neuroscience supports a relational approach to rage / abuse issues

We are born with the capacity to rage for a good reason; it is our first and most important survival mechanism…it’s an alarm….intended to summon help if our early environment fails and our needs are not being met.

We are NOT born with the ability to reflect on impulse rather than act on it, to think ahead, to connect, to be kind, to be empathic and to be concerned for ourself and others; NOR are we born with the ability to calm ourselves down when stressed, to be self-aware, to problem solve or to be creative and imaginative.

These capacities, which ensure our humanity, stem from a well functioning frontal-cortex; they have to be developed and can only be developed within the crucible of a loving relationship which validates our experience, is attuned to our affect, contains our feelings and soothes us (Kohut, 1971). Without this relational experience we cannot thrive; we cannot sustain relationships or begin to fulfil our potential and make our contribution to the world; instead, we will live our life, brain awash with cortisol, drifting in and out of various states of rage and hurting our self and others as a result.

Sixty years of psychotherapy outcome research has highlighted the importance of the therapeutic relationship in all successful therapy; and thankfully, as we know, the brain has an element of plasticity and can be influenced positively later on in life. This means that rage issues can be organically transformed in an empathic relationship which quietens the amygdala and stimulates the functioning of the frontal-cortex.

 

why is it ok to be so hateful towards men?

this hateful video has been issued by a mainstream organisation, a national American charity….Help Shelter Animals in partnership with Jason Debus Heigle Foundation

The release of this video in an attempt to raise funds for the neutering of cats and dogs is an indicator of how unashamedly misandrous our society is….it is shockingly offensive…I have a great sense of humour, this isn’t funny.

If female genitalia or body parts were being ridiculed or attacked there would be a furore, in fact I don’t believe a video like this about women would ever have been entertained.

Why do we allow these double standards? It’s not OK to disrespect men, any more than it’s OK to disrespect women.

PLEASE COMPLAIN to… ihateballs@jasonheiglfoundation.org

 

please sign this petition to end the bias towards Cognitive Behavioural Therapy within the IAPT programme (UK)

When IAPT was launched it’s remit was to deliver talking therapies ‘including CBT’; however most IAPT services across the UK are delivering wholly or substantially CBT.

This is inspite of the fact that positive outcomes in psychotherapy research have consistently been linked to the resources a client brings to therapy (40%) and the therapeutic relationship (30%) rather than any particular technique or modality (15%) (Lambert & Barley, 2002); more recently Miller, Hubble and Duncan (2008) found that ‘when a measure of the alliance is used with a standardised outcome scale, available evidence shows that clients are less likely to deteriorate, more likely to stay longer and twice as likely to achieve a change of clinical significance’.
Finally, more recently still…..a meta-analysis of more than 80 studies presented by Robert Elliott and Beth Freire at the World Association for Person Centred and Experiential Psychotherapy conference in Norwich (2011) found that person-centred and related therapies (PCTs) are shown to be as effective as other forms of psychotherapy, including CBT.

There is no doubt that the evidence base for CBT is the strongest but most other modalities have a body of evidence that supports their efficacy.

CBT is not effective with all clients and across all diagnoses; in my opinion, if IAPT services  are to genuinely serve their clients what they offer must reflect the diversity of those clients referred and their needs and to offer some choice; ‘oranges are not the only fruit’ and CBT is not the only therapy…..a more plural or heterogenous service ought to be available.

please sign this petition….REFORM THE NICE GUIDELINES AND END THE BIAS TOWARDS CBT IN IAPT SERVICES

 

This is petition for Reform the NICE guidelines and end the bias towards Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) in the IAPT programme. Join the movement! Sign now! THANK YOU

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anger is the poor relation of other mental health issues

Outlook Southwest, the psychology services commissioned by Cornwall Healthcare Trust, has recently announced that it will no longer be commissioned to deliver their ‘Understanding Anger’ course or to accept referrals for one-to-one counselling where the client’s main presenting issue is anger.

This is hard to believe because anger problems affect a significant proportion of the UK population.

free download at  http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/boiling-point-report/

The Mental Health Foundation carried out a telephone poll involving 1974 people from all the regions in the UK, across the age groups and with a gender and social class balance. They produced The Boiling Point Report (2008) which found that

• 64% either strongly agree or agree that Britain is getting angrier
• 28% worried about how angry they become at times
• 12% reported having trouble controlling their anger
• 20% had ended a relationship with someone because of how they behaved when they were angry

I am concerned and curious about how a whole group of mental health patients can be annexed and deemed not worthy of a service. Interestingly I have come across this in The Prison Service as well where departments compete for funding and ring-fence their spending;  those with anger difficulties often fall between two stools and the prison mental health department will argue that anger problems are an educational issue and the education department will argue that it is a mental health issue.

