Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Johnson Sue

Author:Johnson, Sue [Johnson, Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Self Help, FAM000000
ISBN: 9780316031998
Amazon: 0316031992
Goodreads: 7000470
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2008-04-08T07:00:00+00:00

WHAT AM I MOST AFRAID OF?

This part of the conversation is aimed at gaining greater emotional clarity. I ask Charlie how Kyoko can help him get the safe, loving feeling they had once experienced back into their relationship. “Well, I wouldn’t get anxious and lecture her, if she would just quit exploding,” he replies. I then invite him to talk about himself and his feelings. He tells me that he is not sure where to begin. This world of feelings is “foreign” to him. But he does now see, and he gives me a big smile here, that maybe there is a “logic” to being able to listen to feelings and share them. He turns to Kyoko and tells her that he does see her as more predictable, as “safer,” now that he understands that she feels pushed away and punished by his advice giving. But he is not sure how to really get into his own deeper feelings here.

I ask him how he identified his feelings in the previous conversations. Where did he start? He is a very clever man, and he tells me what we therapists often take years to learn. He says, “Oh, I look first at what blocks me, what makes it hard to focus on feelings. I look at that moment when I stay away from my feelings and go off into my head sorting for formulas.” I agree, and Kyoko helpfully joins in, telling him, “It must be like me learning English. If feelings are a foreign language for you, it’s hard to feel comfortable. We try to stay away from what is strange. Strange is scary.” Charlie laughs and replies to his wife, “Yes. I go away from feelings because they are strange. I don’t feel in control. It is easier to make up an improvement program for you.”

He turns to me and makes a second point. “In our best conversations, it helped to take what you call ‘handles’ and mull them over.” Handles are descriptive images, words, and phrases that open the door into your innermost feelings and vulnerabilities, your emotional reality. Kyoko and I remind Charlie of some of the handles he has used to describe his reactions to Kyoko: a shattered heart, overwhelmed, anxious, freaking, and fleeing. Charlie nods his head but looks doubtful. “It’s hard for me to slow down and stay with those handles,” he whispers. “Even just to let myself explore. To listen for the cues that spark my feelings and thoughts. I don’t know where this will go. I trust thinking more. But maybe it’s not enough here.” I nod and ask him what handle holds his attention right now. He says quietly, “Oh, that is obvious. I go off in my head when I cannot stand the disquietude, the foreboding.”

Kyoko and I both lean back a little. “What does ‘disquietude,’ this big abstract term, have to do with anything?” I wonder aloud. Then Kyoko chimes in. She has learned from previous conversations to unpack big abstract words like this so that they don’t hijack the conversation.

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