Dr. Jessica Higgins: Welcome, Keith. So glad to have you on the show.
Dr. Keith Witt: Great to be on your show again!
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes! Those that have been consistent listeners know that Keith has been a previous guest on the show, and I’ll make sure to put those links on today’s show notes, for easy access.
Today Keith is sharing with us about how to give and receive influence with your significant other.
Dr. Keith Witt: Yes.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Help us understand what you mean by influence.
Dr. Keith Witt: We’re always influencing each other. The nature of life is to create some kind of coherence, on every level. For instance, if you walk into a room and there’s a plant in that room, the bioluminescence of that plant becomes coherent with the bioluminescence from your skin. That’s true in relationships. Right now, even though you and I can’t see each other – we’re just on audio – there are hundreds of thousands of inputs going back and forth, and you and I, our brains have been recruited to harmonize our inner subjectivity… And right now we’re influencing each other to have a good conversation, and to soothe each other, and to stay connected with each other in a way that feels good to both of us.
Human beings do that automatically, human nervous systems do it. All mammals do it, but people’s brains are so powerful and we’re so social that we do it on an order of magnitude, in more complex ways than other creatures. And that’s for good and for bad. States are amplified when people share them with each other. That’s positive states, like having good time, and laughing, and couples enjoying each other and making love, and sharing an experience… But also it’s true for negative states; couples can enter defensive states, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, that self-amplify back and forth in relational defensive patterns, that can accelerate into people getting lost in rigidity or chaos, and losing emotional contact with each other. That creates a lot of problems.
Working with couples, self-amplifying positive states and trying to change their capacity to self-amplify negative states is what working with couples is all about.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Lovely. There’s a couple terms you’re using I would love for people to just have a better sense of how you’re using them… When you say “inner subjectivity” – can you help people with that?
Dr. Keith Witt: Yeah. There’s you having your experience of Jessica right now, and anybody who’s listening, you’re having an experience of yourself, that feels separate from other people. And then you connect with another person. So you and I, as we connect, your subjectivity and my subjectivity combine, and creates a shared sense of we, of us. An integral that’s called the Lower Left Quadrant, the inner subjective dimension. And that quality of us-ness, of you and me, is unique to every single interaction, and it’s unqualifiable. You and I know what it feels to be Jessica and Keith talking, and nobody else can really understand that; they could look at, they can look at the words we’re saying, they could observe the expressions on our faces, or even if they have sensors observe our biochemistry and neurochemistry, but they wouldn’t get that qualitative sense of Jessica and Keithness. That’s our subjective connection.
Every couple has a wide variety of inner subjective connections that they have. States that they share when they’re feeling good about each other and themselves, and states that they share when they’re feeling bad about each other and themselves. Those are inner subjective states, and they’re unqualifiable. They know what it’s like, but other people can only reach for it empathically, or even join it. In therapy, what therapists do is we join that inner subjectivity, and mostly we do that unconscious to unconscious, what I call shadow-to-shadow. Everything that we’re not consciously aware of, I think is our unconscious; what neuroscientists call our adaptive unconscious.
And when we’re in connection with another person, my shadow self, my adaptive unconscious is relating to your shadow self, your adaptive unconscious, automatically. And that feels better or worse, depending upon what states we’re in, and how we’re directing our conversation.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. One of the things I’ve talked about is just how two unique people join together and it’s a unique expression of those two people. You’re not gonna have that connection with anyone else, because there’s no other two people exactly the same. Is that similar?
Dr. Keith Witt: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay. And when you’re referencing integral theory, you’re talking about Ken Wilber’s integral theory, yes? Just for people who maybe don’t know.
Dr. Keith Witt: Yes. [unintelligible 00:05:40.22] If people wanna know more about integral psychotherapy, they can get my book “Waking Up: Psychotherapy as Art, Spirituality, And Science.” It’s about integrally-informed psychotherapy… Or its companion volume, “Sessions”.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And it’s really an integration of so many different fields that are looking at human nature and the human experience in various capacities, so it’s very comprehensive.