Anger management difficulties do not constitute a discrete mental health diagnosis in the DSM V but its presence or absence is a symptom of many of the diagnoses. Why do commissioning authorities and other institutions ignore anger as an issue in a way they would not ignore anxiety or depression?

 

it’s not education, it’s preaching! part 2: mystical manipulation

Mystical manipulation is a process whereby a group leader, often with a charismatic personality, is apparently ‘directed from above’ (Lifton, 1981), endeavours to turn group members into ‘pawns’ (ibid) through installing his/her particular, preferred thoughts, behaviours and emotional responses in them in such a way that it seems to have occurred spontaneously. These behavioural and emotional changes will appear to have been brought about, not through indoctrination and personal manipulation by the leader, but in a mystical or spiritual way, through participation in a group which shares a special and superior knowledge or awareness.

Such group leaders are not just interested in exerting power over others; they are also motivated by feelings of having a ‘higher purpose’ which obliges them to share their method of social advancement and they place themselves at the forefront of this development. The aims of their organization become shrouded in mysticism and ostensibly group members are chosen by God, or another higher authority, to carry out the ‘mystical imperative’, a mission which becomes more important than individual human welfare. Any questioning of the leader or group’s higher purpose is discouraged through labeling such thoughts or behaviours as ‘backward, selfish, and petty’ and declaring them to be motivated by a ‘lower purpose’ (ibid).

When this process is at work, members are hyper-alert to all kinds of cues  in their environmentand become skilled at anticipating and responding to the expectations of the leader and their group. This often involves them in acts of self-betrayal and the betrayal of others.

In my opinion, mystical manipulation is operative to lesser and greater degrees within IDAP;

• in place of ‘charismatic group leader’ or ‘Guru’ substitute ‘group facilitators’
• for ‘superior knowledge and awareness’ substitute ‘radical feminist ideology’
• for ‘being directed from above, God or a higher authority’ substitute the judicial system and the dominant position that radical feminist ideology enjoys in the UK, USA and elsewhere.

Reducing domestic abuse is the IDAP facilitators’ ‘higher purpose’. The means to  understand and address this issue and the preferred thoughts, behaviours and actions which they wish to install in their male group members are informed and driven by radical feminist political beliefs which stereotype them in a negative way, as ‘patriarchal terrorists’ (Johnson, 1995). Disseminating these beliefs has priority over the psychological and emotional welfare of individual IDAP group members; their critique of radical feminist ideology or expressions of a different point of view attract negative labels such as ‘sexist, disruptive, not engaging, having authority issues or being controlling’.

My research has not shown that men have experienced IDAP as a spiritual or mystical process; however, while the programme does not have divine authority I would argue that it does have ideological authority which gives its group facilitators a licence to refute and re-interpret men’s’ version of reality, motives, behaviours and other experiences.

IDAP participants whom I have worked with and interviewed spoke of feeling ‘mystified’, ‘preached to’, dissuaded from asking questions or expressing criticism and more generally of being deprived of the opportunity to exercise self-expression and independent action. They often described being in a state of hyper-vigilance and searching for cues which is characteristic of mystical manipulation and told me how they ‘sussed out’ what was expected from them in the group, how they took their lead from group facilitators and others in the group and how they contrived to give the impression that those expectations were being spontaneously met.

Michael told me he found it very difficult to take on board the radical feminist ideas presented and he often asked questions such as

• “surely women can be manipulative too?” or
• “if all violence is wrong, does that mean I can’t defend myself?”

He expressed opinions such as

• “perhaps my relationship history or childhood experiences had a bearing on the incident which caused me to be a participant on IDAP”
• “I think my wife’s behavior contributed to the situation”

Michael reports having been taken to one side in a tea break and told that if he continued to be disruptive and not engage in the programme he would have to go back to court (which may have resulted in a custodial sentence).

Michael remembers making a difficult decision in response to this experience which involved betraying himself; he decided to submit to the programme. He told me

• “after that, quite simply, I lied; I told the group that I had frequently abused my wife [to this point he had repeatedly told the facilitators that the incident was a ‘one off’ event which had been triggered by particular unusual and provocative circumstances]
• “I told the group that I was the whole problem” [previously he had asserted that he did not hold himself wholly responsible for the event, that he had been attacked in the first instance so his partner must bear some of the responsibility]

He went on to say

• I treated the course as ‘academic’ and got through the weekly sessions by presenting a false self.

