4
Search Yourself

One of the best wedding gifts God gave you was a full-length mirror called your spouse. Had there been a card attached, it would have said, “Here’s to helping you discover what you’re really like!”

Gary and Betsy Ricucci

Knowing yourself is not as easy as it sounds. Most of us can identify our own preferences—a night out in the city or a quiet evening at home, a juicy steak or a salad with chicken—but understanding ourselves at deeper levels is not so obvious. We assume we know ourselves well, particularly if we’re decisive and goal-oriented. We seem to know the path we’re on and where we’re headed. But if we look a bit closer, we each have parts of ourselves that are a bit of a mystery, even to us.

The presence of these parts is evidenced by how reactive we can be in certain situations. Your husband forgets to pick up something you’d asked him to bring home, and when he arrives without it you tear into him. Your wife expresses disappointment about not being able to afford a weekend away, and you attack her for her lack of gratefulness. If we’re honest, we will admit that sometimes our reactions are far more intense than the situation warrants.

Often we will justify our reactivity and focus instead on the fault of our mate. “If he hadn’t forgotten, I wouldn’t have gotten so mad.” “If she didn’t spend so much, I wouldn’t have yelled.” We justify our behavior even if we have a suspicion we may have overreacted. Both our reactivity and our justifying can be seen as parts of ourselves that jump into action when our needs are threatened.

Sometimes our responses are not so obvious to outsiders. We might be adept at keeping our emotions inside, not letting on that we are disturbed or affected. Whether our reactions are obvious or beneath the surface, they often indicate deep wounds that are not apparent to our conscious awareness.

Remember Seth and Amber? Seth’s anger had been escalating in the months prior to entering therapy, but initially he was unable to acknowledge its intensity or effect. He was in denial about being angry, shifting the blame for his behavior onto Amber, whom he accused of being “too sensitive.” He saw their problem as primarily Amber’s. When he was willing to admit his own frustration, he traced the provocation to his wife’s sexual withdrawal.

Although Amber was more aware of her increasing anxiety, surfacing in the form of panic attacks, she was unaware of its origin and felt powerless to calm it. The combination of their two reactions created a level of tension between Seth and Amber that was palpable. Without clarity about why they did what they were doing, they remained at the mercy of their destructive pattern.

Why Look Inside?

Many of us fear looking inside ourselves. We don’t know what we’ll find. If we’ve had a painful past, we prefer to leave it behind and focus on what we hope will be a more promising future.

Understanding our inner workings is not a skill we learned growing up. Instead, we learned to focus on the needs and moods of others and adapt ourselves accordingly. Wanting to be connected to our caregivers, we learned to put forward those parts of ourselves that were pleasing and accepted and hide those parts that were unwanted or needy.

Taking an inside look is, therefore, often an unfamiliar effort and not unlike starting down a road with unrecognizable terrain. You’re not sure what you will discover and assume the road you’re already on is just fine. It’s gotten you through life to this point, so why mess with it? Besides, what if you don’t like what you discover and end up feeling more shame and guilt?

At the core we long to be accepted. Many of us experienced disapproving or shaming voices as a child and have a fear that if others were to truly see us, they would confirm that we are bad or unacceptable. We fear the judgment and rejection of others, so we hide our uglier aspects and deny they exist. We are unaware that grace is available, even for our most unlovely parts.1 But to receive that grace, we must come out of hiding.

Knowing yourself deeply and learning to acknowledge all parts of yourself is freeing. When you are able to see the ways you protect and defend yourself as parts you developed to help you manage life, you find that you are less driven by them and more able to freely admit their impact on others.2

You can begin to look at your reactivity and get curious about it rather than defensive. Self-exploration frees you from the endless cycle of behaving poorly and justifying it. It allows you to step back and experience a healthy separation between yourself and the ways you’ve learned to protect yourself. Once you are aware and can identify these parts, you have more room inside to choose to respond rather than react. Richard Schwartz, who developed the Internal Family Systems model, is responsible for this concept of “understanding of parts,” which frees you to see yourself more clearly.

