truths. That “precious nugget” from the mining metaphor is still there on the bookshelf, as a book, so to speak. And although it might remain precious, it’s no longer seen as the only story or only explanation or the one-and-only-one real truth that must be accepted, confronted, and/or “resolved.” Other “books” or “stories” become more apparent and are not automatically discarded as irrelevant or of lesser importance. And they offer alternative understandings and perspectives and solutions. In general, the bookshelf metaphor might look like this:

When we are guided by the bookshelf metaphor our main question is: “What are the different ways to understand this problem, and in what specific ways are these different ways, or ‘stories,’ helpful?”

NEXT

In the next piece in this series, we’ll revisit Dave’s situation with grumpiness and see how these ideas might apply.

* The onion metaphor is similar to the mining metaphor, but with layers that are “peeled away” to reveal an inner-core truth.

** Michael White and David Epston called my attention to this idea of turning our conventional understandings and root-cause-type explanations on their side, in their book, Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends.

Taking Life Back From Exploding

2009-03-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

I'm very pleased to have my partner in therapy and marriage, Michelle, contribute the piece below. It describes her playful narrative work with an 8-year old named "Amy," including parts of the book that Michelle and Amy wrote together to help Amy and others find alternatives to Exploding. (You can read more about Michelle here) -- Kurt

By Michelle Naden

The following is an account of my meetings with a very vivacious and tender 8 year old. I’ll call her Amy so that her privacy is honored. Amy is the oldest of three girls. They live with their mom and dad who are among the most loving of parents I have met. Too, they are playful and helpfully engaged in their children’s lives. But even with such good things going for her, life has been difficult for Amy. She felt challenged by some significant changes in her young life and by the complications of her relationships. Before coming to see me she had lost a good neighborhood friend after a painful struggle between their families. She hated school and didn’t want to go. Overall, Amy didn’t feel very good about herself and she struggled with very BIG feelings that would well up and often erupt into explosions. These had her family tired, confused, sometimes angry, and perplexed about how to help Amy. Explosions were affecting everyone in the family, including Amy, who felt quite dispirited and beaten down when she first came to meet me.

The Use of Story in Therapy

Before continuing with Amy’s story I want to say something about my work so you have a context within which to understand some of the steps Amy and I have taken together.

The idea of “story” is central to how I listen and work with people of all ages. To explain this in a little more detail, the “narrative mode of thought” (White and Epston, Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, 1990):

(1) privileges the particulars of people’s lives, and pays special attention to the unique ways they live them. Out of these particulars come the unique meanings that people themselves hold about their lives. These meanings are the “stuff” of therapy conversations.
(2) “Time” is a critical dimension in the narrative mode. As events unfold over time, stories can be told that help to make meaning of these events. These “plots” of people’s stories “place us at the crossing point of temporality and narrativity” (Ricour, 1980), which is a fancy way of saying that paying attention to sequences of time and plot is what makes a really good story!
(3) To enhance the development of preferred stories, “rich” (i.e. poetic and picturesque) descriptions are elicited and conversations always are more exploratory and less purpose-driven.
(4) Narrative exploration acknowledges that stories are co-created between at least two participants. The protagonist or subject (or person consulting a therapist) is always accorded the status of privileged author. Therefore, it is the subject’s words and meanings that are taken as most valuable rather than a therapist’s interpretation or clinical evaluation of them.

Now back to Amy. I quickly realized that Amy was a fabulous artist. Her beautiful flowers put mine to shame and her skillful ways with making things and illustrating her ideas riveted me to the possibility of our work together centering around her creations. Because reading books was her passion, the idea of focusing on the story of her own life made really good sense to Amy. Too, Amy loved to dictate what we should do in any given meeting and so I put this talent of hers to good use and asked her if we might work together on a book that would document our progress with the very tricky problem of Exploding. Here is the result of this dynamic collaboration between us that took place over a period of a few months. It ended up in the form of an actual book that Amy illustrated and carefully dictated to me as I faithfully scribed.

Amy's Story

My name is Amy and I am eight years old. I am still having problems with exploding. But Michelle is helping me with them.

I have two sisters. Their names are Sally and Hannah. Sally is one and Hannah is four. Sometimes Hannah can be a pest and she aggravates me. When Hannah makes me mad this is what I used to do:

HIT HER!!

Sometimes I would get so mad I would even jump on her! When I would hurt Hannah I would feel sad and my mom and dad would be mad. Then he (dad) would almost spank me but he didn’t because my mom stopped him. Everyone in the family was frustrated—except Sally.

Then things began to change in our family. We all went to see Michelle in her office.

We talked about Exploding. Exploding happened when Tired and Hungry got together to make me miserable. It was all because of Exploding. We went to work to get rid of Exploding. Here are some of the things we tried.

We tried playing games with Exploding and chased it away from the house. He went thumping down the street in a cloud of dust.

He’s kind of like a robot to me. Everyone has their own imagination of what Exploding looks like. Everybody is different.

One day things got really, really hard and Exploding went crazy! We were away from home, which is hard for me. So we came up with a new plan so that everyone would be safe. The plan was for me to be able to go to sleep without my mom there and without a fuss. If I could do this I would get to go to Apex, which is a super fun place.

The plan:

(1) Take my Michelle CD to play at bedtime.
(2) Read my book until I fall asleep.
(3) Take my three favorite animals: Cheddar, Puzzle, and Nuzzle. They will help me get to sleep.

I think I am pretty determined and can do hard things. Even though this won’t be easy I am going to be able to do it!

[Later…]

I really did do it!!!
I took Cheddar and dressed her up in ski clothes.
And NO EXPLODING!!

One day we decided that sometimes I don’t know that Mommy loves me. She surprised me one day with a box and a card. In the box was a beautiful real gold necklace. It was a circle that means forever. Mom said it reminded her of the gold in my heart. If I touch it I remember that my mom loves me and it helps me to feel much better.
Fantastically better!

Now I am eight years old I understand more. Like not hitting my sister. Like stopping myself, writing it down, talking it out. I like talking it out best.

Exploding is kind of like a ghost now. He’s gone. I‘m not going to pack Exploding on our trip to Apex.

Mom says things are really good at home now. She sees me coming up with solutions when I don’t get my way.

I am much happier now.

[The End]

Here’s one of the book’s illustrations:

One day, after meeting with Amy and her family, I discovered a very scary picture of Exploding under one of my office chairs. Amy strictly forbade me to include a picture of this horrible problem in her book and so you’ll just have to take my word for how frightening he was!

Witnesses and Celebration

As a part of our book-writing project, I visited Amy’s second grade teacher to interview her about the unique qualities that Amy brought to her classmates and her teacher. All sorts of treasures came out of that conversation and I copied down verbatim what the teacher told me and included a copy in Amy’s book. Amy didn’t say much about these reflections from her teacher but she did begin to express enjoying school and her teacher.