Dr. Keith Witt: It is, that’s why I love it. Integral is really a meta-theory. It’s a scaffolding that organizes other theories, and when you do that with psychotherapy it’s really wonderful, because in this age, the 21st century, there’s an incredible amount of systems and sources of knowledge and wisdom that are being generated in broadcasts, in podcasts like this, in books and so on… And what I’ve always been fascinated with from my very earliest days in psychotherapy, back in the 1970’s, when I started studying this, in ’71, ’72, ’73 – I’m interested in how everything fits together. In that sense, I’ve generated and published eight books. You can check my books out if you wanna go on Amazon. My most recent one is Loving Completely, about relationships, and another one called Shadow Light, about shadow work.
I’ve been fascinated by the forms that these great systems take when they are integrated with each other. I find that most accomplished psychotherapists naturally do that. They have a natural healing style of their own, that is an integration of different styles. If the 20th century was about people specializing, the 21st century is about interdisciplinary understanding and intersystem understanding… And integral is the best way of putting all that stuff together that I’ve ever discovered, and that’s why it informs my writing and my psychotherapy and my teaching.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. I know when I’ve had you on the show, there’s such a richness and a depth which you’re pulling from, so I have your wisdom that you have to share.
Coming back to influence, there’s a couple other things that you’re saying about amplified states, and you’re also talking about unconscious/conscious, and also positive and negative, or what we would maybe label positive and negative, and how couples are showing up and how they perhaps are responding to each other and having influence, or attempting to have influence on one another… And also possible reactive patterns that we might not even — we get hooked into, that we’re maybe not even fully aware of. So help us if you can around what that looks like. Can you describe that a little bit more in an example?
Dr. Keith Witt: Sure. A couple comes into my office, and I go “How are you doing?” They go “Oh, we’re great!” They look at each other and they smile warmly. I get them a cup of tea or something, and they sit down. Then I go “So what do you guys wanna talk about?” She looks at him and he says “Well, he’s just never paying much positive attention. He doesn’t seem to be aware of his feelings, and he gets really critical of me.” All of a sudden, he tenses up. His face tightens. Her voice has gotten a little sharper. And he goes “There you go again, giving me a hard time.” And all of a sudden, that initial inner subjective state of shared pleasure and even attraction has been turned into a state where she’s pissed off at him and he’s pissed off at her… And they’re disconnecting. This is a common example of a couple trying to change. They start trying to change by somebody complaining about the other person.
So I look at that and I go “Okay, now my job is to help them with this.” They don’t realize that what they’re doing is they’re shifting from a state of healthy response to each other, social engagement that they came in with, into defensive states… And when a couples enters the defensive states, they’re creating a relational defensive pattern. And here’s what I mean by that – when we’re little, we begin to learn how to defend against threats. Threats are people shaming us, scaring us, separating from us… So our nervous systems learn how to protect from those things, from those threats, in a variety of primitive ways, like “I didn’t make that mistake. You did.” That’s projection. Or denial – “You lied to me. No, I didn’t.” Or scapegoating – somebody gets mad at me, so I go “Be mean to the cat”, that kind of stuff.
We learn that stuff, and those states are defensive states that keep on developing as we develop. And when they show up in our lives – they show up when we get threatened; our nervous system goes “Threat!” and then they enter that state to protect us from the threat. And those states are characterized by amplified or numbed emotions, so we get more upset or we get more numb… Distorted perspectives – we create a story about the other person being bad and us being good, that’s generally distorted. We have destructive impulses to attack or flee, because these states come from our mammalian past; when we’re threatened, we should attack or flee. And our brain stops being able to effectively self-reflect or be empathic. Because if we’re preparing to attack or flee, we have to cut ourselves off empathically from this other person who’s threatening us. So defensive states have those characteristics.
When a couple enters — when a partner gets threatened by the other, like this guy got threatened by her complaining, he entered a defensive state and all of a sudden he’s not connected. He’s trying to get away, and they’re creating a classic pursuer/distancer pattern. Virginia Satir 50 years ago said this is one of the most common patterns that she saw. One person – usually the woman, about 80% of the time – pursues, and the partner (80% of the time the guy) distances, separates, doesn’t wanna talk about it, that kind of stuff. And various therapists and writers over the years have had different names for this particular dynamic. John Gottman calls it the promoter and the resister, for instance. But it’s just a common pattern that happens.
So his state is he’s getting amplified emotions, he’s getting angry at her; he has a story about her never being satisfied, and always being critical. He has a destructive impulse to shut down and not respond. He’s not aware that she’s distressed and wants to be closer to him, and he’s not aware that he’s entered into a defensive state. [unintelligible 00:12:23.15]
She’s feeling increasingly frustrated. She’s just trying to make things better; she’s in therapy, and this is what you’re supposed to do in therapy – you’re supposed to complain about your partner.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: [laughs] Right.
