Step Two: Stop, Drop, and Stay
“Your vision will become clear only
when you look into your heart.
Who looks outside, dreams.
Who looks inside, awakes.”
“This weekend was just brutal,” Craig said, as he sat down, clearly in pain. He looked to me as though he’d been run over by a truck.
“What happened?” I asked with concern.
“Well, you know, Lydia and I were fighting. No surprise, I guess.”
Craig, whom you originally met in Chapter Two, is an attorney in his early forties. He came to see me feeling distraught about his relationship with Lydia, his fiancée. Although they’d been together a while and engaged for over a year, he’d been unable tie the knot. His inability to move forward was taking a toll on both of them and was the source of much of the tension in their relationship. Craig was full of ambivalence—questioning his relationship with Lydia, doubting whether he could trust her, and worried that if they got married, it would just be a matter of time before it would all blow up in his face. Lydia, he feared, would turn on him and take him to the bank. Underneath it all, Craig was petrified.
From Craig’s point of view, their weekend together had gotten off to a good start. They’d gone out with friends to celebrate Lydia’s birthday and had a good time. But afterward, they’d no sooner gotten home than Lydia seemed to want more from him.
“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Craig said to me, looking indignant. “We’d just spent a whole evening together. Man, I just can’t win with her. No matter what I do.” Craig continued on, telling me about the fight that ensued—the accusations, the blaming, the finger- pointing. An all too familiar pattern of their defenses leading the way that in the end got them nowhere and left them both feeling battle weary and wounded.
From what I knew about them, I suspected that Lydia was just being affectionate with Craig, wanting to connect with him once they’d gotten home. But given Craig’s strong reaction, it was clear that something about that had triggered him and he was unable to see the moment objectively. After all, there are so many other ways he might have responded to her. Aside from possibly enjoying her embrace, if he really wanted some time to himself, he could have just told her that. Or if he was feeling criticized, as it seemed he was, he might have talked to her about it. But Craig was in a reactive state and not able to respond in a thoughtful way.
I felt sad. Craig was beside himself, at a loss about what to think, do, or feel, and ashamed of his inability to be successful in love as of yet. I knew how deeply he cared for Lydia and how awful he felt about hurting her, but his old wiring kept caging him in. Somewhere inside of him was a person longing to be close and connected but desperately afraid of taking the risk of opening up, desperately afraid of being hurt. If Craig was going to be able to rescue himself from his early programming and get somewhere better in this or any other relationship, he needed to get a better handle on what was going on inside of him.
As Craig talked, I could see that he was getting lost in the story, and it was time to change course and focus back on his feelings. “Craig, I can see how upsetting this is for you. I’m really sorry. You guys have been having a hard time. But instead of getting further into the details, I think it would be helpful to put the story aside and focus on what was going on for you emotionally. I might be wrong about this, but I think something about Lydia’s trying to connect with you was triggering and put you on the defensive. Does that sound like a possibility?”
“So I screwed up?” Craig said, looking dismayed.
“No,” I responded, empathically. “That’s not what I’m saying nor how I see it. But I think your nervous system got the best of you. Let me share with you what I think is going on.” I took out a sheet of paper, drew a Triangle on it, and mapped out Craig’s emotional dynamics for him, explaining how his defenses were kicking in—going into “fight” mode—because he was feeling threatened. I pointed to the bottom corner, which I’d left blank, and asked Craig if he’d be willing to have a look at what core feelings might have gotten stirred up for him. That, I explained, would give us the best chance of turning this dynamic around. Looking slightly wary but willing, Craig agreed.
“Great,” I said. “But first, let’s take a minute or two to get grounded so that we can look at this from a more centered place. Move your feet a bit so that they’re underneath you and take a moment to feel them against the floor. Feel your body supported by the couch. Just notice how you feel as you sit here with me.” Craig sat up, shifted around a bit, settling in, and then looked at me for what to do next.
“Okay. Let’s take a look at that moment with you and Lydia from the other night. But this time, let’s see if you can put aside getting pissed. Let’s try to slow things down a bit so we can see what else might be there. Okay?
Craig nodded.
“All right, go inside. Picture that moment and, as you do, just try to stay open to your experience. Just hang with it and let whatever happens happen.”
Craig focused inward, sitting very still, his face intent and serious. Looking uncomfortable, he said, “Um, I feel kind of tense.”
“Yeah. So something is making you anxious. That’s usually why we tense up. Where in your body are you feeling tense? I asked, helping Craig to attune to and observe his felt experience.
“In my stomach.”
“Can you describe what it’s like? Describing it can help to ease some of the discomfort.”
Craig put his hand on his stomach, sat with it for a moment, and then said, “I don’t know. It kind of feels like pressure.”
“Okay. You’re doing great. Let’s try and stay with that and give it a lot of room. Breathe into that place inside you and just notice what happens.”
This is a pivotal moment for Craig. After nearly a lifetime of stuffing his feelings and soldiering onward, he’s taking a risk and attempting to stay open. Instead of lashing out reflexively or shutting down, he’s trying to stay present. Instead of turning away from his emotional experience, he’s turning toward it and giving it some room. Not an easy task. It takes intention. It takes courage. The pull to do otherwise is so strong. But it’s the only way to loosen the grip of his old programming. It’s the only way to free himself from a fear that is no longer warranted.
Rewiring Your Emotional Circuitry
When we’re triggered, our internal working models for feeling and dealing are activated. Our past emotional conditioning takes over, unconsciously distorting our perceptions and controlling our behaviors. But if we slow down our experience and stay present to our feelings, we’re afforded a golden opportunity to disentangle ourselves from our early wiring.
When we’re triggered, the activated emotions inside of us provide direct access into our implicit memory. If we can get curious and look at our feelings, if we stay open and listen to them, a picture begins to emerge in which the details of our early conditioning are laid bare, all those life experiences that got downloaded into our hardwiring and have been running the show become apparent. We can expose that which has been unconsciously controlling us. We can unpack it, rework it, and update it. We can heal the inner wounds that have long been festering. Ultimately, we can free ourselves from its spell and be transformed from the ground up.
