How We Become - A Therapeutic Guide for Reflection

I’m delighted to welcome you to this first chapter of ‘How We Become – A Therapeutic Guide for Reflection’.

It is written by me, Linn Martinsen – a BACP-registered psychotherapeutic counsellor and author of Therapy Toolkit: Sixty Cards for Self-Exploration (LKP/Hachette 2021). Therapy Toolkit is a psychotherapeutic reflection tool used by tens of thousand of readers worldwide.

How We Become was originally written as a reflection guide for couples. This serialisation has been adapted and can also be used by individuals wishing to learn more about themselves and their relationships in general. This means that each chapter’s exercises have two options: One designed for couples and one designed for individuals.

Index of Chapters (current chapter in bold)

1. Preparing to take part

2. Active Listening and Effective Speaking

3. Wider Family History

4. Early Childhood Relationships

5. Emotions and Feelings

6. Loss and Grief

7. Conflict

Chapters to Come:

8. Sex and Intimacy

9. Parenting and Children

10. Hope and Change

Each Chapter Follow a Similar Structure:

• A poem to help settle into a reflective state of mind

• Therapeutic reflection on the psychology/theory around the content of the chapter

• Case Study (from chapter 3) following a fictional couple.

• Reflection exercises

• Preparation for the next chapter

Working in Sequence

The book offers a series of exercises, presented in a recommended chronological order. Working through the exercises as prescribed may at times feel slow, but in our fast-moving world with its constant promises and desires for instant rewards and gratification, it is necessary sometimes to recognise that there is no ‘quick fix’. We need to be realistic about the pace at which we can absorb things; to accept that things take time to make sense. Especially when it comes to our most profound needs and longings.

This series is designed to open not only a new depth in your relationship/s, but also a new depth within yourself. Engaging with the process with patience and an open mind can offer both comfort and relief in the long run.

Let us begin.

Change and Resistance

How do we become our adult selves? What changes us as we move through life? What do we allow to change us? And crucially: Why do we sometimes resist change?

Even when our relationships seem a struggle, even when we experience much conflict with those around us, even when we feel lonely, angry, sad, hopeless – we can resist change. We resist going inwards to look at how we can alter our own thoughts and behaviours to facilitate healthier and more loving relationships. We resist seeking support, and we resist receiving love.

If we see this resistance in someone we care about and love, like a romantic partner or friend, we might think ‘why are you so reluctant to reflect on your inner life? Why don’t you talk to me about your feelings? Why will you not receive my care and love?’ Subjected to this constant resistance, your concern may shift into frustration, and your partner, friend or family member drifts further away as you try to communicate.

Perhaps you are on the other side of this, feeling pushed to change, pushed to delve into things you don’t want to, or don’t see a need to.

If any of these sounds familiar, from either side; you are not alone.

The Wounded Self

Our wounded self will do anything to protect itself, often without us even knowing, and if we do have some awareness, we may still lack an understanding of exactly how and why it is happening.

We might go down the routes of ‘I must be a terrible person,’ or ‘there’s nothing wrong with me, there’s something wrong with everyone around me’ and we continue to seek people that hurt us, or we continue to hurt the people around us.

It may seem harsh that I mention hurting people, but it’s an important aspect of how we react and respond both to ourselves and to the world around us from our wounded self, and it is often pivotal in the stuckness we may experience.

When I say ‘hurting’ you may think overt aggression, spite, cruelty, consciously wanting to attack. This happens too of course, but often we hurt people without even knowing that we are doing it. We can be jealous, we can be passive aggressive, we can be rejecting – all because we feel inadequate, we feel attacked, we feel rejected. We hurt people because we feel hurt, and of course, when we do this, people will respond with their own hurt, with their own confusion, with their own anger, and thus, we feel we are ‘right’ to feel the way we do. We also hurt ourselves, with self-criticism, perfectionism and even self-hatred.

Letting Go of Certainty

What would happen if you let go for a moment of what you believe to be true or not and simply asked: What wounds do I possibly carry that propel me to hurt or be hurt? What is my potential shame and how was it formed? Internalised shame is the intrinsic belief of ‘being bad’ which forms when those who were supposed to care for us attack us or confuse us instead. Living in shame is a deeply painful place to exist and our mind will protect us in any way it can. Sometimes by projecting it onto others.