This all impressed his facilitators he said who told him

• “you’re really making progress now”

 

References

Johnson MP, 1995, A Typology of Domestic Violence:Intimate Terrorism, Violent Resistance, and Situational Couple Violence, North Eastern University Press

Lifton RJ, 1989, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China, The University of North Carolina Press

 

 

it’s not education, it’s preaching! is IDAP a form of thought reform?

I have been interviewing men who have participated in Integrated Domestic Abuse Programmes (IDAP) (UK) recently for three reasons

1. their voices have not been recorded in UK or USA research beyond a few sentences in a Home Office paper (Bullock et al, 2010) in which two men appraise the programme positively.
2. men coming to me for Empathic Anger Management would often need to debrief and process negative experiences of IDAP before we could begin the necessary therapeutic work. I was disturbed to hear them using phrases including

• feeling dominated and controlled
• it was the facilitator’s way or the high way
• felt bound and gagged
• I was brainwashed
• they messed with my head

Ironically, these are the very behaviours which the ideology of IDAP assumes that group participants will have been engaging in in their intimate partner relationships and aims to eradicate.

3. I attended an International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) conference in 2010 and listened to       speakers discussing ‘the psychology of totalism’ and referring to Lifton’s (1989) eight components of ‘ thought reform’; as I listened, the men whom I had worked with and their stories came to mind and wondered if they had been subject to a form of indoctrination

So far I have interviewed a small sample of 3 men from London and the East and West Midlands; white males, two are white collar workers and one is blue collar; in the 35 – 50 age bracket.  I am going to map their experiences against the eight components of through reform  which are milieu control, mystical manipulation, the demand for purity, the cult of confession, the ‘sacred science’, loading the language, doctrine over person and dispensing of existence. I will briefly define each component and offer extracts of the men’s stories which, in my opinion, illustrate that a form of mind control or thought reform is at the core of this programme. These components co-exist, they are not discrete phenomena and my attempt to separate them out is somewhat artificial; they will inevitably overlap so for example, milieu control has to be present for all the other components to exist, the demand for purity is linked to the cult of confession and the sacred science is inextricably connected to doctrine over the person.

Milieu Control

This relates to the control of all communication within a given environment including both the individual’s inner communication as well as their external, inter-personal communication. Milieu control is maintained through structuring all group dialogue around the power and control wheel and the equality wheel. When these two models stand-alone they finely calibrate a wide range of constructive and destructive inter-personal behaviours which make a considerable contribution to our understanding of what constitutes harmful and unharmful relationships. However, those I interviewed described them being used in conjunction with a radical feminist ideology which holds a cynical stereotypical view of men who are all viewed as rapists or perpetrators of domestic abuse or potential rapists and perpetrators of domestic abuse.

The men I interviewed told me

• “make no mistake about it, we were left in no doubt that men are bad”
• “I was assumed to be a serial offender; you were not allowed to say “it only happened the once”
• “you knew that if you didn’t agree with them you’d be off the course; ‘off the course was code for ‘back to court’ or ‘prison’

These highly structured groups restrict participant discussion to the eight abusive behaviours on the power and control wheel and their eight non-abusive counterparts on the equality wheel. The men I interviewed told me that they were assumed to have committed harmful behaviours from each of the eight categories and were discouraged from saying

• “actually, I never sexually abused my wife”
• “I never financially exploited my partner”
• “I didn’t use the children to manipulate her”

Facilitators argue that ‘the driving force [of domestic abuse] is the hub of the wheel…. power and control – not alcohol, stress, drugs, poverty, bad childhood experiences or anger problems (REFERENCE).’ Each of the interviewees had reflected on their behaviour and all of them had a complex narrative of why what happened had happened; invariably they resolved that there were multiple personal and interpersonal factors that had contributed to the single, abstracted event, with the single explanation, which facilitators, magistrates and judges focus on. They quickly learned that these other kind of explanations would not be tolerated. When the milieu is being controlled individual autonomy becomes a threat to the group and those men I interviewed who challenged the notion that all men are bad, denied that they hadn’t committed a category of abuse or offered an alternative explanation from ‘the party line’ (participant) were told they were being

• disruptive
• unco-operative
• not engaging
• in denial
• making excuses

and were threatened with being removed from the group.