Amy and I decided to have a celebration and to bring her parents and sisters to our final meeting. She decided that we should eat strawberries and have lemon and vanilla cake. Too she wanted strawberry Italian sodas. For entertainment I read her book to the family and we played a card game that Amy decided we would enjoy. Following is a certificate that I prepared to honor Amy’s work. We all signed this as witnesses to Amy’s newly developed story of “Creativity Brought to Tough Problems that No Longer Exist” and entered it into her book that she proudly took with her.

CREATIVITY AWARD

This is to certify that AMY has successfully applied her very significant creative talents to the very tricky area of relationships. Her biggest achievement of talking it through has turned Explosion into a ghost and has her feeling more successful and happy at school and at home. Reading stories has helped her through tough times as well as remembering for sure that her mom loves her—fantastically!!

Witness_________________________________

Witness_________________________________

Date____________________________________

Amy gave her permission for me to publish her book here. She felt it was a good idea to share her success and strategies with other kids who might also struggle with tough problems like Exploding.

There is one catch, though. Amy would like to hear if anyone finds her experience to be useful in their own struggles with tricky problems!

The Voice of the Narrator

2009-02-22T16:05:00.000-08:00

How can couples break away from those familiar conversations that get stuck in point-and-counterpoint, accusation and defense? Conversations where the content is lost to a frustrating, confusing process?

One answer might be found at the movies, in the voice of the narrator: that disembodied voice that speaks from outside the movie or on top of its action, that helps set the historical context, explains a key plot point, or conveys thoughts that would otherwise be only “in the head” of a character.

The voice of the narrator came to mind recently when working with a married couple, Maria and George, who were frustrated by a regularly occurring conversation that would lead to nowhere but misunderstanding, defensiveness and distance. As we looked closely at their conversation, what was both obvious and saddening, was how, in the course of their difficult interaction, they would drift away from their original good intentions. Those good intentions would get lost in the background, implied but never spoken.

This time their difficult conversation began with a concern expressed by Maria, which felt like a criticism to George. He then responded defensively, or self-protectively, or with a counter-criticism (they disagreed on the exact nature of George’s response), and the conversation went back-and-forth, and headed from-bad-to-worse.

I asked Maria what her intentions were when she started the conversation earlier that week. Was she hoping for something in particular? What did she want to accomplish by raising the topic? Why was it important to her? What was her preference for how the conversation would happen?

Maria said her intention was to “connect with George, as a partner,” around an issue that was of concern to her (I’m not naming their particular issue here; feel free to insert one that’s familiar to you). Her hope was that George would be “open” to her concern, that he “could understand” why she was concerned and maybe even appreciate her for raising the matter. When I questioned her further she was able to cite occasions in the past when they were able to interact in this preferred manner, and she was clear that this was a strongly held preference, or preferred story, for their relationship.

Then I asked George about his preference for that same conversation. Similar to Maria he expressed his desire for “non-defensiveness,” “mutual care,” and listening with “openness” to one another, to build more understanding and closeness.

In that moment I was aware of how vastly different were the two conversations they described: the conversation that actually happened earlier that week where they got lost in the content and their reactions to one another – I’m calling it the “lost-in-the-process” conversation; and the second conversation, which didn’t happen that week, except in their descriptions, that was built around their intentions and preferences – I’m calling it the “intention-focused” conversation.

The lost-in-the-process conversation had all three of us feeling sad and overwhelmed by the mess of hurt, fear, accusation and counter-accusation George and Maria described (and that they actually re-lived, to a certain extent, while they were describing it in session).

The second conversation, the intention-focused one, had us feeling more optimistic about Maria and George’s desire for closeness and connection. We were clearer about what they wanted and how they would like to talk with one another; what they wanted felt do-able, and certainly worth doing.

In session I moved to the whiteboard and tried to visually depict the two conversations. For the lost-in-the-process one, I used back-and-forth arrows and words like “fear,” “hurt,” “vulnerability,” and “defensiveness” (words they had used) to depict the pain and stuck-ness they felt. It looked something like this:

Then I depicted their intention-focused conversation and wrote the words they used to describe their intentions and preferences: “clarification,” “talking about things that matter,” “tackling the tough topics,” “being open,” “being respectful,” and becoming “closer” in the process. It looked something like this:

With both drawings on the board, and with all of us feeling the different effects of these two depictions, I asked George and Maria to indicate their preferences. They both opted for the intention-focused version. Among the reasons they cited for their preferences were that they thought this kind of talking “brought out the best” in both of them, and rekindled “hope” and “love” that was often hidden by frustration. They also said that this kind of conversation didn’t let fear and vulnerability rule the day.

Later in the session, I wondered with them about what it would be like to step out of the lost-in-the-process conversation and into the intention-focused conversation. That is, if they found themselves in the midst of a lost-in-the-process conversation, headed in an unproductive direction, would it be desirable to step out of that conversation and into the other one? Or, might it be worthwhile to just begin some conversations by focusing on intentions and preferences, as an introduction to raising any concerns?

In other words, would it be valuable for Maria and George not to leave all of their hopes, desires and good intentions in the background, but to bring them up-front in their conversation? Would it be valuable to name those intentions – to “own” them, so to speak – and allow those intentions, like the narrator in a movie, to provide the context in which the desired conversation could take place?

From a narrative perspective

Michael White’s work on “landscape of action” and “landscape of identity” has been helpful to me in understanding how the “story” of an experience, how we understand or make sense of it, is derived both from our actions (what we do and say), and from the meanings, values, hopes, commitments, and intentions (“landscape of identity”) we ascribe to the situation.

For example, when Maria first raised her concern George not only heard the words Maria spoke and saw her gestures, movements, etc., but he also attributed or viewed them through the lens of certain meanings, like: “she’s unwilling to accept that my ways are just as legitimate as hers”; “she doesn’t like it that I’m so happy”; “she’s still afraid of me.” Likewise, George’s responses were also viewed and interpreted by Maria using these dual landscapes (“his words and tone are ‘defensive’; he knows I’m right but he’s too proud to admit it”).

From a narrative perspective we see these dual landscapes informing all interactions, and we assume that there are always multiple possibilities for how we understand a situation (we believe that multiple stories are always present). There are lots of interesting applications of these narrative ideas and assumptions to the situation with Maria and George. I’ll highlight just two or three of them here.

One application is that these ideas help us see that it is possible for George and Maria to explicitly influence the meaning they’re making of a given interaction rather than “leaving it to chance.” By stating, up front, that her intention is to “tackle an important issue,” or “make a tough decision” and to “work together” while doing so, Maria is helping to shape the unfolding story. She’s offering a lens or perspective to George to help him interpret what she’s up to. By doing so she’s increasing the likelihood that George hears her concern as an effort to work something out and get to a better place, rather than as criticism. (And, yes, it is possible that George won’t believe Maria when she says that her intention in bringing up a concern is to “work together” or “get closer.” And it’s likely that Maria has multiple intentions and may be choosing to highlight just one of them. There may be much to discuss even in the simple statement that “I want to be close to you.” Did I mention that relationships can be pretty complex?)

