Esther Perel 【中字】美國婚姻家庭治療師EstherPerel分享她的一次失敗的伴侶治療片段

Hey, welcome If you are here today It's either because you come to this free workshop series every month You read my newsletter Or you saw it on my social channels So you probably already know that I'm sharing a story today About a time that I acted out of character I snapped I snapped at a person across from me In my therapy office And I walked away feeling like I was Well, I wasn't going to say that I failed But I was simply going to say that it was a failed session And I think it's really important to share this particular experience Because there's more to this story than meets the eye Or shall I say that meets the ear Because this story today and the entire workshop is about listening So, as I was saying, I was Oh, how would I say this It was a bad therapy day You know, I have bad therapy days And it was over this past summer And I was already having one of those days When you just don't feel like you have much to give I was languishing as my friend Adam Grant would call it That sense of stagnation and emptiness That feels like you're muddling through your days Looking at life through a foggy windshield People have become so interested in that word Because it describes a universal experience Everybody seems to be having During the last two years in this pandemic era Part of the reason languishing is so tough Is because it's not severe enough to derail your day But it's also not minuscule enough to not affect you For me, I believe the opposite of languishing And its antidote is eroticism The opposite of languishing, of stagnation, of blah Is when I get in touch with the vibrancy and the vitality of life Is when I tune into the senses and the environment It's that rather than staying behind that foggy windshield And letting life pass by But sometimes, even for me Especially for me It's easier said than done And this is true for many therapists like me Who are meant to be able to guide people Through that sense of feeling unmoored So on that day in July, I was languishing And I had work to do We were recording a one-time anonymous couple session For my podcast Where Should We Begin But by the end of it I was convinced that material was unusable And that has not happened often All the sessions that we have done have been included So to have one where I'm like I don't know if I can put this out there Was very, very significant The recently married early 30s white American couple And new parents were sitting across me And they were bickering to no end From sex to money to in-laws They had fallen into quite a pattern Of not hearing a single word that the other was saying Well, they were hearing the words But they were not listening They were hearing the words for the purpose of rebuttal And they couldn't help themselves From cringing when the other one talked Rolling their eyes Shaking their heads And sighing every time that the other person spoke And, you know, I would listen to one person But I would watch the other person get all agitated I couldn't listen anymore I myself was getting derailed, you know So sooner or later I was experiencing from the inside What was happening between the two of them Her and each partner, each partner You know, their whole bodies They seemed to express the inability To accept a different reality from their own But her tendency was to speak over him To fill in all the details about his point of view Not as he had told her But as she saw it What she thought he should tell me What she thought was important And it was crashing the session But he wasn't any better, you know He would let her talk Quiet Wait See You knew he wasn't listening Because he was organizing his rebuttal And he wouldn't acknowledge anything Of what she said that he may have agreed with He would wait till he found the one thing That he could argue with And then he would refute So you can imagine the dynamic And this is not unusual in high reactivity And many of us have been in this situation But many of us have been more so in this situation So they were stuck in a feedback loop Leaving them both feeling trapped and frustrated And I knew they wanted to be better They wanted to be more caring Because they were caring They just couldn't It got lost in between all the noise They wanted to be more loving They wanted to be more intimate And this is why they came So I wanted to know How long they had been hearing each other Without listening And I couldn't even get there I mean, I could not make two steps forward Without all the cacophony You know, basically derailing all of us You know, we couldn't have any specific conversation Because they were locked in a cycle of negative escalation Every sentence was a blame about the other person An attack on the other person A counterattack and a defense Usually the path forward as a therapist Is to help them develop the basic skills For self-regulation To lessen their reactivity And to structure practices for listening Usually I would emphasize Ways to connect to their own needs And I would be empathic to their needs But also to their ability To acknowledge the needs of the other I wish I had said every once in a while That is really hard I feel for you That makes me feel so bad for you I said it, but I didn't really say it You know, because they were cutting each other off so quickly That I began to experience a sense of dysregulation myself And I was being sucked into the feedback loop And I lost my position as a therapist And suddenly I snapped So at the risk of cringing myself I want you to hear for yourself right now Let's listen in on the session It's just hard for me because he speaks so slowly And I feel like I'm so high energy I always just want to get the facts across What fact I see is that when he talks You are shaking next to him So he can barely keep his mind straight I know, I'm so angry I don't care the subject Yes, but you don't know You know, you collect, you collect Anything else I could be angry about Because he knows every single thing about my finances And I don't understand how we're fine Because the numbers he tells me, they don't match up If you want her to stop, you need to ask I'm sorry I believe that that is You know, you need to do it May I stop you Sure, I'm sorry Not may I stop you I know, he's so beaten down from me I feel horrible, but I'm also angry Not may I stop you What should I say I want to describe my situation myself And could you please make the effort Of managing your impatience And give me a courtesy Of explaining my own situation All that No, no, you don't borrow You have to do it Give me the courtesy Of explaining my own situation Oh, sorry The goal at this moment Is really not to help them Talk about money Or their financial situation The goal is for them to develop Some basic skills About regulating together So they don't escalate When he feels usurped That she took over Because she doesn't trust He can tell his own story And she can do a better job at it And he wants to reclaim it He has to take it Kindly, respectfully and assertively So he can draw the boundary Of I own my story And I will tell it As I see it And I ask that you Make space for me to do so And hopefully can hear it And then I will hear your reaction to it So we start with very basic work Around the boundaries The delineation, the demarcation Between the two of them It goes so fast Each one cutting the other person off I can barely keep it straight And I start to experience The same dysregulation inside myself I've been there before And it's not a good place to be Because I start to lose My therapeutic stance I begin to act with them The way they act with each other I'm inducted into the system