How Can I Ever Trust Him (or Her) Again? One Couple’s Story of Rebuilding Intimacy

Maura was devastated when she and her boyfriend, Armando, arrived for their first couple therapy session.  After a relationship of 5 years, he had acknowledged being unfaithful to her, while still insisting that he still loved her.   There was palpable tension in the air as they came into my office, then sat down--as far apart from one another as the couch would allow.

Armando, a handsome man with deep-set eyes in his mid-thirties, faced slightly away from Maura.  He looking somewhat sullen, angry, and intransigent, like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world at that moment.  Maura, a heavy-set woman of the same age, had tears in her eyes, and a look of pleading and desperation on her face:  “I don’t understand!  I’ve done nothing but love you!  And always, always supported you!  How could you?  How could you do this to me?  Armando’s lips tightened, as though blocking words that might want to come out.

After several minutes of silence, I softly inquired: “Armando, is there anything you want to share with Maura about what was going on for you at that time—what motivated your decision to be unfaithful to her?”

He finally replied, still avoiding eye contact with Maura:  “I don’t really know.  I just know I was fed up with her trying to control me—telling me how to be.  I’ve had enough of that!  She’s got to stop!”

Maura leaped to her own defense:  “If you’d do what you’re supposed to do, when you say you’re going to do it, then I wouldn’t have to tell you what to do!”  Then, looking at me:  “He embarrasses me all the time.  When I have friends over for a dinner party, he sometimes doesn’t say a word!  Or he sits at his computer, instead of entertaining the company.  It’s just rude!  And then I feel so desperate—to keep the company happy, to keep Armando happy—it’s just awful!”

Armando appeared to be quietly seething:  “Maybe I don’t want to talk to your friends after you’ve told them what a terrible man I am—that I cheated on you—that you can’t trust me.  How am I supposed to want to hang out with them, when I know they’re judging me all the time?”  You disrespect me all the time—in front of your friends, and in front of your family, too!”

This brief confrontation revealed a lot about the dynamic in Maura and Armando’s relationship.  Maura would become frustrated with something Armando had done and would yell at him about it.  The louder she yelled, the more he would grow silent, ignore her, and refuse to do whatever it was that she wanted him to do—which would lead to even louder yelling on her part and more stonewalling on his. 

In our exploration of this dynamic, it became clear to both Maura and Armando that this was a no-win game for both; that each was contributing to the problematic pattern described above—her yelling elicited his stonewalling, and his stonewalling elicited her yelling.   In other words, each was bringing out of the other the very behavior that he/she hated the most.  They were co-creating a pattern that led to each feeling frustrated, misunderstood and lonely—the very feelings that ultimately led to Armando’s infidelity.

This acknowledgment of mutual responsibility for their problems is generally the beginning of finding workable solutions for a couple, and this was certainly true for Maura and Armando.  Once Maura was able to acknowledge that her “losing it” with Armando was counterproductive, she worked in session to take three breaths before she spoke, modulate her tone, and make requests, rather than demands.

Armando also struggled valiantly in sessions to stay present, despite his strong impulse to clam up and punish Maura for her “disrespect.”  When I gently pointed out how his body was turning away and his eyes were avoiding contact with her, as they were discussing this charged issue, he had the courage to turn back around, face her and re-connect.

At the moment that he turned toward her, Maura’s face softened, and she said, almost in a whisper, “I’m sorry for the times it has seemed like I’m disrespecting you.  I don’t mean to do that.  I never mean to do that.  I just get so scared when you disappear—so scared that you’re going to abandon me.  And I love you so much—so much!  And I get afraid that you’ll hurt me again—that you’ll cheat, again.”

Armando stayed present this time, able to tolerate the intensity of Maura’s feelings without withdrawing, but took a long time to speak.  “I felt like a kid who could never get it right for you—like you criticized me all the time.  So I guess I got sick of that—and when I was in Atlanta and that woman hit on me—I felt like, ‘Why not?  For once I’ll feel like a man—appreciated as a man, not criticized.  I guess that was why-- (he looked down, his face showing sadness and regret) why I did it.”

