Chapter V
Lasting, Rewarding Relationships

It is natural that we love one another, care for one another, respect, and support and protect one another. Our survival as a specie depends on such relations.

What makes for and maintains a close relationship?

Validate one another often. Express appreciation of one another always. Listen to one another consistently. Express affection for one another unconditionally. Communicate openly, honestly and courageously to one another unerringly. Support one another, particularly to help the other to see and confront any distressful and destructive behaviors the other engages in persistently. Support one another to work through to heal or solve such behaviors.

If your partner wants to do something, if it is not hurtful, e.g. go to concert, take a walk, see a particular movie, talk, communicate, etc, and you are physically able to do it, then do it, and do it with a good attitude, even if it is not your cup of tea. Don’t be inflexible, it is no skin off your nose, and your partner will love you for it and be even more enamored of you.

Does any of this truly seems hard to do, read on, my friend.

Most of these supportive actions work for any relationship. Intimate relations require special factors. This is addressed in Chapter VI.

The text that follows deals with those distress patterns that block the natural and easy flow of such actions, and how to heal and solve such blocks.

Next to preserving, or recovering, full confidence in our uniqueness, expressing it, fulfilling and contributing it to the enhancement of human society and its unfolding history, relations between one another offer the potential for the kind of joy we yearn for; and what we hope for as we engage in every new relationship.

Why does not such quality generally mark our relationships? Why does such quality and hope seem to evaporate sooner or later in almost every intimate relationship? Why do we settle, at best, for unspoken, unjoyous compromises, or for living in silent disappointment – often resentment - with one another?

It would be enlightening and fruitful if the reader were to reread chapters I through IV of this document, Life, Love, Health and Happiness. These sections describe what goes wrong in our lives, what hurts us and, particularly, what heals us, and how to set up partnerships for listening, healing and reclaiming our power.

Given the way most of us have been conditioned, and have internalized family hurts and patterns, what we are taught by intimates and society alike as to who we are supposed to be, who is supposed to do what and give what, what notions about the other person or gender are real or not, it is a wonder how we conduct relationships to any successful degree.

It is a testament to our real human nature that we somehow manage to conduct and maintain relationships to any positive degree. The literature, the ether itself, seems full of theories and advice about “building” good relationships.

The common denominator among all theories worth their salt is the necessity to learn how to listen to and respect one another, especially one another’s differences.

Before I present what works to achieve the joy of lasting relationships, let me describe a few of the major factors that interfere with such relations.

Because of the way we grow up with conditioned ideas, hurts, and behaviors we unconsciously drag these into our relationships: a bagful of distress patterns that we, through no original fault of our own, wipe all over our partners - whether they are partners in intimacy, friendship, work or any social environment in which we substantially engage.

The chief troublemaking pattern we carry with us into relations is the “unmet need.” We’ll describe this pattern below. Other major distress patterns we internalize in early years (Developmentally Internalized Patterns – DIPS, i.e., conditioning) which interfere with good relations are:

MODELING of behaviors and patterns we internalize from our own childraisers,
ROLES we were shaped to play,
RULES of relating that we learned and internalized,
INVALIDATIONS to our worth and self esteem, and invalidation of others,
INABILITY to listen well with an open, non-judgmental and understanding ear, EMOTIONAL PAIN from the past that is unhealed and unresolved,
TRANSFERENCE of identification from past persons to present ones,
RIGID and unacceptable attitudes and behaviors
ADDICTIVE behaviors.
DEFENSE AND DENIAL of our irrational patterns and behaviors
APPROVAL SEEKING, we hope to get approval by being and acting out in such and such a way.

We’ll describe all these troublemakers but first let’s define “good relations.”

Good, lasting, rewarding relations are those that are built on what we inherently have in us to begin with:

VALIDATION of the other’s quality, efforts and successes, as well as our own.
DELIGHT in the other’s uniqueness and differences, unconditional caring, AFFECTION and empathy;
LISTENING, patient and non-judgmental listening and attention, TRUSTWORTHINESS, true to one’s word, consistently loyal,
COMMUNICATION, open, timely and full communication,
RESPECT for the other and his/her struggle, despite the ensuing scars, and for his/her courage to survive through it all,
FUN AND PLAY, to balance the seriousness of matters,
SUPPORT for the other’s effort and dealing with the hard stuff and challenges,
FLEXIBILTY towards the other’s choices and social expansion,
COMMITMENT to the other’s well-being and to one’s own self awareness, and to the pursuit of emotional healing and self esteem.

The above lists seem to make it impossible to achieve good, joyful relations. Of course it isn’t. The first list is of the baggage we acquired through socialization and therefore is imminently reversible with commitment to healing (please read the foregoing chapters in this document) and persistence. The second list of components, as I said, is inherent in our real human nature.

Because we see and experience so much of the distressful side of people’s behavior, it may seem hard to believe that we have such goodness in our inherent nature. But, of course we do, because we are naturally endowed with such quality since successful survival is dependent on supporting one another and giving one another such quality of relations, this is intuitive and functional. Nature provides such quality because “she” is interested and dedicated to the continuation of life and its evolution towards better and higher functioning. Every new born human is potentially equipped to advance this natural goal. Any other level of survival, that is conditional survival, may, indeed, seem to characterize human behavior, but invariably leads to frustrating, distressful and degenerative lives.