As a result of this freedom, you will be able to live more authentically. Rather than living out of shoulds or scripts that were handed to you as a child, you will be more able to live out of your true self. As Frederick Buechner describes:

[Our] original shimmering self gets buried so deep we hardly live out of it at all . . . rather, we learn to live out of all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.3

Your true, original self is who you were made to be.4 To live authentically, then, is to discover your “original shimmering self,” as reflected to you by the One who made you. It is to be open to continually learning about yourself, to have the courage to face your fears and doubts, to sort through the messages and baggage of childhood. The authentic self does not fear the judgment of others. It is content to be oneself, however imperfect. To be authentic is to engage in the process of knowing yourself deeply and living from your heart.

Another benefit to searching yourself is richer relationships. When you are free to explore yourself, you can relate to others, including your mate, in a more transparent way. As you get to know the reactive parts of yourself and why they attempt to protect you in the way that they do, you no longer need to defend them. You can appreciate these parts and know they are just parts of you—they do not define you. You can apologize and seek forgiveness more readily. As you relate to your mate in this less defended way, you are able to enjoy more responsive, less reactive interactions that allow for more closeness.

As you search yourself and offer yourself compassionate understanding, you are able to offer the same to your mate. Rather than judging and accusing, you can offer compassion to their wounded parts and understanding to their protectors. As you come to embrace all your parts and your true self, you are able to be more receptive to all of your mate, offering them room to be real, room to grow.

Why We Do What We Do

Human beings are born with a deep longing for unconditional love. We yearn for someone to see us completely and love us still. To be known without being loved is painful. To be rejected is wounding to the core. We desire relationships in which we can be fully known and freely loved.

We also long to feel valued—to know that we matter to someone. We want to have an impact on the world around us. Initially we discover our importance through our primary caretaker, most often our mother. As an infant, when you cried because you were hungry or needed to be changed and your mother attended to your needs, you felt comforted. Her presence, attention, and warmth helped you feel secure in the world. You mattered.

If your primary needs to feel loved and valued were not fully met, you felt pain. As a young child, you weren’t able to put words to this ache but you felt it nevertheless. To cope with it, you developed protectors—ways of being that helped you manage it and avoid feeling it. Although these protectors attempt to guard us against future injury by defending us, they also work to keep our young, vulnerable parts from our awareness.5

If your parents were angry, you may have learned to hide your feelings and needs and accommodate their moods. If your parents were too busy for you, you may have clamored for their attention to get your needs met or learned not to need them, not to be a burden. You may have developed demanding or avoiding protectors to help you cope with an unavailable parent. If your parents were critical, you may have tried to please them to avoid their displeasure or became angry in order to defend yourself. In short, we all have developed protective parts—ways of guarding ourselves from further injury and managing life.

We carry these protectors into our adult relationships. They are like stowaways aboard the ship of our life. We don’t realize they’re there until they pop out of the ship’s hold when we land in a relationship.

James and Amy discovered their “stowaways” when their marriage hit a rocky shore. Amy’s mom had high expectations for Amy’s school and chore performance and tended to micromanage her daughter’s homework and extracurricular activities through high school. Amy unconsciously developed a task-oriented protector that accommodated her mom’s expectations.

When she married James, that part worked hard to create an orderly home. When James disregarded her desire for tidiness, Amy became frustrated and angry. The young, vulnerable part of Amy, who feared rejection if she didn’t keep a perfect house, was shielded by this protector.

Likewise, James was equally unconscious of what was driving his behavior. He minimized Amy’s feelings because they seemed unreasonable to him. Growing up in a home where his feelings weren’t welcome, he had learned to shield himself by becoming dismissive of his own emotions. When he married Amy, James found her desire for emotional closeness threatening. Having rarely paid attention to his own feelings, he felt inadequate to deal with hers. His avoidant protector demeaned Amy for her constant desire for his attention. James’s vulnerable longing for unconditional love and attunement, so long neglected, was buried deep.

James and Amy needed to understand their protectors and the roles they were playing, as well as give attention to their wounded parts, in order to forge new relationship patterns. Toni Herbine-Blank applied Internal Family Systems to work with couples and created a “courageous communication” model that has been imminently helpful in my work to help couples change their interactions.

The session in which we began to address these issues became a turning point. The tension was thick as they seated themselves in my office. James reported that the previous day, Amy had “exploded” when he informed her that the trip they had planned for the end of the month would have to be postponed due to a work obligation. As Amy listened to James’s account, she crossed her arms and glared at him.