Lifton (1989) says ‘intense milieu control can contribute to a dramatic change of identity which I call doubling: the formation of a second self which lives side by side with the former one…… the boundary of the self is chipped away at, pressure on the internal milieu [participant’s inner life] to introject [swallow / take on board] the external milieu [the feminist ideology]’.

The research participants reported

• “presenting what they [facilitators] wanted to hear”
• “showing a false self”
• “telling others to keep their heads down, do what’s expected and don’t rock the boat”

‘When the milieu control is lifted, elements of the earlier self may be reasserted’ (ibid); participants described being more real in tea, cigarette breaks and in any contact outside of the group environment.

Lifton (ibid) describes how humans naturally ‘strive towards new information, independent judgement and self-expression’; all three men told me they were optimistic about learning something about themselves and relationships when they entered the group; milieu control thwarts this organismic process.

References

Bullock K,  Sarre S, Tarling R & Wilkinson M, 2010, The delivery of domestic abuse programmes: An implementation study of the delivery of domestic abuse programmes in probation areas and Her Majesty’s Prison Service, Ministry of Justice Research Series 15/10 July, London, Home Office

Lifton RJ, 1989, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, North Carolina, University of North Carolina

To be continued…………

 

 

a politically incorrect conversation: a non-gendered approach to domestic abuse

 

anger management in schools (and any organisation) is a shared responsibility

My earlier post argues that anger and rage are different and that it is rage (teacher/pupil) in the classroom that is the problem and not anger; in my opinion, where rage is involved it is not about the here-and-now (though it is always triggered by a here-and-now incident) and people are relating to one another as objects and not seeing themselves or others for the whole separate human beings that they are. Far too often these issues are personalised (pupil / teacher).
In my relational model…everyone has a responsibility for creating the emotional environment in a school or any other environment….teacher / pupil / managers & policy makers. Relationship and integrity between these agencies is the key…where there is relationship, connection, mostly shared values and goals and an environment which treats everyone as vibrant human beings and not as ‘heads on legs’ there is much more chance of an approximation to harmony.
Further…being realistic, where there is a one-size-fits all programme (curriculum/prescribed practice) which treats all members as the same….there will be a large number of students/clients who will be regulalry traumatised by it. Government ministers, policy makers, schools & other organisations have to be more imaginative about what constitutes education/service and how it is delivered.

That’s probably quite a way off! For now I think it is necessary to give as much attention to encouraging functional relationships between all parties in schools/organisations as is given to the curriculum; to build an optimum emotional environment where all human needs get met and where everyone experiences their natural organismic hunger and joy for learning . RELATIONSHIP is the vehicle for learning / change, not the curriculum/prescribed practice.

 

A call for men who have participated in the IDAP (UK) or Duluth (USA) programme for domestic violence to tell their story

Every year, thousands of men go through the IDAP and Duluth interventions for domestic violence in the UK and USA and yet their voices are seldom included in official research.  The success of these programmes is usually measured in two ways, neither of which involves the participants themselves; the two indicators are whether a man is re-arrested and a partner report.

There is widespread scepticism among programme funders, facilitators and researchers about the credibility of men’s own evaluation of the quality of the programme or of their participation and progress within it. At a time when health authorities, councils and all manner of voluntary and statutory agencies have service user involvement policies to support the development and evaluation of provision, an attitude towards men’s self-reporting as invalid because it is ‘subject to perpetrator denial and minimisation’ (Mullender & Burton, 2000) seems not only unethical but also antiquated.

Men’s voices are presented in only one document that I have sourced. Bullock et al (2010) interviewed 26 men in their research yet only included two quotes from them under the heading of ‘men’s engagement and views on the programme’ (p14); three quotes from facilitators are included in this section. The men’s comments (below) about the IDAP programme, facilitators and personal development gained are uncritical and place the intervention in a positive light.

Programme and facilitators:

‘Well, it was just pretty much giving me a chance to introduce myself, anything I said they made it feel like it was valid and they would actually listen and give advice about it – really interested in knowing what you are doing outside work, outside of the course and stuff like that. They do involve themselves quite a bit, they do encourage you as much as they possibly can, I think.’ (GM6)

Personal development:

 

‘In general just the way I come across and deal with situations, you know, I didn’t understand, I don’t think I really realised that I was coming across in my voice and my body language quite aggressive towards my partner always. I’ve controlled that a lot more, so it’s, you know, I’m conscious of it, which means that you do tend to control it. You know, as soon as it starts happening, you can nip it in the bud, because you’re now conscious of it, you know you’re doing it.’ (GM11)

 

Men whom I have worked with who have experienced the IDAP programme were not complimentary about it; a contrary picture with regard to its success emerges from a meta-analysis of 22 studies in 2004 (Babcock et al) which found, depending on the type of research design employed by the various studies, suggested that effects due to treatment were in the small range, a 5% to 15% decrease in recidivism or reduction in violence between those who took part in an intervention and those who did not.

