Soulmate Skills

It’s true.  Three little words can go a long way to saving your relationship.  They are:  “That’s my stuff!”  Which means, “That thing I just said was my emotional baggage.  I take responsibility for it.”   In Anthetic Psychology, we call “stuff” reactivity.  It’s the strategies we created to defend against Inner Critic pain.  And it invariably comes out in relationships.  It shows up as anger, short-temperedness, and all kinds of negativity.  We help couples understand and dismantle this machinery.  Piece by piece.  But in each case, Step 1 is learning to label it and admit it to your partner:  “That’s my stuff.”  Sure they’re just three little words.  But they can stop an argument.

We’re going to give it to you straight.  If you want a high-voltage soulmate relationship, you have to flatly refuse to live by toxic values.  These may suprise you:  1) Relationship Perfectionism–it causes defensiveness; 2) Reactive Pride–it makes you touchy and quick to take offense; 3) Thinking it’s OK to Act Out Negativity–anger, secretiveness, harsh criticism–it will wreck your relationship; 4) Living in Your Little Boy or Little Girl–you’ll feel like a victim with no power and see your partner as the powerful parent.  If you’ve gotten into any of these, we want to set you free.  You have a choice.  Values are chosen.  What you choose is what you get.  Instead of these toxic values, choose love, psychological flexibility, forthcomingness, and working on your stuff.  You’ll be laying the foundation for an optimal high-voltage relationship.

You probably have a “Flaw Report Filter.”  It gets triggered when someone gives you feedback that disconfirms your self-image.  Such a filter will make the feedback look like a flaw report; that is, a notice of your supposed defects.  Not true.  That feeling of defectiveness is an add-on.  It’s your Inner Critic at work, adding a layer of condemnation to what you’ve been told about yourself.  We want to offer you a magical equation that will clear away the add-on:  Do Inner Critic work; subtract the add-on.  That will equal your ability to listen to any disconfirmatory feedback with astonishingly unruffled equanimity.  Here’s a challenge to your Inner Critic to get you started:  “Just because I feel flawed doesn’t mean I am.  I have the right to be what you call defective; I’m still a good person.”

It comes in waves.  Primal pain, that is.  It’s the pain we carry from our past.  All the way back to infancy.  The pain of not being loved, nurtured, responded to.  And sometimes when responded to, only with abuse.  Being in relationships triggers our primal pain.  It can happen for several reasons.  Maybe we choose the wrong partner, someone who resembles those early pain-inflicters.  Maybe we see a really good partner through the filter of those earlier relationships.  I know I have.  One time, I was sure Jim was fussing at me.  It so happened we had a tape recorder on.  Oh my gosh, when I played it back, his voice was the most tender, loving one.  I had heard him through the memory of primal pain.  What to do about primal pain?  Identify the person from your past from whom that pain came.  Imagine they’re with you,  then express your pain and anger as fully as you can.  You’ll be draining your primal pool of pain.  Do it as many times as you need.  You’ll feel relief each time.  Through this process, you’ll be able to see your partner clearly.

“Why can’t you do this simple thing I want?” he asked.  She shook her head, “I don’t know.”  As we explored her resistance to complying with his easy-to-do request, an interesting part of herself emerged:  The Inner Rebel.  She said, “If I do what you want, I’m knuckling under.  I had enough of that with my dad growing up.  I’m never gonna do that again.”  Many of us have an Inner Rebel.  It’s an inner figure whose purpose was to create some power for us when we felt powerless.  It can create a powerful pull on us, influencing our behavior without our awareness.  In intimate relationships, it can block our ability to express love and caring behavior to our partner.  If we follow the pull to respond from this figure, it will harden our hearts to our partner’s longings.  If you find that your Inner Rebel is sabotaging your relationship happiness, dialogue with it.  Tell it whether you want it controlling you.  You can have power without coming from a rebellious part of yourself.  Once you’ve disengaged from this figure, your heart will soften toward your partner.  Your love will flow.

