A Return to The Question of Relationship Challenges: Habituation

Habituation: If we didn't have it, we'd all be mesmerized (without the help of hallucinogens) by tying our shoes or by the taste of toast. We'd get nothing done. EVERYTHING would all be all new, all the time and it would all be equally significant. Granted, "beginner's mind" may be an enviable state, but without the ability to habituate or grow accustomed to repeated stimuli, we'd be focused on every little detail of our environment—unable to distinguish what should be foreground from what can be background. So over all, our ability to come to ignore irrelevant stuff (i.e., at the most basic level, that which is not life threatening) is a great gift.

Definition: Habituation is a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations. For example, a novel sound in your environment, such as a new ring tone, may initially draw your attention or even become distracting. After you become accustomed to this sound, you pay less attention to the noise and your response to the sound will diminish. This diminished response is habituation (http://psychology.about.com/od/hindex/g/def_habituation.htm). 

However, it is just this habituation experience that makes it really hard to keep the impact of positive statements strong over time in a relationship.  Hearing statements like "I love you" or "Gosh, you're so wonderful," though positive, ultimately become pretty meaningless after we've heard them more than a handful of times, and that is a big enemy of long term love because current research shows you need a minimum ratio of five positives to every negative to keep a relationship in good health (see, for example: Gottman & Silver, 2000).  The first time you hear “I love you,” your eyes light up, your pupils dilate, your nose runs, and your ears start to flash colored lights.  It’s pretty exciting.  Perhaps you’ve been waiting to hear that for months… or years... (or, in some cases, maybe only hours…, but in that case, you might want to slow down your fantasy life…).  Finally, s/he says those three little words! You walk around on a cloud with a goofy smile stuck on your face for days. You are sure everybody can see Total Joy bursting forth from your entire being.  

Fast forward to the second year of the relationship, after dopamine has dropped and oxytocin and vasopressin have taken over (okay, topics for a different blog post), and you have heard “I love you” 500 or more times.  Do you even hear those words anymore?  It’s more likely you might notice when you don’t hear them than when you do… and then it is not pretty. 

Thus, there is a serious necessity for us to get better and better at 1) noticing our partners when they do things we like and 2) making statements of appreciation about those things with a great deal of specificity. So, in other words, "Wow. You're just super!" is much less impactful than "When you made dinner tonight, I got a few minutes after work to just sit still without having to think about anything which helped me relax and I felt really taken care of!"  “Thanks for dinner” fades into the background if you’ve been together awhile and you’ve said it before, but “I love that you thought of taking me out to dinner tonight.  When we get just that extra couple of hours to talk together, by ourselves, I feel like I understand you better and can picture how your day went and then I feel closer to you” is much more likely to make an impression.  It must be near dinnertime, as I write this, because it seems like all I can think of are examples about food.  Okay, let me try another subject: “When you just called my attention to that article about the neurobiology of trauma in the magazine you’re reading, it made me feel like you really know me and that you keep me in mind, and that makes me feel especially connected to you” would always trump just a “Hey thanks!” 

In other words, try to tell your partner what they did that made you happy, what was it about that particular thing that made you happy, and how you feel about her/him because of it.  And try to find as many things as possible to tell her/him about every day.  Truly, as “unnatural” as this may feel at first, trust me…it’ll be worth every unit of energy you use to do it and it’ll get easier and easier!

© Nancy Young 2010



Tony Blair vs The Inner Critic: Round 2

The other thing that comes to me in the "Tony Blair moments" of my life is Johnny. Regardless of whether the error was mine or is one, the aftermath of which I'm simply witnessing, I go back to the hot muggy summer of 1964, in Washington, D.C., long before the invention of the Brazilian blow-dry, and the wisdom of a man named Johnny...

