Defending myself is a natural part of therapy

You wouldn’t fight with your marriage counselor would you?

It turns out that actually most of us do just that.  It’s a subtle and unconscious fight.  Couples therapists call it resistance. 

It’s actually a natural and unavoidable part of the marriage counseling process.  I go and see a stranger, and the plan is to tell them all about my marriage problems so they can provide effective relationship help.   But if you are anything like me, you are probably guarding carefully every word you say.  After all, most of us want to look good in-front of other people.

There’s another deeper force at work too when I see a marriage counselor.  It goes way back to when I was very young, and couldn’t fend for myself yet.  According to attachment theory, I see that the love and care I get from my parents is the only thing that stops me being eaten by wolves, or simply starving to death.  When things happen which make me think my parents aren’t going to care for me, my young mind finds that very scary.  Infant Tim is scared for his life when he doesn’t feel loved, and that leaves me with some subconscious emotional raw spots, that don’t heal by themselves.

As I grow into an adult, I find that some things get quite unreasonably upsetting.  What’s actually happening is that these situations are triggering those emotional raw spots, but of course I didn’t see it that clearly.  Instead I did the sensible thing, and behaved in a way that keept anything and everything away from those raw spots as much as I can.  In effect, I wrap them up with a big bandage.   When people have found me cold, defensive and insensitive in the past, its actually because I was keeping them away from things that would have re-activated raw spots in my mind, that my subconscious connects with death.  It’s powerful stuff! 

I grew up to get along pretty comfortably in my relationships with people.  And then I did something which upset all those carefully built emotional defenses.  I fell in love.  That was wonderful for a short while, because my body did something very clever!  It gave me a nice cocktail of feel good brain chemicals, which lasted just long enough to get me really committed.  Oops.  Then they went away, and here’s this partner of mine who seems to be hell bent on ripping off my protective layers, and rubbing my emotional raw spots.  So I do another very sensible thing.  I protect myself by pushing them away a little.

Next thing I know, I’m in marriage counseling, because my partner has decided its extremely important for them that I do the things that I spent my life trying not to do, because of all the emotional pain it brings up for me.   Do you think I’m going to let the marriage counselor prod around at my emotional raw spots?  NO!!  I’m going to try to get them to persuade my partner that I’m just fine as I am, and to be happy with what the’ve got.  It’s not as if they didn’t get to try me out first, before we got married.

This is my way of explaining why the big “R” word in the marriage counselor’s vocabulary is “resistance”.  Harville Hendrix said to me that he didn’t feel he had a client until there had been enough time for them for the defences to relax.  In a nice, gentle, safe and pain-free way, of course.  Imago folks don’t want to stick their fingers in your raw spots!

The big “R” is one of the reasons why it can make so much difference attending a weekend couples retreat.  In Imago we believe that it’s best to put you in charge of the process, so you can understand your resistance, and give you a safe and pleasant way to soothe away those raw spots.  And you can do it in a weekend!  At the Imago couples workshop we help couples understand and discover for themselves the emotional history that is causing the pain, and how easy it is to work with your partner to move forwards. 

Imago couples therapists love it when you decide to go to an Imago weekend workshop, because most times when you return, you’ve taken charge of the process yourself.  You understand it.  You aren’t fighting them in the marriage counseling sessions, but instead many couples are inviting them in to say “We know the work we want to do, please guide us through it.”

To previous post: http://gettingtheloveyouwant.com/blog/marriage-counseling/couples-therapy-when-you-cant-afford-divorce/