My dogs bark at the letter carrier. They also bark at the UPS box carrier. They bark at these intruders into their territory, because the letter carrier is an unknown, a threat, and his footsteps set off an alarm in their heads. They get their hackles up, their hearts pounding, their minds focused, and they present themselves as flesh-rending crazed canines, intent on death and destruction and guess what? The interlopers leave.
So from my dog’s perspective, the cause and effect is pretty obvious. They bark and these modern day Visigoths retreat. They go away. They turn tail and run. Thus, it seems to my dogs that they have an effective tool to keep the barbarians away from the gate and to keep their world safe: they bark,.
And when an intruder happens to simply walk down the sidewalk: they bark. The trespasser, according to the story my dogs tell themselves, is aware of the immense threat they pose and probably mindful of the dog’s successes with the postal service, and so moves on up the street. This is another example from my dog’s point of view of the extraordinary effectiveness of barking.
Mind you, the from the letter carrier’s point of view, (or as we say in HTSYMBBABM speak, the letter carrier’s “reality”) there is no hasty retreat, there is no turning tail and running, there is only the next mail box to fill, the route to complete, and the kids to pick up from school. In the letter carrier’s reality, as with the sidewalk trespasser and the Man from Brown, the dogs’ barking is mostly irrelevant.
A friend of mine, Stan, comes by the house on a regular basis. At first the dogs barked and being a prudent man he waited outside the gate until I responded to the dog-bell and let him in. The dogs barked some more, but eventually they shut up. Time and time again, Stan would drop by and the dogs would bark and Stan would wait patiently for me to come to the door.
Eventually they stopped barking. Now when Stan stops by they don’t even bother to raise their heads from their sun-besotted dozing. He gives them a pat and walks on in, often commenting that I need to get my dog-bell fixed.
The cleverer of my two or three constant readers will now nod their heads and say, “I know where this is going” but for the slower, the stubborn and the neophyte I will explain how the story of the barking dog fits into the paradigm of the better man and saving your marriage.
My dogs have one tool that allows them to keep a modicum of control over their environment when they feel threatened: they bark. In their reality it is an effective tool. It seemingly generates the response they want. When Stan did not respond the way they expected, the barked and barked and barked until at some time they realized that the whole bark thing wasn’t working on Stan and they quit barking. The tool didn’t work, there was no point in using it.
Your spouse might have one tool that allows her to maintain a modicum of control over her environment when she feels threatened: she becomes angry, and when she becomes angry she seemingly generates the response she wants: you leave, you retaliate, you shut down, you give in… whatever response to which you habitually resort is the response she associates with her anger, and thus by seemingly causing that response she gains something, maybe it’s a sense of moral outrage, ascendancy, or maybe it’s simply control and thus a sense of safety.
You’ve seen this happen time and time again. It shows up as when you start talking about one thing, it leads to another, and soon you are fighting about something that has nothing to do with where you were.
Imagine it happens like this: you and your beloved are chatting and you say something that you think is totally innocent but she hears it differently and for whatever reason it scares her. Maybe it scares her because it brings up a guilt issue, maybe she feels controlled, or blamed, or inadequate. It doesn’t matter what particular alarm you set off in her brain: the sensor has been tripped and the bell is ringing. She is scared, so she goes to the one tool she has, anger, and with the expression of that anger she gets the response that you all ways give her and suddenly she is on safe ground again. Admittedly, it is unpleasant ground, her hackles are up, adrenaline is coursing through her veins, and you’re not on your best behavior, but it’s safe ground. By reacting as she expects you return to a pattern that she’s experienced before and she can anticipate the course of the next few minutes, hours or days. Not pleasant, but predictable and thus safe.
Now mind you, she’s not trying to start a fight. I know it seems like that, but remember my dogs are not trying to kill the letter carrier. They’ve just learned to bark when they hear his footsteps and because they are scared and they’ve learned that when they bark the letter carrier leaves and safety is restored.