Upon graduation from high school, I took up golf to try and win a used Volkswagen Bug from my dad. (I must have been channeling Og Mandino or some other Salesman archetype pretty well when dad not only agreed to that proposal, but appeared to do so with both happiness and tremendous amusement!) The challenge was that I needed to break 100, in two months, at our club where the U.S. Open had just been played. The course was challenging and I'd really never played golf before but, at the time, it seemed like a reasonable caper: He loved golf and I wanted a car for college in the fall. I definitely put in the work, though. In an effort to assure my win, and not really aware of the fortune it was probably costing my dad in greens fees (and which he never mentioned), I played either 18 holes and took a lesson or 36 holes every day. In between, I practiced at the driving range. I was Bound and Determined like never before. (And of course it didn't hurt that I fell hopelessly in love with the game, the first time I played, sweetly seduced by a ball I chipped crisply into the hole from off the green.) Now this was a really long time ago, before electric carts had become commonplace, and the club we belonged to required that everyone (of any age) pay a caddy if they wanted to play there.

So that's where I met Johnny. I don't remember the golf pro's name or the names of most of the people I played with during that time (other than my dad, of course), but I remember Johnny's name because, to me, he was god. I was 18, he was 30 and he, himself, played below scratch golf. He was a recently-returned military veteran who caddied at the club that year and assisted the pro with the children's golf clinic, I think, on the side. He must have liked my commitment and dedication... or maybe it was my great love affair with the game... but whatever it was, he carried my little tan naugahyde bag (with the attractively "sporty" dark brown piping) and taught me every day that summer and was truly my biggest and most patient supporter.

One day, however, I hit my ball soundly into a Black Hole... Okay, it was actually what polite golfers call a "bad lie" (often only after they have silently cursed to themselves and ground their teeth). My ball was stuck in the crease of a sand trap, with the green several feet above it (and me). Oops. I opened the club face and took my stance, just like Johnny told me to. I kept my head down, my eyes on the ball, concentrated on not bending my left arm, and took my first shot. Then, alas, I took another. And... oh dear... another. And another. Somewhere along the way, my Inner Critic grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and took hold. My self-hatred and despair grew greater and greater with each swing and, somewhere along the line, I began cussing (as my mother would say, "like a stevedore"), for the remainder of the 17 shots I took before I had extricated myself from that pit of hell. Not pretty. Not at all cute. Johnny calmly watched me putt out and take my 23 or something for that hole, and then he quietly set my clubs down on the next tee and walked off the course. Not even a word.

Well, to anybody who thinks one has to yell to get through to kids, I beg to differ. Standing there, in his silence, I felt humiliation and shame to the 12th power. I finished the round sobbing, carrying my own clubs, and feeling completely mortified and alone. I knew he would never forgive me if I just quit and stood on my lower lip. After the 18, I went humbly, still sobbing of course (teenage girls have more available tears than the average person), in search of my guru. I found him and, pleading for his forgiveness, I expressed my overwhelming shame and remorse and proffered my sincerest apologies, to which he said:

Look, when I was overseas, I flew out a window from the fourth floor of an eight-story building on fire and ended up in a field medical unit. I was badly burned with pretty serious injuries and I was depressed... feeling very sorry for myself... for weeks. Then one day I looked around me and saw how badly injured a lot of my buddies were and I thought I'd better quit that sorry-for-myself stuff and get on with it.

Now, did you see Arnold Palmer hitting out of the lake yesterday on TV? (I had.)

There is only one difference between a pro and an amateur and that is who gets out of a bad lie with more poise and grace. Don't you ever feel so special that you won't get a bad lie now and then!

And ever since that moment, when I have faced what felt like a disaster or when I have made a mistake and my Inner Critic (or my Inner Eeyore) has begun to get a foothold, or whenever I see somebody else potentially at the mercy of their Inner Critic, that's what I think about. I think of Johnny and his grave disappointment in me when I over-focused on feelings of sorrow and anger at myself and how there is only one difference between a pro and an amateur... And, if a disaster is mine, I try my very best to just stay conscious and face it. If a mistake is mine, then I try my best to acknowledge the error. Then I dust myself off and try to focus fully on what's next. If the disaster or mistake is somebody else's, I watch them and pray they can/will meet that experience with consciousness and integrity and then refocus and get on with their lives.

Isn't it crazy how some people can make such a huge impact on us and, at the moment not realizing their importance to the very fabric of our lives, we lose track of them? I never even knew Johnny's last name and I'd give anything to have been able to thank him. Well, this is a blog and it is in cyberspace which, I am told, is a Very Big Place so maybe somehow he'll find it and come to know, all these years later, how much he is appreciated and how profoundly he touched my life...