In addition, when we stay present to our emotional experience, we discover that when fully felt, our feelings don’t last forever, no matter how strong they may seem in the moment. Like an ocean wave, they grow in intensity, peak, and invariably dissipate. It’s all the defensive maneuvering we unconsciously engage in that keeps them hanging around. When we suppress or distort our feelings, as we learned to do, they’re not able to run their natural course. They get stuck and keep coming back to haunt us in some way, shape, or form. But by staying with our emotional experience, rather than being reactive, we can learn to move through it and get to a better place.
Over time, the more we stay present to our experience, our feelings become familiar, manageable, and less threatening to us. We come to see that they’re not only not to be feared, but that they can actually be of great benefit to us. That’s their purpose—to make our life better. Moreover, the more we lean into our emotional experience and see it through in its entirety, our amygdala softens its reactivity, and our neural programming gets updated. We come to have a friendlier response to our feelings, needs, and desires. Ultimately, we change the way we relate with ourselves, and in turn, how we can relate with others. In this way, learning to stay present with our feelings is an act of love.
Learning to abide with your emotional experience is the work of Step Two, “Stop, Drop, and Stay.”22 In this step, your main task is to put your defenses aside, focus inward, and stay present to what’s going on inside of you.
When we’re reactive and respond to our feelings by either shutting down or overreacting, it’s a sign that our “window of tolerance”23—the zone of emotional arousal in which we’re able to function most effectively—is constricted. There’s not enough space in which the full extent of our emotional experience can comfortably reside. There’s not enough room for the totality of our being, and so we’re forced to play out a limited expression of ourselves.
I’m reminded of a Buddhism-inspired metaphor a colleague of mine, psychologist and mindfulness practitioner Miriam Marsolais, once shared when we were teaching a group of therapists together about how to help people abide with their emotional experience. It goes something like this: If you want to tame a wild horse, you need to give it a big corral. If you fence it in too tightly, the horse’s energy will be destructive. But if the corral is wide and spacious, there’s enough room for the horse to run, buck, snarl, and do whatever it needs to do to work out its pent-up energy. Eventually it settles down without causing any harm. It’s not the horse’s activation that’s destructive. Rather, it’s not having enough room within which to exist.
Our emotions need a wide, open corral as well.
When you stop, drop, and stay with your feelings, you expand the space inside of you so there’s plenty of room for all aspects of your emotional experience to reside comfortably. The past, as it shows up in your nervous system, can coexist with our here and now self. What was once foreground, your emotional upset, can step back and be a part of a larger picture. As renowned Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön aptly explains, “Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it’s an experience that’s expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.”24
By dropping inside, you allow for a more integrated experience of yourself. You clear internal space so that your core self has room to emerge in its entirety. You can then relate with your partner from a more adult place, instead of one in which you’re mired in the conditioning of your past.
As the name of this step implies, “stop, drop, and stay” consists of three different parts. Basically you’re stopping the action, dropping inside yourself, and staying with your experience. It’s a 1-2-3 sequence of smaller steps that in practice blends seamlessly into one broad movement. But for learning purposes, I’m going to break the sequence down and spend some time on each individual part so you can get a handle on what’s entailed. Then we’ll put them all together.
At this point in your process, the work of Step Two is meant to be done on your own instead of with your partner. You need time and space to get to know, explore, and work through your feelings before trying to do that while engaging with others. There may be unprocessed memories that need to be sorted through first. It’s not that it can’t be done while you’re engaging with your partner; in fact, that’s precisely what you’ll eventually be doing. Later in the book, we’re going to look at how to apply all of the four steps while we’re relating with our partners.
But I really want you to take the time to get to know and sort through your own inner experience first. Give yourself a lot of room to practice being with yourself. The more you do, the easier it will become.
In a nutshell, “stop, drop, and stay” is all about engaging your attention in a new and constructive way. You start simply by stopping.
Stopping
“Stopping” is not about bringing our experience to a grinding halt or getting rid of any part of it. It’s about stopping whatever we’ve been doing and slowing down so there’s room to do something different. It’s about interrupting our usual way of responding when we’re triggered in order to move to Step Two—shifting our focus in a different direction. This aspect of Step Two overlaps with the tail end of Step One. You know, the place where you probably wanted to ask me—“and what the heck do I do now?!”
By stopping—recognizing and naming when you’ve been triggered—you’ve already begun to slow your process down. However, as I’m guessing you’ve discovered in your learning process, your nervous system may still be giving you a run for your money. Although your finger is reaching for the proverbial pause button, the pull to go with the old familiar way of doing things is likely feeling tempting and strong.
Why is the pull so powerful? I mean, if we know that the old behavior is not helpful, why can’t we just let it go? This is actually a telling question. Remember, the lessons that we learned during childhood about our feelings, needs, and desires? Our early conditioning occurred during a time when emotions were experienced as very intense. You were a child. You hadn’t yet developed your ability to manage them. Thus, you experienced an extreme version of your feelings along with the intense fear that comes when your primary attachment relationships seem threatened. And as research shows, lessons learned during times of profound emotional experience are very strong and enduring. So the sense of threat that comes up for you around your emotions is intense because it comes from a very young place inside of you.
One way you can tell that this is the case is by looking at the beliefs imbedded in the fear you experience. If you ask the fear what it’s afraid will happen should you let your defenses go, should you do things differently, the message you receive will likely be something like, “Everything will fall apart,” “Someone will be destroyed,” or “You’ll be abandoned.” If you step back and look at these beliefs, they don’t make rational sense. That is, unless you’re a child. When you were young, your thinking was not very nuanced. It was black and white, extreme, and full of absolutes. And your world was a very small place made up of just a few people. For a child, the possibility of losing connection feels catastrophic—it’s a life or death matter. That’s the fear that got entangled with your core emotional experience and now shows up in your adult life. That’s why the pull to do something defensive to protect yourself is so strong. That’s why letting go of the old way of doing things feels so threatening.