“She was so irrational,” James complained. “It’s not that big of a deal. We can go another time.”

“Irrational?” Amy cried out. “You didn’t spend your time making all the plans!” Her bottom lip quivered. “You just don’t want to go on vacation with me.”

“I didn’t say that! Why can’t you just be reasonable?”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault?”

“I’d like to slow this down,” I interjected, “so we can understand what happened.” I made eye contact with Amy. “When James told you he wanted to postpone the trip, what happened inside you?”6

“I was hurt and disappointed,” Amy said.

“Can you notice where in your body you felt that hurt and disappointment?”

“My chest tightened . . . and my heart.”

“And what thoughts went through your mind?” I asked.

“I thought, ‘He’s doing it again. He doesn’t want to be with me. He’s making excuses.’”

“And what did you do or say to James?”

She shrugged. “I got mad. I told him to be honest, to admit that he doesn’t really want to spend time with me.” Amy sniffled. “Work is always more important to him than I am.”

I turned to James. “And do you know this angry part of Amy?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And what did you notice inside when she got angry?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

James hadn’t had much experience tuning in to his emotions and physical reactions, since they were seldom acknowledged by his parents. Learning to do so would be a significant growth goal for him.

After a minute, James said, “I think I was feeling frustrated. Then I just went numb.”

“That part of you that went numb, James,” I said. “What is it afraid might happen if it didn’t react in that way?”

“I think it fears I’d be overwhelmed. I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“Does that happen often?” I asked.

“Now that I think about it, I guess it does.”

“When you felt this way, what did you say to yourself?” I asked.

James looked away. “That I’ll never be enough for Amy.”

“Have you ever thought that before, like you’re not enough for someone?”

“Oh, yeah. My dad was really hard to please. Even when I was successful in sports, he hardly seemed to notice.” James was beginning to connect with his young, wounded part that was triggering his protector.

“When you felt like you weren’t enough for Amy, what did you do?”

“I left. I got in my car and took off. I just needed to go for a drive.”

I checked back with Amy. “When James took off on his drive, what was going on inside you?”

“I felt hopeless and alone.”

“And what did you hear yourself saying to yourself?” I asked.

“That he’s never going to get it. I’m never going to have what I need.”

“Have you had that feeling before?”

She dropped her gaze. “I really wanted my dad’s attention. But he was gone a lot. I felt I was always waiting for him.”

Helping Amy slow down and notice her feelings was the first step toward recognizing the young part of herself that longed for connection.

“Amy, what is that part of you afraid will happen if James doesn’t spend time with you?”

“That I’ll always be alone,” Amy said, and got in touch with her deepest fear.

As we continued, Amy came to realize that one of her protectors became angry whenever she sensed James pulling away. She had been doing this ever since early childhood, when her dad was unavailable or absent and her mom was preoccupied with performance and duties. The pain of her unmet need for closeness activated her angry protector.

As we explored this connection between Amy’s longing for connection and her reactivity, James saw how his withdrawing triggered an old hurt. Amy began to feel more compassion for James too. She saw how he feared not being enough for her and how he needed to feel accepted before he could reconnect with her.

Our longings for loving relationships and impact are good—they are part of the way we have been created. I’ve never met an individual who did not long for both. Nor have I met a person who hasn’t experienced pain when those longings have gone unmet to some degree.

Because we are all imperfect, we fail to love perfectly. No human being, including your spouse and your parents, can fully meet the depth of your longing to be unconditionally loved and valued.

Even after we physically and/or emotionally separate ourselves from our parents, we still attempt to get what we need from them. But they don’t hold the keys to our souls. They are fallible humans just like we are.

When our parents fail to come through for us, we often turn to our mate to fill the void. The problem is they too are wounded. Our parts want to be understood and heard but believe the only way to do so is to demand, manipulate, and shame our mate into meeting our needs. Our mate’s protective parts respond in kind and both of us are left frustrated and injured.