Another potential benefit of George (or Maria) naming his intentions at the beginning of the conversation (or during it, perhaps), is that he puts himself in the position of considering what actions and attitudes would be most consistent with his intentions: “If I really want to accomplish this, how should I behave? What words and tone-of-voice would best match my intentions?”

One thing I really like about Maria or George making a clear statement of their intentions is that it lets the other person make a more-informed decision about whether they want or feel able to participate in such a conversation. If Maria wants to “talk about a tough subject” in order to “be clearer” and “possibly get closer,” is George interested in or able to talk about that subject? Is he able to do it now or would it be better in an hour? Does he want to get clearer? Does he want to get closer? And is he willing to extend himself toward that end? In other words, Maria is naming her preferred story for the conversation, and now George can make a more-informed decision about whether he wants to help create or build that story with Maria. Of course, George may not want to or feel capable of doing so at that time, but maybe that’s better to know at the beginning rather than finding out at the end.

Finally, I’m aware that this discussion about naming one’s intentions can seem like an overly cautious, scripted, or regulated way of being in a relationship – not “free” or “natural” or “in the moment.” I think spontaneity or “free-flowing” or “open and honest sharing” can be beautiful and delightful, and when a relationship is working well, such conversations may predominate. The fact that they are possible and that they do work well may also indicate that those in such a conversation already have a good understanding of one another’s intentions, and that their conversations are consistent with and supportive of those intentions. But I think we also need options for when difficulties arise, or for when we want to give ourselves the best chance to have a good, productive conversation about something difficult. To return to the voice of the narrator: Sometimes the movie’s action and dialogue carry the story, and sometimes the narrator is needed to set the stage or fill in the gaps.

Pausing at Suffering

2009-01-25T08:35:00.000-08:00

Therapy is about many things. And it is often about suffering.

…People loving each other but suffering because they can’t seem to make their relationships work better.

…People knowing what they want but suffering because they keep encountering obstacles, sometimes the same ones over and over and over.

…People not knowing what they want but suffering because they’re sure there’s something “better than this.”

…People suffering because their actions and choices have hurt others and yet they’re hurt themselves, by those same people, and there’s no clear way out.

…People suffering because there’s too much risk, too much vulnerability between where they are and where they want to be.

My usual focus for this blog is to share some of the ways hope and new possibilities arise from suffering. But for now, for this blog, I wanted to write a reminder to myself of the presence of suffering: not to worship at its altar or to imply that therapy is always or only about suffering. But to acknowledge that suffering is often the territory of therapy: real people in real dilemmas who see their hopes and dreams vanishing.

I realize that this talk of suffering may evoke a big “of course” for you (You: “not a surprise, really, that people are in pain when they show up to therapy”). And your imagined response has made me wonder if this entry is worth writing. But here’s my dilemma: In writing from a narrative perspective about the practical and hope-giving solutions people develop, I don’t want to give the impression that people’s lives and the painful experiences they share with me in therapy are merely fodder for my blog, nor that I have simple, formulaic answers for them. For me the truth is quite the opposite.

People’s pain and fears, and the complexity of their problems can be daunting for my clients and for me. Ironically, perhaps, it is probably this sense of feeling daunted that most draws me to my work as a therapist. To be let in to people’s lives when they are truly in pain, and to be asked to help, is to experience a special, privileged kind of connection with them. Words fail to accurately capture the feeling of it, but I’ve heard many therapists talk of this experience as “sacred.” That feels about right to me.

I’m also drawn to the challenge of helping people find a new way, a solution, when they’ve already tried everything. The things I write about in this blog, the practical solutions inspired by a narrative perspective, usually begin in the territory of low spirits, fading hopes, and no apparent solutions. My clients and I venture forth by seeking to name and feel and understand their pain and suffering. And we let their pain and suffering lead us to their hopes and dreams.

My blog exists because I love how narrative ideas and practices help me and my clients move from suffering to solutions. But in the effort to express the joy, excitement, and practicality of what people are able to accomplish, I don’t want to diminish the fact that their beginning places, and their paths, are complex and challenging: and those paths often begin or lead through suffering.

Agreeing to Stop - Part 2

2008-12-21T11:43:00.000-08:00

The will and ability to stop, to pause, or to take a break, stands out for me as one of the best achievements made by the couples I work with in therapy. This is Part 2 of a two-part piece on a couple’s work to interrupt a destructive pattern and opt, instead, for a preferred story of their relationship.

***

Part 1 of this two-part piece described how a married couple agreed to change a longstanding pattern by stopping a destructive, downward spiral of arguing and hostility before it took them down one more time. Instead, they developed the ability to pause or take a break and resume the discussion when they could be calm and compassionate with one another. Their ability to start taking these steps had begun to restore their hope in their relationship and allow the positive, loving, and caring qualities of their relationship to be more on display. In Part 1 I framed their agreement to stop as an act of standing up for their preferred story of their relationship. In Part 2 I want to return to this couple and describe in more detail the steps they took to get to the place where they were able to agree to stop, and stick with it. To give this fictitious-but-based-on-many-people-I’ve-worked-with couple a little more life and personality, I’m naming them Abe and Zoe.

The ability to say stop and have it mean something, resulted from considerable effort by both Abe and Zoe. Previous efforts had usually not helped, and often resulted in an escalation of their arguments and left them feeling demoralized. But when they showed up to a therapy session and told me of their recent successes at stopping before being pulled down, I was eager to document the factors or steps they took to make it happen. Here are some of the steps they identified:

1. They made changes based on the concerns raised in their previous arguments. A hallmark of Abe and Zoe’s downward-spiraling arguments was that neither one believed the other was listening. Consequently they found themselves repeating the same argument over and over, with emphasis, and defending against those arguments with well-honed rebuttals.

But as I talked with them about how they were able to interrupt the painful pattern it became clear that both Zoe and Abe had, in fact, heard some of the other’s key concerns. And not only did they hear, but they made changes that showed that they had listened. The changes were in areas like kitchen cleanliness, showing interest in each other’s day, the tones of voice they used with each other, their facial expressions while the other was on the phone, the amount of time spent on the computer or in front of the TV, and in their willingness to take on responsibilities for their kids’ activities and schedules. Zoe started noticing Abe making these changes, and Abe noticed Zoe’s changes and the changes sparked a sense of good will in one another.

2. They each reflected on their own processes and patterns and developed a greater level of awareness. At various points in our conversation, Abe and Zoe each reflected on something they had learned about themselves that helped them understand how their own actions had been fueling the downward spiral of their arguments.

For example, Zoe had a moment of clarity after a particularly difficult argument. She said, “I realized that I had been getting mad in response to frustration and difficulty all of my life, but getting mad had never really accomplished anything.” Zoe’s insight enabled her to consider doing something other than getting mad when frustration and difficulty hit.