And then maybe, just maybe, he could call Tony up, fly over to the U.K. and give him a pep talk... Or if he doesn't need a pep talk, I would urge Tony to hire Johnny for some truly great golf lessons!

© Nancy Young 2010

Tony Blair vs The Inner Critic: Round 1

Okay, first, I think that directly talking back to an Inner Critic is useless. I've tried. Heaven knows, I've tried. But I think that finding another internally supportive voice, or self, can be really helpful.

Back in the Dark Ages, the late 1970s, when I was trying to understand romantic love, the only thing out there for me was information on therapy group cohesion. (Honest, I am trying to address the Inner Critic issue here...) Cohesion, it seemed, was a "magnifying variable" that amplified outcome for group members (though, admittedly, one could not predict which direction the outcome would take--great improvement or great destruction). Theorists were writing about which groups stayed together (demonstrating greater cohesion) and which ones disbanded quickly (demonstrating inadequate cohesion). It seemed that having some negatives improved group credibility, but that too many negatives, relative to the number of positives, destroyed cohesion because they made group members so uncomfortable they wouldn't go back to the group.

What was the ideal negative-to-positive ratio? Well, it appeared that no negatives made the group not credible and, therefore, not viable, but less than four positives to every negative was considered too encountering, making it feel too unsafe. It seemed that a good solid group, then, could be achieved by running an absolute minimum of four or more positives to every negative.

More recently, the work of John Gottman and colleagues (see www.gottman.com) has shown that a minimum of five positives to every negative (5:1) is one of the most critical factors in sustaining relationship health.

Bear with me... I really am going somewhere with this...

Sometimes, things that aren't exactly the same just seem to fit together in my head. And, in this instance, I can't help making a bit of a leap from the inter-personal (macrocosm) to the intra-personal (microcosm): Doesn't it make sense to apply both the group therapy and Gottman couples' data to our internal environments just as we do to our external (interpersonal) environments? Thus, we could conclude that, if you aren't receiving five positives to every negative about yourself, you may be headed for a divorce... from yourself!

But how can we get that ratio up amidst other people getting periodically upset with us and constant criticism from our Inner Critics so fraught with panic that they work overtime trying to protect us from ever sticking our necks out? Well, surrounding ourselves with loving, positive friends and loved ones is certainly a good first step. But other people will never keep up with our Inner Critics so we'd better get busy with self-appreciation as well! Fortunately, we all have a Good Mother somewhere inside that can think of endless things about us that are simply charming and genuinely miraculous. And that's the go-to self for this mission, I'd say...

As for me and my Inner Critic around that Terrible Email Blunder, I feel truly blessed... I got well over a five-to-one ratio of positives to negatives from all of you so THANK YOU! And in addition to that, my Inner Mother is pretty consistently loving and strong.

Maybe it would help Tony if we all wrote him some compliments...

© Nancy Young 2010

Tony Blair

This morning I feel I must diverge from my plight to improve romance everywhere and talk about Tony Blair.

After my last week's embarrassing failure to BLIND-cc a huge email blast, I feel a sort of empathy for Tony. Once beloved by so many, if not all, the exciting, handsome, young former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was apparently "pelted with eggs, shoes, and other projectiles" at his book signing this morning in Dublin. God love him. I can just see his security team trying to shield him from the eggs with their sober, black, oh-so-serious umbrellas. And what did these people do, take extra shoes? Or did they just get spontaneously terribly excited and then feel shocked when they had to walk home barefoot? I wonder how Tony is now. Is he lunching with the Mrs. in the rain (because I'm told it always rains in the UK) at some charming sidewalk cafe, impervious to the earlier assault? Or is his Inner Critic, instead, having him for lunch?

Is it saying, "Tony, you boob! People HATE you! You can NEVER do anything right! WHY aren't you BETTER?! I should kill you right now, before you make an even bigger ass of yourself! Why did you ever enter politics in the first place? You could have just sold shoes. One can never get in trouble selling shoes. People LIKE shoes. And that rocker thing you tried to do early on? Oh Dear. Ridiculous! But I'll tell you, Tony old boy, you should really just go home and shut up. Putting yourself out there like that... in a rock band, in politics, and now in a friggin memoir? Please! What have you been smoking?! You should just paint a target on your back and get it over with!"