In one sense, your protectors are well meaning. They want to keep you safe and functioning. Because they have been doing their job for so long, however, they habitually take over and interfere with the intimacy and authenticity you desire. They also fear that if the young, vulnerable parts of you were exposed, they might overwhelm you and you would be reinjured. But by keeping them in hiding, the protectors hinder their healing. What they don’t understand is that your young parts have been carrying burdens that, once released, will also relieve the protectors of needing to work so hard.7

Your young parts long to be understood and nurtured. As you take time to get to know your protectors, appreciating their hard work and offering them compassion, they can calm down, allowing you to engage with your young parts. But sometimes these well-meaning protectors have difficulty stepping down.

On one occasion, children were brought to Jesus.8 His adult friends, the disciples, got upset. They thought it was an intrusion and wanted to protect Jesus from the disruption. Jesus asked them to step back and let the children come to him. He welcomed the children and blessed them. Although the disciples thought they were helping, they were actually interfering with the care Jesus sought to offer.

Your protector parts often think they know best. They can be fiercely self-reliant and fearful of standing down. They are convinced that their way is the only way you can survive. They have little confidence that your true self is capable of providing adequate protection and leadership and fail to recognize the presence of any higher power to provide safety.9

You can begin to calm these protectors by inviting them to trust you to care for your young parts. You can ask them to step back, assuring them that your young parts can be safe with you. And, like the children with Jesus, your young parts are also safe with God. He sees them and desires to comfort and heal them.10 He sees you, accepts you completely, and loves you beyond your wildest imagination. As you come to understand his love for you, a space is created for all your parts to be known and cared for.11 As you understand the fears and intentions of your protectors and lean into God’s presence, your true self emerges and your protectors begin to settle.

As you are able to offer more understanding to your own parts, you can begin to relate to your spouse from a place of compassion, offering understanding to theirs as well.

Getting to Know Yourself

So how do you go about getting to know yourself? How do you gain the self-awareness necessary to live a more conscious life and have a more intimate marriage? Here are a few steps that will help you begin.

1. Check Your Dashboard

The first step in doing some healthy self-inquiry is to pay attention to your feelings. In one sense, your emotions are like the indicator lights on your car’s dashboard. When they go on, there’s a pretty good chance something is happening that you need to pay attention to. Your lights may have been flashing for some time, but you haven’t done anything about them because you’re afraid of what you might find. In order to have a well-tuned, smooth-running vehicle, you need to know what’s going on under the hood. With the right amount of attention, your car will be able to go the distance.

Most of us make decisions out of a combination of our thoughts and our emotions. When it comes to big choices like where you’ll live or when you’ll get married, you are likely influenced by both the practical realities and how you feel. Some people, however, are so driven by their emotions they tend to react to events and other individuals rather than using a balance of feeling and thinking. Other people are so cut off from their emotions that they don’t even consider feelings when they make decisions. Paying attention to how we feel and what we think, and exploring our underlying motivations, is important for anyone who wants to live a fully conscious, meaningful life.

A simple way to begin to become more self-aware is to notice feelings and thoughts that come up throughout the day. Keep a journal and record at least three emotions you experienced each day, along with the physical reactions and the thoughts that coincided with each feeling. Here’s an example:

What happened: I walked into a business meeting today.

Feeling: Anxiety.

Physical reaction: My hands were jittery and my stomach was clenched.

Thought: This presentation had better be good. My last one wasn’t as sharp as it could’ve been.

Here’s another example:

What happened: Jack came home from school today with a note from the teacher that he didn’t turn in an assignment.

Feelings: Anger and embarrassment.

Physical reaction: My shoulders were tight and my cheeks were flushed.

Thought: The teacher will think I’m a bad parent.

Use the “Feeling Words” list in appendix A to help you describe your emotions.

2. Explore Your Upbringing

Understanding the impact of how you were raised can help you gain clarity about how you relate to others—in particular, your spouse. How was conflict handled in your home? Were you allowed to express feelings? If so, which ones? Did you have parents who provided tender emotional comfort when you were hurting? Or were you expected to buck up and dismiss your feelings?

An honest look at the good and bad of your upbringing will allow you to see what is true about yourself and your circumstances. Then you can avoid the black-and-white thinking that causes you to lay full blame on your parents or yourself.

