Part 3- The Three Worlds: Survival, Emotional, and Practical
THE EMOTIONAL WORLD
(EW)
As with the previous two posts on the Three Worlds, here are the Axioms that apply to the EW:
No one dies in this World.
Lacking empathy and forgiveness, this World cannot operate in a functional manner, as it will lack warmth.
Vulnerability in this World is good, as it invites tenderness (for oneself, as well as for others).
The fundamental “substance” of the EW is warmth, even if anger and conflict are in the room; especially if they are present. This may sound like a strange thing to say, but think about it. We only “do” the EW with a small, select group: those we love and have chosen. This World is about love. Love is warm. Love is constant. Love is not fickle or manipulative. This is good because the EW is a “Process” World, as opposed to an “Action” World (SW) or a “Content” World (PW).
Twenty years ago, my wife and I attended a two-day training workshop with Dr. John Gottman in San Francisco. Without exaggeration, it is fair to say that Dr. Gottman is one of the world’s leading researchers on the nature of couples. We learned so much in that weekend, we both dramatically modified our approach to how we have conducted couples’ therapy ever since.
We learned boatloads of new material that weekend. For me, the most astonishing new piece of information had to do with couples who Gottman refers to as “Masters of Marriage,” couples who seemed to be able to right the boat after a storm or even during a storm. Through his observations, he discovered that these couples all shared a common trait: they were shot through with warmth. He observed that when they were having a disagreement they said eight warm and encouraging things for every negative statement.
At the heart of what I call a “Healing Relationship” (and will be the subject of future posts) is warmth, durable warmth. Most of what works in the EW is not intuitive, unless you were fortunate enough to have it modeled for you. Terrence Real, another noted couples’ therapist, talks about “first and second consciousness.” In first consciousness, one responds to a partner intuitively and habitually. These responses come out of the modeling for relationships learned in childhood or from adaptations learned throughout childhood. Type A Behavior (TAB) is a first consciousness response: immediate, intense, impatient, cold, and hostile.
In learning second consciousness responses, one is learning new models of consciously desired behavior. In the modification of TAB, the leaders prescribe daily “drills” for people to perform. These drills seem strange (e.g. find a long line and stand in it) to a person with TAB, but seem like normal behavior for a Type B. The purpose of the drills is to imitate Type B Behavior until it becomes the new habit.
In obtaining and having access to second consciousness responses, people practice new non-intuitive behaviors (e.g. maintain eye contact during conflict). The most important goal of second consciousness is “to remember love.” This simply means the ability, especially in the midst of a heated or cold moment, to remember that you love this other person and this other person loves you. The love is there even when you can’t “feel” it. Why? Because you “do” this World with people whom you love and who love you.
This remembrance of second consciousness has power in the EW because this World is first and foremost a place of influence. It most certainly is not a “Fact” or “Fix-it” (PW) World, nor is it a place where you can have a discernible outcome (SW). The bank robber, Willie Horton, once famously said, “I find I can get more from people with a kind comment and a gun, than I I can with just a kind comment.” This is most probably true in robbing banks, but is not true in the EW. In this World, the greatest source of “power” is influence leavened with a generous amounts of kindness, understanding, and warmth.
I tell people continually that I am always teaching to power. It’s just that power in the EW looks vastly different from power in the SW or the PW. Influence and confidence in influence is the source of power in the EW. However, for most folks that has to be learned because it is not intuitive. Resolution in the EW is nothing like resolution in the other two Worlds.
Woody Allen once famously said, “Eighty percent of life is just showing up.” Well, “McNeel” says, “Ninety-seven percent of the EW is satisfied by just being and staying present with warmth and curiosity.” Here again, this dictum is quite non-intuitive. When someone is “hot” or “extremely cold and blaming” with us, most of us are not trained to be warm, curious, or non-defensively present. But, the key word here is “trained.” My Chinese is non-existent, but I never presume I can speak that language just because I am very trained up in English. Lots of folks, though, march confidently into the EW “armed” only with their training in the SW and PW.
So, if an “outcome” (hopefully good) satisfies the SW and, as you will see in the next post, “a task completed” satisfies the PW, what exactly satisfies the EW? Excellent question. It is a three-part answer and has to do with abilities that might not be intuitive, but are learnable. The skills of the EW can be learned. The three necessary skills are: mirroring, listening, and curiosity. I like to change the wording of a familiar saying, “Curiosity might kill the cat in the PW, but it is what allows that same cat to thrive in the EW.”
The ameliorating factor is affection. There needs to be affection (remembering love) present. Those three skills can also be used in the presence of aloofness or contempt but the outcome is very different. When those are the background filters, then the EW feels “too hot” or “too cold.” Warm feels better than victory or retreat. The effort needs to be twofold: to be present so emotions can be processed and to look for the path back to warmth, to the comfort of affection.