Similarly, Abe reported that he was managing his annoyance better. After one argument where he strenuously objected to Zoe telling him that he was “annoyed all the time” (which, Abe argued, “couldn’t possibly be true … no one could be annoyed ALL the time”), and having heard Zoe use the word “annoyed” over and over again, he started paying more attention to all of his gestures that indicated annoyance. He didn’t like the impression his gestures were giving to Zoe or their kids, but even more importantly, he didn’t like that he was being one of those constantly annoyed people for whom he had little respect. “It was just no way to live,” he said, and he started looking for ways to shift a moment of annoyance into something more positive or “actionable” (that is, finding a way to take action to address the annoyance rather than just getting angry).

Zoe also acknowledged to herself, really for the first time, that stress was taking a big toll on her. So it became worth it to her to find ways to reduce tension in all areas of her life. And Abe realized that his insistence that they “resolve this right now!”, whenever they had a disagreement, grew much more from his anger and fear than from a real desire to work together with Zoe to resolve something. So he started to imagine other possibilities that could be more helpful than “resolving it right now!”

With their changes and insights, Zoe and Abe began to see a slowing of the spiral. They began to see small signs that one good turn did, often, lead to another one in return. Their story about their relationship started to shift a little. Whereas before they had begun to see themselves as helplessly stuck in the downward spiral, they now could see the possibility that even though there was tension in the air and an argument seemed to be brewing, there might still be a chance to have their interaction turn out well. For Abe and Zoe, the shift, small though it was, wasn’t just theoretical or based on principle. They actually started to see one another differently. Simply put, Abe began to get glimpses again of Zoe his friend; and Zoe began to see, for the first time in a long time, Abe the good guy. These new pictures of one another, led to more changes and helped them start to see new, hopeful possibilities for their relationship.

3. They became more open to one another’s language and signals. From my perspective it seems to be a perennial challenge for couples who are stuck to be able to respond respectfully or compassionately to one another’s signals of having had enough, or being worried or afraid. Instead, like Zoe and Abe, when couples are stuck in a long-standing pattern of arguing and blame, they can be highly reluctant to respond warmly or graciously when the partner signals that they’re too worn out to talk, or too worked up to be able to focus, or too stressed to be able to resolve something right now. And if the relationship is highly stressed and has become hostile, then the request to wait until a better time to talk can actually be treated as a political maneuver, as an attempt to manipulate. If you’ve been there, I probably don’t need to say anymore for you to understand how easy it is to be “deaf” and “blind” to the other’s messages that they just aren’t able to do this right now.

Abe and Zoe had been deaf and blind to one another for a long time. But building on the new, positive movement in their relationship, they each tried to really pay attention, and treat at face value, what the other communicated about their readiness to talk. Instead of being suspicious of the other’s motives, they allowed the other’s words to carry weight. “I’m not ready” started to mean, “I’m not ready,” instead of “I’m waiting for a more advantageous time,” or “since you’re ready to talk, I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of talking.” And beyond just starting to trust the other’s words, they also started to “see” the other’s body language and let themselves interpret it softly or with empathy. Zoe’s yawn in the early evening, which often maddened Abe, started to be seen by Abe as indicating Zoe’s tiredness or being ready for a break, not as anything personal about him. Zoe could now entertain the possibility that when Abe closed his eyes and started breathing deeply and slowly, it was to calm himself down and get perspective, rather than to indicate that Zoe was an idiot.

I don’t want to give the impression that once they started down this path of greater empathy and respect that everything was smooth sailing for Zoe and Abe; it wasn’t. But what they did say was that once they started to let themselves see the other in a “good light” rather than a “critical light” or “suspicious light,” they started to find evidence that this could be a good relationship. And they continued to kindle the hope that their efforts could actually pay off.

4. They started to change the “rules” for their arguments. Although most of their “rules” for arguing remained implicit, Abe and Zoe actually discussed and put in place a couple of rules that really made a difference.

One rule was that if a conversation was disrupted they needed to return to it and finish it up. Whether it was disrupted by conflict or hostility, a phone call, a work demand, or by their children, they agreed to come back together later and complete the conversation. It wasn’t a highly formalized rule: they didn’t specify that it had to occur within a certain time frame or follow any particular guidelines. But they did agree that they should return to the discussion as soon as possible, when they had the capacity to talk in a way that would make things better. With this rule in place (which for Zoe and Abe, was only really possible after they made the other changes discussed earlier), they started to gain a sense of confidence in the relationship. That is, they started to see the relationship as one that could get “clean”: not having a lot of loose ends dangling, fights unfinished, issues that couldn’t be discussed or resolved. They weren’t there yet, but they could see that it was possible for them to actually raise an issue of importance and eventually come to a clean, friendly, satisfactory resolution.

The second rule went hand-in-hand with the first: no violent outbursts. For Abe and Zoe, “violent” had never meant doing physical harm to one another, but it had meant frightening outbursts of punching walls or the air (by Abe), yelling (by both), and threats to leave (by Zoe). In the past, such actions were so infuriating (and often frightening), that they immediately led to an escalation of hostility, and the increased probability that one of them would either “storm off” or threaten to “kick out” the other. A related rule to this one was that if they felt like they were in a place where the only option seemed to be one of the above violent options, then they had permission to leave the room, without being pursued or taunted by the other.

Zoe was particularly articulate in pointing out that their agreement to return to finish up a conversation allowed her to be much more comfortable in letting Abe walk away when he was too worked up. Before the new rules, she felt she had to keep Abe in the room, to keep the conversation alive, because at least they were talking (albeit loudly and unproductively) about something that mattered (and not ignoring it or addressing it only with snide remarks and sarcasm). Now she had a sense of confidence that if Abe left the room during an argument, he would eventually come back, and they could make progress. In essence, allowing each other to walk away kept a tense situation from become even more intense, and, thereby, limited the amount of damage they would do to the relationship in the name of “working it out now!”

5. Life helped them out. Just as the circumstances of a couple’s life can often add to their stress and make it difficult to find the time or energy or good will to work though difficulties, life circumstances can also help at times. For Abe and Zoe, a few good weeks in other areas of their lives helped them develop the ability to “agree to stop.”

Their young son finished teething and was becoming better rested and less fussy. Zoe’s work had calmed down, plus she got a raise, after a particularly stressful time in the life of her company. And Abe was coming out of a painful crisis in his own extended family – the kind of time that always left him feeling torn between his loyalty to his current family with Zoe, and his desire to help his parents and siblings with their struggles. Abe also gave credit to having found the right dosage for his anti-depressants. He had been so low in recent months, that even thinking about different ways of talking with Zoe took more energy than he could muster.

6. They learned to stop before things got too heated. Building on all of the above, Abe and Zoe became much better at recognizing the signs that said they were headed toward a downward spiral, and now had the ability and permission to say to one another, “Let’s stop and come back to this later.” Now, their words were far less likely to be met with suspicion. Now, they were much more likely to express themselves in ways that indicated their hopes for and trust in the relationship rather than despair. Now, they were much less likely to feel a sense of urgency or desperation: so a “stop,” now, was more like a pause until a better time, and less like they were in the grips of a “do or die,” “now or never” situation.