Yeah, I know... Inner Critics--so heavy, so loud, so intrusive in our heads. And I know that, underneath it all, they really love us and are just trying to protect us by keeping us small... by keeping us from doing anything that might not just go perfectly and be approved of by everyone. But man, they're pesky sometimes. And they can be so limiting. They certainly don't like us reaching for that No Fear cap! And I just love people who are fearless. My late husband was fearless. He thought this life was sort of like a big cosmic game that had been designed as his own personal playground. I admired that in him. My first husband seemed to operate according to the principle: If you never open your mouth, you can never put your foot in it. Once, he didn't talk for seventeen days. Okay, he was a little upset with me at the time, but I found that kind of suffocating. During those early years, I suppose I operated quite a bit like that as well, but I have worked ever since, wrongly or rightly, to let go of as much fear as I could.

But if one is to live more courageously, what can one do with that ever-so noisy little fella, the Inner Critic? I had a meditation teacher once who said that, for his first eight years of meditative practice, his mantra was simply, "Shut Up!" It might have worked to quiet Busy Brain, but I'm pretty sure it's not that effective with the Inner Critic. I've tried it.

I just find myself wondering what Tony did with his Inner Critic today...

© Nancy Young 2010

Why must relationships be so difficult?

You meet someone... and suddenly you find yourself walking on air, writing bad poetry, and singing off key. You just can't stay away from that person... Your feet just follow her/him everywhere. This extremely handsome/gorgeous stranger begins to take up 24-hour residence in your head. You date. Finally, your dreams come true. You move in together and become partners--joint conspirators--in the creation of the life of which you've both always dreamed. Maybe you marry... or not. Either way, you feel like the luckiest people on earth. Everything is solved. And then, suddenly... or gradually... and much to your shock and dismay, the arguing and fighting begin. Or, perhaps worse, neither of you says a word... for days. You feel horrible. You wonder about what cruel jokester tricked you into falling in love with Voldemort (modern version of Darth Vader) or Bellatrix Lestrange (modern version of the Wicked Witch). This is not the person with whom you fell in love! Were you drunk at the time? Could you have been drunk for several months? Somebody clearly pulled the wool over your eyes. How rude.

Do you stay and fight it out, hoping to win? Hoping that your partner will finally come to her/his senses and, with lightening bold clarity, suddenly grock your point (which, of course, is The Only True and Reasonable Point)? Maybe you call an experienced helping professional to see if s/he can talk some sense into your (formerly) beloved. Perhaps this is just a phase... rather like a bad cold or the "terrible twos." One can hope. But still you suffer. You think about how unfair it is that such a nice person as yourself should be living with the devil incarnate. Your friends all agree with you. And you de-link, unfriend, and cut off all tweets to any who don't.

WHY do relationships have to be this hard?! Well, I think they're hard for a number of reasons. One reason is habituation, or a gradual numbing to the good stuff, so that we come to take each other for granted. A second reason is a hard-wired tendency to orient to the negative. A third reason is our lack of training for and awkwardness with conflict. Fourth... and this is a stretch, I realize... the purpose of life is growth and relationship conflicts afford us that "opportunity." Sweet.

My next four blog posts will focus on these four areas of difficulty, and the two groups I'm offering for this Fall are geared toward mitigating these four relationship challenges:

Assertive Communication Skills training is different now than it was in the 1980s. Then, it was more about learning to have a voice and to defend oneself. Now, it's more about how to say things in such a way that you prevent habituation, how to express negatives and set boundaries softly and gracefully (and effectively, of course), and how to stay open to your partner's needs and accept influence without being a pushover or a doormat and without losing yourself.

Meeting Your Selves: Voice Dialogue, Psychology of Selves & Aware Ego is geared toward exploring the way in which we might meet relationship conflict differently--seeing it as a gift rather than a disaster. In Voice Dialogue we can come to be more curious about what's going on and what it holds for us than we are offended by it. We can view and use conflicts in our relationships as adventures... opportunities to become more conscious of the range of "selves"--or attitudes, feelings, and behaviors--within us than we have ever been before.

© Nancy Young 2010