Differentiation: Staying Connected Without Losing Yourself (Episode #126)

Welcome to the Human Intimacy Podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with Marianne Michalis, licensed clinical social worker. Marianne, when we work with couples marriage and family therapist. That's what I'm trained as. You're a social worker, but we still work with couples. And one of the common things that occurs when we get married is we're taught to become one, equally yoked together. And you shared a statistic a few weeks ago on the podcast that it was at 69% of couples, there are certain issues that they just, they're not going to solve. Well, how does that work when we're supposed to be equally yoked, working together, and we can't agree on things? Today's topic is how to deal with these differences in a way that doesn't shut us down. And the term we're going to use is differentiation— the ability to hold on to self and recognize that I have my own identity in this relationship. So, your initial thoughts, Marianne?

My initial thoughts when I talk with my clients about this are before you came to this equation of the relationship, you were an individual entity. You had your thoughts, you had your hobbies, you had the things that made you, you, your partner had their thoughts, their hobbies, their things that made them, them. The idea that you were talking about that we sometimes get confused with is we have, we call it enmeshment and it's where we get all really mixed up and my world and your world overlaps so much that we can't figure out where the edges are of each person. So we call that enmeshment, where our lives are just so intermixed. And while we want to be one and we want to be connected, we also want to be individuals as well. And today we're going to also be talking about individuation or differentiation. We want to be in a space where we're, we're more like We still retain our individuality. And so I tell my clients, it's kind of like he used to fish before you got together and you used to do pottery. And so rather than you going and fishing with him and him doing pottery with you, he still goes and fishes and you do pottery and you get together and you have dinner and you eat the fish he caught on the plates that you made.

So Marianne, the interesting thing about differentiation is that people misunderstand even this concept. And I think that's important for us to talk about. When we are differentiated, it doesn't mean that we're completely isolated and alone, yet we still have the individual things that we've done. And when we understand that properly, especially after sexual betrayal, I see so many times that my fear, my traumas, my experience, my response to you, we're so enmeshed in each other's emotions because I'm trying to read you. I'm hypervigilant if I'm the betrayed, which makes tons of sense because I'm trying to determine whether I'm safe. But what's lost in that process is who am I? That's a concept of differentiation. Like, what are the things that matter to me? Do I stop doing the things because I'm trying to put this relationship and make sure it works? I find more often than not, Mary, and the biggest problem with undifferentiation or undifferentiated people Is that we're so entwined with each other's stuff that we can't feel our own feelings. Right.

I may have learned that I have to watch you and guide you maybe, or point things out. I may have to even control you. I might not use those words, but that might be the actions that I'm taking so that I can be safe. As long as I make sure that you are doing the things that create safety for me, then I can feel safety. Now, when I do that, I do abandon myself because there's nobody taking care of MaryAnn. Years ago, when I first started my own journey, my husband was having some health problems and I was a caretaker. I was in a caretaking position and I saw a counselor and she nailed me to the wall. And she said, meaning she said, Who's taking care of Marianne?

Hmm.

And I said, I can't, I'm taking care of my husband. I'm taking care of my kids. I've got this responsibility. I've got this responsibility. I'm involved with all these things. And she probably about 5 times, she just said, and who's taking care of Marianne? And who's taking care of Marianne? She just kept nailing me with that question. I wasn't, no one was taking care of Marianne. I was lost. And that was part of my, that was part of my coping with my betrayal as well. I didn't have the tools to cope with it. And so I was very busy and I took care of everybody else and everything else. And so that was a breaking open moment for me. I left her office and I went and sat in my car and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. And then I reached out to some friends and that was really a moving moment for me where I realized. No one else can take care of me. I'm the only one that has the power. I can go on a walk for me. Like nobody else can go on a walk for me. Nobody else can get a drink of water for me. Nobody else can do these things for me. And that was a really pivotal point for me.

And the interesting thing is you described that, Marianne, is when I ask clients about that process of like, who is taking care of you? Or saying it another way, how do you do some self-care? And when I get, I don't have time for that, or I'm just so involved in taking care of everything else. When I'm differentiated, there's my emotions, your emotions. We have used the term emotional contagion where our emotions push into each other's emotions. And they're contagious. So you feel sad, I feel sad. When I am not able to differentiate self, then your emotions and my emotions are just mixed all together. And when we are living in a state of trauma or shame, it's really hard to differentiate ourselves out to a space where I can pull myself and say to myself, I actually like the weather today. I like the mountains. I like this feeling of just being outside and I'm just here with my own thoughts and I'm here with my own feelings and I'm just learning about what I'm feeling and thinking. That kind of, can I say, self-evaluation, self-awareness makes it so we can separate or differentiate ourselves from each other's emotions. And sometimes during high conflict and betrayal and trauma relationships or acting out, What happens, Marianne, is we aren't separating ourselves out. So I'm constantly reading you and I'm trying to— are you okay? You okay? You okay? Okay. And Marianne, when there has been sexually acting out, the hypervigilance that comes in, I'm trying to monitor your behaviors, I'm losing myself and literally being sucked into your world trying to read everything about you. That is a problem with the betrayal, is I'm safety-seeking at the expense of self.