From a narrative perspective

If we think of Zoe and Abe as having enacted their preferred story of stopping before the destructive, downward spiral sucked them down with it, we can see that their ability to do so did not emerge “out of the blue.” Instead, the preferred story of saying “stop” and having it mean something was actually built on top of several other “smaller” stories that made it more and more likely that they could stop. These smaller stories included: the changes they made; their self-reflections and insights; their openness to one another; their new rules for arguing; some help from their life circumstances; and a greater understanding of a fast-moving downward spiral that was better stopped before it started.

Zoe and Abe’s ability to say “stop” is similar to a movie where the opening scene is actually from the “end” of the story, chronologically. As we watch this opening scene, we can see that something has just been resolved, and can see the people or bits of evidence that have been key to its resolution. But if that’s all we know, it’s likely to have little impact on us. If the movie actually ended at that point, we’d be far less than satisfied. But if the movie then takes us back to the beginning, to the original crime or dilemma, and we can see the complexities of the situation. And then we see the pieces of the mystery put together in a way that points toward an understanding, a solution, or a conviction of the guilty parties, we gain a much greater appreciation of what’s been accomplished. And then if the opening scene is re-played, what at first may have seemed like an interesting-but-not-compelling resolution, now takes on richness and depth and becomes highly satisfying.

Similarly, with Zoe and Abe, their ability to say stop, when we understand more of what went into it, becomes not just the application of a good-marriage principle that they read in a book or on a blog! Instead it reflects a rich, detailed story of how they’ve made changes in their relationship to have it reflect their values and dreams. It becomes a story of how the small things add up to the big things. It becomes a story of how they each notice their thoughts and emotions and actions, and consider how well those are working toward what they want in their relationship. And it becomes a story of how they each allow the other to have influence: Together they build or construct the story of what this relationship is and what it is to become. So by the end, “agreeing to stop,” isn’t a cheesy cliché, but a rich story capturing Abe and Zoe’s best efforts and intentions, reflecting and supporting their hopes.

Agreeing to Stop - Part 1

2008-11-30T09:39:00.000-08:00

The will and ability to stop, to pause, or to take a break, stands out for me as one of the best achievements made by the couples I work with in therapy. This is Part 1 of a two-part piece on one couple’s work to interrupt a destructive pattern and opt, instead, for a preferred story of their relationship.

***

I was working recently with a married couple who were frequently stuck in a downward spiral of painful accusations, criticism, counter-criticism, frustration, and anger. At the end of such spirals the couple would feel overcome by a sense of themselves as being “incompatible,” “just too different,” or “not a good fit from the start.” At the bottom of the spiral they would be completely saturated by “our relationship is bad” stories, and by that point they would have a lot of evidence to support their conclusions. Thoughts of divorce would soon follow, as would feelings of loss, fear, and powerlessness.

Through the years, with every new occurrence of this painful cycle, the couple would become more convinced that the downward spiral, with its defensiveness and recriminations was the “true” story of their relationship. More and more the good times were dismissed as uncharacteristic and irrelevant, and were even used against one another in the couple’s arguments.

Initially, our work in therapy helped the couple to get a clearer picture of how the spiral worked and how it undermined what they wanted in their relationship. But the progress they sought was still slow in coming. Along with a better understanding of the downward spiral we were able to document the many good qualities in their relationship that made it worth trying to find a way to break out of their destructive dance. And yet the harmful patterns remained entrenched.

One day, however, the couple arrived in therapy talking about how much things had improved between them over the past month or so. I was eager to learn more about the steps they had taken to bring about the changes they desired, and our conversation provided a context for them to name and describe what they had accomplished, and how. The short version is: They stopped. They developed their capacity to pause and interrupt the downward spiral before it could, once again, suck them into its vortex. Here’s some of what they did to stop:

1. They recognized a “point of no return.” They both came to see that there was a point in their disagreements where the agitation and frustration, fueled by their increasingly negative thoughts about each other, were becoming so intense that to continue the conversation was almost guaranteed to make things worse.

The signals of growing agitation and frustration included: pacing the room; her voice getting louder while his would become more measured, deliberate, and quiet; he would start telling her to “please stop yelling,” and she would tell him “I’m not being loud! Talk to me like an adult, not like I’m a four-year-old!”

Their thoughts about one another were like these:

“He never accepts responsibility!”
“She always thinks she’s right!”
“She’s losing it again!”
“He’s so controlling!”
“She doesn’t want to listen to the truth!”
“He’s completely out of touch!”

At their calmer times the couple came to the conclusion that once a difficult conversation passed a certain point, the conversation became an argument and took on a life of its own. They likened it to a forest fire that becomes so intense that it creates its own weather pattern, with driving winds that pull in everything nearby as it grows in heat and intensity and destructiveness. They also agreed that they were fed up and ready to stop.

2. Saying “Stop.” As their destructive interactions grew in intensity, it became more and more difficult for the couple to interrupt the process. Yet they found a way. After recognizing that there was a “point of no return,” the couple did the tricky work of finding a way to signal to one another that they needed a break.

I say it was “tricky” because it’s easy for partners to feel “controlled” or “blamed” or “belittled” when the other communicates the need for a break; like this:

Her: “I need a break from this. I can’t take it anymore.” Him: “Oh, so you think I’m out of control! Yeah, walk away! Just when we’re finally starting to talk!”

Him: “Can we just keep our voices down a little?” Her: “I … am … not …being … loud. Stop trying to control me. YOU’RE NOT MY FATHER!!!”

Her: “Can we NOT do this again?” Him: “You’re blaming ME for this!? I can’t believe it.”

This couple became so tired of the destructive pattern that they reached a point where just the words “I need to stop” or “let’s take a break” were enough to signal the imminent point of no return and the need to take a break: to physically separate for a little while and then to come back together and talk, more calmly, about whether they were ready to continue their previous conversation in a more productive way.

[To honor and give a more complete picture of this couple’s hard work to get to the point where they could say “stop” and have it turn out well, in my next blog entry I describe some of the work they did to build and strengthen the capacities of their relationship.]

3. A willingness to trust the preferred story. It’s easy to get caught up in thinking that the problems of our relationships are more real than the good or preferred qualities of our relationships. But by saying “stop” and trying to interrupt the downward spiral, I see this couple as having cast their votes for their preferred story of their relationship. By agreeing to wait until a better time and place, and a better way to talk about their difficulties, the couple was saying that those better qualities were just as real as their problems. They were trusting, and risking, that if they took steps to stop the downward spiral (by resisting accusations and confrontations), and instead, to respectfully offer one another the time to regroup and refocus, they would be building a better relationship, one that was real and that was a better fit with their values than was their destructive downward spiral. In other words, they said:

“The good aspects of this relationship are real and are important to nurture. We nurture them best when we talk about our challenges and differences in a calm and friendly manner. We undermine those good qualities when we allow ourselves to be sucked into tension, suspicion, and hostility.”

