Jody and Justin, both psychotherapists, work through an emotional imbalance in their relationship: she wants marriage and expresses feelings openly, he loves her but isn't ready to commit and struggles to voice anger about the timing. A therapist uses exaggerated mirroring to expose what each partner isn't saying.
This series of videos will focus on the most classic pattern in love relationship. One partner is typically more expressive emotionally and the other partner is less or even non expressive. This will give you an opportunity to identify and balance your own patterns of communication. In part one, we begin with a short session with Jody where I provocatively mirror her deepest unexpressed emotions and those of her boyfriend. The couple then views the video together. The five sections that follow are a learning ground in how to develop balance. As a note, Jody and Justin are both psychotherapists, quite developed in their love relationship and communication practices and are clearly modeling steps towards healing imbalances in emotional expression. The references to mom in these sessions are an exaggerated caricature of who the mother really is and is a device used to support feeling aggression when otherwise it is much more difficult. They have been in a committed relationship for several years and Jody has a deep desire to be married. Justin loves her but isn't quite ready. She's feeling anger and also regret about her indirect but regular inferences to marriage. In this video she is successfully containing these feelings in an effort to balance her pattern. He's angered by not being allowed his own timing but unable to express these feelings directly. The following sessions will give you a chance to see who you identify with your own patterns and help develop communication skills and greater balance in your relationship.
So I will give you a heads up and I will take you up on your invitation and I'll further encourage you to express. Okay, how about half that? Or if it's too intense so you don't have to stick to it. I'm going to start there and then we can adjust. So my comment to you was who in the hell do you think you are to think the timing is about you? What kind of narcissistic crap is this? And that part of you that thinks it's about just you versus it being about both of you. And that for Justin, he's feeling like God, I want to just be able to feel my love deepen for the person in my life I by far love more than anybody else without every day feeling her feel like she has to struggle with her God damn feelings. I'm sick of it. It is like my mother. Who in the hell do you think you are acting like you're not like my mother? At one level you're just a sophisticated version of my mother. And don't pretend you're not. Let's be straight. So underneath underground everything, you can't relax because you want what you want. You want me to move Ahead and forward in time and in sync with you. And if Justin was freer with my aggression, I'd be saying, screw you, screw your timing. Look at your contradictions. You say you're working really hard for yourself. How, how many times a week? Two times a week? Three times a week? Not enough for me to even have a week at a time where I can drop into myself and feel myself alone without having to reflect back on your feelings. So I'm mirroring his reality. If he was simple and he was straight, that's what he'd be saying to you. And if you were simple and you were straight, I think what you'd be saying to him is two messages that are completely contradictory. One would be what you just said to me, which is after two and a half years, you don't know what you feel for me. How am I supposed to trust you if you don't know after two and a half years of what we've shared and who I am and the depth of what we have and you look around the, at these other people who don't have 10% of what we have and you don't know, how am I supposed to trust that? I'm outraged that you don't know that you love me enough to make a commitment already and you're not sensitive enough to jump right in or courageous enough to jump right in. That would be one level of what you say to them. And I want you to take it right now. And I want to dish out more. And I'm pissed at you. I hate that you're not courageous enough to do that. And you, you completely air that out as much as you want. Keep going, Keep going and going and going and going and going and don't stop until you have nothing left to say. And then the exact opposite of what's going to be and it would be, I don't have a right. I, not only do I have a right, I'm not going to give you a chance to feel where you are. And you're right, I am reflecting back on my feelings before giving you a chance to feel yourself. And I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I don't have the self control. I'm so sorry that I'm so feeling sensitive and I'm not able to feel an essential peace and I'm not able to feel a calm and I'm not able to feel a primary trust to where I can just give you space for three months or six months to be uninterrupted, just to feel yourself. Because then we could really know if it's your neurosis if I gave you enough time. And I'm so sorry for both of us. I'm so sorry. I feel such sorrow for me and for you that I can't give you that space. And I'm praying that I can. And in a sense, you say you want my strength. I'm going to give you a heads up right now. Get it together not to leak. Get it together. Trying hard isn't good enough. You are capable of really knowing. This is for you. This isn't for him only. This is at least as much for you. And if it's not, it needs to be. Sam.