Resilience

Something that often gets lost or goes unmentioned in the search for understanding, compassion and growth is how remarkably resilient we are as human beings. Despair, sadness and anxiety are not proof of its absence, it simply dampens our belief in it. With appropriate support and conscious work resilience can be nurtured to provide the foundation from which we can live, grow, and experience profound love and safety.

Theory in Background, Self in Foreground

In this series we will use the core tenets of attachment theory as well as brief forays into neuroscience (relating to emotions and memory) to anchor our exploration. But understanding the theory is not the most important aspect of the book. Information is useful up to a point, but when it comes to deep psychological change, we want to access what is under the surface and on the periphery, and to meet and be met in this place with patience and compassion without having to carry and reference complex theory.

Think of it like this: when you read a book you focus on the one hand on the words on the page, but your mind and body are also working on many other levels simultaneously. You might clench your jaw when you read something that makes you angry, you might breathe shallower when something triggers fear.

This series aims to access these signals and processes to gain a better understanding of how your quiet internal world dictates how you relate to the world around you.

To help this, we need to feel reasonably safe.

The Secure Base

Imagine a young child entering a playground. They are new there, and at first, they stay close to their parent for security. Then another child approaches, and they start playing together. The child looks back at their parent now and then to make sure they are still there, and that they are keeping them safe. Perhaps a smile is given, or a gentle nod of the head. With this reassurance the child knows they are still looked after even while they turn their attention elsewhere.

This experience illustrates a secure base (the attentive and caring parent) from which to explore the world.

In therapy, therapists become a secure base, someone to hold you, contain you and guide you, helping you move compassionately towards change. So how can you find that secure base when you do this work alone, or alone as a couple? Bear in mind that, especially in conflict, or in anxious states, a lack of a secure base from childhood can be felt even more profoundly.

The following suggestions can be used with a partner or adapted for personal reflection.

Tips to Create and Facilitate a Secure Base:

• Use the same space each time you sit down to go through a chapter’s exercises. This gives a sense of continuity and holding.

• Take one minute before each exercise to tell yourself, or each other, how you are in that moment, including a feeling word and a physical sensation. Only listen when the other speaks. This gives you a chance to be aware of your own and (if applicable) each other’s state of mind before you start.

• Stay conscious of peripheral behaviours like eyerolling, tutting, turning away, ignoring certain feelings, both internally and outwardly, and use whatever you may notice in a compassionate way and not as ammunition against yourself or the other. Acknowledging that these responses exist and bringing them into awareness without judgement or aggression can be hugely supportive.

• When you sit down, repeat these words – either aloud or silently – before you start: I aim to make this a safe space.

• Should you descend into an argument or feel emotionally overwhelmed, take responsibility to pause as soon as possible. Step away and find emotional equilibrium before returning to reflect on what may have been triggered. Focus on your own feelings and behaviours.

• Stay open, stay centred, stay curious, and invite calm.

I suggest you read these tips before starting each chapters exercises as a gentle contract of the safety you wish to be held by.

I feel it important to say that the exercises in this series cannot solve all problems. If there is emotional or physical abuse in your relationship, it is recommended that you seek support from a domestic abuse charity like Refuge or the appropriate authorities. Similarly, if you are in a deep conflict or crisis situation, it is recommended that you seek outside support in person, whether via a GP, counsellor, or a charity like Mind or Samaritans.

PREPARATION FOR THE EXERCISE

Before you embark on the following exercise, whether alone or with a partner, I invite you to spend a few days or a week noticing the following:

• When does your heart beat faster?

• When do you feel calm?

• Which people or surroundings give you a sense of safety?

• Where, when, or with whom do you feel more on edge?

• How do you experience these things physically?

• What are your thoughts doing? Ruminating? Avoiding?

• Also pay attention to the signals your body sends you, and whether they propel you to connect, or stop you from doing so.

I encourage you to pause when you notice a recurring feeling/sensation and that you ask yourself this: What is familiar to me here? It could be echoes of past relationships, confusing feelings that are familiar to you but you’ve yet to understand or any other realisations/thoughts.

It can be helpful to take notes and to keep them in a book dedicated to this series.

EXERCISE FOR COUPLES

For this exercise I would like you to share with your partner what you discovered when paying attention to yourself with the questions above in mind, and if applicable, what was familiar to you.