You're right. And I wanna be really clear here. As you were talking about that, I was listening. If I were a listener, I might feel a little bit confused. As we often talk about intimacy, as we often talk about healing, we often talk about attunement. And so we're talking about emotional contagion, And I might be sitting here as you described it saying like, oh, wait a second. Oh, what about attunement? Attunement is that I want to understand and feel and pick up my partner's emotions. And so I want to be really clear here. As you just described it, attunement is two people turning towards each other and connecting. They're sharing, and it's a two-party process. And when we're talking about this emotional contagion, it's more of a one-party process, and it's more of that focus on the other party where I lose myself, where I am being absorbed into their stuff. It's kind of sucked in. And as you said, contagion, it like, we think about that word contagious and we all go, oh, okay. That, that, that's something I can catch. So we, we think about, I can catch those emotions, but it's, it's me getting them from you versus us turning towards each other and we're relating and picking them up from each other. Does that make sense? Or is there anything you wanna add to that?

Yeah, I, I like the separation here. When I'm attuned, it does not mean I have to be overwhelmed by your experience. I don't have to catch your emotion. I can feel it, be with it, be present with it. Just like the difference between empathy and compassion, I can be with the experience, understand that you're having that, but it's not overwhelming my nervous system. So when I'm differentiated, I allow you to experience what you're experiencing without it becoming my personal issue. I found that many years ago when I was talking, as I have with most of my clients over the years, when we take on another person's emotions, when we literally go into those emotions, it is so easy for us to feel hopeless. Because if you're struggling with something and depression, like for example, we can easily go into those states of depression if couples mirror those things. And so couples can be equally depressed because one's depressed, the other becomes depressed. Anxious, same, similar thing. And so we cash into each other because that's what we do in relationships. We care about each other, but we can get so enmeshed in each other's lives and emotions that we don't step back and say, what's happening to me? So really the importance of this differentiated self is I maintain self. And that means I can also be with you in your suffering, compassion, but it's not overwhelming me to the point where I'm not functioning and doing the things that maybe I need for my wellbeing.

Okay, Dr. Skinner. So we've got differentiation and we're trying to talk today about becoming really an individual and owning our own emotions, our own experience. And we are talking about that. And this is a really interesting conversation because we've got empathy. And compassion and attunement, and they all kind of get mixed in this box here. And this can be really confusing.

Well, it can be, but for most simple purposes, differentiation is I understand self, I understand where you're at, and I'm not so involved in this that I lose my identity, lose self. Attunement is I'm aware of your experiences, I'm attuned to those things, Like for example, if I'm attuned to something, I may say, Marianne, it feels like there's something off today. Are you doing okay?

So you're noticing, you're picking up my vibe.

I'm picking it up, but I'm giving it a voice. I'm giving it a language rather than you're something upset. And I'm like, oh, Marianne, it's been a horrible day. I'm upset. I'm, 'cause I'm picking up on you. Or I'm like, oh, Marianne, you're, you're so upset. And I'm anxious because you're anxious. Right. That's undifferentiated because your emotions overwhelm me.

So you're living in my emotions. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And when we get into that kind of an environment or that kind of a relationship situation, we really don't know what to do with it because we literally, we feel the depth of what you're feeling and what you're experiencing as if it's our own.

I wonder, Dr. Skinner, Are there people that have a harder time with this? I think about my husband. He, when he watches movies, he feels like he's in the movie.

Yeah.

Or like he's watching the World Cup right now. And man, he is like on his feet cheering and screaming.

I think that happens with sports. I think it happens with movies. We get so into it. It's like we put ourselves into those roles.

Do we call that being enmeshed?

How about entertained maybe? Or just, right, we're in it, it's entertaining us because we see ourselves in those situations.

Maybe we're over-identified with it, maybe.