After a respectful silence, I interjected “You’ve both shown a lot of courage today—the courage to acknowledge your respective contributions to the difficulties you’ve been experiencing as a couple and also to express the vulnerable feelings that are so often hidden under your anger.”

Then, sensing that Armando might be willing to express more, I suggested:  “You’ve both come here with the goal of bringing trust back into the relationship.  Is there anything that either of you might like to say to the other that might be a step in that direction?”

After a moment, Armando volunteered, “I do love you, Maura—I do.  But it’s been really hard.   It’s not that I want to be with anybody else—but that I want us to be different.”  They left the session on that positive note for the first time in many weeks.

Of course, trust is not rebuilt in one hour, but in the session above they took a giant step toward being able to communicate in a way that would help them be less reactive and more responsive to one another, less defensive and more empathic.

In future sessions they would have to explore how their respective histories contributed to the unhealthy dynamic they had developed.

Armando grew up in Columbia with highly critical, demanding parents, who often shamed him when his performance wasn’t what they hoped for.   They completely disregarded his interests in life—to study journalism and become a sports reporter—and “forced” him to get a business degree.  Whenever Maura was dissatisfied and critical of him, she evoked all of the feelings of his miserable childhood—18 years of pent-up anger—as well as all of the defenses he used to emotionally survive those years—generally some form of rebellious silence.  He had to work hard to identify these feelings as historical and not take them out on Maura.

Maura grew up in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father who cheated on her mother, a depressed woman who was financially dependent on her husband—and therefore at his mercy. There were also three younger siblings who were often in Maura’s care.  She remembers often feeling absolutely desperate as a child—trying to keep her father happy, so he wouldn’t be abusive with her mother; trying to make her mother happy so she wouldn’t be depressed; trying to take care of her brothers and sisters when she was still a little girl, herself.  Absolutely no one was responsive to her needs.

Maura had to learn that the feelings of desperation that emerge when she fears that Armando will abandon her go back to that early time of life—that they belong to the child who was terrified that her father would leave, and that the family wouldn’t survive.   Her challenge is to learn to handle these historical feelings of desperation and anger from back then, without taking them out on her partner now.

For any couple struggling to rebuild trust after a partner has been unfaithful it’s important to recognize that infidelity is often an indirect way of communicating that something isn’t working in the relationship.  If you and your partner are struggling in the aftermath of such an episode, it will be important to explore what was going on before the infidelity occurred.  Was there a habit of talking past each other, or “talking to win,” rather than talking to really understand one another?  If that is the case, the first step will be to learn to listen—really listen—to one another, as well as to respond in an empathic, rather than a reactive way.

It will also be important to explore your respective family backgrounds to get a sense of how the two of you may be unconsciously playing out negative patterns from history.  It isn’t easy to recognize how much we repeat the ways of relating that we experienced in childhood.  But once we see it, we can change it.

The process of rebuilding trust after infidelity is not easy but, in my experience, when both members of the couple are committed to that goal, it is certainly possible.  Each of you can learn to communicate more authentically, to listen more empathically, to become more curious and less critical, more responsive and less reactive.

You can find the courage to look at what your contributions to the problems of the relationship might be--to own these and forgive yourself for all of them.  Then, from this openhearted, self-loving place, you might just be able to take a step toward the forgiveness of your partner.  Not to deny or condone what happened, but to understand what happened and be willing to make the leap of faith toward beginning to trust again.

Portia Franklin, LCSW, is a New York City based psychotherapist who has helped couples improve communication and rebuild intimacy for more than 20 years.  She also works with individuals who are seeking greater fulfillment in life, both personally and professionally.  Check out her web site:  www.integrativepsychotherapy-nyc.com and her blog: www.healingpsychotherapynyc@blogspot.com.  

When You're Feeling Stuck, Take Just One Step Forward

There’s a Buddhist saying that is often quoted to encourage people to take up the practice of meditation:  “Don’t just do something, sit there!”  And I believe, in most cases, when you’re feeling sad or scared or any difficult feeling, the Buddhist advice to “lean in” to that feeling rather than trying to distract yourself or run away from it is very sound. 