Amy was initially resistant to seeing her anger toward James as unreasonable. When she considered the impact of her dad’s absence and her mom’s anxiety that drove her focus on performance, she realized how she had depended on James to repair the wounds of her childhood. As she became more conscious of the fears and longings that drove her behavior, she was able to have compassion for her wounded parts that triggered her anger. She was then able to free James from the weight of her unmet needs. When he no longer felt diminished by her demands and criticism, he could comfort her.

Since Amy no longer felt dependent on her parents for validation of her worth, she experienced a more adult relationship with them. She could love them without demanding something in return. And she set boundaries with her mom’s anxious expectations.

Whatever your upbringing, or your responses to it, doing some serious introspection about the dynamics of your home and the impact it has had on how you engage in intimate relationships is imperative to enjoying the warm, healthy, long-lasting marriage you desire. Here are some questions that can help you begin your exploration.

1. Do you have clear memories of your childhood? If you have very few childhood memories, this likely indicates you have a protector that disconnects you from painful memories for fear you will be overwhelmed or invalidated if you actually felt them. If this is true, ask your siblings or others who knew you as a child about the realities of your early home life.
2. Do you have memories of being listened to and warmly affirmed by a parent? Think of specific instances that were significant to you. Did such attunement characterize the way your parent was with you throughout childhood, or was it limited to one or two notable instances?
3. How were feelings expressed in your family? Were they openly shared or dismissed and invalidated? Were your parents uncomfortable expressing their own feelings? Which feelings were allowed and which were not? Did you have a moody or emotionally unpredictable parent? What did you typically do with your own feelings as a child?
4. What were your most significant childhood disappointments? What did you long for that you did not receive? Can you think of specific instances of hoping for some kind of emotional connection that did not happen or for affirmation that was not forthcoming?
5. Were your parents critical or overprotective? Did you find yourself yearning for their approval or trying to be very good? Did you feel anxious when your parent left or returned? Were they often unavailable or too involved? How did that make you feel?
6. What were your parents’ expectations of you? Did you strive to meet them? Did you feel like a disappointment to your parents? If so, what did you do with the pain of feeling you had let them down?
7. As you think about the hurts or disappointments in your marriage, can you trace them back to any wounds from childhood? What topics or activities are you particularly sensitive about? What does your spouse do or say that stirs the strongest reaction in you? Can you think of anything from childhood that triggered a similar reaction?
8. Did you have the experience of parents who divorced? If so, what feelings did you have about it? How were you told? How did your parents talk about the divorce? How did they talk about one another? Did they invite you to talk about your feelings and offer comfort or just expect you to adapt?
9. Did you grow up in a home where there was violence, abuse, alcoholism, or mental illness? How did family members respond? Was anyone safe or protective of you? Did they deny there was a problem or try to cover it up? Did they expect you to keep family secrets? How did you cope with the unpredictability of your environment?

As you consider your upbringing, try to notice the feelings you had as a child. Were you sad, angry, confused, or scared? Or were you numb, disconnected, or anxious? Your emotions can give you clues as to what protectors you may have developed to cope with your circumstances.

If you have difficulty identifying any feelings, chances are you may have a “disconnector” part that avoids, dismisses, and shuts down. That often happens when our feelings were disregarded or punished in childhood.

3. Identify Your Protectors

In addition to considering your upbringing, one of the best ways to identify your protectors is to notice your reactions in conflict. That’s because we usually react to threats by using patterns of protecting ourselves that we learned in childhood. Some protectors are reactive—they jump in to make sure we aren’t hurt again. Some protectors are preemptive—they attempt to manage situations so we won’t be exposed to pain.12

Protectors come in all shapes and sizes. Here are some examples of protectors and their purposes:

• Anger is usually an attempt to compel others to meet our need for respect or attention or get them to back off.
• Withdrawal ensures that others can’t get close enough to hurt us. It also can protect us from being exposed as somehow deficient.
• Joking can keep others at a distance through humor and keep the conversation light so as to not touch on anything too deep or painful.
• Analyzing allows us to assess situations in advance so we aren’t taken by surprise. It allows us to distance ourselves and feel in control.
• Judging places condemnation on someone else as a way of feeling superior and invulnerable, or on ourselves in order to deflect attention from the wounded parts of our hearts.

Most people have any number of protectors. For a more comprehensive list of possible protectors, see appendix B.