As we heal the dysfunctional baggage and act on becoming aware, learning and putting into practice the dynamics of the good qualities, the inherent qualities emerge, naturally, from under the load of distress. It is very like an old ship that is covered with soot and barnacles, and then a good scraping and cleaning reveals the bright, shining entity it started out as. The hard work goes into the healing. The love, care, delight and respect comes back, naturally. It’s like remembering how to ride a bike.

The experience of healing and reclaiming these qualities that foster good relationships is itself grand, joyful, and rewarding.

We are conditioned with bias, hurts, inhibitions, rigidities, parental and societal distress (it is not wise to deny this – we must be courageous and honest with ourselves and look at what troubles us in the way we feel, think and behave, what negative attitudes and beliefs we have about ourselves and others, what we feel is missing in our lives – all a product of the specific way we have been conditioned growing up, if we hope to improve our lives and relationships).

The Unmet need

Such conditioning leaves a painful hole in our young lives, the period in which the foundation of our psychological/emotional/behavioral and belief development is imprinted within our psyche.

This painful hole is the loss of one, some or more of the components of good parenting (or child-raising – and let me hasten to say that distress conditioning is not the original fault of parents or significant child raisers; they are compelled to act out what they got from their raisers and conditioned to pass it on to their children – this generational oppressive conditioning is precisely what perpetuates the injustice and social strife in family and in society, in every way. In a later chapter I will discuss the issues involved in the oppressive society)

Parental upsets and distress must not be dumped on the young ones. If the distress slips out in front of, or targets the young one, the parent must quickly assure the young one that it is not meant for, nor the fault of the young one. The parent must then pay attention and listen to the emotional discharge and venting of the young one until his/her happy nature re-emerges. The parent must question her or himself “how and where did I learn to respond to my child this way. What do I remember of my own childhood and the stuff I didn’t like done to me?” The parent then must allow her/his feelings to come out and be released.

This self questioning is the start of self healing.

The painful hurt of whatever was conditionally offered or missing in our young lives as regards nurturing and material need, gets internalized and stuck in our psyches. If we were not paid good attention to, then as older ones – later childhood to adulthood – our pattern of behavior is such that either we give up in depressed hopelessness, or in many ways manipulate others in order to get attention.

Even if it is “negative attention.” If the only way we were paid attention to was through criticism, punishment, derision or other negative dynamic, then our pattern compels us to act out behaviors that typically earn such attention. This foundation is what leads some to delinquency and crime. Such behavioral patterns can are often described as ‘self-fulfilling propheses.”

If what was missing was affection, protection, communication, respect, equality (especially with our siblings), nourishment or material necessities, any of the qualities that constitute good nurturing, we grow up to hunger for what was missing. The distress pattern that develops compels us to unconsciously try to manipulate the other in the relationship to be the “parent” that we never had.

The most difficult aspect of the unmet need pattern is that it is a psychologically bottomless pit. It never can be filled no matter how much of the missing ingredient we manage to obtain from the other in the relationship.

This is so because the pain of the unmet need was experienced when we were very young. It gets implanted in the deepest core of our psyche, and becomes associated with the invalidation of our very worth (what is called “self esteem.”) If we do not get good nurturing as tiny, new humans our minds ultimately decide – of course, unconsciously – in some way or another that we are not worth good care; in some way or another we are not good enough. This is the core of every hurt that is imposed on us by the “big ones”. It also gets associated with survival itself. If we don’t get what we need, down deep it feels like a threat to our very lives; in many cases it feels like death itself.

It is this pain that accounts for the painful reactions, resultant behaviors and decisions that we or our partner engages in when we lament “he or she does give me what I need.” This by no means is saying that the other is innocent of depriving us of what we need; he or she may have issues of giving and support.

What this is saying is that the pattern of unmet need we carry is responsible for most of the pain we feel when caught up in such a relationship. Were our psyche intact, replete with self respect and confidence, we would be free to see that our partner is her/himself distressed about giving (or receiving). We would become a compassionate ally to the partner we care about in helping her or him to see the distressful behavior and pattern, and to embark on healing it.

To reiterate, the compulsion of the unmet need pushes us to try to turn our partner(s) into the kind of parent we didn’t have. We can’t admit this or even be aware of it. It is as if we are still the needy child, and potentially our partner, friend or authority figure is the parent we never had.

This compulsion places an impossible burden on the other (probably the other is compelled to make you the parent for him or her out of her/his own unmet need)..
Over time our partner, or ourselves if we are the parental figure in the relationship, becomes exhausted and resentful. Both partners become exhausted and resentful, and the relationship falls apart in pain.

More often than not both partners in the relationship are acting out of their unmet need patterns, each trying to make the other parent her or him. Like two exhausted fighters, each landing knockout punches on one another.

The only real thing one can do is take responsibility for one’s own hurts and make a commitment to heal the pain and the underlying invalidation of one’s own worth. As either one in the relationship begins to heal the invalidations and pain of parental deprivation, that one becomes more empowered to become an ally to her or his partner for her or his healing as well. When this is embarked upon, every stride in the healing process makes an important difference in the quality of the relationship. Part of the healing is learning the dynamics of good listening, communication, support and equality.(See chapter 1V of “Life, Love, health and Happiness’ )

In the mainstream psychological field there is a term “co-dependency.” This is in fact a collusion of patterns between partners. Examples are the “giver” and the “taker,” the “controller” and the “complier,” etc.

A strategy for spontaneously dealing with the pain of unmet need:

This process is a brief description of the general strategy for healing psycho/emotional pain found in the preceding chapter (IV) of this document.