Recognizing and labeling your reactivity as old, as we did in Step One, can help to calm your distress, but sailing your emotional ship against the tide can still be challenging. What if you could further calm the sea and make it easier for you to move forward? That would certainly help. Here’s where simple, practical tools for calming your nervous system can be so useful.
When you’re activated, your fight-flight-or-freeze response is in gear, you’re overcome by your distress, and that’s all you can see. But if you can expand your awareness to include other aspects of your present moment experience, your perspective widens and becomes more balanced and realistic.
Mindfulness exercises in which you shift your focus to your here and now sensory experience can help you to see beyond your distress, connect with your surroundings, and feel more grounded. By intentionally focusing on a neutral aspect of your experience (for instance, whatever else you can see, hear, smell, and so on), you send a message to your amygdala that you’re safe, and it’s okay to put the brakes on. You relax the charge in your nervous system and free yourself up a bit so that you can do something different.
So at any time when you’re feeling anxious or distressed, or you’re having a hard time resisting the urge to respond defensively, try this:
GROUNDING TOOL
Shift your focus away from whatever is activating you and take a moment to notice what you’re experiencing through any or all of your senses. Notice what you see, what you hear, what you touch, smell, or taste. For instance, notice how the chair you’re sitting in feels against your body. Listen to the sounds of your environment and note what you hear. Look around the room and notice what you see. Notice what you smell in the air. Take a sip of a beverage and notice how it tastes. As you do these things, describe to yourself what you’re observing. Let the experiences fully register. Feel yourself connect with them. Notice and appreciate what happens for you.
What happened as you tried to ground yourself? Did the energy inside you change at all? Are you feeling a little more settled and centered as a result? If so, great. If not, let’s consider another option.
Focusing on your breath, a common practice in meditation, can also be calming.25 In particular, when we breathe in a slow, measured way, the vagus nerve, the main channel of the parasympathetic nervous system, gets activated, and the nervous system as a whole comes into balance.26 For that reason, any activity in which you regulate your breathing can be a powerful resource for calming yourself.
One breathing exercise that I like and use a lot with my clients employs what’s referred to as “resistance breathing.”27 It involves using friction to slow the flow of air and slightly increase the pressure in our lungs, which in turn activates the calming part of our nervous system and slows us down.
Here’s what you do:
BREATHING TOOL
Take a full breath through your nose and then, while pursing your lips as though you’re letting air out through a straw, slowly exhale. Feel the air push against your lips as it slowly leaves your body. Do this three or four times, breathing in through your nose and out through the small opening in between your lips. As you do, you’ll likely focus your attention on your breathing which will help to also shift your awareness. Notice what happens while you’re breathing in this manner. You should feel the tension inside you begin to dissipate a bit. You should feel the edge softening.
Regulating your anxiety is especially important if you’re someone whose feelings can get the best of you. You need to be able to calm the energy around them so that you can see your core emotions more clearly. On the other hand, you may have done such a good job of avoiding your feelings that when you do try to connect with them, you start to feel uncomfortable. That’s actually a good sign as it means you’re getting closer to your emotional experience. You’re going to need to get used to feeling some degree of anxiety as part of your change process. In either case—feeling too much anxiety or not enough—your task is to find a way to lean into your emotional experience and work your growing edge in a way that feels manageable.
What I like about both of the tools I just shared with you, in addition to their calming effects, is that they can be done anywhere. You can practice them whenever you’re feeling stressed (e.g., while you’re driving in the car, waiting in line somewhere, in a work meeting) and have them ready for you when you get triggered. They’re also pretty inconspicuous so you can use them without feeling self-conscious about being noticed. Experiment with both of them and figure out what works best for you.
Remember, though, that the point of doing either of these exercises is not to calm yourself so you can be on your merry way. We’ve got more work to do! You’re simply trying to loosen up your distress just enough so that you can more easily shift your attention and be with your emotional experience from a more centered place—stop and then drop.
Dropping
“Dropping” is not about changing our physical position, as in getting down on the ground. Rather, it is about shifting our attention inward to a deeper place inside ourselves. It’s about letting go of the storyline, getting out of the chatter in our heads, and connecting with what’s going on in our bodies. It’s about moving toward what’s at the bottom of the Triangle: our core emotional experience.
To get a sense of what I mean, try this. Close your eyes for a moment and notice what happens when you do. As everything fades to black, notice how your inner experience suddenly becomes more apparent and feels nearer. Notice what’s going on energetically for you. Notice what sensations you’re experiencing in your body. Feel yourself “drop” into your experience.
Without visual distraction from the outside world, it’s as if we take a step closer to our experience, as if we can inhabit ourselves more fully. This is exactly what you’re striving for when you drop—to be more fully present with yourself. You’re shifting your focus from looking externally to looking internally. As renowned couples therapist Sue Johnson suggests, you’re taking your internal “elevator” down to the ground floor.28
In reality, you haven’t moved anywhere. You’re still in the same physical place whether your eyes are open or closed. Your shift in experience has to do with where you place your attention. You can focus outward, or you can focus inward. When you drop, you focus internally on what’s going on inside of you. You move closer to your felt experience. This is what you need to do.
If it helps you to feel more in touch with your experience, you can close your eyes, but you don’t have to. Simply by shifting your gaze from looking outward to one that is inwardly reflective can make a big difference.
In any case, once you drop inside yourself, your work now is to stay present. Instead of running from your emotional experience, you need to foster a new way of being with it. You need to accept it. You need to bring it into the light of awareness. You need to welcome and make room for it. You need to stay with it.