But, there are instances when people are feeling stuck, scared and depressed, that I would give the opposite advice:  Don’t just sit there, do something!”  Because depression, among other things, can feel like a kind of paralysis, a hopeless stuckedness, and inaction when you’re in this state leads to negative predictions (“Nothing will ever get better.”)  Then, of course, negative predictions lead to more inaction, and on and on….

As an example, Annette’s (not her real name) job as an executive assistant, which she had held for 10 years, was eliminated because of corporate restructuring.   Though she had consistently superb evaluations, the company made no effort to find another position for her.  “Basically they gave me a minimal amount of severance, and showed me the door!”

Initially Annette was in shock.  It was difficult to believe that people for whom she has worked so hard for so long could have treated her so shabbily.  After the shock wore off a bit, she began to do the typical job-hunting things—posted her resume on the appropriate sites and requested alerts when an appropriate job listing came up. 

After months of no responses, she fell into a panicked depression.  It was hard to fall asleep at night, and when she did finally fall asleep there were nightmares.  Then it would be hard to wake up in the morning.  It was also hard to focus and hard to get anything done:  “When I wake up in the morning, I just want to turn over and pull the covers over my head.  I feel like a reject of society!”  Annette started to feel paralyzed and hopeless.

In therapy we worked out a strategy based on “just one step” every single day.  Annette agreed to take one new action every single day, whether she felt like it or not—to contact one new person or write to one new company.  We agreed that she should go beyond the traditional online resources, because they had yielded so little.  She ultimately came up with a plan to contact companies that were of interest to her—who were not advertising anywhere—by writing an old fashioned letter and sending it by snail mail. 

Though the voices in her head kept telling her it was useless to do all this, she kept it up.  After a couple of weeks her tenacity paid off.  She received an email from an HR person in a company she had always wanted to work for.  When Annette called this person back, they made a warm connection on the phone, and she advised Annette to get in touch with a small agency that the company uses to fill their staffing needs.

Feeling “guardedly optimistic” Annette contacted this agency, using the above person’s name, and they immediately invited her in for an interview.  As Annette put it, “Though I couldn’t see it for sure, I could begin to imagine that there just might be a light at the end of this dark tunnel!”

The interview exceeded Annette’s hopes:  “We clicked from the very beginning.  I felt comfortable, like I could be myself.  Jeff (the interviewer) made me feel for the first time in ages like I had something to offer.  He actually said,  ‘You’re just the kind of person we’ve been looking for.’ “

Within a week, Annette was placed in a highly visible temp position in a company where the atmosphere was relaxed and informal—a perfect match for her style.  She started to develop relationships with a number of her colleagues, and it looks like she’s well on her way to a good job in a company she respects and admires.

There are a couple of important takeaways from Annette’s story:

• Though it may be difficult to find your motivation, take action!
•  Particularly if you’re job hunting, it’s important to go beyond the      typical online resources.  Research companies that you find interesting and write a well crafted letter to a specific individual.
•  As negative predictions show up (and they will!), release them, reminding yourself that most negative thoughts are inaccurate—based on the past, not the future.
•  Don’t isolate when you’re feeling down.  Though you may feel so inclined, it’s the last thing you need to do. 

 The bottom line is this:  feeling stuck is just a feeling.  And as Buddhist psychology teaches us, all feelings (and all situations) are impermanent.   So it’s okay to feel all of that, to lean into the sadness and discouragement that are part of it for a while. But then, you’ve got to take action—just one step, today, this very moment, to begin to move out of the stuck feeling of the present toward a future that’s filled with rich, as yet unimagined possibilities.

Portia Franklin is a New York City based psychotherapist with more than 20 years of experience helping people move beyond depression, anxiety, trauma and relationship issues to find more satisfying and fulfilling lives. 
She has also produced award winning documentaries on psychological subjects for National Public Radio.  Check out her web site:  www.integrativepsychotherapy-nyc.com 

It's Never Too Late to Have a Wonderful Childhood

As any survivor can testify, traumatic experience can bring many unwelcome consequences to a person’s life—including frightening nightmares and flashbacks, heightened anxiety, or debilitating panic attacks that make it very challenging to function in the world.  And when people feel at the mercy of these symptoms, helpless to control or even understand them, they are likely to feel discouraged and depressed.