Humans operate best when they make decisions to do the thing that works best for dealing with circumstances. In this way we train ourselves to be in charge of our reactions and emotions rather than be manipulated by them.

We probably have to make the decisions over and over until they take hold.

Decision number one:

I will pay attention to the pain that comes up when I feel the discomfort of not getting what I need.

In relationships the pain of unmet need comes up often: not being paid attention to, not “being heard” accurately, not getting enough affection and warmth, not getting respect and equality, and so on.

Decision number two:

I will not let my emotional reaction rule me. I will not! I will not automatically blame or attack my partner for not giving me what I need. I will not! Instead I will say to my partner “I feel terrible. I need you to listen to me for 5 or 10 minutes to deal with this.”

Decision number three:

If your partner is in the middle of something that absolutely cannot be put on hold, then set up a time later on when listening can take place. If your partner refuses to listen to you, your partner may be angry at you or simply have a pattern of not being able (easily) to listen.

Decision number four:

Be the model (or the hero). Put your own pain aside for a while and offer to listen 5, 10, 20 minutes to her or him about what’s going on with her or him. At the end of that time, be sure to take your turn.

Decision number five:

If you’ve tried this many times with no results, get a counselor for you and your partner (or you can certainly contact me through the Healing forum and my private message pathway). Go alone, if you have to. If nothing works, and if there is no other agenda to keep you bound to your partner, get out of that relationship or your lives will continue on the road to greater pain and waste.

Decision number six:

When your partner is listening to you, identify (without blaming) what it was that triggered your “restimulation” (the discomfort, the pain you are feeling is something that you have felt before, probably many times). “When I’m feeling ignored (or whatever is the pain: lonely, invalidated, unheard, ‘bossed, angry, scared, etc.) it reminds me of when I was (describe the source memory, e.g. when dad or mom, or teacher or boss, or sibling did such and such) I felt such and such (I was really sad or scared or angry) and I wanted to say “stop that, how dare you do that, or #*!@+# you!” Keep sharing the memory and the feelings until the discomfort lifts, or for the time you asked for. If you need a bit more time, ask for it. .

Decision number seven:

You may have to work on this for longer periods of time, but for now this is good. The SPSP (Spontaneous Problem Solving Process) is almost through. It will be when you then turn around and offer your partner listening time to work on what is going on with her or him, or on anything else she/he needs to work on. You become the listener.

Practicing the SPSP adds such richness, trust, closeness and joy to the relationship as can hardly be described. It adds a great security to the relationship, knowing that we have a caring partner and means to solve problems in a way that makes things better.

To add to this menu of happiness in the relationship, decide to give each other a “session” at least once a week where you give one another a half hour or an hour each to work on your respective life stories, the hurts the joys, the disappointments, the victories. This is a powerful healing tool, a powerful rewarding relationship tool.

Listening is natural. If you were not listened to growing up, nothing can be more fruitful to work on.

MODELING

The way our parents or significant child raisers acted, behaved, thought and reacted to stimuli in their daily lives, the way they spoke, what they said, their attitudes, the way they comported themselves, in short everything about them, is the template for what the pre and post natal child, infant and toddler internalizes and “learns’ (conditioned) about how to be.

Many children are conditioned to act out these parental patterns in their own lives. Each one of us, however, is unique, and our uniqueness modifies the behavior. Still much of our behavioral patterns lay in what our models presented.

It is interesting that as we “age” more and more of our behavior resembles more accurately that of our parents. This is because as children we are closer to our real, unique selves (we see this is the “rebelliousness’ of the young) and we try harder to keep that “self” intact. As we age the pattern becomes more rigid, more chronic, more overwhelming of our psyche, thus more and more of the original template becomes visible.

In a way early conditioning is like psychological cloning. We intuitively hate this, we defensively deny this. This does not help us nor heal the distress.

The following are some of the things that will help to reverse the rigidity of the conditioning that comes through modeling:

Make a check list of everything you remember about how your parents acted:

What they said and how they said it, the repetitive phrases they used, the tone they used, and the looks on their faces.

List how they reacted to things, to you, to others and especially to emotional stimuli. List how they treated each other and others outside the relationship.

list their general and specific moods. Make a list of the attitudes they showed or expressed about things, and about people, especially those different than they. List all the beliefs and biases they expressed.

Make a list of how they dressed, how they moved, their posture, their comportment, their rhythm of speech and movement

Question yourself, honestly, about these factors:

“How much did I know about their backgrounds and their stories, what made them happy, sad, scared, and angry?

Which of the above factors did I accept uncritically, or ever questioned seriously? Which of the above factors did I accept because I gave up hope of dealing with them or changing them?

What did I like about the above factors, what did I not like?

What is similar to my parent’s behavior in my own behavior?

What additional information do I have about them, and how did it influence me?

What in their behaviors made others happy to be near them; unhappy to be near them?

What in my own behaviors makes others happy to be near me; unhappy to be near me?”

Create your own list of self questions in addition to these.

These factors, each and all, have an important impact on your relationships.

If you have a close relationship, sit down with her or him and share this process with your partner. Have her or him listen to you as you process this, share and release your feelings that may come up, with your partner. Encourage your partner to do the same. Give your partner time and listen to her or him in return.

If you don’t currently have a close relationship, share this with a friend and create a listening partnership with her or him.

This mutual listening and sharing is a potent force for solving problems and creating the great joy and trust you naturally expected from the relationship (promise one another that you will keep everything confidential, or get permission before sharing the information with another).

