Hendrix redux: The "full container"* and why anger is good or bad

 

Four years ago, I wrote a piece about marital guru Harville Hendrix’s Imago Dia­logue (or Couple’s Dialogue). I described three factors that can sabotage the proc­ess. (1) A partner (the “receiver” of the “sender’s” grievance) may not be able to justify helping with the prob­lem if there is a deeper unresolved issue. Wife complains: “It aggra­vates me that you rarely call me when you’re going to be late.” If the husband believes his wife is having an affair – arguably a more profound issue – he will likely not sympathize (or clearly reflect, or vali­date or empa­thize) with her complaint. “That’s right, dear. I have to sneak home to see whom you’re sleeping with.” (2) If either or both parties have a person­ality disorder (mainly Narcis­sistic or Border­line), their perception of reality may be so warped that empathy is impos­sible. Nar­cis­sist as “receiver”: “If only I gave a damn about your petty drama.” Border­­line as “sender”: “I saw you reading Field and Stream magazine in the doctor’s wait­ing room. You want to fuck furry wood­land crea­tures, don’t you?” (3) You have to like the other person. You have to like and respect their character, not merely “love” them. If you don’t, all the pro forma Dialoguing in the world will end in atrophy.

Recently, I observed a fourth saboteur which seems, admittedly, entirely pedes­trian. It has to do with the specific words the Sender uses to express her message, need or griev­ance. By coin­cidence, two male clients in the same week described their exasper­ation and con­ster­na­tion with their wives. The men had committed some errant behav­iors. They would have been fine to apologize. But their wives’ reactions absolutely disabled all potential grace and humility.

Here's the idea. Had the wife said, as the Dialogue prescribes: “It upsets the hell out of me that you gambled away half your paycheck,” her husband could easily set aside his defen­sive­ness and feel sympathetic care for the hurt, frus­tration and fear under­lying her anger. A normally sensi­tive husband would know it is pain that informs her words, regard­less of whether those words were sad or furious. But if she had, instead, said: “I am disgusted with you, I despise you for gambling half your paycheck,” her husband would feel burned to the core, gutted, no substance remaining in him to feel anything warm for his partner.

What makes the first statement a doorway to healing, the second statement dynamite? Both con­formed to Hen­drix’s rubric, the ownership of one’s own feeling, the famous “I-state­ment.” My clients’ spouses, also in accord with the Dialogue, expected their feel­ings to be respected and validated. The differential factor? Love – how love can still exist beneath, even cause upset, anger, even rage, but dies in disgust and the condemnatory feeling.

I have seen people ruin rela­tionships by the wrong words, and be completely blind to the death they have caused.

It may also seem that I am describing nothing other than one person’s hatred for another. But a father I work with loves his son, or wants to, yet speaks such condemn­ing words that the boy feels unloved and has given up hope of having a caring father.

I have to suspect that most partners and parents who condemn so toxically are feeling their childhood, their own parents’ shaming and rejection, not true feelings about their partner or child. They are blurrily seeing in their loved one the world that did not save them. This is why it can help sharpen their vision to perform the seemingly superficial act of questioning the specific words they use. And then, to return them to their own childhood, this time with a guide.**

- - - - - - - - - - -

* https://www.aish.com/f/m/Is-the-Marriage-Vaccine-Dangerous-A-Response-to-My-Critics.html. I believe Ms. Rigler throws the baby out with the bathwater here, in rejecting criticism in marriages. As I’ve said, anger can be a legitimate way of expressing hurt and pain, and the caring partner should be able to see that. Why is this not obvious to everyone? We know that an infant having a tantrum is not hating his parent: He is suffering a surfeit of frustration. Aletha Solter, child psychologist, writes: “Most unacceptable behavior can be explained by the fact that the child has a legitimate need, lacks information, or is suffering from stress or unhealed trauma. Because of this, punishment and withdrawal of love are never helpful in the long run. It is paradoxical, yet true: children are the most in need of loving attention when they act the least deserving of it! If we can look beneath the surface to figure out why children act the way they do, we can give them the kind of attention that is appropriate to each situation.” (See Aware Parenting Institute, articles.) It makes sense to look beneath the surface of a loved one’s angry expression.

** “I speak here of the child’s private world . . . Each of us is implying in his way that one cannot help another in his ascent from hell unless one has first joined him there. . . .” Bruno Bettelheim, The Empty Fortress, 1967, p. 10.