PBSP is a powerful, respectful therapeutic approach that effectively addresses all of these symptoms by helping clients identify the source of their trauma, fully and safely express feelings that may have been suppressed, and create a healing symbolic memory that antidotes the original wounding experience.

The work is predicated on a profound understanding of the nature of memory, which acts as a filter over reality, contouring how we see and respond to the world. Traumatic memories that are out of awareness can evoke very intense responses to everyday events that seem mystifying until we realize that the feeling that is coming up here and now is actually a memory of an event that took place long ago.

As an example, a 50 year-old woman named Mia was recently sitting in my office when a fire truck with a very loud siren went by.  She was suddenly overcome with a feeling of anguish:  “Oh my god!  Just hearing that siren reminds me of a time when my girls were small.  We were in the car driving to the city when we passed a terrible accident by the side of the road.  There was chaos and noise—one ambulance after another whizzing by—sirens blaring.   My youngest daughter was terribly frightened:  She reached to me for comfort:  “Mommy, what’s happening?” I reassured her, “There’s been a terrible accident, but it’s okay, because people are going to help.”

As Mia recounted this, she dissolved into sobs.  When I invited her gently to stay with the feelings and see where they would lead, she connected with an earlier trauma:  “When I was 5 years old my father would beat up my mother and my sister, and no one was there to help!  No one was there to help!”

From this place of awareness Mia was able to fully express her feelings from that early trauma—which she had never processed in 15 years of talk therapy.  While her childhood longings to feel safe and protected were so present, I was also able to help her create a symbolic memory of what life would have been like then—and what she might feel like now--if there had been someone to help—if she had had the protection, nurturance, love and support that every child needs and deserves.

The first time I witnessed the transformative power of a PBSP session (or structure, as it is formally called) in 1991 was during an introductory training presented by Albert Pesso, the co-founder of the work.  A woman, who I will call Annie, was deeply engaged in a role play process, making a “virtual memory” of a loving, “ideal father” who would have been the opposite of the hard-edged military man she actually had to endure as a child.

In the role play, the ideal father spoke:  “If I had been back there then, when you were a little girl, I wouldn’t have been harsh and rough, I would have been loving and playful with you.”  Annie’s face softened as she heard these words; there was an innocence, an openness in her eyes, and she looked like a young child as her body leaned toward him, then snuggled against him for comfort.  More painful memories then surfaced of her actual father.  She tearfully remembered:  “He would be so rough with us—he would always hurt us when we played.”

The “witness figure,” who sees and names feelings in PBSP, spoke as Annie crumpled over in pain:  “I see how much you suffer, remembering what it was like with your actual father.” She shook her head, grateful for the validation.  Then she looked with longing toward the man playing her ideal father, who was then instructed to say:  “If I had been your ideal father, I wouldn’t have been rough when we played, I would have always been gentle with you.”

Annie looked gratefully and hopefully at him, shifting once again to a young state.  Though she was not aware of it at the time, her thumbs were contacting each other in a sort of playful dance.  (Since this work is interactive, contact that we give ourselves is often indicative of contact we long for from another person.)  The therapist gave feedback about this, and suggested that Annie make contact with her ideal father’s thumb.   She giggled at the idea and proceeded to initiate what became a joyous thumb game with him. The role player was instructed to meet her energies, without adding anything, so that this symbolic memory would exactly match what Annie needed.

At the end of the structure, the therapist helped Annie to make a memory of the experience that would last, by thinking of herself at a young age, having had such a wonderful ideal father, and noting all the sensory details—of his words, his touch, and the felt sense of his presence.

 Annie has been a dear friend since that time, and still speaks of her early work with a sense of awe:  “The shift in me was so powerful, so visceral—By experiencing my ideal father, and later my ideal mother, I realized in a way that I never had, what a balanced family is like. That awareness allowed me to see and change a negative dynamic that had been going on with my husband and my daughter for years.”