ROLES

The conditioning that we encounter growing up shapes us to play out role patterns. It is as if the pressure put on us herded us to act in certain ways. These were internalized as rigid role patterns that become addictive and compulsive.

For example, the child that is faced with dysfunctional parents often has to ‘take care’ of the older one, or of the siblings. This child will internalize a parent role, and will as an adult impose it on everyone in her or his life whether they want it or not (sometimes the rebellion against such imposition turns a person off to any and all responsibility towards others). It is natural and inherent to care. But the internalized role makes this compulsive and it takes a terrible toll on the bearer, because it is attached to the distress of oppressive expectations or of not having “parents,” and actually being cheated out of a free and happy childhood.

There are many roles, for example the good one, the bad one; the smart one, the dummy; the successful one, the failure; the popular one, the wall flower; the beautiful one, the plain or ugly one; the do-gooder. the troublemaker; the “cop” the “criminal”; the pleaser, the rebel, an so on.

It is inherent to be flexible; our best sort of survival depends on flexibility. The conditioned role (as well as all the conditioned patterns) ties down flexibility and thus the best quality of survival.

I’m sure the reader can add importantly to this list.

One can heal and break the rigidity of one’s “role’;

Ask yourself, “What role makes me feel, that this is me?

Ask yourself, “Can I comfortably not play this role if I choose to?”

Ask yourself, “What approval do I hope to get by acting out this role?”

To break the rigidity of the role and to discharge the conditioned distress that it is attached to, you can employ the strategy described above and in chapter IV of “Life, Love, Health and Happiness,” preceding this chapter.

In the session you give yourself or in the Listening Partnership Session (LPS) you and you partner employ, work on what you were supposed to do, what you got approval for, how you were supposed to act, what you had to do to simply survive.

RULES

As in the case for roles, we internalize rules of how to be: what to do, how and when to do it, how and when to talk, how to dress, to eat, what to eat, who to associate with, what ideas are acceptable, which aren’t, when and how to play, to work, to rest, what pleases “them,” what displeases them, etc

Some of the rules may be functional in how to handle the cultural, social, work and daily life pressures. But in every case, because we internalize these rules mostly through conditioning (as opposed to finding out for ourselves what works best for ourselves), the rules become automatic, compulsive, rigid and addictive,

In order to extinguish the rigidity of role and rule conditioning, do the LPS process with a partner, or if there is no partner, record and play back your output, or do journaling and read it back, over and over.

Make the lists. Talk about them: How they occurred. What happened when you did not comply or when you changed, or questioned the demanded or expected behavior.

Pay attention to the point in your narrative when you began to feel your feelings. Go over that point, over again. This helps clear out the distress that is associated with the memories and events.

Release (discharge) the feelings as they come up: the sadness, anger, fear, embarrassment, the humiliation. Stay with whatever you said or did that triggered the discharge.

INVALIDATIONS

Every conditioning event has some distress associated with it. A conditioning event is that which is imposed on the young one, or anyone, as opposed to supporting the young one, or other, to think or experience events for her/himself.

The imposition may be effected in many ways; physical/emotional -psychological/sexual abuse (these are the severest forms of oppressive conditioning, and actually each is associated with the others, because each effects behavior comprehensibly), by manipulation, threat, punishment, withdrawal of approval, refusal to accept and respect the view of the other, or simply by force of repetition and expectation on the part of the big one.

There are many other forms of distressful conditioning (see Chapter one of this doc that lists many of the behaviors that constitute hurtful behavior).

Supporting the other to think and experience the events of living for her/himself is what aware parents, teachers or partners do as they raise, teach, guide and otherwise relate to the young one, or other. Some guidelines in giving such support are described below.

The severest hurt of the conditioned distress is an invalidation of the uniqueness and worth of the person targeted by the conditioning. The internalized invalidation is the core of the chronic distress pattern.

The invalidation is the severest of all psycho/emotional pain. It interferes with confident and successful functioning in life. It cheats a person of achieving her and his fulfillment of dreams and goals, and certainly of the lasting joy of accomplishment. It is a critical cause of conflict in relationships.

The internalized invalidation lies deep and numb in one’s psyche, lurking, as it were, until some stimulus triggers it off. The trigger can be small, like a perceived bad look or tone of voice. It will be triggered by bigger stimuli, of course: a perceived rejection, criticism, refutation, an apparent abuse, ignoring or other lack of attention.

The invalidation will flare up in an explosion of painful emotion, or motivate a vengeful action or retaliation. Invalidations drive fights, conflicts, and in larger social terms drive the conflicts, hate, prejudice and discrimination between groups, genders, age categories, religions, cultures and orientations. Of course other factors are implicit in such human relations. Society teaches us that there are scapegoats upon whom we can dump (displace) our repressed anger, hate, fear and general distresses. It is the invalidation we carry that drives us to scapegoat others. By committing our courage and willingness to become aware and to heal out own hurtful distress and invalidations we can wipe out social oppression.

The messages of internalized invalidations are felt in some way or ways as not being good enough, “Not smart enough, beautiful enough, lovable enough, acceptable enough, likable enough, successful enough, capable enough,” in short lacking, or devoid, of worth.

This is what undermines that widely used, but vaguely understood, notion of “self-esteem.”

Healing the distressful invalidation requires a commitment to self healing, to become aware of how it influences our behavior, and a persistent dedication to contradict the messages of invalidation we carry in our psyche.

