I draw from many sources to find help for couples struggling to stay together, to consider the perspective illustrated by the Chinese character for Crisis: a time of danger and opportunity. Inspired by the work of Tara Brach, I’ve recently started asking them this question when they feel like all may be lost: “Might you consider what is happening right now as the Darkness of the Womb versus the Darkness of the Tomb?”
In other words, are you willing to use this moment in time to transform suffering into an opportunity to birth new life into your relationship?
How do people open to new ways of thinking, feeling, interpreting and acting? This is complex, but it starts by harnessing the power of attention to create choice and change. You cannot control your partner’s actions, but you do have the power to choose what you do with that information. Do you want to hold on to it, rehearse it, find more evidence to support it, or do you want to notice what happened, feel your feelings, express them, and find the opportunity for the two of you to grow in response to the stressor?
Where attention goes, neural firing flows, and integration grows. This quote by Daniel Siegel captures the essence of how the mind may be used to change the brain to promote health and well-being in oneself and in relationships. What we pay attention to gets stronger; if the object of that attention is solely how awful your partner is, that is what will remain. While it is natural to attend to thoughts and feelings that arise from stress within your relationship, it is also possible to expand your focus to include the wider perspective of what is working in the here and now as well as what might help to bring about change.
I help couples start the process of birthing new life into their relationships by having each member do some attention training:
1) Don’t believe thoughts that breed separation, hatred, anger, and resentment: while your thoughts may be real, are they true? Maybe the thoughts have valuable information for you, but do they get carried away into areas that represent more of your fears, or your exaggerations, or your doubts e.g., “She’ll never change. She is just like this,” or “He is always disregarding me. He doesn’t care about me anymore.” Beliefs are powerful. But are they true? I help clients engage in focused exploration of their thoughts to find what is useful information and what is not entirely helpful or true. Finding evidence that does not support the hot thought creates potential for the birth of healing in the relationship.
2) Feel your feelings: your brain is wired to turn away from pain, including emotional pain. But what you resist persists, so the pain from feelings unexpressed doesn’t disappear. It’s possible to train the mind to be open and receptive to feelings without getting swept up in them, trapped in pain that you can’t recover from. Using openness and objectivity, I teach clients to observe, express and integrate whatever feelings arise so the old habits of pushing feelings away are left behind.
3) Turn toward what is going well, or love: our brains are wired to scan for danger, to track what is potentially harmful. You can override this mechanism by training your attention to notice and linger upon what is going well. One of the greatest pitfalls I see as couples try to work through problems is one or both members not appreciating the positive changes his or her partner is making because they are predicting the change won’t last. In this waiting for the shoe to drop mentality, you block the birth of growth and change in our relationships.
4) Act from your awakening heart: imagine yourself moving through each day from your heart center, a heart that is open, curious, accepting and loving, that is in the present moment, not driven by protecting itself from your partner’s past actions or hurtful ways of being.
I often see people who are clinging desperately to the story of how bad their partner is, interpreting every moment in the here and now through the lens of then and there. It’s also common for people to eschew the ideas of “feeling your feelings” and “acting from the heart” as just psychobabble. I get that a lot, and I understand that perspective. It comes from the lack of education people are given about how the mind and brain work in the context of relationship. When someone feels hurt by a loved one, the brain sends signals of “Danger/Fight/Flee” automatically. The person will remain stuck in this defensive mode if he or she hasn’t yet learned the skill of using the mind to engage attention in ways that can soothe the brain to return the mind to an open, receptive state. The place where stressors can be transformed into opportunities.
Sometimes it takes a therapist as an attuned “other” to help two people who have become lost in their narrative of the other to use their minds to change their brains so they may bring forward a new, healthier chapter in their lives. With Tara Brach’s beautiful metaphor of the womb versus the tomb and the training of attention, change is possible!