“I’m just gonna fake it till I make it,” she said.  She wasn’t having a good day.  In fact, she was in deep emotional pain about a relationship.  I told her, “I don’t recommend that.  In Anthetic Psychology we approach pain relief in a different way.  We do Inner Figure work.  That means identifying the part of yourself that got triggered and came on stage when you felt hurt by what that person did or didn’t do.”  So, she addressed her feelings in this way.  She discovered it was a hurt child part of herself, who felt “not good enough–ever.”  With that realization, she could orchestrate that inner figure, tell the pain-filled little girl she understood her pain, but she wasn’t going to view her relationships from that perspective anymore.  As she dialogued with that part of herself, she shifted into her rational Executive Self, who could evaluate the relationship, along with the illusions and expectations she had unconsciously held about it.  By the end of the conversation, she was out of the grip of the pain and into a strong, disengaged woman.  It was a pleasure to see.  So, should you “Fake it till you make it?”  Not when there’s a better way.

You have Inner Critic shoulds that keep whole chunks of your personality submerged.  Locked away.  If they try to emerge, the feelings of defectiveness lead you to push them back down into your subconscious mind.  And that takes a toll on closeness in your relationships.  Because if the condemned parts of yourself were to be exposed and others see it, your Inner Critic would lead you to feel the pain of humiliation.  And there’s the connection:  I have to stay distant from you; can’t let you know all of me.  If you did see all of me, especially those hidden parts, you would surely reject me.  This is why Anthetic Inner Critic work is so crucial to high-voltage soulmate relationships.  As you get free from your Inner Critic; as you no longer accept its condemning messages, you move toward welcoming all parts of yourself.  And so you open yourself to letting others see you too.  Now you can connect the dots:  Self-Acceptance…Closeness.

Quibbling over little details:  “No, it was 6:30, not 6:00.”  Arguing scrupulously over minute points:  “You wore your blue shirt, not your grey one.”  That’s how you can tell if you’re being contentious.   If you’re witnessing it, it’s tedious.  If you’re the target of it, you’ll feel weary.  If you step back and take a look at what it’s doing to your relationship, you’ll see that it’s killing closeness.  Somewhere along the years of our relationship, I found that I was being contentious.  I was driven by my Inner Critic to set the record straight; to care more about getting it right than about communicating with Jim.  If you want to stop this pattern, monitor your pull to be argumentative.  Then tell yourself, “I’m not gonna go there.”  For even more freedom, you can add, “I have the right not to set the record straight.”  You’ll choose closeness.  Like me, you’ll find that it’s infinitely more satisfying.

Thinking of doing something different?  New hairstyle?  Going back to school?  New relationship?  Then have you felt keenly aware, “What will other people think?”  That thought comes from your Inner Critic–doing its best to make you conform so as not to trigger other people’s criticism.  When you pretzelize yourself  to please other people, you give away your power to do what you want.  Here are two challenges to your Inner Critic to help you reduce your concern about what other people think:  “I have the right to do what I want; not pretzelize myself to please other people” and “I no longer choose to give my power away to other people.”  Now you’re set to have a soul-fulfilling day.*

*For more help, see page 155 of our book, Disarming Your Inner Critic.

“Yes, you are indeed in labor, giving birth–and to what you do not know, nor do I–but I will be here to give you whatever help you wish and to hold your dear hand when it gets painful, and encourage you to bear down.  I am here [as with my therapy clients] to help you give birth to yourself.”  Jim wrote that to me only one month into our relationship.  I was in an intense change and growth process.  And that can be painful, as you may know.  It was incredibly comforting to have Jim beside me (psychologically speaking; he was 2000 miles away).  His support and encouragement helped me birth strength and clarity and self-expansion.  And happiness.  Just as Jim was for me, you can be each other’s midwives in your own growth processes.  Just listen, encourage, and stand with the other in their pain, holding them.  It will be a wondrous experience.