Set up a regular LPS (Listening Partnership Session) on a daily or weekly basis. If you simply cannot get a partner to participate in a LPS, then decide on a regular session of recording and playback (or journaling) more than once a week.
In Chapter IV of this document “The Mechanism of Healing” you’ll find a General Direction that contradicts the invalidation. A review of the LPS process is described below.

Use this process verbally and behaviorally in every way:

Talk about how you were treated growing up, how the invalidations were laid in.
Review your memories of how you were hurt and how you were happy. Talk about the good things. Stress how the good things felt, how they related to your sense of worth, your self-esteem.

Incorporate the good messages as evidence of your worth.

Discharge all the feelings that come up. Do not cut them off or try to hold them in. The discharge is actually releasing and draining the damaging chemical and hormonal material that was produced by the distressful conditioning and repressed by the conditioning of repression (no listening, no support, disapproval et al)

In purging the psycho/toxic material you will restore your self worth, confidence, rational thinking, and humane attitude, greater use of your vast intelligence potential, and your physical health and well-being.

Support your partner in such a way.

Smoking out the internalized invalidation:

When upset or hurt comes up. Identify it: “this makes me feel…”

Ask yourself “Underneath this hurt feeling. It makes me feel that I’m not worth…(love, care, respect, success, that I’m stupid, ugly, whatever)”

Construct a powerful contradiction to the invalidation: ‘How dare you make me feel this way. I am worth the best, I am good, lovable, smart (whatever the specific quality that contradicts the invalidation. I demand respect and (whatever it was that was missing). I have the right to demand just treatment. I am a human being, equal to and as good as any other!”)

Train yourself to internalize this truth by holding the direction in your head, voice and general behavior, repeatedly until it takes root in your psyche.

This restored power is the ticket to creating the lasting, rewarding and joyful relationship (with yourself and your partner) you long for and deserve.

INABILITY TO LISTEN

We are inherently gifted with the ability and willingness to listen to one another. This is naturally vital to our survival, to our successful and powerful journey in living. This so because we are social creatures and we depend on one another’s support and cooperation for well-being and success.

Why isn’t such listening common in society? The development of oppressive patterns (which maintain the status quo of the have and have not, hierarchical system where a few capture the bulk of the wealth and power and the rest are subservient, or worse, to the few) includes the pattern of non-listening. The vital support of listening helps to maintain and restore people’s power. This is the real threat to the status quo, and to the advantage held by people at the top.

The hurt and internalization of non-listening, or conditional listening, becomes integrated into the chronic distress pattern that takes hold of our behavior. We then have a hard or impossible time of listening to others, especially our loved ones.

Every family reflects this contagion of repression, non-listening, to different degrees. In so called “good” families, listening is still a conditioned thing. “Good” parents try to listen, but their ability to listen is inhibited by the ideas, views and perspectives (and biases), of what they learned growing up and/or through their own experiences.

Truly good listening consists of (the decision) to put aside one’s reactive ideas and feelings, one’s own biases and judgments. One must become an open mind, a sounding board, devoid of any compulsion to interrupt, interpret, argue, debate, or advise (all this comes out of the listener’s experience. each one is unique and no one else’s experience fits the uniqueness of another. Even if the listener is the loving parent, all this still operates to undermine the effectiveness of the listening).

The effect of good listening is profound. It allows the talker to 1) discharge any hurt feelings (and the internal psycho/toxic material) produced by the subject events, 2) it allows the talker’s deep mind to work on and evaluate the underlying dynamics of the subject event, 3) it allows the talker to achieve rational insight as to the subjective and objective implications of the event, 4) through the insight and learning, the talker gains more power, confidence, self esteem and flexibility in dealing with the challenges of living, 5) these effects maintain or restore physical health and well being, because, in part, the phenomenal process actually strengthens and/or restores the immune system.

When anyone, young, older, your partner, receives such a good session of listening (five, ten minutes, an hour, until the talker reaches a point of lightness and resolution), even one, they immediately sense a feeling of release and well-being. Of course in order to heal the conditioning and hurts of a life time, many sessions may be required. Relationships are an ideal situation for commitment to conduct regular healing sessions

When there seems to be insufficient time for a longer session (even a few minutes of good listening (as in the case of a flare-up in the relationship) will have a beneficial effect in defusing the moment and restoring trust. It is always necessary to switch roles, for the talker to become the listener and offer such support to the other.

It is vital that the partners set up time later, when there is time for a longer session, in order to continue the healing process.

In more dysfunctional families, the willingness to listen diminishes in relation to the degree of the dysfunction. In abusive families there is no good listening to any useful degree. These people need to reach out for help, and to read this and other material to teach themselves to be rational, humane and supportive people for one another – before any of the members of the family or group engage, or continue to engage, in destructive and dangerous behavior.

EMOTIONAL PAIN

Typically, in the society we know, we are conditioned to hold in our emotional pain and behavior, or conditioned to dramatize the emotional output in rigid and repetitive ways.

People make soap operas of their emotional pain mostly because they seldom if ever get good listening. The habit of dramatizing actually develops from the effort to get good listening, and in failing to get this, we keep repeating the same phrase, the story, and the emotional outbursts over and over (in hopes of getting good attention) until it becomes a habit pattern. The pattern of dramatizing may also come through the modeling by the older close one, when we are young and in the (experiential) internalizing stage of our lives.

Be not mistaken, however, the basis of the dramatized material is real. It is anchored in the early conditioning and hurts imposed on the person. It is a cry for help. Given good listening the dramatizer, being human, also becomes a healing person. S/he senses, at last, the support of a good listener. S/he works through and dislodges the habit of dramatizing and responds to the irresistible urge to discharge and heal the pain, to purge the distress pattern from her/his psyche.