When Stan simply stood there the dogs eventually learned the tool didn’t work with him and they stopped using it. Likewise, and this is not to compare your wife to a dog, if you can become non-reactive, if you can learn not to give tit for tat, if you can learn not to take offense and make that point clear by way of engaging in an argument, guess what will happen. Guess what will happen if you simply stand there, as Stan did, and not react to the barking?
She will quit. She will quit because the tool isn’t working for her. As I said, she’d not trying to tell you she hates you, she’s not trying to drive you away, she’s not trying to hurt you, she’s simply trying to protect herself from some fear, perhaps a fear she doesn’t want to confront, perhaps a fear of which she is unaware. And if you stop reacting, if you stop responding in king, she will either start looking for another tool or she will open herself up to introspection and try to understand the fear that is driving her anger, but she will stop barking.
I shit you not.
Showing posts with label anger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anger. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
BECAUSE I CAN'T BE MAD AT THE DOG
A while back my dog, an otherwise well-trained and good dog, had been housebound too long due to protracted rain (she simply will not go out in the rain) and errands (my beloved and I both had things to do and we will go out in the rain) and as a result when she got home before I did…
Well, let’s say my beloved knew with her frist breath after she opened the door that the dog, a Great Dane, had allowed biological need to overwhelm both her training and her sense of decorum and there in the dining room (on the oriental rug, of course) was ample evidence that the dog was well fed.
As they say, shit happens, and if you lock a dog in a house this is not an unforeseen result. Regrettable, but until I can figure a way to teach them to use the toilet for something other than a fountain this shit, literally, is going to happen. I’ve had Great Danes for over 20 years and as a rule I pick up pretty much everything that they eat, so cleaning up the mess isn’t a big deal for me, but I wasn’t the first home.
Now there were a couple of other things going on here. The rug was a new acquisition. My beloved, who enjoys a neat and clean house, had just finished redecorating the dining room, and while she’s not a squeamish type, cleaning up dog shit is not high on her list of fun things. These and other factors all combined to exacerbate the dire effects of this event.
I knew what was waiting for me when I got home because she had called to tell me what MY DOG had done and by the time I arrived the doors were open, the attic fan was on, two or three spent bottles of Lysol spray lay on the floor while their contents hung in the air, the poop was gone and she was angry.
No, she was livid.
And better-man me embraced her anger and in the course of our discussion I asked why she was mad with me and she said, “Because I can’t be angry with the dog.” Which was true. Irrelevant, it seemed, but true. I knew and she knew that the dog would have gone outside if she could, that we had locked the doors, and hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.
But still, it didn’t explain why she chose to be angry with me, inasmuch as I had just about as much control of the situation as the dog did. I would have opened the door had I been there, but I wasn’t there. Her anger felt like an unjustified personal attack, and I although I struggled with that, I set it aside. I didn’t take it personally because to do so would invite me to retaliate, to allow my righteous indignation to fuel an attack on her for her unjustified attack on me.
So I listened, and I mirrored, and eventually she felt heard and calmed down and somehow the sun rose the next morning and life went on, but her response has stuck with me…. she was angry with me because she couldn’t be angry with the dog. She’s not crazy so that has to make sense.
And finally, last night, it dawns on me: duh! The dog hasn’t studied Imago, the dog hasn’t read HTSYMbBABM, the dog’s only response to her anger is to run away. The dog cannot be a vessel for her anguish, the dog cannot embrace her anger…
But I can.
So it makes sense that she shares her anger with me (the only way she knows how), because I have shown her that I won’t run away from it, that I will embrace it, that I will be there for her.
Now some of you are going, “Hunt, come on down off the cross, it wasn’t right for her to be angry with you because of something the dog did. Grow a set and tell her to shut up.”
Yeah, you’re right about the first part, but telling her she’s wrong is not going to help things. It is enough that I know it, and as for the second part, grow a set, I got a new and improved set so I don’t have to prove I have them (to you or her) by telling her to shut up. There are better ways.