Since Annie’s father was frequently away from home, involved in military conflicts, her mother did most of the parenting.  Annie had repeated this pattern with her daughter, Sarah, in a totally unconscious way:  when 4 year-old Sarah was “mad at Daddy” because he had set a limit of some kind, she would run to Annie, who would comfort her. Annie realized after the above structure, that she was fostering a split between her husband and her daughter.  With this realization, she responded differently the next time Sarah complained about her dad.  Instead of comforting her, Annie went over to her husband, put her arms around him and said:  “This man, your daddy, is my husband, and I love him very much.  And we both love you.” With that one action, the pattern changed.  Sarah, who’s now 20 years old, was able to bond with her father, and they continue to have a positive relationship.

There were seven of us participating in that introductory training with Al Pesso.  We had all come to Franklin, New Hampshire, where Al lived and worked, motivated by a desire to do deep, personal work as well as to learn new skills that would make us more effective as therapists.

Since we had all heard about the power of PBSP, there was a sense of excitement and expectancy as we arrived for the first day of the six-day training.  We sat in a semi-circle, facing Al, a 60ish man, with bushy eyebrows and intense eyes that radiated curiosity, openness and an eagerness to share this process with us.  We knew that he and his wife, Diane Boyden Pesso, had come to psychotherapy via an unconventional route—through the world of dance.

Al had studied with Martha Graham in the late 1950’s.  During that time he and his wife had developed an intuitive awareness of the connections between body, mind, emotion, memory, perception and behavior in the world.  Long before neuroscientists became aware of the degree to which autobiographical memory shapes how we see and respond to the world, the Pesso’s got it. From this awareness, they developed an approach to emotional re-education and healing based on the creation of new, symbolic memories of what should have been—richly textured, deeply felt experiences of what it would have been like to have had early needs met by the right people at the right age.  From this perspective, you don’t have to have actually had a wonderful childhood in order to live well in the world; you just need to have a deep sense of what you would feel like and what the world would look like, had that been the case.

Portia Franklin, LCSW is a New York City based psychotherapist with more than 20 years experience helping people move beyond depression, anxiety, trauma and relationship challenges to lead more truly authentic and satisfying lives.  Check out her web site: www.integrativepsychotherapy-nyc.com.

For Women--and Men--Who Give Too Much

I can still hear Marcy’s desperate tone:  “No matter how much I give at work, it never feels like enough!”  As she spoke, her eyes filled with tears of frustration. Marcy (not her real name) went on to recount endless evenings when she would stay at the office until 9:00, or even 10:00 pm--a behavior that was beginning to threaten her relationship with the man in her life.

When we explored this dilemma, it became increasingly clear that “good enough” didn’t exist for Marcy.  No matter how hard she worked, she never felt satisfied with her accomplishments—though her boss definitely was.  When I asked her what “good enough” might look like, she was perplexed, and said in a tone that sounded both sad and lost:  “I guess I don’t have a sense of what good enough might be—I’m always reaching for something that feels endlessly beyond my grasp!”

As with all psychological challenges, this issue took Marcy back to her childhood in a working class town in Massachusetts.  Her father was a bitter man who always felt that life owed him a lot more than it gave him.  He would return home tired and depressed from the car repair shop he ran, and would immediately start drinking to salve the wounds of the day.  The more he drank, the more he would lambast his wife for the messy house, the unruly kids, the burnt dinner. 

Her mother was a well intentioned, but uneducated woman—“emotionally weak,” from Marcy’s point of view, and totally unable to stand up to her husband’s diatribes.

Both parents confided to Marcy about their misery, and that left her absolutely desperate to fix the situation—an impossible job for a little girl.  So she spent her childhood feeling woefully inadequate—and grew up to feel “not good enough” in relationships, in work or in life.

Like all of us, without realizing it, Marcy lives in the feelings of childhood, which are endlessly evoked in day-to-day living.  So she looks at an impossibly high stack of work to be done, and when she can’t do a week’s worth of work in a day, feels the impotent desperation of a child who can’t fix the pain of her parents.

In therapy, Marcy was able to begin to realize that this feeling of helpless desperation belonged to the child in her memory; that the feeling itself was a kind of memory (called implicit memory) of what it felt like to grow up in such a dysfunctional family.  She learned to bring mindful attention to those desperate feelings when they would appear in her body—when her heart would start pounding, and her stomach would be in knots—and to comfort that frightened child in memory:  “I know it was terrifying for you back then—It should never have been your job to fix the problems of mom and dad—Other people should have done that.  You were just a kid—But you’re okay now.  We’re okay now.”

