Dr. Harville Hendrix works with a couple where Mary can't accept her husband Peter's appreciation because her late mother's voice tells her she doesn't deserve love. The session shows how childhood wounds block us from receiving affection in adult relationships, and how safe moments can begin to rewire those patterns.
Chapters
They were not even a neurotic couple. They had really deep childhood needs to work through before they could even get to their relational needs. I said to him, Peter, would you just stop and let Mary tell you what she wants? And so she said, well, what I would like is when you come into the door, that you would come find me and you spin me around and hug me and tell me how grateful you are that I came home and fixed dinner. I said, do you think you could do that? And he said, well, sure, I can do that. So I said, let's enact it. But by the third time, he got it down. And she said, no, don't hug me anymore. I don't want anymore. You don't mean it. I was watching him. He did it perfectly. Yeah. His tone of voice was warm and loving. And he was apologetic for not having done it before. And I said to her, Mary, would you tell me what would happen if you accepted his appreciation now? Yeah. And she said, oh my God, my mother would tell me that you don't deserve that, and if you get that, you should be ashamed of yourself for asking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she just broke down and cried. Yeah. I can't even receive what I want because if I do, I'll disappoint my mother. And my mother's dead. How crazy is this? And well, it's not crazy. It's normal human stuff that gets triggered. Yeah. Then I said, would you be willing now to let Peter come over and really hug you? And she said, please do.
