{"id":154,"date":"2015-05-04T13:54:17","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T13:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/?p=154"},"modified":"2015-05-04T13:54:17","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T13:54:17","slug":"dark-matter-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/dark-matter-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Dark Matter – 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been thinking more about that dark matter<\/a> I discussed two entries ago.\u00a0 As I listen to my patients and friends, as I observe my own life, and as I read the literature, it seems that this dark matter may be a useful way to think about what goes wrong in relationships.\u00a0 Not just romantic ones, although that is where the problems are usually most evident, but all of them.<\/p>\n

As we discussed in that first entry, the dark matter is the vast range of personal experience and feeling that lurk underneath everything we say and do.\u00a0 It is the stuff we usually try to remain ignorant of, to work despite of instead of with.\u00a0 That, of course, is the problem.\u00a0 Look around you at those you consider most well-adjusted, happiest, fulfilled, and the least intrusive.\u00a0 See if these are people whose outward behavior and words match their inner needs.\u00a0 John Cleese, the writer and comedian, put it in good simple terms what he said that after much thought and personal experience with psychotherapy he concluded that it is a process by which feelings and thoughts are made to move into closer harmony, to match up better.\u00a0 Over 100 years ago, Freud said something similar, and it has been put in many different ways over the years.<\/p>\n

There is a vast literature on \u201ccountertransference\u201d and \u201ctransference\u201d in the worlds of psychoanalysis.\u00a0 These are the processes in psychotherapy \u2013 in the patient and in the therapist \u2013 whereby all that dark matter emerges.\u00a0 Both patient and therapist say and do things that come from the “inner child”, things that inadvertently express or give vent to our less-than-conscious agendas.\u00a0 What makes the therapy and the therapist unique \u2013 assuming he knows what he’s doing \u2013 is the processing of all this chaos, all this dark matter, so that it becomes conscious and ultimately no longer at odds with conscious behavior, thoughts, feelings.\u00a0 At the end of treatment, you want likewise to be able simply to pursue what matters to you, to cease getting in your own way or letting others block you (much the same thing, when you stop and think about it), to stop engaging in behaviors or feelings that in your better moments you know don\u2019t make sense and only gum up your life.\u00a0 Modern psychoanalysis has drifted away somewhat from discussing \u201ctransference\u201d and \u201ccountertransference\u201d; now the terms are \u201cintersubjectivity\u201d, \u201crelational psychoanalysis\u201d, and many more.\u00a0 But the central phenomenon being addressed by these terms is largely unchanged.<\/p>\n

This gumming up of one\u2019s goals and life because of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that aren’t under conscious control is also what happens in romantic relationships, as well as in friendships and even work relationships although people don’t talk about it as much in those arenas.\u00a0 How much of all that measuring of the prospective lover\u2019s displays of affection and attentiveness are simply the foot stamping of the inner child who still wants that blissful parental “yes!”, that attention?\u00a0 One conflict arises when someone genuinely is that attentive; but then once the relationship is comfortable, once the inner child is reassured, suddenly the recipient wants their “space”; more about why that happens in the next paragraphs.<\/p>\n

In the worst cases, the ones that are most written about and most reach the therapist consulting room, we have the borderline personalities.\u00a0 These are the people whose early damage was more particularly severe; the pain is much closer to the surface, much more piercing.\u00a0 These are the people whose relationships are often described as stormy, unstable, erratic.<\/p>\n

The idea of dark matter comes in because most people try to deny all of that turmoil.\u00a0 But just under the surface there is a very painful experience of 1) desperately yearning for that blissful reconnection, and yet 2) stark terror of the connection being lost \u2013 again.\u00a0 I say “again” because the great fear is not the loss of an adult, present tense, incipient or even established relationship.\u00a0 That kind of pain is awful but tolerable.\u00a0 No, the real horror is the less conscious terror of a separation which will cause the kind of horrific helplessness and despair that can only happen to a small child.<\/p>\n