It absolutely could be. It's like somehow I can influence the outcome there. When I watch sports, there's certain teams that I watch and I remember when our team was in the NBA Finals many years ago and man, I was so into every play, every moment. And so yes, we can take on those. General point though. Related to sexual betrayal and trauma. It's really hard to separate myself out from your emotions. If I betrayed you, I'm also trying to pick up, are you upset at me today? Are you upset at me? If I'm the betrayed partner, are you being honest with me? All right, right. And we're reading each other, literally trying to say, where you at? And I actually do believe this. After sexual betrayal, we become more enmeshed or fused together not differentiated. And I believe that the healing is actually a separation of that depth where we get overwhelmed with each other. And differentiation then isn't that we don't care. In fact, it's quite the opposite. If I'm a person who wants to be in a relationship, when I'm differentiated, I'm still going to lift you, nurture you, care for you, make amends if I've offended you. When I learn to be differentiated, I can see your hurt, your anger in different ways, rather than like, Oh, this is about me. I've screwed it up and now I'm making it about me. When we are differentiated, very important point, I can take an awareness and say, I've created some suffering here. I need to be with you in this. A differentiated self can be with you in your suffering.

Okay. So Dr. Skinner, I'm hearing you talk about that. I'm thinking, if I'm listening to this, I'd be thinking, okay, great. How do I do that? They took females. And they said, we want you to smell these sweaty t-shirts.

We want you to smell these sweaty men.

And we want you to pick which one's the most attractive to you. Like smell the sweaty t-shirt and decide which sweat you like the most. What they found was fascinating. They found that the women were the mo— were attracted to like the, the ones that they chose were the people who were the most opposite of themselves.

Why?

I'd have to dive into that a little bit more off the top of my head. What I know is they said opposites, you know, that phrase opposites attract. They, they chose the people who were the most opposite of them. And so the reason why I bring this up is there is a reason why we're attracted to our partners. And it's usually because they are different from who we are, but oftentimes we're also connecting because there's something that's very different. Those are the things that are curious about them and we find fascinating. And how is that for you? And so as we're looking at, okay, how do we differentiate? I think it's important to keep in mind, I'm attracted, or my initial pull was because this is a very different person than I am. Keeping in mind, can I step back with wonderment? Awe and curiosity and see this person as not an extension of me, not a part of me, but someone to be curious about. And can I find the things that make me, me? I had a conversation earlier with Dallin Brun, who, for the Rise podcast, and we were talking about mindfulness and we were really talking about that insight that we have inside of all of us, that inner wisdom. Inner knowledge that we have and really tapping into who I am internally. So as we're talking about betrayed partners and betraying partners, when it feels like we want to enmesh so much and just be so involved with our partner, as we start to differentiate, it can feel scary. Like, but what about my partner? What if they're not there? This is a space where coming back into that, pulling into my own my own self. Who am I? What were my talents? What were my interests? What were my abilities? What were the things that made me, me stepping back into those spaces? And like, like my therapist said, who's taking care of you, Marianne?

Yeah.

These are the places that I think are really important to step back into and realize my partner has work to do. I also have work to do. And there's a phrase that we use oftentimes in recovery, especially with betrayal trauma. We often talk about staying in your lane. I cannot crawl into my partner's head and change any neural pathways.

Much as I would want to be in my partner's head that way.

And I, and I can't, I cannot change their brain. And so the more that I can step back and say, I can, I can change me. I can work on me and I can trust my partner, their support groups, their therapist, and I can love. And sometimes I might need to detach and use some boundaries. And within me, and I can celebrate my differences and celebrate the things that I love and appreciate about my partner while I also celebrate that uniqueness that makes me, as I, as I find my own resilience and my own strengths. Yeah.

So Marianne, there's a question we always have to ask here. How do we differentiate? What does that even look like? Well, let's pause on just a couple terms here. Identity. Who am I? How do I see the world? What are my core values? We need to understand ourselves. So in order for us to be able to completely differentiate, we have to understand ourselves well enough. Let me give some very specific examples. If I'm the betraying partner, if I've acted out sexually, I have to ask the question, why am I trying to repair this relationship? Why am I trying to stop this unwanted sexual behavior? Without that kind of clarity You don't know your identity. You might be going along for the ride because you think, okay, well, I don't want my spouse to be upset. But that's not the answer. The answer is you need to figure out yourself well enough to say, this is why I'm not doing these behaviors. That differentiation, absolutely essential. So you have to figure out your own identity, why you're doing what you're doing. In order for you to have that identity awareness, you have to get, have more personal awareness. Like, what's happening to me? What is it that I'm seeking out when I act out? If I'm the betrayed partner, like, this experience is triggering nightmares and flashbacks. I'm not eating, I'm not sleeping. The awareness of that happening to your body— what do I do about this? Is it possible for the betrayed partner— and this is a very interesting one when I see this transition— I can't control your recovery. A differentiated statement. That's their journey. I can't control it. I can maybe influence it by saying, I— if you want a marriage with me, then these things need to happen, but that's still your choice. I can't make you stop a behavior. So awareness, identity formation, are the foundation of healthy differentiation. And may I suggest, the more differentiated I am, the more comfortable I am with my boundaries. When I'm not differentiated, I don't know where my boundaries begin and end. So a part of the recovery and the healing journey is being able to differentiate and create those boundaries so I know what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. That's where boundaries become more effective.