As Marcy began to heal from that part of her history, she got much better at being able to identify impossible demands at work without panic.  This awareness made it possible for her to leave work at a reasonable hour, knowing that she doesn’t have to do the impossible to be “good enough” to make an important contribution to the organization for which she works.

Sometimes the compulsive need to do too much shows up as an impulse to rescue people. This was the case for Diane, a middle-aged woman, with a complex history and a generous heart.  Diane is a successful, self-employed business consultant who constantly felt compelled to go “beyond the call of duty” for her clients—taking calls at 3:00 am; putting in “all-nighters” for people who called her last minute for help—then feeling angry when her boundless work was not appreciated.

She also would hire people—dog walkers, personal assistants, house cleaners—who were in dire straits, then desperately try to rehabilitate their lives.  Inevitably she would end up feeling frustrated and hurt when they ignored her advice and failed to experience the transformation that she was trying to offer.

When we explored the cause of this life pattern the answer was in her history (as is always the case).  Diane grew up with parents who had a very contentious relationship.  Her mother was always frustrated with her father, who would avoid contact with his wife as much as possible.  Instead, he turned to Diane to meet his need for companionship and love, and was sexually inappropriate with her when she was still a young child.

In the midst of exploring this issue Diane remembered a recurring dream from childhood.  “I used to dream that I lived on Venus—actually I was the Queen of Venus.  My father lived on Mars, and my mother and two younger sisters lived on Earth.  I wore a cape—like a superhero—and would spend my days desperately flying around and around trying to help everybody—my father, my mother and my sisters.  Then I would be so exhausted that I couldn’t move, and I would be crying and all alone, and there was nobody there to help me—nobody at all.”

At this point, in addition to her weekly therapy sessions, Diane had begun a daily meditation practice.  In the course of one of her meditations the meaning of the above dream became crystal clear.  As she was recounting the moment in therapy, her eyes filled with tears:  "Oh my god, my whole life—I can see that from the time I was a little girl I tried to rescue everybody—my childhood dream told me the story of my whole life—and I’m only realizing it now!"

From that moment, Diane, who has a number of medical challenges, made the commitment to take better care of herself, to be mindful of the difference between a conscious choice to be generous, and the compulsive need to rescue others that came out of her troubled history.

Any of us who have a history of family dysfunction—in which parents and siblings are not getting their needs met by the appropriate people--run the risk of “overdoing” like Marcy and Diane; of compulsively trying to meet the needs of others, while finding that our own needs go sadly unmet.

The good news is that you don’t have to stay stuck in that kind of a negative pattern.  Even if you have had a very difficult history, you can learn new ways of being in and responding to the world, of connecting with others and creating relationships that are based not on negative reenactments of history, but positive, mutually satisfying connections in your present life.  It is the goal of psychotherapy to help you realize this rich potential. 

For more information on one approach to transcending the negative memories of the past go to www.integrativepsychotherapy-nyc.com and click on “Healing Early Trauma.”

Portia Franklin is a New York City based psychotherapist with more than 20 years experience helping people move beyond depression, anxiety, trauma and relationship challenges to lead more satisfying and fulfilling lives.  She can be reached through her web site: http://www.integrativepsychotherapy-nyc.com.

Snapping Out of the "Trance of Unworthiness"

Some time ago when the Dalai Lama was being interviewed, the subject of low self-esteem came up, and his translator had great difficulty finding a way to help him understand this concept.  Reportedly he was perplexed by the notion that people could disrespect themselves; that they could fail to perceive their own value and feel unworthy of the fulfillment and happiness in life that should be the birthright of every human being.

It is striking that the concept of low self-esteem that plagues so many of us in Western society is so foreign to Tibetan Buddhist culture that there is not even a word for it in their language.  Rather there is a sense that every being is unique and precious, and inherently worthy of love and respect.  How is it that we have managed to create a culture in which low self esteem—the devaluing of the self—is so common, that even people who appear very successful by conventional standards are often riddled with self doubt and feelings of unworthiness?