Staying
When we drop inside ourselves, we begin to approach that from which we had been running. We turn toward the emotions, needs, and desires that we’ve been conditioned to fear. The feelings deep inside us that we’ve attempted to disavow or hide. They’ve been trying to get our attention for a long time, but we didn’t realize it. We’ve been too afraid to stay present and listen. We’ve been too distracted to notice that they’re there.
When we’re triggered our natural tendency is to avert our attention and move away from our discomfort. But when we do that, we’re just perpetuating our distress. We’re responding as though we’re in danger, thus validating and reinforcing our threat response and never giving ourselves a chance to learn otherwise.
By staying with our emotions instead of reflexively exiting the scene, leaning into our discomfort and moving through it, we’re challenging the fallacies of our early conditioning. We’re calling its bluff and loosening the hold that fear has had on us and freeing ourselves from the past.
By staying with our emotional experience, abiding with it and giving it room to breathe, it’s able to move through us and come to resolution. We come to see that everything will not come tumbling down, our relationships will not be ruined, our feelings won’t destroy anyone, nor will we be destroyed. We come to see that ultimately we are better for it.
When you stay with your emotional experience and see it through, you grow your capacity to be present with yourself and with others. In doing so you develop a different kind of relationship with your emotional experience. Instead of responding to it as though it’s the enemy, you befriend it. You give it a chance to be seen and heard, the same chance you’d give someone you care about who’s feeling distressed. Someone who you want to relate to with kindness, patience, and respect. Don’t you deserve the same?
When you’re triggered, you need to become familiar with your experience. You need to get to know it. You need to meet it with open eyes and an open heart. When you do this, when you lean in and receive it with curiosity and a desire to understand, you are in a way re-parenting yourself. You’re giving yourself the kind of sensitive attention you so desperately needed early on in life. The kind of care and support that would have helped you develop and flourish. The kind of caregiving that can enable you to do just that now.
How do you do that? Simply put, you stay with your experience and allow it to unfold.
Okay. I know. Easier said than done. It’s hard to stay put when you feel uncomfortable, want to run, or feel confused. But you don’t have to white knuckle your way through it (although it may initially feel that way). The key to growing your capacity to stay present with your experience lies in slowing it down and making it more manageable. As you know, you can use your breath to slow down your experience. And you can intentionally engage your prefrontal cortex by taking a participatory observational stance, one in which you both allow yourself to be with your experience while also observing it. You do this by paying attention to what’s happening in your body—observing mindfully and describing to yourself your physical sensations—and noticing any images or beliefs that accompany your emotional experience. This practice of using your higher brain to manage your lower brain by simply observing the components of your emotional experience grows your affect tolerance—your ability to hang in there with strong emotions instead of being overwhelmed by them—and makes your emotions easier to be with. You notice them, name them, and watch them as you ride out the waves of your experience.
With this goal in mind, give this next exercise a try:
STAYING EXERCISE ONE
Close your eyes and go inside. Think about a recent relationship experience you’ve had in which you were triggered. Recall what happened. Picture it in your mind’s eyes in as much detail as possible. As you do, notice what happens in your body. Find the place inside of you where you’re feeling physically activated. Focus on it. Stay with it. Breathe into it and give it a lot of room. Allow yourself to feel whatever is there. Touch the quality of it. Describe it to yourself. Notice what happens as you do.
Let yourself get curious about what you’re experiencing, not from an intellectual place of trying to make sense of things, but from a place of openness and discovery, allowing for whatever comes. Listen to whatever is there.
Try to look beyond your distress to see what feelings might be underneath. Ask yourself, “What’s coming up for me?” Just notice what reveals itself. Notice how it manifests in your body. See if you can identify and name what emotions you feel (see pg. 103 side bar). Then just do your best to stay present and allow the feelings to move through you. Surf the waves of energy inside you. Feel them move through you. Stay with them as long as it takes for them to begin to shift.
If you start to feel overwhelmed, pause and focus on your breathing for a moment. Take a few deep breaths and let them out slowly. Use your breathing and grounding tools to help regulate your experience and make it more manageable. Do whatever you need to do to bring yourself back into your window of tolerance, where you’re able to stay present to your felt experience without exiting in any way. Find a balance between leaning in enough so that you can be present with your feelings, but not so much so that you get ahead of yourself or feel overwhelmed.
If you’re having trouble getting out of the story, putting your defenses to the side, you might wonder what you’re afraid will happen if you do. Ask the fear, not your head, what it anticipates. Remember, your defenses developed to protect you. So try asking the fear what it’s protecting you from. Listen for the answer. Ask yourself what you might feel if you were to let go of your defenses. What might you do? What might you say? What might happen? Notice any resistance or tension in your body and breathe into it. Try to soften it and let it go.
Then come back to your emotional experience and give it another try. Picture the triggering moment and notice what comes up for you now. If it’s helpful, you can alternate between focusing on your breath (or some other neutral point of focus) and touching back into your emotional experience. Keep coming back to your emotional experience and staying with it until it shifts.
What was that like? What did you experience? Were you able to stay present with yourself. Was it as difficult as you anticipated? Did it help to observe and describe your emotional experience? Were you able to identify what you were feeling? What did you learn about your inner experience? Did you discover any feelings you weren’t aware of?
There is no right or wrong answer to any of these questions. There’s only your experience. What matters most is that you’re trying to stay present to yourself. You’re stretching and expanding your emotional capacity. You’re widening your corral. In the doing, your emotional experience will become clearer over time.
If you noticed yourself getting distracted by your thoughts, judging yourself, or moving away, that’s okay. It’s hard to stay with your discomfort, especially when your old programming is telling you to do otherwise. Your defenses are ever ready to jump in and do their old song and dance routine. But what matters more here is that you’re noticing that you’re inclined to move away. You’re becoming mindful of your process, of what’s happening for you, instead of mindlessly going along for a ride.
WHAT AM I FEELING?