Take some time to assess how you responded in a recent conflict with your spouse. Use the following questions to help in your exploration.13

1. What happened? What did your spouse say or do that triggered a reaction in you?
2. What emotion came up in you when it first happened? Did other emotions follow? (Use the “Feeling Words” list in appendix A.)
3. What was the first thought that came to your mind? Did other thoughts follow? For example, I want to leave. I’m unimportant. I’m right. Why can’t my partner . . . ?
4. What did you want to do immediately?
5. What did you actually say or do?
6. How did your partner respond?
7. What did you feel, think, and do when they responded in that way?
8. Can you identify a common pattern in your interactions?
9. What do you typically do to protect yourself when you get into these patterns?
10. Do your feelings remind you of a time in your childhood when you felt compelled to protect yourself in a similar way?

Your emotions, reactions, and self-protective efforts help you identify your protectors. Once you have done so, you might want to interview them.14 Ask each of your protectors what they believe their role to be and what they fear might happen if they didn’t jump in to protect you. Ask them how long they’ve been doing their job and if they are aware of the young part that they have been trying to protect all this time. You might also ask how old they think you are (they often think you are quite young and still in need of their vigilant protection). It can be helpful to write out your answers.

Let your protectors know how much you appreciate their hard work for you and invite them to notice that you are an adult now. You have a voice and can speak on your own behalf. Ask them to trust you to see your young, vulnerable parts and care for them. Invite them to notice that God is trustworthy to care for your young parts as well.

Extend compassion to both your protectors and your young parts. Over time, as you are able to notice and reassure your protectors that you are present and your young parts that they are loved and safe, your internal system will calm. Your parts will be less inclined to jump in and hijack you, and you will be able to respond to your spouse with less reactivity.

Identifying the feelings you had in childhood and the adaptive protectors you may have developed is beneficial for several reasons. It gives you clarity about the origins of your way of relating. It also helps you develop compassion for yourself. As you learn about what has contributed to any hurtful habits you may have developed, you will be less inclined to shame yourself, more able to acknowledge the hurt and seek forgiveness, and more empowered to make new choices in the future. Remember, your protectors developed to help you cope and believe they are still helping. Understanding them and extending compassion to them can free you to be less defensive and more self-aware.

You can also develop more compassion for your mate, who also has had formative negative experiences. Each of you can begin to identify your own patterns and make new choices about how to relate. You may find it helpful to engage the support and expertise of a good therapist to help you explore the impact of your past and assist you in making connections to your present style of relating.

4. Invite Feedback

Ask others, including your spouse, to give you candid feedback about how you come across. This is a courageous thing to do, as the input may be difficult to hear. But it can reap meaningful rewards.

The relationships in our lives can be like a mirror reflecting us to ourselves and revealing how we relate to others. Marriage provides innumerable opportunities for such awareness. It exposes our patterns and protectors like no other relationship.

If we lived on a deserted island, we would have no need to develop as human beings. But we live with the daily challenge of relating to others who are different from us. And with our mate, we live in close proximity to someone who is privy to our harmful patterns and selfishness. We can either defend ourselves against their observations or allow ourselves to be refined by the challenge of intimate relating.

We are often blissfully unaware of our inner workings and our impact on those around us. Remember Steve and Jill? Jill had been unaware of how her nagging Steve to find work affected his anxiety. When she discovered how paralyzing her efforts to motivate her husband were, she asked Steve to tell her about other ways her behavior was activating his anxious protector.

Then Steve thought about how his difficulty searching for work was affecting his wife’s sense of security. He invited Jill to share what went on inside her when he became immobilized in his job quest and when he deflected her concerns. This exploration led to an understanding of their protectors and the cycle of mutual activation. Soon they were discussing how they could both participate in calming their reactivity.

Asking your mate for feedback is humbling and connecting. It tells them you want to grow and learn to love better. Inviting trusted others who know you well to share their perceptions of you, while being non-defensive and fully receptive, can give you rich information that leads to positive change. It can also strengthen those friendships and inspire them to invite feedback as well. As a result, you will enjoy deeper and more authentic relationships that bring you joy and meaning.