This thought came to mind during a session with Roger (not his real name), a dynamic, highly regarded executive in a software engineering firm.  Though he has succeeded by every objective measure—he has earned a good living that has allowed his family great material comfort and is well regarded by colleagues and friends--he walks around with a constant sense of  “not good enough.”  His external image of an affable, self confident man, well practiced over many years of professional life, belies the sinking feeling inside:  “I always feel like they’re going to find me out, that my façade will crumble and they’ll see who I really am.”

Even in non-professional situations, the feeling endures.  As we were discussing how pervasive these negative feelings are in his life, Roger winced and buried his head in his hands as a wrenching memory rose to consciousness:  “When my son was born—he was perfectly beautiful from the first moment he came into the world—for just a moment in time I felt such exquisite joy—but then—words came screaming into my consciousness—‘You don’t deserve this!’ ” He struggled to continue in a halting, agonized tone:  “and we didn’t have any other children—though I always wanted a big family.”

Roger lives in a state that author Tara Brach describes in her powerful book Radical Acceptance as “the trance of unworthiness.”  As we explored his history, the origin of this trance became clear.  He had a mother who was emotionally volatile, physically abusive, and cruel, and a father who was emotionally and often physically absent.  Though Roger was extremely bright and always did well in school, from his mother’s perspective, he never did well enough.  To a very great extent, children become who we tell them they are, and Roger got the message over and over again, that “You don’t deserve!”

In therapy Roger was able to begin to identify the bad feeling that goes with the thought “I don’t deserve” as ancient history—literally a memory of what it felt like to be a beleaguered child with a mentally unstable, cruel mother. He came to understand—as we all must if we are to transcend a difficult childhood—that he is constantly viewing current reality through the lens of the past.   

The question is, why don’t the positive accomplishments of the present override the negative programming from the past?  To answer this question we have to look at the nature of the brain, and the powerful way that early memories color how we see and respond to the world as well as how we see ourselves.

The first thing to understand about the brain is that it is a survival machine that has the primary job of keeping us alive. To accomplish this goal it is constantly processing the here-and-now through the lens of the there-and-then.  That means it sizes up every new situation by instantaneously comparing it to all the similar situations we’ve lived through in the past.  As it does that, it pulls up all the old feelings from history—the implicit memories—that make us feel the same way now that we did then.  The problem is, we don’t usually recognize that these negative feelings are a form of memory.

That was certainly true for Roger when he first came into therapy. Every time he walked into a professional situation where the quality of his work was likely to be evaluated, his brain would pull up all the feeling memories of being a little boy who was harshly judged as “never good enough.”  He would re-experience all of the dejection, hopelessness and despair of his 10 year-old self, without realizing that these were the feelings of the child who lives on in memory. 

And this is a physiological as well as a psychological phenomenon.  If we could go back in time and capture an image of Roger’s 10 year-old brain when his mother was putting him down, and then do the same for adult Roger when he was feeling inadequate or criticized at work, the images may very well look identical.  Which means that the historical child lives on in his current feeling states, still wounded and longing for the love and validation that he so richly deserves.

Roger was eventually able to identify the dejected feeling state he so often fell into as “old stuff”—a memory of the suffering child he once was.  In a very moving session he spoke from an adult, compassionate place to the child in his memory:  “You never deserved what she did to you!  You were always a good kid.  You deserved to grow up and have a good life—to feel good about yourself—to be happy!”  This was a turning point in his therapy, after which he was able to confront the negative voices from history, no longer viewing them as accurate or real.

There were so many profound moments in Roger’s sessions that resonated with my own early experience, having grown up in a conflict-ridden family that gave me many negative messages about myself.  I spent long years in therapy re-wiring that early software—learning to recognize my strengths, accept my weaknesses, and embrace the person that I actually am.   This is the birthright of every one of us—to come home to ourselves and know that it is a good place to be.

The most important take-away for anyone struggling with self-esteem issues is the realization that you don’t have to live in that negative trance for the rest of your life.  You can learn to recognize, as Roger ultimately did, that most of the negative feelings that plague you are “old stuff”—negative programming, not ultimate truth. 