Dr. Keith Witt: That’s my job, right? And as she gets more frustrated, she has a distorted story about him being clueless and “He doesn’t care”, and she has a destructive impulse “Since he’s not getting it, I think I better just give him the same message, but this time with more intensity and more vitriol. And then he’ll get it.” She doesn’t have self-awareness of that, she’s lost self-reflection, and she certainly doesn’t have empathy for how it’s really painful for him when she shifts from loving him into being critical.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. Like “He knows he’s not listening, he knows he’s ignoring me and not hearing my complaint.”
Dr. Keith Witt: :”You’re there. You’re doing this on purpose” and the other person says “What do you mean?” Every once in a while that happens; people occasionally will on purpose hurt each other, but that rarely happens. Mostly people wanna [unintelligible 00:13:20.15] And so as they do that, they’re self-amplifying that state.
Now, I just wanna do a brief foray here – and this makes sense – into complexity theory. Complexity theory was developed by Ilya Prigogine, a chemist, in the 1950’s I think, and it showed that if there’s a complex system, a system of linked parts – they’re differentiated, but they’re linked – and they’re energized from the outside and they’re arranged hierarchically, a complex system is biased to go to greater complexity if it doesn’t get lost in too much rigidity or too much chaos. This is the evolutionary impulse. It came into existence with the Big Bang, and it’s what drives evolution.
With a couple, what you see is they get distressed, and you see they’re getting more chaotic as they accelerate, but they’re also getting more rigid as they’re not receiving influence from each other to change their position – they’re hardening the position – and as they get more chaotic and more rigid, they’re getting away from complexity, which would be intimacy in the present moment.
Now, as a therapist, what I wanna do is hold them in that interface between rigidity and chaos, knowing that what they want is more complexity; they wanna turn this conflict into loving each other better, and helping them with it until there’s a transformation at that edge, into them feeling better about each other, which is a more complex state. It doesn’t look more complex, but that’s the nature of complexity. More complexity is more energy-efficient, and it looks simpler, the way an iPhone looks simpler than the computers they were using in 1960, but it’s way more complex.
So I’m seeing them go into rigidity and chaos, and it’s my job as a therapist for me to influence them, to influence each other, to go to the more complex state of transforming this conflict into more love with each other, because that’ what they both really want.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And how do you do that?
Dr. Keith Witt: Right, how do we do that? [laughter] I’d like to give a practical example… I’ll just use this couple as a practical example. First of all, the person who has studied mutual influence most rigorously is John Gottman. In his book Principia Amoris he has a series of equations that are influence functions. He likes predicting whether people are gonna break up and stay together, and so he has these influencing functions that show if people normally enter certain states of distress, that they tend to separate and cause problems and betray each other… And if they enter into states of mutual validation and care, they tend to do well. And therapy is about influencing people to shift from the negative to the positive. So how do we do that? There’s the question.
What he found is it did matter what type of person you were. You wanna be with somebody that’s like you, and you’re attracted to people that are like you, which is true statistically, but in general, what characterizes a happy couple is that mostly they have positive affect states towards each other. They’re mostly influencing each other with positive emotions.
So you can be a volatile couple that fights easily, but when you fight there’s a lot of humor. You could be a conflict-avoidant couple, that don’t like conflict, but do it when you have to. You could be a validating couple, where you’re always looking for what’s right about each other… Whatever couple you are, if you have negative emotional states that you bring to bear routinely, you’re gonna have a lot of problems, you’re gonna be miserable or you’re gonna break up… And if you bring positive emotional states, you’ll do well.
That’s very encouraging to us about love. Love can work between almost any two human beings, if they’re willing to learn how to cultivate positive affective states with each other, and regulate negative states into positive states. So how do we do that? One way we do that as therapists is that we notice them, and we have an idea about what’s happening.
For instance, when a couple like this starts fighting, I have a vision of how this couple would be if they were getting along really well. I have enough experience to know what these two people would look like loving each other well around this issue… So I’m guiding in that direction.
[00:17:58.29] I know all this stuff I’m talking about with states, and I know that people are reluctant to give up defensive states, because our brain associates those states with defense, with protection, and brains do not give up states that have to do with defense. In fact, even when it looks like we don’t go into anger states anymore, actually what’s happening neurobiologically is that we have a new habit of being that has included and transcended the old anger state. The old anger state is still there.