Repressed, unhealed emotional pain is a great saboteur of relationships. Our psyche is almost always ready to unload the psycho/experiential/emotional pain, in order to heal. Carrying the hurtful stuff is a destructive and painful burden; destructive to our health, our goals, our relationships and the joy of living and contributing our uniqueness to (what I call) the unfolding story of humankind.

Because we are, in truth desperate (though we are mostly numb to the desperation) to heal, our psyche is always looking for any small or large excuse to unload the pain. The wrong look, the wrong tone, the non attention, the misinterpretation (a huge and common complaint of not being understood), the wrong time of day or weather (environmental factors are very often restimulators of bad moods and feelings), a perceived lack of support and, of course, obvious hurtful behaviors, someone or something ‘we don’t like”, almost anything can act as a stimulus to trigger off 1) the old pain of invalidation, 2) the emotional outburst, or even inbursts – of repressed pain that nonetheless effects the quality of relating to the other, and which people “save up like postage stamps” for bigger episodes of emotional pain that even the smallest “straw in the wind” can trigger.

Because in general we are not knowledgeable about the mechanism of psycho/emotional pain, we don’t understand the emotional upsets of the other in the relationship. “What did we do, what did we say?”. We become confused, our own invalidation pattern gets triggered and off we go escalating the painful conflict into the heavens, no one listening, each trying to get the other to listen, trying in effect to get the kind of “parenting” we did not get enough of or any at all.

What can we do about lowering the amount of emotional pain in the relationship?

Set up a LPS process with your partner or a friend if your partner is not willing or available. Make a commitment to have regular LPSs with this partner. Keep healing, processing and discharging the emotional load.

Hold that direction to contradict the message and painful content of the chronic distress pattern. You will find the model of the General direction Chapter IV, in the section “the Mechanism of healing.”

See the below guide to handling emotional conflict “on the hoof,” as it were, as you conduct your daily lives with your partner. This is the Spontaneous Listening Partnership Session.” This is profoundly useful in nipping the escalating conflict in the bud, until a more convenient time for a longer session.

TRANSFERENCE

The word “transference” is widely used in professional counseling. It means how one identifies another with someone significant in her/his life, and projects her/his distress and needs onto the other. Good therapists use the transference to uncover, understand, and heal the distresses the client is working through.

It is very rare that anyone with whom we have significant contact will not remind us of someone we have had significant experience, especially during our early and growing up years.

The similarities between present and past, or other significant present people, are generally not brought up consciously. Often, however, in conversations we do cite “She or he reminds me of so and so, my dad, my mom, my first spouse, my teacher, my old boss, whomever.”

We don’t generally realize what a powerful phenomenon this is. It influences the relationship in significant ways. We heard the phrase “I (or s/he) married my dad or mom.”

We also have subconscious expectations of our partner that relate to the source person. We have (the pain of) unmet needs associated with the source person that we subconsciously hope will get met by the present partner. Many will deny this because we don’t like to think that we are controlled by psycho/emotional factors, were that it were not so, “tis a consummation devotedly to be wished.” Transference is a fact of our present psychological evolution.

When the expectations or unmet needs are not forthcoming they trigger off strongly restimulated distress. As stated above in the description of unmet need, the bottomless pit cannot be filled no matter how much of the need is offered by the present partner. Over time the distress of the unmet need leaves both partners exhausted and disappointed. In some cases we hold in the pain until it accumulates and finally explodes in unreasonable proportions, damaging the relationship progressively. Many people, in fear of change or losing “what they have” or of being alone ultimately settle into a life of repressed and “quiet desperation” and unhappiness, alone or with their partners.

Transference is not a bad or useless thing. Restimulation of emotional pain is not a bad thing if we have the knowledge and tools (such as offered herein) to deal with it. The transference and restimulation mechanisms actually alert us – mostly through emotional or intellectual discomfort, nature’s signals, really - to the pool of conditioned and experiential pain that we internalized, and give us the opportunity to heal and restore our powerful well-being.

Dealing with and healing the transference also works best in a LPS, but works well also in a Self-Listening Session (SLS), using a recorder or a journal.

Clearing away any distress associated with transference or psycho-experiential/emotional (PEE, yes, yes, joke if you must, make sure it’s a good one) identification between people:

Make a list of everything you notice about your present person: complexion, voice, tone, phrases, inflection, accent, color hair/.eyes, posture, age, movement rhythm, taste, ideas, attitudes, biases, age, gender, reactive behavior, treatment of you, treatment of others. Everything you are aware of.

Do the same about the source person,

How does the present one remind you of the other? In what ways?

State what you like about the present one, what you like about the other? What don’t you like about them?

What do you really want or need to say to the other, to the present one? (If it’s good tell you partner, if it’s bad do it privately for yourself.)

You have a natural right (and necessity for well-being) to feel and release all your feelings, the good and the painful ones.

Repeat the process until the emotional pain associated with the transference lifts.

RIGIDITY

All distress patterns are rigid; therefore all the automatic behavior and ideation produced by the distress patterns we have internalized are rigid. We accuse one another of stubbornness, of unreasonableness, refusal to bend, unwillingness to see the other’s point of view. The familiar phrase “you can’t or you won’t, you don’t want to?” is illogical, because the other (and ourselves as well) typically can’t bend until the stakes are so high that the decision to try to be flexible becomes crucial. Even then, some people cannot make the effort.