While there are many words used to describe how we feel, in actuality there are only a few core emotions. Everything else is a variation on a theme. Our main feelings are anger, sadness, fear, joy, interest (which includes love), surprise, shame, and disgust. Although any emotion can be troubling for us, the ones that we most often have a difficult time with in our relationships are fear, sadness, shame, and anger along with their related needs for safety, security, comfort, reassurance, understanding, empathy, support, respect, and the like. In addition, some of us learned to suppress our natural vitality so feelings like joy and love, along with their related needs for appreciation, delight, acceptance, and connection, can cause us conflict as well.
Moments such as these are revealing. You get to see in real time how you’ve been unconsciously responding to your emotional experience. You get to see what you’ve been doing all along but didn’t realize until now. When you notice what’s happening, you’re no longer in the dark. You’re keeping the light of awareness on and catching yourself. In these moments, you can say with a sense of wonder and discovery, “Wow. Look at that! Look at what just happened! Look at how my brain’s conditioned!” You can note the impulse to escape the present moment, and then bring yourself back to your here and now. Every time you catch yourself and come back to your felt experience, you’re strengthening your capacity to stay. This is the essence of practicing mindfulness.
You’re going to feel some anxiety and distress. That’s to be expected, especially if you typically withdraw from your feelings. You’re taking a risk and doing something different. You’re opening the closet door and turning on the lights to see if there’s actually a monster hiding inside.
While it may seem counterintuitive, leaning into your distress rather than pulling away from it can actually help to decrease it. Resistance is what perpetuates your discomfort. But if you lean in and give it your attention, it starts to open up and shift. As you do, the knot inside you begins to unwind and the varied strands of your experience reveal themselves.
More than Meets the Eye
Craig took a breath and focused back inside on the pressure he was feeling in his stomach. He sat very still with his hand on his belly, doing his best to stay present. Then all of a sudden he seemed to shudder. His shoulders tensed up as he quickly turned his head to the side. It was as though he’d seen something upsetting, something that was painful to look at, something he’d rather not see.
“What is it Craig?” I asked. “What did you notice?”
“Um. I … I … wow, this is really strange. I don’t … I don’t know why I’m having this memory,” Craig said.
“Oh, that’s so important. I’m sure it’s relevant. What did you see?”
“Um, I don’t know. I must have been like five or six-years-old. It’s nighttime. I’m in my bed alone. I feel sick to my stomach. I don’t know why. Probably stress. I mean, my parents had just gotten divorced and my father was being such a jerk. Anyway, I was lying there in the dark and I wanted to call for my mother, like I wanted her comfort, you know?”
“Of course you did,” I responded, feeling for him.
“But I just … I just didn’t want to bother her. My poor mother, she was under so much pressure raising us on her own. I didn’t want to add to it. I didn’t want to give her any more problems. She had it tough enough. But … it was scary.”
“So scary,” I said, again pained by Craig’s story. “You were a little boy. You needed someone to take care of you and be with you to help you deal with everything you were going through. We all need that.”
“So … I remember like trying to compress my stomach and seeing if I could make the pain go away, kind of like doing sit-ups. And that’s what I’d do. I would tighten my stomach and make the pain go away.”
“Craig, that’s so sad to me that you were all alone when you needed love and care, that you felt you had to make your feelings go away.”
Craig looked at me with pain in his eyes as tears began rolling down his cheeks.
Getting to the Source
As Craig is discovering, when we stay with what’s been triggered inside of us, it very often leads us to its source—the attachment injuries where the feelings and beliefs we are experiencing in the present originated. It’s as though our emotions open up a portal through which we can see into our past. By staying and remaining open to what’s going on inside of us, the emotional experiences that provide the foundation for our internal working models reveal themselves. The fog begins to clear, and potent memories come into view.
I’ve seen this happen so many times with my clients as we explore their emotional experience when they’ve been triggered. Invariably, they’re taken by surprise when a memory arises, seemingly out of nowhere and totally unbidden. While it may seem as though that’s the case, it’s not. The memories that come up for them are what cause them to be triggered in the first place. They’re the emotional lessons they learned that have been informing their amygdala’s response. Together, we’re able to draw a line from their reactivity all the way back to those early experiences and conversely trace it back in the other direction. The feelings and beliefs they’re having in the here and now are echoes of what they experienced in the there and then.
But in general, we’re not accustomed to looking below the surface. We just focus on whatever it was that triggered us. We focus on the person in front of us instead of looking inside ourselves. We don’t realize our past has infiltrated the present and is coloring everything we see and do. But when we drop inside and stay with our experience, we come face to face with the memories that are fueling our reactivity and informing our behavior. In this way, our triggered state is, to borrow a phrase of Freud’s, a “royal road to the unconscious.”
As Craig stays with his feelings, the underpinnings of his abrupt response to Lydia begin to emerge. Tracing his reactive state back in time we discover a boy afraid of needing anyone. A boy rocked by his parents’ divorce, his father’s absence, and callous behavior. A boy afraid of his fragile world falling apart. In a heartbeat, his father was gone. Could the same thing happen with his mother? Lying in his bed alone, longing for his mother’s love and care but afraid of doing anything that might unduly burden her, what was he to do? To his child mind, his attachment needs were potentially dangerous and as far as he could tell would only bring him disappointment and pain. His strategy was to make them go away, stuff his feelings, needs, and desires down and go it alone. He figured out a way to deal so as not to feel.
Now many years later, Craig’s nervous system is still governed by the same unwritten rules. When the prospect of closeness with Lydia presents itself, he reacts as though he’s in danger. His implicit memories remind him of those potent early lessons. It’s as if there’s a little boy inside warning him not to need anyone—don’t let yourself get too close, you’ll be hurt! In response, and without thinking, Craig springs into fight mode, effectively pushing Lydia away, protecting himself, or the child within him, from danger.
But when Craig goes inside and stays with his experience, implicitly stored memories bubble up into his conscious awareness. He sees and makes contact with the boy inside of him. The child still lying in his bed trying to make his feelings go away. He begins to bear witness to the longing, fear, and pain he felt as a child, the feelings inside of him that had nowhere to go, the feelings he learned to suppress and avoid. As he stays present to his experience, the unprocessed feelings of the past begin to release and move through him.