For instance, they taught these rats how to be scared of this one spot within a maze, because there was a bunch of electric shocks there, right? So all the rats got scared of that one spot of the maze. Then they stopped having the electric shock, and the fear of that spot got (what behaviorists call) extinguished. They weren’t scared of it anymore.
So then the neuroscientist [unintelligible 00:18:50.26] and I don’t do this because it’s pretty awful, but they took this rats and they took off their frontal cortex. They just took it off.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Ugh…
Dr. Keith Witt: I know… But then they put the rats back into the maze, and they were scared of that spot again. Now, what that said is that when we develop a defensive response, it goes into our…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Amygdala.
Dr. Keith Witt: Yeah, which is in the limbic area of the brain. And it gets hardwired. If we wanna change that, we need to develop a new habit of being that will include and transcend that. That means it’s always there; it might never show up, but the possibility of it to show up. And this is important with couples, because if couples work through a pattern, one thing I tell them is “That pattern can still show up for you guys. If it does, I want you to remember what we’ve worked on, and then use the tools that we’ve developed to change it.”
That doesn’t mean that nothing’s changed, and it doesn’t mean that really you hate each other when that pattern shows up. It just means that that pattern was associated with protection, and your brains just don’t give up those patterns.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, it’s tracked, it’s categorized, and the survival mechanism to protect ourselves – they keep a really great record.
Dr. Keith Witt: Really great record. That saves us from feeling all messed up when an old pattern asserts itself, or an old defensive state shows up, or we get jealous, or we get envious, or we get narcissistic, or any of those things that are primitive defenses. We go “Yeah, that’s just that old state…” And rather than pathologize ourselves, which is what the 20th century psychology did to people, which is cause people to all feel messed up, because you can diagnose anybody really, if you look deep enough into the DSM-5… I’m fond of calling The Book of Woe, [unintelligible 00:20:34.15] The case is we have the capacity for all kinds of crazy behavior as human beings. In fact, we have the capacity for all the crazy behaviors. But as we grow and as we grow our unconscious (shadow) selves, our unconscious regulates those into more complex states… So before it even reaches our consciousness, it’s been regulated and we’re going with a new habit, which is some more mature habit.
With this couple I’m talking about, where she’s complaining and he’s getting pissed off and they’re getting more and more angry, they don’t realize that they’ve already regulated a lot of defensive states. For instance, this couple will never hit each other. Now, about a quarter of couples (a quarter to a third of couples) engage in some form of domestic violence. Now, that’s significant, 25% to 35%. What that means is that in certain situations their mammalian brain that has fight or flight loses its screen about physical violence, and somebody does something violent to the other person. Usually, not bad. Usually the woman initiates it, more often than the guy, but the guys are more destructive.
But this couple – that’s regulated. Those impulses don’t make it to their conscious attention, they’re not gonna do that. So what I want them to do is to learn even more complex ways, so that the impulses for emotional violence don’t make it to consciousness. Instead, they go “We need to work through this in a more loving way.”
So how do we do this? …getting back to your original question. First, recognize that arousal levels matter. If your resting pulse goes above 100, you’re beginning to enter what’s called a state of diffuse physiological arousal, where you’re beginning to lose more mature capacities. So as they begin to go back and forth, and she says “Well, you never do this”, and he goes “There you go, you’re doing that again”, and now “There you go, shutting down! Don’t shut down!” she says with a threatning tone. He goes “Don’t talk to me that way!”, with a more threatening tone – their pulses are going now to 99, 100, 101, 102, 103. They’re beginning to lose capacities for these defensive states and self-reflection.
So the first thing I do is I’ve gotta lower their arousal levels. One thing I do is I tell them to stop looking at each other, and I go “Wait a second… Look at me, you guys. Let’s all take a deep breath and do a slow exhale.” It’s one of my favorite self-regulatory techniques. So as they look at me, I’m looking at them with a certain amount of love and humor, and so mirror neurons inside each of them begin to calm them down as they’re looking into my more kind face, rather than the other person’s angry face.