So here’s the insight: when your beloved is angry with the world, maybe it’s something that happened in her family, maybe it’s something that happened at school or work or maybe, god forbid, it has something to do with the dog, understand that you, her spouse, represent her safety zone. She may not do it gracefully, and it may not be a lot of fun, but she is turning to you in anger because you are the only person she can turn to, and for now, the only tool for expressing herself is anger.
She cannot blow up at her boss, her teacher, her mother, her neighbor or her dog because it will serve no purpose. They will run away, the will fight back, things will go from bad to worst. She is angry, and she can’t get mad at the dog, so guess what? You’re elected. Don’t get me wrong: getting angry at you is not good relationship maintenance and depending on your tolerance it will have to change at some time, but it is a very natural and common behavior for all of us.
You’ve done it. You’ve popped your cork at someone because damnit enough is enough and that person just picked the wrong person to fuck with…. And if you have done it then you cannot blame your beloved when she goes there.
And you’re elected because 1) you volunteered, (maybe the vows should be to love, honor, respect and embrace her anger) and 2) you (if you’ve read the book and done the work) got the skills: you can embrace your beloved’s anger. You can listen, you can understand, you can be supportive, and in her world the odds are you are the only person she can turn to (seemingly on) when the chaos of an unfair world make her fear and it shows up as anger.
You can take it in knowing that it’s genus, while superficially you, is elsewhere, and by not reacting to her anger, by not blaming her for being angry at you for something you didn’t do, by not allowing yourself to believe the lie that she is angry with you, you can help her survive the moment, transcend the anger, and perhaps grow.
My beloved became angry and the only recourse she had, the only tool in her box, was to blame me. Why? Because the dog couldn’t help her, and I can.
Well, let’s say my beloved knew with her frist breath after she opened the door that the dog, a Great Dane, had allowed biological need to overwhelm both her training and her sense of decorum and there in the dining room (on the oriental rug, of course) was ample evidence that the dog was well fed.
As they say, shit happens, and if you lock a dog in a house this is not an unforeseen result. Regrettable, but until I can figure a way to teach them to use the toilet for something other than a fountain this shit, literally, is going to happen. I’ve had Great Danes for over 20 years and as a rule I pick up pretty much everything that they eat, so cleaning up the mess isn’t a big deal for me, but I wasn’t the first home.
Now there were a couple of other things going on here. The rug was a new acquisition. My beloved, who enjoys a neat and clean house, had just finished redecorating the dining room, and while she’s not a squeamish type, cleaning up dog shit is not high on her list of fun things. These and other factors all combined to exacerbate the dire effects of this event.
I knew what was waiting for me when I got home because she had called to tell me what MY DOG had done and by the time I arrived the doors were open, the attic fan was on, two or three spent bottles of Lysol spray lay on the floor while their contents hung in the air, the poop was gone and she was angry.
No, she was livid.
And better-man me embraced her anger and in the course of our discussion I asked why she was mad with me and she said, “Because I can’t be angry with the dog.” Which was true. Irrelevant, it seemed, but true. I knew and she knew that the dog would have gone outside if she could, that we had locked the doors, and hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.
But still, it didn’t explain why she chose to be angry with me, inasmuch as I had just about as much control of the situation as the dog did. I would have opened the door had I been there, but I wasn’t there. Her anger felt like an unjustified personal attack, and I although I struggled with that, I set it aside. I didn’t take it personally because to do so would invite me to retaliate, to allow my righteous indignation to fuel an attack on her for her unjustified attack on me.
So I listened, and I mirrored, and eventually she felt heard and calmed down and somehow the sun rose the next morning and life went on, but her response has stuck with me…. she was angry with me because she couldn’t be angry with the dog. She’s not crazy so that has to make sense.
And finally, last night, it dawns on me: duh! The dog hasn’t studied Imago, the dog hasn’t read HTSYMbBABM, the dog’s only response to her anger is to run away. The dog cannot be a vessel for her anguish, the dog cannot embrace her anger…
But I can.
So it makes sense that she shares her anger with me (the only way she knows how), because I have shown her that I won’t run away from it, that I will embrace it, that I will be there for her.