When we’re triggered, it’s as though a young part of us has been activated; the child who learned to fear his feelings, needs, and desires; our child self, stuck in time, still holding all the feelings that needed to be felt, still hoping that someone will come to the rescue and free him from the bind he is in.
In order to calm the emotional storm inside of us, we need to attend to the source of our triggering. We need to go to the place where the damage was done. We need to find the child inside of us still trapped by these early lessons, still carrying the burden of unprocessed feelings, unmet needs, and desires, and set him or her free.
Now I’m guessing that you’re either resonating with this idea that there’s a stuck child inside you, or you may be rolling your eyes. If this concept makes sense to you, sit tight for a moment. If it strikes you as strange or silly, I get it. I had a similar response many years ago when I heard counselor and self-help guru John Bradshaw talk about “healing the child within” on one of his PBS television shows. I had appreciated so much of what he talked about in the program but just couldn’t relate to this idea that there was a wounded child in me that needed attention. At the time it seemed hokey to me and made me uncomfortable (that in itself should have been a sign).
Years later in therapy as I began to open up to my emotional experience, I came to understand viscerally what Bradshaw was trying to say. I discovered inside of me feelings from my past that had long been held in limbo, feelings that were just waiting to be heard, seen, honored, and find a way out. They were all the feelings I wasn’t able to manage or work through at the time that they were evoked; all the pain, loneliness, and fear that I felt as a child that had gone unwitnessed and uncared for; all the anger that felt too dangerous to feel. It was as if my child self was finally given the permission to have his feelings.
As I allowed myself to feel and work through my feelings by sharing them with my caring therapist, my internal experience began to shift. I discovered a sense of compassion for my younger self for all he’d gone through, and I wanted to be there for him and attend to his feelings; to calm his fear, honor his anger, and empathize with his pain and shame. And as I did, the past receded to its rightful place. I felt myself come more fully into my adult self.
The truth is that when emotional experiences are suppressed, when they’re not processed through to completion as they need to be, they stay stuck inside of us and don’t go away. That’s why we get triggered. They’re still alive in our memories with all of the emotional charge of the past, all the potent feelings, beliefs, perceptions, and expectations that overtake our present moment when we’re triggered.
Although much emotional healing can occur in the context of a loving, adult relationship, some memories and their inherent feelings and beliefs can stay locked away behind our defenses. As such, they don’t receive the attention, love, and care our partner or other people in our lives may offer us. They remain sealed off from and unaltered by the disconfirming experiences we may be having; the experiences that tell us that we are worthwhile, that we are loved and cared for; the things we “know” but may not be able to fully feel.
For instance, a part of Craig is still afraid of trusting Lydia. Even though he may have all the evidence in the world that she is a good person, inside he still suspects that it’s dangerous to open his heart and allow anyone close.
But don’t get hung up on the idea of an actual child inside of us. It’s just a concept. There are stuck emotional states stored in our implicit memory that get activated when we’re triggered and need to be addressed.
Certain memories can remain cordoned off from our life experience unless we find a way to soften our defenses so that the healing light of the present can get through and undo the darkness and pain inside of us. We need to find a way to open the door to our past so that we can drain it of its emotional charge and put it to rest. We can do that by attending to the child within us.
Seeing your suffering as though it is coming from a child-self can make it easier for you to stay with and attend to these emotional states when they arise. Instead of being overly identified with the emotions that get activated in you when you’re triggered, you can observe them and begin to relate to them as though they’re coming from a part of yourself, not from the whole. In turn, you can disentangle your past from your present (your child-self from your adult-self) more readily. In addition, by understanding that your distress comes from a young place inside of you, you can more easily approach it with compassion and kindness instead of the frustration and defensiveness we all have a tendency to feel toward our adult-selves.
Getting triggered is actually a gift. A wounded part of you is sending up a flare so that you can find him or her. If you can find the child within you, so to speak, you can take care of him or her. You can be there for this child, you can attend to its feelings, you can relieve its suffering. By staying with your emotional experience, you can uncover the root of your struggle. Your discomfort is another important signpost on your emotional journey, pointing you down a path that can lead you to your emotional freedom.
When you stay with your emotional experience and open your heart to the unprocessed feelings inside you, you can release the pent-up energy that’s been activating your nervous system. You can begin to deactivate the explosives in the minefield of your implicit memory that have been causing you to get triggered.
Recall a recent relationship experience that was triggering and still feels somewhat charged to you when you think about it. You might return to the experience you used in the previous exercise or work with something else. Get a mental image of what happened that was distressing for you. Then close your eyes and go inside; locate where you’re feeling activated in your body.
Focus on your physical experience and give it a lot of room. Notice what happens when you do. Feel into your emotional experience. See if you can identify and name what you’re feeling. Are there any images that come with the feelings? Are there any thoughts that arise? Do you notice any negative beliefs (for instance, “I’m a bad person,” “I’m in trouble,” “I can’t trust anyone,” “I’ll be hurt,” and such)? Just stay open to your experience and see what arises.
Then while focusing on your felt experience along with whatever images and beliefs arose, trace the whole experience back in time. Not intellectually. You’re not trying to figure it out with your head. Just let your mind open up and follow the constellation of feelings, images, and beliefs as far back as it goes. As you do, notice whatever comes into your awareness. You might ask yourself, where is this coming from? How far back does it go? How young does it feel? And then see what comes.
Look deeply into the core of your emotional experience and see what you discover. Can you locate it in time? Can you see the child who has been holding all these feelings? What’s going on for him or her? What is she contending with? What is making him feel afraid, sad, vulnerable, or unloved?What’s causing her to feel ashamed, angry, or upset? How do you feel as you see and witness this child’s experience, as you honor his or her feelings?