They were choosing to construct or build their relationship around their preferences. They chose to prioritize those qualities that brought life, energy, respect, and love to their relationship, rather than relegating them to the “less real” or “less important” or “less honest.”

Building Preferences – Being Less Grumpy

2008-11-16T17:12:00.000-08:00

As promised in my last entry on Building Preferences, here’s an example of building a preference. The preference is for Dave, who has been struggling for several months with what he’s come to call his “grumpiness” at home. We’ll walk with Dave through the process of building a preference. Although Dave is fictitious, the dialogue that follows is based on many therapy conversations.

1. Naming your preference. Dave is clear only about what he doesn’t want – the problem that is causing such a negative feeling for him and a disheartening spirit at home with his wife and two kids: grumpiness. At first he states his preference as:

“I’d prefer to be less grumpy.”

We’re on our way to developing some useful alternatives for Dave, but first it will be helpful to get a better understanding of at least two things:

1. Dave has identified what he does NOT prefer (i.e. being grumpy), but I wonder what he DOES prefer, instead of grumpiness; or, since he prefers to be LESS grumpy, what would he say he wants MORE of?

2. Where does the preference matter most? Where is it most an issue? Is Dave grumpy “all the time,” or mostly around certain issues, or particular times of day, or around certain activities, or perhaps with some of his family members rather than others?

In response to the inquiry about what Dave DOES prefer, he’s not entirely clear, but he offers his best understanding:

“I’d prefer to be happy, to be more pleasant around my family; to be upbeat and have more fun around them.”

This is helpful to our process of building a preference as it gives us a sense of direction: away from grumpy, toward happy, pleasant, upbeat and fun.

In response to the second inquiry, Dave says that grumpiness is mostly an issue in the evening, from the time he gets home from work until the kids’ bedtime, some two to three hours later. He’s not always grumpy during these times, and he can recall many experiences of lightheartedness and warm connections with his wife and kids in the evenings. But grumpiness has made more and more of an appearance, so to speak, and he doesn’t like its effects on himself, his wife, or his kids. In the course of this conversation Dave clarifies that grumpiness is far more of an issue during the week than on the weekend. In light of this, we update his preference as follows:

“I’d prefer to be happy, to be more pleasant around my family; to be upbeat and have more fun around them – especially in the evening, on weekdays.”

2. Describing what your preference looks like. Dave has identified important concepts or ideas to express his desires – being happier, more pleasant, upbeat, and fun around his family. And Dave may experience real benefits just by having clarified something that’s been bothering him, and clarifying what he’d prefer instead. But concepts like happiness and being upbeat or fun can easily remain abstract or vague, and therefore, not as useful, unless we take the time to explore what they actually look like when they show up in Dave’s life. So, we explore these questions:

When you picture yourself being happy, pleasant, upbeat, or fun, what are you actually doing with your family?
What “feelings” or “emotions” capture your sense of being happier, more pleasant, upbeat, or fun? What’s happening with you, your kids, and your wife that would evoke those feelings or emotions?

At first, questions about what Dave would be doing with his family are difficult for him to answer. All he can really identify is that whatever he’d be doing, he’d have a warm sense of contentment.

I ask him to imagine himself feeling such contentment and to describe what he’s experiencing. He first describes what he sees: his daughter and son being energetic, but not rude or out of control, they’re not anxious or worked up. As he thinks about himself in this scenario, he imagines a variety of situations. He could be working on his own project from work, or sitting beside his kids helping with their homework. He could be cleaning up after dinner. He might be talking with his wife about the upcoming week, or just catching each other up on the day’s events. Or he might be by himself, reading or watching TV, but with a prevailing sense of calm or peace, even with the hum of activity going on around him.

I start to ask Dave about why this matters to him, but before I can move in this direction, Dave says that he’s gaining a new insight about what his preference looks like. He states it this way:

“No matter if we’re having fun as a family or working on really challenging projects, or homework, or facing our finances; and no matter whether we’re all together or off in our separate places in the house, there’s a positive energy, and a sense of calm, and a sense of focus. Bottom line, tension and frustration with one another are not getting in the way of what we’re doing. It’s like this fog, this thick, gray fog that so often hangs in our house, is gone. The air is clear. And if my son is struggling with his homework and I need to help, that’s all it is: my son is struggling with his homework and I need to help. I’m not thinking, ‘why does he always put it off until the last minute?’ And I’m not thinking, ‘if I have to help him now, when am I going to get back to my work? I can’t afford to stay up late.’ I’m not worked up about helping him and he’s not worked up about needing help. I’m just helping my son. And he’s just struggling with homework.”

3. Understanding why the preference matters to you. I ask Dave why it matters to him that the fog lifts and that homework is just homework.

He says it matters to him because he believes tension is corrosive. The fog of tension gets in the way of working together clearly and cleanly, and creates a sense of unrest and uneasiness for everyone. He says that he can actually feel his body relax and breathe easier when he’s able to help his son with his homework without getting worked up about how late it is. He’s certain that it must be better for his health when the fog lifts and his family’s relationships with one another are calmer. And he thinks they all benefit by not carrying around with them the tensions of a frustrated, fog-shrouded evening together.

I ask him if there are other ways he thinks the carrying out of this preference might matter to his kids’ lives. Dave talks about his hope that he and his wife pass along a different legacy of family than either of them had growing up.
At this point Dave’s updated preference might be described more creatively as:

“I’d prefer that the fog has lifted and the air is clear: that I’m helping to create a focused, connected, playful, and tension-free evening with my family.”

4. Exploring how your experience has informed you about this preference. I hold an assumption about Dave, as I do when I work with people in therapy, that he is able to describe what his preference looks like because he’s experienced it. He’s either experienced it in his own life, or he’s witnessed others enacting this preference, or perhaps he’s witnessed it only in his imagination. Our conversation turns to his experiences to see what they’ve taught Dave about his preference.

Where have you seen or experienced the fog lifting and the air being clear? Where and when has it shown up in your life?
Have you seen others interacting without the fog? What was it about what you observed that captured your interest and attention?
Have you imagined what it would be like to be with your family without the fog? Have you read of such an experience, or seen it in a movie?
What have these experiences taught you about what the preference looks like? What have they taught you about the effects of clear air, of relating without the fog? And what have you learned about why this matters?
What have those experiences taught you about how to do it?

Dave was already in this territory when he talked about helping his son with his homework. He described an experience from just the past week in which he was particularly stressed from a confluence of events – bills that required online payment that evening, his wife’s making a late run to the store, his sense that he was catching a cold, and his daughter’s pouting at dinnertime. When bedtime approached and his son still had a history assignment to complete, Dave could feel that grumpiness was turning into something worse: intolerance and frustration toward his son. The fog was descending.