Now some of you are going, “Hunt, come on down off the cross, it wasn’t right for her to be angry with you because of something the dog did. Grow a set and tell her to shut up.”
Yeah, you’re right about the first part, but telling her she’s wrong is not going to help things. It is enough that I know it, and as for the second part, grow a set, I got a new and improved set so I don’t have to prove I have them (to you or her) by telling her to shut up. There are better ways.
So here’s the insight: when your beloved is angry with the world, maybe it’s something that happened in her family, maybe it’s something that happened at school or work or maybe, god forbid, it has something to do with the dog, understand that you, her spouse, represent her safety zone. She may not do it gracefully, and it may not be a lot of fun, but she is turning to you in anger because you are the only person she can turn to, and for now, the only tool for expressing herself is anger.
She cannot blow up at her boss, her teacher, her mother, her neighbor or her dog because it will serve no purpose. They will run away, the will fight back, things will go from bad to worst. She is angry, and she can’t get mad at the dog, so guess what? You’re elected. Don’t get me wrong: getting angry at you is not good relationship maintenance and depending on your tolerance it will have to change at some time, but it is a very natural and common behavior for all of us.
You’ve done it. You’ve popped your cork at someone because damnit enough is enough and that person just picked the wrong person to fuck with…. And if you have done it then you cannot blame your beloved when she goes there.
And you’re elected because 1) you volunteered, (maybe the vows should be to love, honor, respect and embrace her anger) and 2) you (if you’ve read the book and done the work) got the skills: you can embrace your beloved’s anger. You can listen, you can understand, you can be supportive, and in her world the odds are you are the only person she can turn to (seemingly on) when the chaos of an unfair world make her fear and it shows up as anger.
You can take it in knowing that it’s genus, while superficially you, is elsewhere, and by not reacting to her anger, by not blaming her for being angry at you for something you didn’t do, by not allowing yourself to believe the lie that she is angry with you, you can help her survive the moment, transcend the anger, and perhaps grow.
My beloved became angry and the only recourse she had, the only tool in her box, was to blame me. Why? Because the dog couldn’t help her, and I can.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
YOU ARE NOT YOUR WIFE’S THERAPIST
It is not your job and it is not your skill set, and most importantly, it is not the relationship you want. If you want to be your wife’s therapist, get a divorce, get your PhD in either psychology or psychiatry and then give her a call after you have set up your office, but guess what? She probably won’t want you as her therapist then any more than she does now.
Consider Mary is angry and she is angry about something she’s been upset about before. You stay out too late with your friends. You’ve done nothing intrinsically wrong, and in point of fact you do everything right: this isn’t a regular issue and you call her to tell her that you’ll be late and in fact you are not too late but when you come in she is seething.
When this has happened before (footnote) you embraced her anger, you mirrored her, and after a while you discovered that her anger stems from her fear that she’s not important in your life, that she feels you would rather be with your friends, and ultimately this all goes back to the rejection she felt in prior relationships where she had been betrayed, and possibly even further back to formative issues with her parents.
After a lot of patience and mirroring she calmed down and her anger passed and life was good.
But now, coming back from time with your friends, you sense her anger because she’s got that tone of voice and it’s about twenty degrees colder in the room where she waits for you and because you’ve had the discussion with her before you have a good idea of what’s going on and because you love her and because you don’t want her to be angry you say:
YOU: C’mon Mary, you know this isn’t about me. You know I love you and that your anger is merely a defense against your fears of betrayal so why don’t we talk about that?
Which would be a great line for her psychologist to say in the safe confines of the counseling room and could have all sorts of therapeutic benefits because, guess what? Mary wouldn’t be mad at her therapist and thus maybe Mary could hear it. Mary is paying her therapist for that sort of insight and Mary wants her relationship with her therapist to be one that includes reality checking. Mary wants her relationship with her therapist (as does her therapist) to be a relationship of un-equals, a relationship of professional distance.