Notice what happens for you emotionally. Stay open to whatever comes. Let yourself feel. Let the child inside you feel. Give the feelings a lot of room to be felt, to move through you, to be processed. Stay with it as long as you can and as long as it needs. Take some time to reflect on what came up for you, what you experienced, what you discovered, and what you learned.
Taking Care of (or Parenting) Yourself
When you stay with your emotional experience, giving it breathing room to move and flow through you, you’re attending to your original pain. You’re allowing stuck memories or emotional states to process through to completion and lose their charge. You’re allowing the child inside of you to have its feelings and be witnessed and held in the process. As psychologist Richard Schwartz explains, we’re “unburdening” our younger selves from the extreme feelings and beliefs that they’ve been carrying.29 In short, we’re healing ourselves.
Sometimes that may be all you need to do. Sometimes dropping inside and allowing yourself to feel what’s there is enough to calm and heal the source of your distress. It enables you to begin to disentangle yourself from the past and see your present reality more clearly. But sometimes what’s inside of you is stubborn and holds on. Sometimes it needs more attention. When this happens, you may need to figure out what the stuck child inside of you needs in order to be freed from the bind it’s in. Then you can use your imagination to help him or her get those needs met.
Let’s come back to Craig so you can see what this process might be like. Looking back at the memory that arose for him, Craig would see that his child-self, lying in bed distressed, needed to be comforted, held, and supported. He needed to know that he was loved and would be taken care of. With that in mind, Craig might then imagine going to his child-self, sitting down next to him, and taking his hand. He might let the boy know that he sees his distress, understands his fear, and empathizes with all that he’s been going through. He might rub the child’s back or take him in his arms as he tells him how much he is loved, how all of his feelings are okay and that he doesn’t need to hide or be ashamed of them, and that he’s not a burden. Craig might picture himself lying down next to the boy and holding him until he falls asleep.
Now you might be thinking to yourself that imagining such a scenario is not real and won’t make a difference. Well, it’s true that it’s not real, but it can make a difference. As research shows, when you picture doing something with intention, your brain is activated in the same way as it would be if you were actually carrying out the behavior.30 The same neurons start firing and wiring together, laying down new neural networks. Thus, imagination has the power to change the structure of your brain. By imagining healing scenarios in which your early emotional needs were met, you can create new, attachment-based, internal working models and update your programming. That’s nothing to balk at.
But there is a qualifier when it comes to imaginal work. The experience needs to be felt. You need to engage in this process on an emotional level. You see, implicit memories are stored on the right side of the brain. If you’re going to open them up and work them through, you need to utilize right-brain processes. It can’t be done through logic or reason. It needs to be infused with emotion, and the experience needs to be embodied. It needs to be felt. That’s what makes the difference. Remember, new emotionally rich experiences are what change us.
With that in mind, give this next exercise a try.
IMAGINAL CAREGIVING EXERCISE
Recall a relationship experience that was triggering and still feels charged to you. You might return to the experience you used in the previous exercise or work with something different. Get a mental image of what happened that was distressing for you, then close your eyes and go inside. Locate where you’re feeling activated in your body.
Follow your feelings back in time to the hurt, scared, angry, or distressed child inside of you. Through your adult eyes, look at the child in your memory. If you have a hard time visualizing, don’t worry about it. Just imagine the following in whatever way that works for you. All that matters is that you engage emotionally and that you have a felt experience.
Ask yourself, what does this child need? What would have made this situation better for it? Perhaps it just needs someone there to hold its hand. Maybe it needs someone to recognize, validate, and empathize with its pain, sadness, or anger. To hear it out. To tell it that it’s loved, is good enough just the way it is, that everything will be okay. Maybe it needs to be taken somewhere where it will feel safe, to know that it’s protected. Maybe it just needs to be held. Listen to your heart. Let it guide you. Deep inside you know what your child-self needs. You know what will make things right.
When you get a sense of what your child-self needs to be unburdened, picture your adult-self caring for it in just the right way. Picture your adult-self really giving the child the care that he or she needed. Help the child feel what it’s like to be seen, heard, to be cared for and loved. Give your child-self whatever he or she needs from you. Let yourself feel what it’s like for the child. Let yourself feel what it’s like to be met in this way. Let yourself feel, as an adult, what it’s like to be there for the child. Let all the feelings flow. Let your experience be deeply felt. Stay with the feelings as long as they need.
If you find it challenging to direct feelings toward your younger self, try imagining how you might respond if the child in your memories was someone other than yourself. Perhaps you have children of your own or have siblings or friends who have children. Imagine how you’d feel toward him or her if they were suffering in kind. Notice how that makes you feel inside. Let yourself be with those feelings, let them deepen. Then imagine directing those feelings toward your younger self.
Similarly, if you find it difficult to imagine your adult self being there for the child, imagine someone else instead. Picture an ideal parent, real or imagined, someone who has just the right qualities to meet the child’s needs. Someone who is able to really be there for your child self.
What was that like for you? Were you able to imagine being there for your younger self? If you were, how did that feel? Did it make a difference in your experience? Did it change how you feel inside?
Maybe you found it difficult to imagine engaging in the kind of caring that would have met your early needs. Maybe you found it hard to feel for your younger self. That’s actually not uncommon. Many people struggle with being able to feel compassion for their younger self. For that matter, many people struggle with feeling compassion for their adult selves as well. The sad truth is, if we weren’t cared for as children in ways that were sensitive and attuned, if we didn’t feel valued, respected, and loved, it’s hard for us to respond to ourselves in a caring way. We have no frame of reference to draw on, no internal working model for what self-compassion looks like. We lack an inner voice that tells us we’re okay, that we’ll be okay, that we’re worthwhile and lovable, and that we’re not alone. In short, it’s hard to imagine being this way if we’ve not experienced it. If we had, it would be an available internal resource for us, there for the taking.