This can play out in the real world in the following way.\u00a0 A and B meet, A is attentive, charming, seductive.\u00a0 B is flattered, warmed, excited, and returns the frothy, giddy attentiveness.\u00a0 If A becomes preoccupied or busy one day, B may respond with panic.\u00a0 However, that panic is often pushed into unconsciousness, if only because experience has taught B that feeling it leaves one feeling empty, despairing, helpless, awful; also, B has perhaps learned that expressing it in any direct way turns others off.\u00a0 (This last point is especially the case with men in our culture who are so strongly socialized \u2013 yes, still \u2013 to deny all emotional need or pain.)\u00a0 So, instead, B complains to friends that A is awful, may start pushing A away with anger or, depending on how strong the defenses are, with a very reasoned excuses despite the simple fact that A and B are in fact still quite enthralled with each other.\u00a0 B may also go out and have affairs; B \u00a0may come to my office astounded that because of this perplexing, sudden, and seeming irresistible craving for other partners which always arises just as things are looking good, s\/he ruined what was starting out to be yet another promising relationship.<\/p>\n

If A and B manage to make it through this period, here\u2019s another frequently seen outcome.\u00a0 Let’s assume B is the borderline personality and that A is a reasonably attentive and consistent partner.\u00a0 B is deeply in love, by all observations and self-report.\u00a0 Yet B becomes subject to episodes of fury or sudden feelings of being completely unconnected to A; later B will be the first to say these feelings were preposterous however powerful.\u00a0 Episodes of bizarre and unfounded jealousy are common here.\u00a0 Eventually B will end the relationship just as A was most clearly committed to it and B most clearly in love!\u00a0 The reasons offered for the termination, to each other and in the therapist\u2019s office, never hold up to scrutiny.\u00a0 What’s really going on is that dark matter terror.\u00a0 I once saw a couple who were enmeshed in this way. \u00a0(OK, I\u2019ve actually seen many over the years.)\u00a0 When the woman revealed that during the years of their marriage she had entertained thoughts of suicide, her husband\u2019s response was striking.\u00a0 He didn’t even look at her at this point but looked down at the floor, sad and self involved, and said in a somewhat scolding tone: \u201cMan!\u00a0 And you never even told me\u201d.\u00a0 Here we see an otherwise quite responsible, thoughtful citizen, a good father to his young children, who never-the-less in his most personal relationship is dominated the intensely selfish neediness of a very young child \u2013 so much so that he could not even notice how cruel he was being by ignoring his wife\u2019s pain; like a very small child, his only experience of the moment was his feelings about being left out.<\/p>\n

A master therapist I have consulted over the years for supervision in my own work with couples once said to me about romantic relationships that people always fall in love with the other\u2019s inner child.\u00a0 (This applies of course to those relationships that are not limited to the surface, to those not based entirely upon division of labor, shared sexual or material tastes, or flat out bartering of services.) \u00a0He confirmed to me that indeed the problem in relationships is all that dark matter, that unspoken, often unconscious feeling that pervades our lives but which \u2013 like dark matter to the physicists \u2013 usually lies outside of our awareness.<\/p>\n

There are many of course who push aside talk such as this about inner lives, who tend to say “what’s the big deal?\u00a0 It was just a joke.\u00a0 I just don’t see it.”\u00a0 (I was once in an acting class with a girl who turned to me and said \u201cI don\u2019t get monologs; people don\u2019t talk to themselves\u201d, as if the inner storm never rises to that level.)\u00a0 If you\u2019re one of those, maybe this will help:\u00a0 Have you ever been around an adult friend with his or her parents and noticed, particularly if your friend was a young adult, odd prickliness, irritation, and what you would describe as “overreaction” by your friend to his or her parents?\u00a0 What seems like innocent behavior to you and perhaps to the rest of us somehow drives your friend nuts.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Is it because, as your friend complains later if asked, “they always do that”?\u00a0 No, because if that were the only problem your friend would know even better than the rest of us how futile it is to get exercised by the parents\u2019 annoying habits. \u00a0Your friend has lived with them for a very long time, has many times over seen that the best way to handle them is either a stern \u201cnone of that!\u201d or to just let it roll off the back.\u00a0 Your friend would have long accepted that \u201cYep, that’s just how they are sometimes\u201d.\u00a0 \u00a0But that isn\u2019t what happens.\u00a0 Instead, your friend is agitated, even enraged.\u00a0 Why do those parents\u2019 behaviors irk your friend so?\u00a0 Dark matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been thinking more about that dark matter I discussed two entries ago.\u00a0 As I listen to my patients and friends, as I observe my own life, and as I read the literature, it seems that this dark matter … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions\/155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}