5. Create Soul Space

Life can be crazy hectic. So many of the young moms I speak with are overwhelmed with all that is on their plate and desperate for some time to themselves—time to think, rest, and just be. Although some downtime sounds nice, the idea of having to make all the plans necessary to enjoy it—babysitters, food preparation, reservations, laundry, and so forth—make even a small getaway a huge effort. Husbands and dads are stressed as well. Striving to prove themselves in the workplace while managing their family responsibilities can leave them with little margin for much else.

We are so used to running so fast that, if and when we finally slow down, the quiet can be quite disturbing. It’s amazing how used to constant stimulation we can become. One young husband recently disclosed to me that he can’t go to sleep unless the television is on. Quiet creates anxiety for him. The steady drone of noise is somehow reassuring.

Our need to be constantly connected on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and other social media sites makes us worry if we go for a few hours without checking our phone. Are we just social animals or do we fear missing out? Do we fear being alone? Is the constant connection itself a protector that guards us from feeling unloved or unimportant?15

Alone time can restore our sense of peace in the midst of all the pushes and pulls of life, or it can throw us into anxiety. Busyness can be one of our most go-to protectors, as it keeps us from looking inward and, like all protectors, pushes away what we don’t want to see. Some of us are so afraid to slow down and take an inside look that we stoke the raging fire of busyness so we can avoid it. The pull of fretful living is seductive as it numbs us to our insecurities, fears, and doubts. We even pride ourselves on how busy and connected we can be.

Sometimes our protectors have been so active that we fear we might not like what we will find if we slow down and take an inside look. Not only are we concerned that our pain or fears might overtake us but we even fear that at the core we are empty—that there’s not much there. This is untrue.

At your center, you are a beautiful self. If you don’t believe it, will you trust the One who made you? God says you are made “in his own image” (Gen. 1:27). Your true self reflects his very nature—compassionate, caring, creative, peaceful, loving, just, kind. Your protective parts can take over and eclipse that image but never erase it. God considers you worthy of his love and pursues you in order to restore your likeness to himself.16

Our protectors urge us to rely on them and remain independent of God. They have wooed us with false promises of finding life apart from him.17 But they cannot satisfy what our hearts yearn for. Our selves are hungry for God. As God offers us relationship with himself, we can ask him for forgiveness for relying on our protectors and relinquishing control to them.

We can never have a more meaningful life or intimate relationships unless we are willing to slow down and take an inside look. Learning to nourish our spiritual life while responding to everyday demands and duties is a challenge, but it brings a beautiful balance and health to our lives. This is more than finding our purpose in life, although that too is enhanced by taking quiet times of reflection. Creating soul space is about finding a rhythm in your day, week, month, and year that includes time for spiritual nurture.

Our true self is dependent on God for life and nourishment. We need a continual inpouring of his love and time in his presence to see our way clear and sustain our connection with our “shimmering self.” Psalm 36:9, referring to God, says, “In your light we see light.” By spending time with him, we can begin to see ourselves, our spouse, life, and love from his perspective. This time gives us clarity and feeds our souls. It also allows us to remain keenly aware of our protectors and not be overtaken by them.

To begin, you might set aside five to ten minutes a day to be alone with God. You can use the time to simply pray, reflect, or read. There are many mobile applications that might help guide you—for example, Examine is a simple app that will help you reflect on a few thoughtful questions each day, while YouVersion offers a Bible verse to read each day and reading plans.

Prayer is an important part of this soul nurture. Your self will be strengthened by routinely thinking about and reveling in its identity as a beloved, forgiven, and delighted-in child of God while in his presence. Enjoy him, thank him, and invite him to search you and reveal to you any protectors that might be interfering with your ability to love well.

It’s not uncommon for your protectors to get riled up when you begin. You may feel a desperate urge to get busy and disparage the practice as a waste of time. Hang in there. Reassure your protectors you can handle whatever may come up. Any new behavior takes time to settle into a rhythm. As you become more comfortable with solitude and more attentive to God’s presence, you will enjoy a peace that permeates your day with a lightness and sense of purpose. Even a bit more patience with the kids!

Additionally, you might set aside more extended time to do one or more of the exercises in the “For Personal Reflection” section at the end of the chapter.