• When your heart is beating faster, do you take a breath to settle, or does your brain increasingly scan for danger?

• When you feel calm around someone, how does it invite you to behave? What are the qualities about the person you feel calm with?

• If you ruminate, are you more or less likely to talk about your thoughts?

You don’t have to have arrived at any answer or greater understanding, for now you are simply sharing your thoughts. Be mindful of when you might be tempted to pull in your partner. Instead try to focus on yourself and your own feelings by using I feel statements, rather than you make me feel.

EXERCISE FOR INDIVIDUALS

If you are doing this series on your own, you can bring these observations into awareness when around other people. Notice how you listen, as well as how you feel heard, or not.

• When your heart is beating faster, do you take a breath to settle, or does your brain increasingly scan for danger?

• When you feel calm around someone, how does it invite you to behave? What are the qualities about the person you feel calm with?

• If you ruminate, are you more or less likely to talk about your thoughts?

For the exercise itself, I suggest you set aside some time and write down what you notice, keeping it only as observations for now.

Important: These exercises are the start of a process, and I am deliberately not asking you to make sense of them now. If you find that you do, that’s great, but if not, we will weave these observations and realisations into the further work and right now, simply noticing is an integral part of the process.

THE DEBRIEF

Each chapter’s exercise session should end with a short debrief that includes the following sequence. This sequence will be the same for all the chapters. If you are doing this on your own, you can, after finishing your notes, settle for a moment with eyes closed, then tell yourself these things out loud, or internally.

• Express, like at the beginning, one feeling word and one physical sensation.

• Provide one ‘I notice’ statement (each). The ‘I notice’ statement should be about yourself and related to what you have reflected on. This could be ‘I notice that I often shut down when I feel sad,’ or ‘I feel invigorated when I am engrossed in X.’

• One sentence on what might feel historically familiar to you, like ‘I can’t remember receiving much comfort as a child when sad,’ or ‘I remember how joyful it was to sing as a child.’

• One self-compassion statement. This can often feel tricky, especially as self-compassion carries such a loaded interpretation of ‘self-love,’ which is often lacking when it comes to the wounded parts of ourselves. But self-compassion often comes before the self-love, and it needs repeated action in order to create a new groove. One example of a self-compassion statement could be: ‘I struggle feeling sad around others, but that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to be comforted.’

• Write down how the ‘I notice’ statement possibly manifests itself in your relationship/s.

I suggest that you create a dedicated section in your notebook where you write brief notes on each of the points above after each chapters exercises.

PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER

COUPLES

Reflect, individually, on what you feel brings tension or distance into your relationship. Try to go beyond the everyday (like you never do the washing up or you’re always late) and focus instead on expectations you feel are placed on you that you feel unable or unwilling to meet – or that you meet begrudgingly – and explore why you think you feel this way. Stay aware of when you enter blame territory, and instead ask: What is my part in this scenario? It could be communication style, silence, self-blame, insecurity – any thought that instinctively comes to mind.

Remember, right now you are carrying only your own thoughts, reflections and feelings and you know little of your partners. It may feel uncomfortable to sit with this unknowing, but remember that it is now becoming conscious unknowing, and you are moving towards a shared understanding.

I recommend you write these things down, and that you do not share them with anyone yet. We will come back to these notes in a later chapter.

INDIVIDUALS

If you are doing this work on your own, you might reflect on patterns of tension or distance that show up repeatedly in your relationships – romantic, familial, or otherwise – or on expectations you feel others place on you, or that you place on yourself, and how these create pressure or conflict internally or externally.

Again, I recommend that you write these things down.

Ending Note

We are all messy. Sounds simplistic, but we are. We have confusing feelings, we make wrong choices, we cry, we get angry, we blame, we apologise, we stumble backwards and we fall forwards. And in between it all we try to make sense of things best we can so we can move through our human messiness with a greater sense of safety. That’s what Therapy Toolkit, and this series tries to provide. Not to make everything ‘clean and tidy,’ but to help you see where things are, and whether you need to keep hold of them , or if you can let them go.

Thank you for reading, and for staying. Feel free to message me, or leave a comment underneath. I’d love to connect.

Next Chapter: Active Listening and Effective Speaking