Mary wants you to love her, and she can’t love you if you try to create a therapeutic relationship. You job as a better man is to let Mary work on her own shit. You can listen, you can mirror, you can validate and empathize but the second you get into psychoanalysis you shatter your relationship of love and create a dynamic where you are the rational and she is the emotional, where you are the adult and she is the child, where you are right and she is wrong.
Now it could be if your beloved is evolved almost to the point of transcendence that she’s going to pause, listen, and say
MARY: Thank you for that profound insight. I always appreciate it when you help me identify my growth points. Let’s have sex now.
But the most likely scenario is that Mary is going to feel attacked, because no matter how carefully you tread you are right up against her soft spots, her tender areas, her buttons if you will, and pointing out, however well intentioned, no matter how lovingly phrased, that her anger is misplaced is going to effectively tell her she is wrong. You are going to tell her something you intend to be kind and understanding and she is going to hear:
YOU: WRONG. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU ARE SO STUPID; THAT THIS IS STILL AN ISSUE. YOU KNOW I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT AND YOU ARE OUT OF LINE…..
And since that is what Mary is hearing, you can imagine she is going to react pretty much the same way she would if you had actually said it. It won’t be pretty. At best you continue your half-assed attempt at therapy and things will get worse, At worst you become reactive and it all goes to hell. You won’t go to bed until late, you will not sleep well and you will not wake up happy. Don’t go there.
So you do what you did before: you embrace her anger, you hear her out, you mirror and you let her talk. This works. I know it’s hard, I know it’s repetitious, I know there’s a part of you that wants to scream.
YOU: I have to do this again? Haven’t we been over this? Why can’t she clean up her side of the street?
But screaming that is just like pissing into the wind: it’s just going to blow back on to you. Don’t do it, it’s non-productive, it is in fact just an invitation to destructive behaviors and regression on both of your parts.
By mirroring Mary you allow her the room to hear herself, you allow her the chance to put her thoughts in order, you give her the opportunity to reinforce the insight she had before, you give her the safety she needs to face her fears and to let go of the bad behaviors they engender.
More importantly, you show her, rather than tell her or perhaps even yell at her, that you love and respect her.
And it could well be she is never going to get over it. It could be she’s not going to get over it because she’s never, ever, going to clean up her side of the street, she is never going to venture into introspection and growth, and maybe you will have to move on to a better relationship, but honestly if that were the case the mirroring wouldn’t have worked first time around. It took you a while to get where you are, but you did (albeit dragging your feet and feeling blindly in the dark.) Give her the credit you have given yourself and recognize it will take her a while too, but it’s worth the wait.
It could also be that this is always going to be an issue that will crop up when she is under stress. This is normal. Some stuff goes so far back it just isn’t going to get fixed, completely fixed and healed, in our life times. Like a bad back or a rotator cuff injury you have to accept that it is going to get inflamed and hurt every so often.
But like a bad back or a rotator cuff injury, you know it won’t last forever, you know how to treat it and if you keep at the exercises and the work the frequency and duration of the events will dwindle.
And one night you’re going to call and say “Honey, I’m going to be a bit late tonight…” and Mary is going to feel that familiar fear and even if she can’t set it aside she going to recognize if for what it is and let it go because you’ve given her the support she needs to do her work.
Consider Mary is angry and she is angry about something she’s been upset about before. You stay out too late with your friends. You’ve done nothing intrinsically wrong, and in point of fact you do everything right: this isn’t a regular issue and you call her to tell her that you’ll be late and in fact you are not too late but when you come in she is seething.
When this has happened before (footnote) you embraced her anger, you mirrored her, and after a while you discovered that her anger stems from her fear that she’s not important in your life, that she feels you would rather be with your friends, and ultimately this all goes back to the rejection she felt in prior relationships where she had been betrayed, and possibly even further back to formative issues with her parents.
After a lot of patience and mirroring she calmed down and her anger passed and life was good.