In addition, our defenses can impede our attempts. We turn to look at our child-self and feel nothing, or worse we feel frustration, disgust, or contempt. Why, you may wonder? Well, some of us adapted to our early experiences in life by learning to blame or give ourselves and our feelings a hard time. As children we presumed or got the message that it was our fault if things weren’t going well with our caregivers, if we were not being attended to, or if we were treated poorly. So we figured that if we can get control over ourselves, if we can whip ourselves into shape, then things will be better with our parents. Things will change.
If this is true for you, perhaps you imagined and hoped that they’d treat you differently, that they’d be there for you in the ways you needed, that they’d love you. Maybe such a strategy worked to some degree. And maybe it helped you feel a modicum of security. Maybe it kept you from being overwhelmed by feelings of pain and sadness.
Trouble is, the strategy was likely built on a false assumption. It wasn’t your fault that your parents couldn’t meet your needs or treated you poorly. You weren’t responsible for their behavior. You were a child. Yet like other coping strategies that you developed early in life, it may persist. You may continue to be hard on yourself. You may continue to feel bad about yourself. You may continue to criticize and blame yourself. If that’s the case, no wonder it can be challenging to feel some self-compassion.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t develop it. After all, it’s innate to feel empathy and compassion. You were born with the capacity to do so. It’s what enables you to connect with others. You just have to loosen up your defenses a bit, find it inside of yourself, and cultivate it. And you need to allow yourself to receive it.
If you’re having trouble feeling for your younger self, if you’re getting stuck in negativity, try this:
NEGATIVE BELIEFS EXERCISE
Think of the negative beliefs that come up for you about yourself. All the things you think about or say to yourself (“I’m a loser,” “It’s all my fault,” “I can’t do anything right”). Write them down on a piece of paper. Then picture a child you know, one who you care about, and imagine saying those things to him or her (“You’re a loser,” “It’s all your fault,” “You can’t do anything right”). Give it a shot. Read down the list of statements out loud as if you’re saying them to a child.
What is that like? What does it feel like to say these things? How do you imagine the child feels hearing them? Chances are it’s hard for you to even bring yourself to say them to a child. Maybe you weren’t able to. That’s understandable. It feels so harsh and unfair. Nevertheless, that’s how you’ve been treating yourself. That’s how you’ve been treating the child inside of you. Take a moment to let that realization sink in. Notice how it feels. Then ask yourself if that’s what your inner child needs to heal and grow. I’m guessing the answer is no. So consider what kind of parent can help this stuck part of you heal. Isn’t that who you’d rather be?
Practice, Practice, Practice
We covered a lot of ground in this chapter. My intention was to give you a broad framework within which you can utilize the different tools I shared with you depending on what’s needed. Not all of what we’ve covered here is required every time we stop, drop, and stay. Sometimes it’s enough just to notice what’s happening inside of us and make a little room for it in order to be able to separate ourselves out from what’s been triggered. Merely seeing what’s been activated inside of us can free us up enough to be able to engage with our partners in a healthier way. But at other times, we have more work to do. The knot inside of us is tightly wound and it takes time and effort to be unraveled.
Our capacity to stay with our emotional experience doesn’t grow overnight. After all, think about what we’re trying to do. We’re challenging the status quo. We’re forging new ground. We’re learning how to attend to our inner experience mindfully. We’re cultivating an altogether different way of being with ourselves. Naturally it’s going to take some time.
But every day we’re given plenty of chances to practice staying. To push the pause button, slow things down, and be with our internal experience. To get to know what’s happening inside of us. To work with our experience and sort it out before we respond. If we pay attention, we get ample opportunity to practice, and that’s what it takes. As the saying goes, “practice, practice, practice.”
Our primary goal at this point in our process is to be able to calm the activation inside of ourselves when we’re triggered so we can see what’s going on for us more clearly; so we can have choices; so we bring a more mindful self to our relationships. Our long-term goals are to continue to grow our skills, attend to and heal our inner wounds, and to free ourselves from our past conditioning.
We don’t have to be completely healed to have better relationships. That’s not realistic. But when we can be with our emotional experience and effectively respond to different aspects of it, we can bring our better self to our relationships and relate to our partners more skillfully. We can speak to them from our adult-self, rather than through the eyes of an overwhelmed, frightened child.
In fact, this is precisely what Craig did. With a better understanding of what was going on for him, Craig took a risk and tried something different. When he got home from his therapy session, he could tell Lydia was still smarting from their recent upheaval. In the past Craig would have kept his distance and waited things out, hoping it would eventually blow over. Instead, he tried talking with Lydia. He told her about what he’d discovered in our work together. What he was learning about himself. How he lashes out when he’s afraid. He shared some of his history with Lydia and explained why it hasn’t felt safe for him to be vulnerable with her.
An amazing thing happened. Lydia softened. She thanked him for being open, empathized with him, and told him she understood. The tension between them, which could have gone on for days, subsided. Craig told me that it was such a relief and that it felt good to connect in this way. He actually felt closer to Lydia.
While there was still more work for Craig to do, he was beginning to turn things around. He was freeing himself from the past and developing a new, healthier way of relating. One that held the promise of something much greater for him and Lydia.
• When we’re triggered, the activated emotions inside of us provide direct access into our implicit memory.
• The more we stay present to our emotional experience, the more our feelings become familiar, manageable, and less threatening to us.
• When we stop, drop, and stay with our feelings, we expand the space inside of us so there’s room for all aspects of our emotional experience to comfortably reside.
• Shifting our focus to a neutral aspect of our here and now experience and slowing our breathing can help regulate our emotional experience.
• Leaning into our distress rather than pulling away from it can help to decrease it.
• When emotional experiences are suppressed and left unprocessed, they don’t go away and cause us to be triggered.
• Staying present to our emotional experience allows stuck memories or emotional states to process through to completion and lose their charge.
• Imagining healing scenarios in which our early emotional needs are met can relieve us of our original pain and create new neural circuitry to support healthier relating.