Because he had been focusing on this pattern where grumpiness quickly becomes something colder, more distant, and mean-spirited, Dave was able, at least, to catch himself from saying something critical to his son (from past experience Dave had concluded that such in-the-moment criticism tended to escalate the situation in a negative way and compound everyone’s frustration).

When his son announced that he needed help with his homework, a panic-wave rippled through Dave's body. But he said, “give me a moment. Get out your assignment and I’ll be there in a couple minutes.” He stepped outside and looked to the night sky. He began to calm and said to himself, “my son needs my help now. We can talk tomorrow about his study habits.” After a few moments, and a few deep breaths, Dave walked back in and sat with his son, and let his son’s homework be homework.

In describing the effects of his actions that evening, Dave said he was surprised by how simple things became once he paused. Instead of being shrouded in the fog of the demands on his time and his frustration with his son, it was simply Dave and his son taking one question at a time: thirty minutes of a comfortable, focused connection.

5. Identifying your own skills that support this preference. From this brief description of just one event we gain an understanding of several skills Dave was able to utilize to work toward his preference. (“Skills” is used here broadly, to include thinking skills, the ability to manage one’s emotions, actions or behaviors, skills involved in communicating, and one’s knowledge that can be brought to bear on a situation.) As Dave I reviewed his experience of that evening, these were the skills that stood out to him:

The skill of recognizing a bad pattern – Dave was able to recognize, when it was actually happening, his well-worn emotional pattern of moving from grumpiness to intolerance, criticism, and frustrated distance. This recognition, though it may seem simple, requires a complex set of skills, such as noticing subtle changes in emotion, gestures, words, tones of voice, ways of thinking, and even changes in breathing that signal the pattern.

The skill of making a choice to interrupt the pattern – When he recognized the bad pattern, It wasn’t clear to Dave exactly what he should do differently, but he knew he did not want to do the critical-intolerant thing he often does. So he took a break to interrupt the pattern and allow for another possibility.

The skill of calming himself down – Dave enacted several skills to calm his agitation. He physically moved, put his body in motion; he removed himself from the stressful situation; he focused on maintaining a steady, calm breathing pattern; and he gave himself a bigger perspective by taking in the night sky.

The skill of focusing on what matters – Of all the things clamoring for Dave’s attention, he was able to prioritize his son’s immediate need for help. He also prioritized an attitude (of care and interest) and an “emotional stance” (being calm and positive) that would be beneficial, both to his son and to himself.

The skill of being guided by a preferred story or picture – Dave showed the ability to identify a picture of how he wanted to be with his son (or a “preferred story” of how to do homework together), and then to allow that picture to guide his comments, his questions, his thinking, and his overall spirit, attitude, and emotions during his 30 minutes with his son.

By naming the skills required by his preference, Dave could see that some of these skills were already part of his repertoire, and he could identify others that he wanted to develop more fully.

A Richly Described Preferred Story

In my earlier entry I talked about how the steps outlined here aid us in the “thickening” of the preference into a richly described story or identity. What began for Dave as almost a whim or an improbable wish – that he could be less grumpy – has now taken on body, detail, and depth. It has become three-dimensional and alive. At this end of the discussion Dave has helped prepare himself for future situations when he starts to experience grumpiness taking on a life of its own. He’s likely to be much quicker in recognizing the patterns before they get a real grip on him. He’ll have a much clearer picture of his preferences for his own behavior, thought patterns, and ways of communicating with those around him. And he’ll have a detailed understanding of himself, his identity, and the resources he already has at his disposal that can be put to use to bring about the preferred ways of being and outcomes that matter most to him. From a narrative therapy perspective, we can summarize this by saying that Dave has richly described his preferred story: which makes it much more accessible on those potentially fog-shrouded evenings with his family. Here’s Dave’s preference, or preferred story, at this end of our conversation – still a work-in-progress:

“I’d prefer to use my skills for being calm and connected, to keep the fog at bay and help to create a focused, playful, and tension-free evening with my family.”

Building Preferences

2008-11-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

Like water that gushes forth when the floodgates are opened, the thing I find most exciting about the naming of a preference is the energy the name can unleash.

Sometimes, though, in my therapy work, my excitement is not shared by the people I work with – at least not initially. I’m moving downstream and they’re stuck behind the dam.

They may still be held in the problem’s grip and skeptical that the naming of a preference could make much difference in their lives.
They may have “settled in” or “come to terms” with the problem and decided to “make the most” of their situation.
They may dismiss preferences as mere fantasies, wishes, or unrealistic dreams.
They may feel daunted by the many factors that make the problem seem like an irresistible force.
Maybe they’ve already been working at this for so long that they’re sure they’ve tried everything.
And they may feel stuck because they don’t know where the path can go after a preference is named.

But the naming of a preference is only an initial step. There’s much more to add, to round out and give life and detail to the named preference so that it becomes “richly described” and more available to the person. So in my work with people I sometimes need to slow down my own thinking and excitement to make sure we’re moving together down a shared path – working together to build a preference or preferred story. Generally speaking, the questions below describe the territory we’ll explore as we travel down that path.

1. Naming your preference. This is the brief description, or title, of what you prefer or desire as an alternative to the problem that has been so dominant in your life. It’s a beginning point and likely to change as you think about and discuss the other steps in this process.

Here are some examples of preferences:

“I’d prefer to have a clearer sense of direction in my career.”
“I’d prefer to be calmer and be clearer about how I want to respond when my kids act up.”
“I’d prefer not to have my life be so influenced by doubts and worries.”

2. Describing what your preference looks like. Usually, when we name a preference, the name itself is only shorthand for a rich, detailed picture of what the preference looks like or how it would show up in our lives. If you were to say “I want to be more involved in my son’s life,” you’re probably not making a generic statement; you’re probably not talking about just a generic kind of involvement. Instead your statement probably carries with it images and ideas, activities and conversations, and places and situations that make it more than just a fantasy or dream. In this step we try to capture in conversation, words, or pictures (and perhaps even in music or colors or movement) a rich and detailed description of “how you know it when you see it.” So, we might ask:

When you picture yourself being involved in your son’s life, what are you actually doing with him?
Is there a “feeling” or “emotion” that captures that sense of involvement? How would you describe it? What do you picture yourself doing with your son that would evoke that feeling or emotion?
Does the involvement you’re picturing include conversations? Are there certain topics or ideas or experiences you might be talking about that would support the kind of involvement you want to have?

3. Understanding why the preference matters to you. The preference becomes more real as you understand the difference it makes in your life. So we ask:

How does this preference affect the way you think, feel, or act?
How does it affect the way you relate with others?
How does it affect the way you see your future?
How does the preference capture or reflect your hopes and dreams?
What does the preference make possible that isn’t possible, or as likely, when the problem is dominating your life?