Some people are so addicted to the rules and roles they have internalized they will not try to make an effort towards flexibility, even if they lose the relationship. All this is the result of the rigidity of the distress. Typically we deny our distress; we hang onto it because that is what got associated, for better or worse, with survival and the rules of how one must live. We are addicted to our distress patterns. The process of healing, in part, includes the lessening and elimination of the pull of the addiction to distress.

Regular LPSs or persistent SLSs (self listening sessions) which promotes the discharge of the underlying emotional pain and P/T (psycho/toxic chemistry and hormones produced by distressful events and held in by repression) reduces rigidity and restore the profound inherent gift of flexibility.

ADDICTIVE BEHAVIORS

In fact all chronic distress patterns are addictive. They got laid in by repetitive and persistent conditioning treatment and circumstances as we grow up They get internalized and imbedded, imprinted into our psyches and mental/emotional behavior systems.

Once reaching puberty all conditioned distress patterns which have not been adequately discharged and purged from our system become chronic and thereby addictive. Before puberty, before chronicity of patterns, children are able to discharge and dislodge the distress far more easily than after puberty and entering the teen and adult phases of their lives.

It is as if nature is saying “Alright, whatever you have learned growing up about how to be and how to survive, the good, the bad, the rational or irrational, these are your parameters for living as independent agents from now on. You are no longer a child; no longer can you be dependent on parents for survival. What you have internalized are the rules you have to follow.”

All the chronic distress patterns are painful – of course we had to become numb to the pain for the most part, because we need to live our daily lives as best we can and constantly feeling the pain on he surface is disruptive and bars any positive function at all. The goal of typical professional counseling is to help a person restore the ability to function according to the “norms’ of her/his culture – this is a step towards healing but is not healing itself. Real healing is the restoration of our inherent qualities and capabilities, our power and confidence, our invulnerable sense of well-being even under the most trying of circumstances. Helping people to achieve this last goal, of course, is the purpose of this document.

It is ironic that, lacking real listening and real support generally in society, we reach for ways to further suppress the psycho/emotional pain produced by our addictive chronic distress patterns. These ways are familiar to all: alcohol, drugs, smoking, over-eating or under-eating, over working or procrastination or “tuning out,” bullying and controlling others or withdrawal from life, in short all compulsive and rigid patterns of behavior are addictive. This is a true case of adding not only insult, but injury to injury.

As in the case of all the patterns described above, confronting the addictions and particularly the underlying oppressive conditioning events and memories that fostered the addictive pattern in the regular LPS or SLS will reduce the pull of the addiction. Persistent sessions made part of your and your partner’s daily lives will ultimately eliminate the addictive behavior.

DEFENSE AND DENIAL

Defending and denying one’s distress or rigidity in one’s relationship, and to oneself, is to set up barriers to the potential success and lasting joy of the relationship. By so doing our distress patterns and rigid behaviors remain intact and cannot sustain good and trusting relations.

To defend oneself by denying one’s distress and chronic patterns is, well, indefensible – and irrational. To hold on to these patterns is to condemn oneself and one’s relationship to a degenerative and destructive life, one that is characterized by loneliness, despair, waste of full potential and talent, ultimate deterioration and premature sickness and death. Even if one surrounds oneself with people, and is the life of the party, so to speak, to deny one’s hurts and distress pattern is to suffer ‘inside.” The mask of joy is the mask over a pit of pain and unhappiness.

APPROVAL SEEKING

The distress patterns and invalidations we are forced to internalize as we grow up attack and diminish our inherent confidence, our self-esteem and our independence.

The roles and rules by which we are conditioned set us up to affiliate with those who comport to our own conditioned view and life style. We become dependent on their judgment of us for acceptance and validation. We act out those roles and rules in order to prove our worth to our peers, and some of us act out to extreme degrees in order to gain stature among our peers.

Because of the internalized distress, we are frightened of isolation, of not belonging.

In all settings, work, corporate, social, political, even play settings we strive to fit in and conform ourselves to the rules and expectations of the culture to which we become attached, to be accepted. We incorporate the rules and views of the given culture, and adopt them as our own. .We treat ourselves and others according to the rules.

If the culture is hostile, because of the conditioning, we act with hostility. If it is profit first, people second, then we take on that perspective in our actions. In macho settings we try to be equally or more macho than our ‘buddies.” If we are in a “feminine” role setting, we try to be equally or more so. In a gang or army, we act out gang or army behavior to insure our acceptance. In political settings we are required to “go along in order to get along.” Even in benign and humane cultures we endeavor to be equally or more so.

The problem is that all the behavior is distress and fear driven. The pattern of approval seeking keeps us in our rigid roles and patterns. It does not permit different thinking and effort. Nor does it allow healing and “growth.” One is labeled a deviant or a traitor if one dares to think or act differently. One is ostracized from the peer culture.

Of course we also seek approval from authority figures (who symbolize dad and mom, and perhaps older siblings, the original authority figures), again because of our uncertainty of our worth, uncertain of how we are valued by others.

There is much pain involved in approval seeking. The euphoria of acceptance or validation we may receive from peers is short lived, and we quickly are pulled back into the tension and fear of not living up to the standards and demands of the peer culture.