There also needs to be an overriding attitude, also quite unintuitive. It is the attitude in times of arousal, spoken or unspoken, “There is no place else in the world I would rather be at this moment.” “Why,” one might ask, “I don’t want to be here. This kind of conflict really stinks.” “Because. Think about it,” is the response. With whom do you “do” the EW? With your loved ones, not strangers or work acquaintances. If the EW is present, then one of two things is taking place, happiness or distress. If happiness is in the room, then you want to be present so you can share it and feel it too. If distress, yours or the other person’s, is in the room, then either you need help or the other person does.
“But I only want to be in the EW when it feels good!” Tell me about it. I understand. I help people with this dilemma all the time. “Besides, when the EW is in negative territory, someone usually gets hurt and feels worse. We rarely feel ‘warmer.’” Roger that. I told you this in unintuitive. All of it is. It is important to remember Axiom #1 at the beginning of this post: “No one dies in the EW. (It just feels like it).”
This is not redundant. This is very important. The EW causes emotional arousal when it appears. Many of us grew up in homes that had the DON’T FEEL Injunctive Message. This means we learned very early in life to snuff out our emotional feelings as if they were dangerous. They are not. Arousal does feel uncomfortable, but it is a kind of discomfort we want! It means we are alive. And, no one dies in this world. The worst it has to offer is discomfort and the best is the “discomfort” of intimacy and vulnerability and joy. Those are good problems.
This is why the most important skill in this World is, “Being comfortable with being uncomfortable.” For lots of folks being uncomfortable is taken to mean that something wrong is taking place rather than something normal and healthy and positive is happening.
Conflict will bring out a lot of emotions and therefore is very uncomfortable. I have seen lots of couples strive to eliminate conflict from their relationship, to which I always say, “Good luck.”
I tried to do the same thing in the first few years of my own marriage. My wife and I always seemed to have our spats in the kitchen. I would normally walk out at some point, “afraid things were about to get out of control.” On one of these occasions, my wife (an exceedingly kind person) said, “I am going to say a few things but these are just words, so don’t walk out of the room.” She was right. I don’t remember what she said, but I do remember it was uncomfortable. I also note that we are still married and I am still very much alive. No one dies in the EW!
Before ending this long post on this most important subject, I want to mention three last things. The first has to do with conflict. I tell people that there are many things we may or may not have in our love relationships, some positive, some negative: love, sex, eating together, kids, vacations, etc. There is one thing that is endemic to all committed relationships: conflict. That doesn’t mean fighting and hostility. It just means that it is a good idea to learn how to handle, in a warm way, what will always be present. We can’t make conflict “go away.” We can learn how to do it so that it enhances our skills in the EW and allows us to know the other much better and to feel deep confidence in the resiliency of our relationship.
The last two are “Protection” and the phrase “It’s not personal.” If we love someone and wish for that person’s happiness and safety, then it is impingent upon us to learn to know ourselves well enough so we can protect our loved ones from our worst trait. Much more rarely now, my wife will say to me, “Nice voice.” This means I have slipped into a voice that is cold and hypercritical. On most occasions, I immediately apologize and switch to a different voice, as opposed to going off into a ridiculous defense, “I have a right to be angry, blah, blah, blah.”
We finish with the a phrase I learned from the directors of the Couples Institute in Menlo Park, Drs. Pete Pearson and Ellyn Bader, “IT’S NOT PERSONAL.” The phrase may not have originated with them, but it is where I learned it. This means that what I or someone else says in the EW especially in a moment of extremis, tells me more about the other person and their mood, than it does about me. “You are such an idiot.” “Our whole marriage has been a joke.” “How can you live with yourself?”
Those are certainly very unpleasant things to hear, but they don’t come from conviction or factuality so much as from pain. They are painful to hear, but the pain is discomfort, not life threatening. If we can stay in the warmth of the EW, then we can weather this storm and invite our loved one out of the fury of the SW or the coldness of the PW back to the EW with us. This is good because the EW is warm. It is warm because we do it with those we love and love is very warm. And it is powerful and transformative and healing.
Life-saving miracles can take place in the SW. Fixing fact-based problems can take place in the PW. Healing can take place in the EW.
Here are the guidelines for the EW. Just as with the SW, following these will help to develop the necessary skills needed to be successful and satisfying in the EW.
One must learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
One must learn to hold eye contact while viewing the other through the “lens of admiration and compassion.”
One must learn to remain curious in spite of the temptation to be critical, blaming, defensive, or avoidant.
In the next post, I will describe the PW with its benefits and pitfalls.