You can begin to give yourself the same love and respect that you would offer a beloved child—the same “radical acceptance” that Buddhist psychology suggests—which means that you accept yourself with your history, understanding that whatever negative messages were learned along the way do not have to define you; they are simply the story that you have lived; they are what you must transcend in order to snap out of the “trance of unworthiness” and become who you truly are.

Recommended readings:  “Radical Acceptance” by Tara Brach and Buddha’s Brain, The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom, by Rick Hanson

Portia Franklin is a psychotherapist who has more than 25 years experience helping people move beyond depression, anxiety and relationship difficulties to lead fuller, richer lives.  Check out her web site:  www.integrativepsychotherapy-nm.com

What Heals in Psychotherapy?

As a psychotherapist who is interested in alleviating suffering the most important underlying question is, what really works?  What really allows people to heal the wounds of the past?  To make peace with whatever their history has been?  To be open to warm connection with themselves and with others?  To feel free to be authentically who they are and make their own unique contribution to this world?

There are as many answers to the above questions as there are modalities of psychotherapy—and, like the movie, Rashomon, they all contain elements of truth.  The cognitive-behavioral approach (also known as CBT) emphasizes correcting distortions in thought.  So, for example, a person with whom I worked who had had critical parents developed the belief that he had to be perfect to deserve love, and was extremely self critical because of this history.  He had to learn in therapy to effectively counter that belief, to replace it over and over again with a more realistic thought.  Something like “As a human being I am inherently worthy of love, and my worthiness is not contingent upon performance.”

But the cognitive, conscious work was difficult for him, because of all the years of negative programming.  So an important aspect of our work became relational—that is, this person had to experience in our relationship what he had never experienced before--what it feels like to be truly valued and respected, without having to be perfect.  (As an imperfect human myself, it’s pretty easy to offer this!) 

The approach to relational work that I find to be most powerful is called AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy).  It is based on current neuroscience, which teaches us that emotional healing is fostered by the experience of warm, safe connection with the therapist—not a linear, logical, left-brain process, but an intuitive right-brain process.  AEDP invites the therapist to be fully present, expressive of her caring feelings, as well as to share parts of her own story that demonstrate her empathy and understanding of the client’s plight.

As an example, Ted (not his real name) came into therapy during a life crisis, when his mother had been diagnosed with dementia.  She had been a difficult, demanding woman whose parenting had caused him enormous suffering—and he was wrestling with a welter of difficult feelings contemplating her decline and death.  As Ted was speaking of this, I felt tears welling up in my eyes, remembering my own mother’s death.  On that day, I felt the deepest grief I had ever known, as well as the greatest sense of relief that her suffering was over.   My sharing this with him created a bond between us that made it safe for him to express all of his conflicting feelings toward his mother without guilt, and to begin to heal from the legacy of her past.

One of the approaches that has been most powerful to me personally as a client in psychotherapy--and most effective as a therapist helping others--is called PBSP, or psychomotor therapy.  PBSP invites people to work with the therapist to create an experience, called a symbolic memory that is reparative of early emotional wounding.  So, for example, a woman named Deirdre, who had a violent, abusive father was able in a safe, supportive environment to express all the feelings about who he actually was and the harm he caused, but then to explore in a very profound way what she would feel like and what the world would look like, if she had not experienced the negative history with him—if she had had a loving father who had been supportive, rather than abusive, for all those years.  (For more information on this work, please go to www.integrativepsychotherapy-nyc.com and click on the tab “Healing Early Trauma”).

The above is just a sampling of the many approaches to psychotherapy that can be helpful.  The most important thing to realize--whether you’re focusing on correcting distorted thoughts, or experiencing the healing that comes from a close, safe relationship, or working on creating reparative symbolic memories—is that healing is possible.  You can’t erase, but you can transcend the past.   You can develop the peace of mind and self-acceptance that makes it possible to live well in this world, to feel accepting of who you are, and open to close and fulfilling relationships with others.  This is your birthright—and it is the goal of psychotherapy to help you claim it.


Portia Franklin is a psychotherapist based in New York City who has more than 20 years experience helping people move beyond depression, anxiety, trauma and relationship difficulties to lead fuller, richer lives.  Check out her web site:  www.integrativepsychotherapy-nyc.com.