S.S.D.D. in The Couple Relationship
“I love you and want to spend a life with you and I’m frustrated that we keep on repeating the same pattern. We are getting along fine and then something ‘small’ seems to be so big and off we go again. I feel like I’ve tried everything and it just doesn’t seem to stop it. Maybe we are just not compatible”.
How often I have heard this and the clients are losing hope and feeling despair. I hate to use a cliché that annoys me but the lack of change is often due to the fact that you, ‘can’t know what you don’t know’. That’s where good systemic therapy can be so helpful. We can get locked into a particular mind set and depend too much on our Conscious mind or Executive Functioning part of our brains. This part of our brain helps us in so many ways and it is understandable that we come to depend on it a lot, yet there is so much more to our brain. We have all had experiences where we have remembered experiences due to looking at photographs, hearing a particular song, smelling something or tasting or touching. How many times have you also realized there’s a more effective way to do something that you have been doing a particular way for so long? We have so much information in our brains that only gets released when our sub-conscious/Unconscious is accessed. This is simply shown by the Johari Window diagram below.
Johari Window
| Known by self | Unknown by self | |
| Known by others | Conscious
And Public |
Others can help you see.
Self-exploration |
| Not known by others | Hidden Self.
You can disclose |
Unknown.
Self-reflection Hypnosis Dreams Therapy |
In my work with couples it is in the taking of an Unknowing stance that I, with the couple, are helped to see what we did not see and know what we didn’t know. We explore together and, in so doing, expand our understanding significantly. Constantly articulating hypotheses and being open to altering our viewpoints, helps the three of us to expand our understanding and find new ways to move forward. The couple discover truths and help me to understand how they experience reality.
I found it very difficult to take an Unknowing position, in my younger years as a therapist. I felt a pressure to ‘be the professional’ and fix things for the couple’s relationship. Now I love to work with the couple from a not-knowing stance and be honest and open, in the belief that we will, together, access the truth. This approach is the opposite of SSDD and leads to growth. Change of this type can’t be lost because perception has been altered and aligns more with the truth. It’s a process that moves forward, “you can’t step into the same river twice”!
Again, it is a process of change. You will have some back steps because your conditioning from childhood has led to some behaviors that are unhealthy. We need to keep ‘catching ourselves’ to help prevent repetition of life-defeating behaviors in our relationships.