Andrea and I just had the privilege of assisting Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt in an Imago Couples Workshop at their ranch in New Mexico. This is the second time we have done so—part of our ongoing commitment to learn at the feet of our founders and other senior members of the Imago community to raise the level of our own work with couples.
Harville said something that is not new yet struck me differently than before. He said that we know quite well by now what children need from caregivers to retain their wholeness. The jury is not out on this. There has been more than enough research. “Children need their caregivers to be consistently emotionally available.” He was clear to distinguish between constant and consistent. No parent is likely to be perfectly present all the time, nor do children require that. But they do require people who are more rather than less consistent, more rather than less attuned to their children’s needs and more rather than less responsive to those needs.
So the obvious struck me in a new way. If that is what we need as children, why would we think our need as adults would be any different? What we need from our intimate partners is consistent emotional availability and responsiveness. It’s good if they have a satisfying career. It’s good if they make a reasonable income. It’s very nice if they buy us flowers, jewelry, clothes or cars. It’s very nice if with our two incomes, we can live in a spacious house in a pleasant neighborhood. It’s also nice if they can afford the high-tech gadgets that have become the common accoutrements of modern life. It’s very nice if they have a reasonably strong IQ and can make their way in the world. But those things are not necessary to create a deep and enduring connection. Consistent emotional availability and responsiveness is the element without which relationships wither and die.
The Imago Dialogue is a process whose purpose is to help us find our way into this kind of resonance with each other and maintain it. In case you’re not familiar with it, a brief summary:
In the Imago Dialogue, one person speaks at a time. The speaker or “Sender” expresses himself without blame, shame or criticism of his partner. He tells his particular story with a particular focus on his feelings, what is moving in him emotionally at the moment. He understands that nearly any big reaction in the present is being fueled by some injury or deficit in the past, for which his partner is not responsible. His partner may have “pushed his button” but “didn’t put the button in his chest”.* He tries to deepen down into that past and feel that feeling. He sends his experience across the space we call “the between” in digestible word flows. The listener or “Receiver” mirrors back word for word what he sends. There are a number of reasons for this but I’ll touch on just two. When the Sender knows what is coming back, it helps him to be calm and own his feelings rather than be reactive and accuse or project onto his partner. Second, word for word mirroring lets him know that he is being seen and heard for the separate person that he is. The Receiver gives no interpretation but plays back the Sender’s language in a state of emotional resonance. This last point struck me very clearly as I watched two videos, for about the sixth time, of Harville and Helen Dialoguing. In one, Helen was the Sender and in the other, Harville. Their mirroring of each other was not flat or emotionally neutral. It did not come across as an exercise of the head alone…just meditatively repeating the words back with no tone. There was tone and it was actually very gentle and loving. It had emotional resonance with what was being sent.
The Receiver periodically asks, “Did I get that?” and “Is there more?” In other words, she is being completely present to her partner and demonstrating a curiosity and desire to receive his entire internal experience. When the Sender says there is no more, the Receiver gives a summary mirror of all that has been sent. This is not word for word but neither is it interpretive. Again, with emotional resonance, it sends back, “So what you’re saying is…” and selects from the Sender’s language to put together a synopsis. The Receiver then checks in with, “Is that a good summary?” so that if she misses anything that is critical to the Sender, it can be resent.
Next, the Receiver validates what she has heard. “You make sense…and what makes sense is…” When Harville does this in the first video, he says, “You make a lot of sense” with a real emphasis on the “lot of”. Again, it is not emotionally neutral. It is emotionally resonant with what Helen has said.
Finally, there is empathy which may sound like this. “Looking at you and hearing this, I see (or I imagine) you are feeling (whatever the feeling seems to be in simplest terms—sad, mad, scared, glad, surprised)…is that what you’re feeling?” The Sender responds either yes or with a different feeling, which the Receiver mirrors and then asks, “Are there any other feelings?” And finally, “Those feelings make sense.” Once again, watching Helen and Harville, I was struck by the gentleness, care and love in their words.
Andrea and I have facilitated and witnessed such Dialogues with a lot of couples and discussed them with a lot of members of the Imago community, which is quite large and comprised of many therapists and educators. But never has it been so clear as at Harville’s and Helen’s workshop this past weekend that every step of the Dialogue is about being emotionally available and responsive, which is exactly what we needed as children and what we still and will always want and need as grownups. That emotional availability calms and soothes and makes it safe for the Sender to grieve past deficits, which certainly is transformative. Mirroring and validating are more than rote intellectual exercises, although they may seem that way in the beginning as people are first learning to use them. Over time, they become an organic part of a couple’s interaction and they are full of the honey of emotional availability and responsiveness. Quite clearly, so is the empathy portion of the Dialogue. It isn’t intended to be an intellectual guess about the Sender’s feelings. It arises out of the Receiver’s profound connection throughout the process to where she can see, hear, sense and feel the emotional pitch and tone of what her partner has been sharing.
It strikes me as especially important to embrace this process as one of emotional resonance that engages all the major parts of our brain and being from beginning to end, lest we miss the critical element in all of it, which is to give our partner what they likely received in deficit as children—to be seen, gotten, heard and fully understood on an emotional level by a caregiver with an open heart and responsiveness fine-tuned to their needs, age and situation at any given moment.
In its advanced and purest form, every aspect of the Dialogue is saying implicitly, “I’m here for you. I’m putting my own stuff aside so you can really feel me feeling you and getting you as the person that you are, not as an extension of my own needs.”
Of course, this takes commitment and practice. What great undertaking doesn't? This is an endeavor that calls the heart forward step by step because of the beauty of connection that is the reward for those who gradually master it.
C 2011 Bob Kamm
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