But now, coming back from time with your friends, you sense her anger because she’s got that tone of voice and it’s about twenty degrees colder in the room where she waits for you and because you’ve had the discussion with her before you have a good idea of what’s going on and because you love her and because you don’t want her to be angry you say:
YOU: C’mon Mary, you know this isn’t about me. You know I love you and that your anger is merely a defense against your fears of betrayal so why don’t we talk about that?
Which would be a great line for her psychologist to say in the safe confines of the counseling room and could have all sorts of therapeutic benefits because, guess what? Mary wouldn’t be mad at her therapist and thus maybe Mary could hear it. Mary is paying her therapist for that sort of insight and Mary wants her relationship with her therapist to be one that includes reality checking. Mary wants her relationship with her therapist (as does her therapist) to be a relationship of un-equals, a relationship of professional distance.
Mary wants you to love her, and she can’t love you if you try to create a therapeutic relationship. You job as a better man is to let Mary work on her own shit. You can listen, you can mirror, you can validate and empathize but the second you get into psychoanalysis you shatter your relationship of love and create a dynamic where you are the rational and she is the emotional, where you are the adult and she is the child, where you are right and she is wrong.
Now it could be if your beloved is evolved almost to the point of transcendence that she’s going to pause, listen, and say
MARY: Thank you for that profound insight. I always appreciate it when you help me identify my growth points. Let’s have sex now.
But the most likely scenario is that Mary is going to feel attacked, because no matter how carefully you tread you are right up against her soft spots, her tender areas, her buttons if you will, and pointing out, however well intentioned, no matter how lovingly phrased, that her anger is misplaced is going to effectively tell her she is wrong. You are going to tell her something you intend to be kind and understanding and she is going to hear:
YOU: WRONG. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU ARE SO STUPID; THAT THIS IS STILL AN ISSUE. YOU KNOW I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT AND YOU ARE OUT OF LINE…..
And since that is what Mary is hearing, you can imagine she is going to react pretty much the same way she would if you had actually said it. It won’t be pretty. At best you continue your half-assed attempt at therapy and things will get worse, At worst you become reactive and it all goes to hell. You won’t go to bed until late, you will not sleep well and you will not wake up happy. Don’t go there.
So you do what you did before: you embrace her anger, you hear her out, you mirror and you let her talk. This works. I know it’s hard, I know it’s repetitious, I know there’s a part of you that wants to scream.
YOU: I have to do this again? Haven’t we been over this? Why can’t she clean up her side of the street?
But screaming that is just like pissing into the wind: it’s just going to blow back on to you. Don’t do it, it’s non-productive, it is in fact just an invitation to destructive behaviors and regression on both of your parts.
By mirroring Mary you allow her the room to hear herself, you allow her the chance to put her thoughts in order, you give her the opportunity to reinforce the insight she had before, you give her the safety she needs to face her fears and to let go of the bad behaviors they engender.
More importantly, you show her, rather than tell her or perhaps even yell at her, that you love and respect her.
And it could well be she is never going to get over it. It could be she’s not going to get over it because she’s never, ever, going to clean up her side of the street, she is never going to venture into introspection and growth, and maybe you will have to move on to a better relationship, but honestly if that were the case the mirroring wouldn’t have worked first time around. It took you a while to get where you are, but you did (albeit dragging your feet and feeling blindly in the dark.) Give her the credit you have given yourself and recognize it will take her a while too, but it’s worth the wait.
It could also be that this is always going to be an issue that will crop up when she is under stress. This is normal. Some stuff goes so far back it just isn’t going to get fixed, completely fixed and healed, in our life times. Like a bad back or a rotator cuff injury you have to accept that it is going to get inflamed and hurt every so often.
But like a bad back or a rotator cuff injury, you know it won’t last forever, you know how to treat it and if you keep at the exercises and the work the frequency and duration of the events will dwindle.
And one night you’re going to call and say “Honey, I’m going to be a bit late tonight…” and Mary is going to feel that familiar fear and even if she can’t set it aside she going to recognize if for what it is and let it go because you’ve given her the support she needs to do her work.
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