We sometimes have the idea that life is what happens to us. But as Carl Jung is purported to have stated, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”18

We are all directed by forces from our childhood. We choose whether or not to become conscious of them. If we don’t, those forces will continue to impact our relationships with our spouse, our children, and others. If we choose the more difficult path of becoming self-aware, we can make new choices about our future.

It’s hard to give up our protective patterns. They have allowed us to avoid pain. And messing with our normal way of relating is risky. We don’t know what lies ahead. Without self-knowledge, however, you cannot be free to make choices and grow. You will always remain a slave to your triggers and wounds and their resulting reactivity.

Find the courage to dive in and discover the beauty of your authentic self. This is the first step toward enjoying a truly intimate relationship with your mate.

Discussion Questions: Chapter 4

Group and Couple Questions

1. How do you respond to the idea of searching yourself? Have you ever found yourself thinking:

a) Why should I search myself when my spouse is really the problem?

b) I already feel bad about myself. Why make it worse?

c) I have a painful past, and I don’t want to relive it. I want to put it behind me.

d) I don’t want to blame my parents.

e) Focusing on myself is selfish.

Why might exploring yourself be beneficial? Read Proverbs 20:5 and Psalm 139:23–24. What do these verses say about self-exploration and allowing God to search you?

2. Would you agree that everyone has a deep desire to be completely known and fully loved? Have you ever had the experience of being loved but not truly known? Have you ever had the experience of being known but rejected? How did these experiences make you feel? Read Psalm 139:1–4 and 1 John 4:16. What difference does it make to you to know that God knows and loves you completely?

3. As you read about the therapy session with James and Amy, could you identify with the way their mutual responses were triggering each other? Do you notice interactions with your partner in which you seem to be setting one another off? Have you ever wondered why you react as you do? Read Romans 7:15–8:2. Can you relate to Paul’s struggle? How did he find rest in his dilemma?

4. Are you able to identify one or two of your “go-to” protectors—ones that predictably surface in an argument with your mate? Do you have any memory of having a similar reaction in childhood? If you have that awareness and feel comfortable, share what you notice about yourself with your group. (Hopefully, you’ve established an agreement with the group to honor the confidentiality of each person. Doing so will make the sharing much more honest and helpful for all.)

5. Read Matthew 19:13–14. How do you think Jesus sees the young, vulnerable, or wounded parts of yourself? Read Luke 4:16–21 and Isaiah 66:13. What is God’s heart toward restoring brokenness?

6. Commit to one another to work through the exercises in the “For Personal Reflection” section below. As you do, take time in subsequent meetings to share what you are learning.

For Personal Reflection

1. Thoughts and Feelings Exercise

A simple way to begin to become more self-aware is to notice feelings and thoughts that come up throughout the day. Keep a journal and record at least three emotions you experience each day, along with the physical reactions and the thoughts that coincide with each feeling (see examples in the chapter).

Use the “Feeling Words” list in appendix A to help you describe your emotions.

2. Exploring Your Upbringing Exercise

Whatever your upbringing, or your responses to it, do some thoughtful introspection about the dynamics of your home and the impact it has had on how you engage in intimate relationships. Questions are provided in the chapter.

3. Identify Your Protectors Exercise

Take some time to assess how you responded in a recent conflict with your spouse. Use the questions in the “Identify Your Protectors” section to help in your exploration. Most people have any number of protectors. For a more comprehensive list of possible “protectors,” see appendix B.

4. Inviting Feedback Exercise

Invite others, including your spouse, to give you candid feedback about how you come across. Before you approach them, check in with your protectors and see if they have any concerns about doing this. See if you can reassure them and ask them to step back and allow you to ask for feedback in an openhearted way.

5. Creating Soul Space Exercise

Set aside five to ten minutes a day to be alone with God. You can use the time to simply pray, reflect, or read. There are many mobile applications that might help guide you. Examine is a simple app that will help you reflect on a few thoughtful questions each day, and YouVersion offers a Bible verse to read each day and also reading plans.

For Further Self-Exploration

To continue exploring your upbringing and its impact on how you relate, you might take the “Love Style Quiz” on the How We Love website (www.howwelove.com). I would also recommend picking up a copy of How We Love by Milan and Kay Yerkovich to familiarize yourself with your individual love style and your combined couple style. Use the workbook section to deepen your self-awareness.