 

This is a scandalously low level of effectiveness which would never be tolerated within health or education services yet goes unchallenged in the domestic violence arena because treatment is based on faith in a political ideology rather than on evidence based research.

A recent Ministry of Justice report (2010) concluded

‘The evidence base for DV programmes is still inconclusive both on the international front and in  the UK. There is still much to learn about what programmes are effective in reducing domestic  violence’

It is time for a piece of research which prioritises the voice of men who have participated in these programmes and for a candid exploration of that experience; to find out which elements of the programme were useful and which were not; to invite them to consider their

• personal story of events
• relationship dynamics
• personal history and trauma
• mental health state
• to debrief the feminist ideology that underpins the programme

I am keen to interview men who have participated in IDAP and Duluth programmes

• face-to-face
• on Skype
• by telephone

and to publish my findings while protecting the identity of contributors. If you are interested in participating please contact Sue Parker Hall at sueparkerhall@btconnect.com Please tell any men you know who may be willing to participate about this research project.

References

Babcock, J C, Green CE & Robie C, 2004, Does batterers’ treatment work? A meta-analytic review of domestic violence treatment. Clinical Psychology Review, 23, 1023-1053

 

Bullock K,  Sarre S, Tarling R & Wilkinson M, 2010, The delivery of domestic abuse programmes,

An implementation study of the delivery of domestic abuse programmes in probation areas and Her Majesty’s Prison Service, Ministry of Justice Research Series 15/10 July, London, Home Office

 

Mullender A & Burton S, 2000, Policing and Reducing Crime Briefing Note, Reducing domestic violence….What Works? Perpetrator programmes, Crime Reduction Research Series, Home Office, London

Ministry of Justice, 2010, What works with Domestic Offenders, National Offender Management Service, London, Home Office

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five Secrets to a More Loving Intimate Relationship this Year

If one of your new year resolutions was to improve your relationship this year there are five tips here to help you

Intimate relationships are potentially our greatest source of comfort and pleasure but when our relationships aren’t functioning well they are a source of the most profound pain. We can lose our precious sense of identity and forget who we are, feel impotent, unimportant, useless and unlovable. If we don’t express our innermost feelings and thoughts regularly there are several disadvantages; they accumulate inside us putting distance between ourselves and others, we may obsess unhealthily, lose our sense of reality and, more seriously still, become overwhelmed with raw unprocessed emotion that spills out in the form of hot rage or we enter a state of cold rage, withdraw and become unreachable and unavailable to our partner.

The five secrets below will support you to understand any difficulties that may be present in your current intimate relationship and to achieve the maximum joy and personal growth from it.

1.       it takes two!

The most crucial element of improving an intimate relationship is that both partners are committed to the process. Each one needs to take some responsibility for the current state of the relationship and for changing it for the better; without this, prospects for change are very poor. If our partner is unwilling or unable to enter into this process then it is vital that we grieve, that we go through a variety of emotional stages in order to come to terms with this fact.

According to Kubler-Ross (1969) the grieving process usually starts with denial about the problem. Once the denial dissolves it begins to dawn on us that there is a problem and then we then usually feel anger. Human beings like the status quo and often resist and resent change and feel angry about it because of the necessary emotional adjustment that we need to make to accommodate it. After the anger comes a period of bargaining where we yo-yo between accepting and not accepting saying things like “it’s bad”, “it’s not that bad” or “I won’t survive”, “I will survive”; at the same time having ‘if only’ thoughts such as “if I just try a bit harder, say the right thing or be nicer then it will work out”. This is an exhausting stage, at the end of which we run out of steam and fall into a state of depression, what I would call sadness, where the reality of our situation begins to fully sink in; our partner is as they are and there is nothing we can do to change them. Then we are in the final stage of grieving, we have moved to acceptance. When we are in this state we can make a choice about our relationship; we may choose to stay, accepting that we may never get what we want from it or to leave and seek what we need elsewhere. Without completing the grieving process we get stuck in any one of these stages and feel profoundly unhappy and powerless and our relationship is stuck and frustrating.