So I need to know what's mine and what's yours. And, and what's interesting is I'm, as, as we're having this discussion, when I am differentiated, it gives me space to have that compassion for you.

Mm-hmm.

Because I'm not so entangled with who you are.

Mm-hmm.

It allows me to step back and see you and sit with you in your pain.

Yeah. A friend of mine, he taught me this lesson. He said, and he uses a monkey, that's a metaphor that he uses. He says, whose monkey is this? If I was to change the term, whose responsibility is this? My sexuality is my responsibility. Your sexuality is your responsibility. How we as a couple deal with our sexuality is a joint discussion of how we do this as a couple and coming to a shared sexual reality. Because then what's happening there, Marianne, is we both understand it's when transparency occurs, when we are open and honest, then a differentiated couple can understand each other fully. And that's why hidden sexual behaviors and secrets are so damaging to relationships because they're secrets. And now I get this information. If I'm not differentiated, then I'm trying to carry your sexuality. I'm trying to carry what you're experiencing because it reflects on me and I can't tell anybody else. And it makes me mad that I'm carrying your secrets, your behaviors that are hurting me. A differentiated self is able to say, I've gotta let them carry this. You've got to decide how you're gonna show up in this marriage.

As we begin to wrap this up, Dr. Skinner, I just wanna add one more concept to this conversation. And that's when we sit down to do couples therapy, We actually have 3 relationships we're working on. We've got the betrayed partner, we've got the betraying partner, and the actual relationship that we're working on is actually the relationship between the two.

That's right.

And so, you know, the two individuals do their individual therapy, they do their individual work, but as a couples therapist, we're actually working with the relationship that exists between two people, which isn't something that we can touch. It doesn't speak, but when those two individuals are functioning as individuals, they can look and say, okay, this relationship that exists between the two of us, we can step back and we can look at it and say, okay, what are the problems that exist here? How do we solve them? Yes. Because the relationship is another entity. It's an extension of who we are, but it's not all of who we are because we are separate.

And when we aren't separate, when we don't have our own self-awareness and our own identity, usually what occurs there is we cross over into each other's paths and we boundary cross. And we're so unaware at times that we're doing it that we literally take on our spouse's behavior or we shame them, we blame them, we accuse them. And so, if you were more sexual, or an undifferentiated self is, I can't blame you if I'm differentiated. My sexual behaviors are my responsibility. A differentiated self knows that. But if I say, well, you didn't give me enough love, or you didn't do this and you didn't do that, and that's why I did this, I'm giving away my choice. I'm giving away my choice because I'm saying you made me.

Yeah, I'm painting myself into a prison that you have the key to.

And it just doesn't work. A differentiated self is, I'm responsible for my choices.

Right.

And that, my hope to our listeners today, if you can take anything away, is understand Your lane, your stuff, your boundaries. Understand who you are. Increase your personal awareness, your own identity. This is the kind of marriage I want. This is the kind of relationship I want. And when you act consistent with it, you're actually freer in who you're being. You don't feel confined. You don't feel like you're in prison. You understand who you are and how you're gonna show up. Final thoughts, Marianne?

My final thoughts are First of all, this is a journey. If you're here and you're finding yourself, oh, I wonder where I am. I wonder how differentiated I am or I'm not. Simple exercise. I'd love just to invite you to start with saying, what are some things that are great about me? And that might feel really uncomfortable. So maybe what are some things that are good about me? Or that people have noticed about me? What are some things about me? What are some things that I like?

Hmm.

And what are some things that I admire about my spouse or partner? Just starting to notice what are our differences, that can be a starting place. And you could sit down with your spouse or partner and say, let's add to this list. Let's start noticing where I begin and end and where you begin and end. And start noticing our differences and start noticing, are there some places where we are crossing over? Where we are, for a podcast where we're talking about human intimacy and connection, what we want is beautiful, wonderful, healthy relationships where you're fully connected, but not to a place where you're drowning.

Yourself.

Right. Right.

That's right.

Yep. So thank you for taking the time to be with us today. And for this great conversation, Dr. Skinner.

And thank you. And to our listeners, please share our podcast with your friends, with others that you think would benefit from this. And if you have questions, info@humanintimacy.com. We genuinely appreciate you being a part of the Human Intimacy Podcast. Have a great week. Something surround you. It's like you're shining, you're starring.