4. Exploring how your experience has informed you about this preference. One of the reasons you can describe what a preference looks like is that you’ve usually had some (or a lot of) experience with it. In this step you deliberately focus on your own experiences to see how they’ve taught you about your preference. So, as a therapist, I might ask the person I’m working with:

Where have you seen this preference in action?
Where and when has it shown up in your life?
Where and when have you seen others enacting it? And what was it about what you observed that captured your interest and attention?
What have those experiences taught you about what the preference looks like? About its effects? About why it matters?
And what have those experiences taught you about how to live it out?

5. Identifying your own skills, abilities, qualities, and knowledge that support this preference. Your detailed descriptions, and your experiences help us understand the qualities, skills, and knowledge that are required by the preference. Sometimes these are obvious in the vivid pictures you paint of the preference or in the experiences you recall. At other times you can see those qualities and skills by speculating or imagining. Or you might playfully consider how you would advise someone else who wanted to live out this preference. Or you might imagine directing someone in a play or movie role, if they youre trying to act out this preference. By naming the qualities and abilities required by the preference, you’re able to consider how these are already part of your repertoire, or how you can build on the things you’re already good at, and more fully develop these skills that support your preferences.

From a theoretical perspective these questions aid in the “thickening” of the preference into a richly described story or identity. What began as almost a whim or an improbable wish, now takes on body and depth. It becomes three-dimensional and alive. It changes, so to speak, from an outline to a story; from a bright idea to an action plan. It starts to move from the vague and ephemeral to the detailed and full-bodied, and thereby becomes much more accessible to us in your lives.

(In my next entry I work through this same set of questions with an example focusing on a grumpy dad)

Naming Preferences

2008-10-31T12:51:00.000-07:00

It’s a basic tenet of narrative therapy that problems are tricky buggers. They take over our lives, drain our energy, and erase our imaginations. They can convince us that they are the truth, the whole truth, and that they are more real than any of the paltry solutions we might come up with. So they’re not only tricky, they’re greedy too. And the people I work with in therapy usually show up to my office with some serious suffering from these problems. They’ve often had the life, energy, and optimism sucked out of them by problems.

But as daunting as these problems often feel for me and the people I work with, my spirits are usually buoyed by my confidence in people’s ability to identify and work toward their preferences, despite the efforts of problems to keep them down. So even in the midst of people’s considerable pain and suffering, I remain curious about what they prefer for their lives and why it matters to them.

In light of this, much of my focus as a therapist is on helping the people I work with identify and build on their preferences. By preference I mean the choice of one quality over another, or one way of being, acting, thinking, or feeling over another, as in: “I’d prefer to show more interest in my children’s lives”; “I’d prefer to act grown-up around my peers”; “we’d prefer to replace bickering with caring discussions and genuine problem-solving in our marriage”; or, “I’d prefer to have more spiritual focus in my life.”

To identify and name a preference is a powerful step toward living the kind of life we want to lead. It’s powerful in at least four ways (and probably many more):

1. Preferences highlight alternatives. The naming of a preference helps us see that there are alternatives to an entrenched problem (and problems often take up so much space in our lives that they block out everything else).

For example, the preference stated above, “to show more interest in my children’s lives,” may have previously been hidden or crowded out by this father’s frustration with his children (that is, all he could see was frustration), his guilt over his own distance from them, or his helpless feeling of re-enacting the same tension-filled relationship he had with his own father. Such frustration, guilt, or déjà-vu experiences can be so overwhelming, so draining of energy and resources that they take away even the hope of a better way. Perhaps even worse, such problem-derived feelings can paint such a compelling picture of the situation that we become convinced that it’s the only picture in town; the only option or way of seeing. But even if it doesn’t seem very likely at the beginning, the naming of a preference puts an alternative out there for consideration and potential development. The problem is not the only game in town.

2. The naming of preferences brings them more into reality. Inspired by an image from the writings of Michael White, I like to think of problems and preferences as books on a bookshelf. The problem-books, with their fat, boldly lettered spines, have dominated and nearly filled the entire bookshelf, convincing us of their truth and comprehensiveness, insinuating that they’re the only story around. But naming a preference is like adding a slim little volume to the end of the row of books. It’s so slim that you can’t read its title without pulling if off the shelf, but its mere presence hints, whispers or even beckons to us that there are more stories to tell; more truths and realities to be explored; more alternatives to be developed.

The naming of the preference often helps convey an emotion or passion that has been only gently nudging us; perhaps a little too lightly to be treated as real. The naming of the preference brings it into the light of day; exposes it; brings it more into existence. It’s like putting pencil to paper and actually sketching a picture that’s been in your head for a while – the sketch may not be the final picture, but it gets you started down the path of color and shape and size and contrast that ultimately brings the picture to life.

3. Preferences help us take a position. By naming a preference, and stating that, in fact, it is what we prefer, we’re taking a position on what matters to us. We’re declaring what is important. If nothing else, we’re letting ourselves know that we value the preference more than the problem, and we desire the effects of the preference more than the effects of the problem. Stating such preferences has the powerful potential to re-shape and re-frame the way we see ourselves and our worlds.

If I take the position that I’d prefer to have civil, respectful, caring conversations with my wife, rather than bickering, I’m likely to pay more attention the next time to the way I talk with her. And although such attention-paying may not yield, immediately, the types of conversations that I prefer, it does help me reflect on the contexts and factors that either help or hinder my ability to be respectful and caring. Such attention-paying helps me think about why it even matters to me that I be civil, respectful and caring; for example, I can contrast the kind of relationship that is possible with caring and respectful conversations with the kind of relationship that is promoted by bickering. And I can consider what skills, abilities, knowledge, and experience I can bring to bear on my desire to be caring in my talks with my wife. Reflecting on my preferences can also help me take more notice of other people who display the kinds of qualities I’ve stated as my preference: For example, I can witness a couple engaging in caring conversations, with openness, respect, and curiosity toward one another, and I can learn from how they do it.

4. Preferences can invite playfulness. Part of the oppressiveness of problems is they invite us to take them and our lives very seriously. And while life deserves some serious considerations, such seriousness is not always the best way to make the changes we want. When we name a preference and then let ourselves play around with both the preference and its name, energy happens, curiosity is unleashed, and creativity erupts.

We may start with one name for our preference, but find that subsequent names are more nuanced or more specific. They can capture more of the energy and passion we feel; they reflect our deep desires and longings. In fact, it’s a good exercise to pay attention to our energy and emotions as we “try on” different names for our preferences. Does the name describe or capture something that gives you energy or enthusiasm? If not, is there a change you can make to the name that brings with it more energy or passion? For example, instead of preferring “to show more interest in my children’s lives,” more energizing names may be “to learn more about my son’s interest in chess,” or “to spend more time bike-riding with my daughter,” or “to try to have conversations in which I’m genuinely curious about how my son sees the world.” The playful naming of our preferences can invite us to reflect on the names we’ve chosen and say, “well actually, it’s more of this and less of that,” or “it’s this, especially in these situations … and in these other situations, it’s this other thing, which I really love!”