Healing the pattern of approval seeking is, once again, effected by engaging in the LPS or the SLS, to talk about and discharge the emotional pain associated with memories of not being accepted for who you are, for having to conform to other’s rules and demands in order to avoid rejection, punishment or painful criticism. Having these sessions on a regular basis with your partner or, if necessary by yourself, is a critical and important factor in regaining your powerful self-esteem, and of building and maintaining successful, lasting and joyful relationships.

You don’t have to treat your female or male friend or mate, the other groups, or the “different” ones the way your peers expect you to. In your human heart, in your human intuition the rules of morality and kindness, of justice and respect, and the rules of your own important uniqueness are deeply etched. You are too good, too smart, and too human to take heed of any other dictate.

GUIDELINES FOR THE SPONTANOUS PROBLEM SOLVING SESSION

These guidelines work for one’s self and for one’s relationship:

It is important, crucial actually, to incorporate a regular LPS (Listening Partnership Session) into the life of the relationship.

Devote times daily or weekly to have a shared listening session with your partner. First one talks about the issues of her/his life, the joys and hurts, and discharges the feelings that come up, while the other partner listens with that open and caring mind. Trade roles, it is the other’s turn to talk and the other to listen.

One can counsel oneself as well in a SLS (Self Listening Session) by using a recorder or a journal.

When discomfort or upset comes up when you and your partner are in the midst of something that cannot be put on hold for a long session (a half hour or and hour or more for each) the following can be done:

The upset partner says to the other “I’m feeling bad about this, can I have your attention for a couple of minutes?”

If the other says ‘No, we or I have got to finish this, or I have no time now” then ask your partner to make a commitment later to do a session.

In most cases one or the other alternative will be agreed to. If your partner simply refuses to listen, try to get him/her to a session with a professional. If your partner persistently refuses to listen and to try to solve the problem, take steps to change or end the relationship in a way to continue your own life in a positive, more joyous and progressive manner.

If your partner agrees to stop what s/he is doing and says ‘sure, let’s do this.” Take the following steps.

If the upset partner can validate the other (what s/he likes about the other) do it. It helps the other to listen better and less defensively.

The upset partner does not blame or accuse the other, rather says “When this (the upsetting even) happens this is how it makes me feel.”

State how it feels “sad, angry, scared, like I’m unimportant, uncared about, humiliated” whatever the real feeling is.

State, “It reminds me of when (tell the story of how you were similarly made to feel earlier, the further back you can remember the better).

If the upset partner can identify the earlier offending person, state “what I would have liked to say to him or her is…(make this statement as powerful as you can, not the ‘why do you do that’ sort of wimpy thing but “how dare you treat me like this and make me feel such and such. From now on I demand that you pay attention (or whatever it was that you rationally needed)

You can repeat this several times, and discharge the bad feelings, in a few minutes.

At the end of your time thank your partner warmly (you’ll be better able to do this after processing) for the support. Again validate what you truly like about your partner.

Turn it around, now and give your partner a turn at processing in a similar fashion.

The more you practice this, the more natural and tailored to your style it will become.

The SPSP (spontaneous problem solving process session) is a profound way to nip conflict in the bud, to strengthen the trust and care in the relationship and to open the road to greater joy.

SUPPORTING THE OTHER TO THINK AND EXPERIENCE FOR HER/HIMSELF

To support anyone, a child or a partner, to think and experience for her/himself is critical for the development and maintenance of powerful independence and confidence, “self esteem.”

Let me share an anecdote with you:

At a communal dinner I attended once many years ago, there was a young couple with an infant I judged to be about six months old. The infant was lying on its tummy in its wicker bassinet. Suddenly I and others noticed that the infant began to rock back and forth. It began to sweat and grunt as it obviously was trying to turn onto its back. Its parents remained relaxed and quiet, paying full attention and beaming a benign and loving smile towards their child. After about three minutes, the infant made it. The last rocking effort brought it about on its back. The infant immediately flashed the most brilliant smile of triumph I think I had ever seen. It lit up the room and all of us sat in awe and wonder at what we had witnessed. This infant had achieved an important validation and confirmation of its inherent ability to be in charge of its own life and circumstances.

Some support guidelines:

When the child, your loved one, your partner, or anyone is engaged in activity of learning, practicing, or doing let her/him, them, know you are there, quietly paying attention.

Be there ready to answer any question that s/he asks, or be willingly to get the information if you don’t have it..

If the other seems to get stuck, do not immediately rush in to figure it out or do it for her/him. Wait a bit, give it time. If the other cannot figure it out s/he will look at you or will ask the question, or ask for help. First give the information the other needs to do the next step. Don’t take over and do the whole thing, wait and see if the answer or information you gave does the trick.

If needed, demonstrate the next step, or give clues, give hints through statements or questions, or let the other ride your fingers, that lead her/him to the next conclusion.

Validate and appreciate affectionately the other for the effort and the accomplishment.

If the other makes a mistake, or “fails” the step, explain that mistakes and “failures” are not bad things, nor do they prove incompetence. They are educational. They show only what needs to be done in the process that improves the effort. Be joyous about the mistake, “Great, that gives us a chance to learn how we can do it better.” Always validate what was good about the effort, and the inherent smartness and ability of the other.

Be warm, caring, patient, relaxed and enthusiastic about the other’s uniqueness and inherent capabilities, her/his intelligence, talent, delight and worth, and courage in confronting the challenges that living and learning presents.

Always check out the other’s feelings about the experience. “How did (does) it feel, honey (lover, buddy, friend, whoever it is).” .

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Relationships are among the jewels of living. We need each other, therefore we love each other. Why not heal and solve that which bars the way to the gold mine of love and its joy?