The Lover's Couch: Relationship Connection Starts with The Self

Relationship work is fast becoming where I see my most dynamic changes, not just of the relationship but, of the self. It is real movement to see a couple that has been stuck for weeks, years, decades in the same cycle of automatic reactive behaviour, now slowing down enough to pause and try get out of the story. The thing; that thing that they come to see me about – usually isn’t the issue at all.

The thing; i.e. who took the trash out last, who paid the bills, how you speak to me in front of your parents, how you didn’t cook this week, how you judge my parenting skills, how you didn’t do the dishes, when you take work calls when we in bed etc etc. That is the story, and every week, if I allow it there will be multiple stories around why they are right and the other should be made aware that that ‘thing’ is what is affecting the relationship, in order to change it. And then, around and around we go: until; we start to focus on the pattern and the only real truth in the room - which is that two totally different, sometimes even opposing truths, beliefs or realities CAN and do exist at the same time. No-one is necessarily wrong (this obviously discounts abuse of any kind & does not excuse certain behaviours that can be harmful & hurtful intentionally). There are just two or more truths in any given moment.

Mostly, the couples that come to me think they have a relationship issue, something that ‘we’ can make the other see or understand. In all the couples work I have done, I have yet to actually meet a couple where, love has left the room and that is the reason for dissonance, so if loving one another isn’t the problem, and it’s not about taking out the trash – what is it about exactly?

The automatic behaviour, the triggered reaction, attached style and pattern of the dance between is where the awareness lies. When we start looking at the pattern as separate from the other, we stop blaming them. That’s the start.

Love, relationships, interactions, intimacy, the lack of connection is present daily. How do we find our way out of the muck of the story enough to see the person sitting in front of us, isn’t who we think they are, isn’t who they were a decade ago, a week ago, a month ago, even yesterday. When did we lose the curiosity to see them with love & tenderness? Life is busy; the excuses many couples maintain; the narrative of there is no time to connect; we have different rhythms, she sleeps late, I’m on mother duty and exhausted all night, she works all night, he works all weekend, doesn’t look up when I come home etc etc etc – we are both exhausted, overwhelmed. That is all true, so I don’t look to work out schedules or finances; that you can do in your own time – what I do is highlight how the other; that mirror, that trigger, might be based in something known, that it has a reaction that isn’t about the thing or the person in front of you; it’s a long standing pattern, a projection, a childhood wounding, something in the other that triggers in us a dysregulated nervous system response that makes us want to fight or run away from with everything we are.

Micro moments of connection changes everything; we don’t need more time to be connected, we need to pause & make the time that we do have count; so it lands for the other. It’s not that we are passing ships, it is what happens in that moment when we move passed the other on the way to the kitchen, out the door to fetch our children, leave for work, have dinner with friends. We learn how even just 30seconds of the right connection time in the room can translate at home.

When we start to pause the story enough to break down that one moment where an other lost us; we start to realise it isn’t about the event/the thing that happened. It’s about what’s happening in you right now (not the story), but the feeling (behind the story), the deeper awareness of where does that feeling come from; then we can pause in the discomfort of not knowing, leaning into something unfamiliar, vulnerable and take a breath BEFORE the mind has interpreted the situation and already labelled it, protected our side and blocked that pivotal moment of connection.

That’s the work, sounds easy, maybe even simple but it is years of patterns of behaviour that feel safer in our nervous systems to react in the same way that protects us from pain. Heightened nervous systems, nervous system dysregulation in those moments are us fighting for something that we needed, probably as a child, that we never got. It is our systems way of protecting us from pain, now as adults that same pattern is triggered in the attachment style with the other and comes out every time there is something that doesn’t feel safe. That’s actually our work, not the work of the couple or the relationship. These are different things.

It is one of the most difficult things to do in a moment of stress or panic or disagreement with our partner, our work colleague, our children or our friends. To take a breath, pause, question if what is happening in us is our minds completing the story of what is going on in that moment or, if it is perhaps something that is familiar. The trigger forms a response, that we can 100% start to manage.

This kind of awareness takes practise; in the work I do with couples in slowing down the story long enough to not have the answers, nervous system regulation is practise from the known. It is the ability to understand the other will escalate in that moment because their baseline is too high and that’s their reactive pattern. The other will retreat, not be accessible, as that is their pattern. Generally couples operate with a simple attachment style within this specific dynamic relationship tension: one chases to reach a resolution, they want to keep going until it is done and understood. The other retreats, goes offline and can’t deal with it now. One pursues, the other retreats and shuts down. Stalemate.

After a few sessions most couples I work with have great insight & understanding. They get it, they become aware of the pattern and their part in it. They sigh such relief because they realise, the pattern is the problem, not necessarily just them, or the other. As we learn our patterns of automatic behaviour, we become more vulnerable, softer, we listen differently.

However, as much as couples can understand it, it makes sense they still not feeling it. They react in the same way the next week, go into detail of what happened i.e. the story. In understanding it cognitively, packaging it intellectually, we sometimes actually move away from the underlying feeling (usually we don’t really know what it is at first). This nervous system CBT work helps us go deeper than the story and into where it is sitting in the body, what is the feeling, what is underlying that feeling, what is the behaviour that that thought or feeling brings out in us. Once we go there, we re-train (basically rewire) our nervous system to have a different response, in pausing, in taking a breath, in questioning.

We can only meet people at their level of consciousness, not our own. Separating out the relationship pattern, understanding our own attachment styles, what we need in those moments helps us understand ourselves, and that is one of the quickest ways to reset relationship fracture and reconnect with the other.

Intimate partnership and relationship always starts with the self, as that is the most intimate relationship we will actually ever have.

Join me on the couch either in person or online www.thevirtualcouchcounselling.com

#CouplesTherapy#RelationshipHealing#AttachmentTheory#NervousSystemRegulation#ConsciousRelationships#EmotionalWellbeing#Therapy#CouplesCounselling#RelationalHealing#TraumaInformed#NervousSystemWork#Connection#IndividualTherapy#CognitiveBehaviouralTherapy#Mindfulness#CorporateWellbeing#Breathwork#CouplesGroupWorkshops