2.       prioritise the relationship

If both of us are committed to improving our relationship then the next secret is to honour it and make it a priority. Many couples struggle because they don’t know how to do this; they give their relationship ‘scraps’, the ‘leftovers’ in terms of energy and attention;  caring for our children, going to work, participating in education or pursuing interests can all get more attention. If our relationship is not just to survive but to thrive, we need to maintain it in the way we care for ourselves, our children, garden, car or home.  It is not true that “if you have to work at a relationship then it’s not right”; the opposite is true. If our relationship is to be the great source of love, joy, comfort, support and security in the world that it could be, it needs at least as much consideration as any other aspect of our life, if not more.

3.       get connected

OK, so we want to improve our relationship and we are willing to make it a priority, what now? We need to get connected. Being connected is an energetic exchange that makes us feel very alive and vital. It is so interesting to me how many couples tell me “oh yes, we talk a lot, we’re always talking” but, when they reveal the content of their conversations, it is all about practicalities (who is going to put the bin out or do the school run? What home improvements are necessary, where to go for a holiday or money issues). It is important to settle these matters, I’m not denying that, but these kinds of conversation do not connect us beyond a very superficial level.

We connect at a deeper level by sharing our innermost experience with each other; expressing feelings such as joy, delight, sadness, fear, anger, disappointment or jealousy; expressing what we think and appreciate about the other, hearing what they think and appreciate about us and through sharing touch. In our busy lives it is easy to ignore what is happening inside us, believing it to be unimportant; however, it is through listening to our inner selves and being willing to share whait with our partner that we enter a more deeply connected state. For example I could reveal my vulnerability and say to my partner, “I’m struggling to like myself today” or “I’d really like a hug right now”; I might share my anger saying “when I speak to you and you don’t reply I feel discounted” or articulate my fear, “I’m scared that my boss doesn’t like me” or express my love, “I love you”.

4.       avoid the fantasy bond

Paradoxically, truly intimate relationships constitute such a safe and loving environment that distressing relational issues from the past, which could not be processed at the time because there was a lack of emotional support, come roaring to the surface, unleashing a whole raft of negative feelings and beliefs which get transferred onto the current situation.

Our early associations provide an unconscious blueprint for adult relationships and they colour our beliefs about others and our expectations of them. If our first relationships were not supportive then we may find it difficult to trust our partner at times; we may doubt that they will care about us or be there for us or believe that they will abandon or abuse us.

This can lead to a highly problematic form of relating; when we see our partner through the distorted lens of our early relationships, we enter a fantasy bond; we ‘put a face’ on them and behave towards them as though they were the person who hurt us. Our partner is not seen for who they are and ironically, if we treat them as if they were unloving, neglectful or abusive that can trigger the very reaction that we most fear; our misunderstood, despairing, hurt or angry partner may tell us that they don’t like us, may walk away or become abusive.

This damaging relationship dynamic is at the heart of most of the difficulties that couples present to my practice with. In order to address this issue it is necessary for each partner to think about their early relationships and to identify the content of their personal relationship blueprint. Just having this awareness alone will immediately reduce the likelihood of slipping into the negative relationship pattern and, if the worst does happen, it enables each party to recognise what is going on and to do something different.

5.       Folks need strokes

A positive stroke is a term from Transactional Analysis; it is a unit of attention which feels good to receive; it may be a verbal statement which conveys love and respect for a particular quality or behaviour or it may be non-verbal in the form of touch or a facial expression. The regular giving and receiving of positive strokes is vital for a relationship to stay alive; it involves an energy exchange which enlivens both the giver and the receiver and each one binds us closer together. Strokes about who we are such as “you have a kind nature” or “you’re such good fun” have a higher value than more conditional strokes about what we do like recognition for washing up or feeding the pet, though these are valuable too. Finally, it is essential to express our love and appreciation to our partner regularly and to feel appreciated by them. Finding at least one thing everyday to say “thank you” to our partner for helps to keep our heart open, ensures that we are connected and make us feel really good. There is increasing evidence that the offering and receipt of kindness plays a role in maintaining good mental health and in the prevention of physical disease.

A life enhancing relationship takes the commitment and effort of both partners to make it their highest priority; to invest their time and attention in order to get and stay connected and to experience their partner as the real person that they are; to take the time to process wounds from earlier relationships so that old blueprints don’t get transferred to new relationships and to give and receive strokes which enhances both partners emotional and physical wellbeing. If we are well supported in our intimate relationships all other aspects of our life are enriched too.