As they take a deep breath and do a slow exhale, 10-13 seconds, the 10th cranial nerve, the vagus nerve, sends a message to the heart that we’re doing better, and the heart sends a soothing message back up to vagus, to the brain. The brain says “We’re a little safer”, and we begin to calm down and our face begins to soften, and our resting pulse is going down around 80-85, something like that.
Everybody who’s listening right now – take a deep breath, do a slow exhale, and just notice how you feel. That relaxes you. And how do you feel, Jessica, as you do that?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: It feels wonderful.
Dr. Keith Witt: Yeah. So I’ll do that, and lower their arousal levels. Then I’ll look at the person who needs to change first. Now, in this case I’m looking at the guy, because the guy is not engaged. She’s leaning forward, she’s wanting to engage with her complaints. What’s happening with him is he’s shutting down, he’s dissociating. He’s going to the place of “She’s being like this, and all I can do is weather the storm.”
So I’ll say “Look, I know that she’s complaining right now, and that that’s distressing, and I’m gonna help her with that… But I want you to realize that what she’s really trying to do – she wants to love better in this situation, and I know that you do, too. And I know you don’t get credit for that, and I’m giving you credit for that right now. I want you to know that this is a hard moment, but I get it that you want to get along better, and you want her to be kinder when she has something on her mind, and make a request, rather than a complaint.”
As I’m talking to him, I’m also talking to her indirectly… Because you know, she’s a smart person over there, saying “Hm, request instead of complaint…”, and stuff like that. I’ll say “Now turn over to her”, and I’ll say “You know, it’s very hard for people to hear complaints. And when you get excited, you do two or three of them at once, and then what happens with the partner over here is he shuts down and he’s not listening, and that’s very frustrating.” She goes “Yeah, it is frustrating.”
I go “So let’s take one of those and let’s turn it into a request.” You said you don’t like it that he gets cold and distant… She goes “Yeah, I don’t like that”, and starts elaborating on the complaint. “Well, wait a second…” You know, if you do couples, they tend to interrupt all the time, because these states are rapidly-accelerating states. And I say “So now let’s turn that into a request.” She’ll look at him and she’ll go “Well, I want you to be more affectionate.” He goes, “Yeah, you’re always saying that.” He’s still there, like “She’s complaining.” And I go “No, let’s make it a request for something right now. What can you ask for right now? What kind of affection you can ask for right now, that would help you feel better about him, and him feel better about you?” Now, she freezes at this moment, because her defensive state does not want to make that generous act. When we’re mad at people we wanna strike out at them, we don’t wanna be kind and generous.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Or vulnerable, and “I need/I would love/I want…”
Dr. Keith Witt: That’s right. We don’t wanna go to vulnerability when we’re mad. We feel safer trying to get engagement through attack, which is actually creating more distance, more disengagement. It goes more into chaos, or into rigidity, not into that sweet spot of inner subjectivity where we are actually getting more complex. More complexity with a couple is almost always characterized by more warmth and more love.
So she freezes, she’s a little confused by this, but I’m staying with her… “Stay with me. Make it a request, something he can do right now.” She goes “I don’t know.” I go “That’s good that you don’t know… What’s the kind of contact you guys are doing well that you like?” “I like when he hugs me.” So look him in the eye — I teach them a lot, and this is what Terry Real calls “joining with the truth.” The way he attunes to couples is by telling them things that are true about them, that gives him credibility and connects him with them. And then the next step of that in his system is that you do the trauma work, which is basically dealing with the old bad habits that you’ve developed defensively… And then you teach them how to love each other better. That’s a pretty good system; it tracks pretty well with the other systems – John Gottman’s systems, his blueprints, and the Susan Johnson system of speaking vulnerability to vulnerability… And then my Loving Completely system – it’s literally how to tend to 3-4 dimensions at once and making sure if we’re doing badly in, say, the dimension of getting back to love in conflict, that we get better at that.
So she looks at him and she’s like “Could you give me a hug right now?” Now, he’s still resistant, so I turn to him and I say “Look, I got her to turn a complaint into a request, and that’s a really good thing. And look at her face. She’s softer, right?” He goes, “Yeah…” So I offer him to come back. I go “Well, you’ve gotta reinforce that. You’ve gotta give her a biscuit here.” [unintelligible 00:28:15.02] and I go “Look, if you’re gonna say yes and you don’t say yes gladly, it ruins it. You’ve gotta go over there and be enthusiastic. Go give her a hug.” “Well, that makes sense.” He goes over there and he gives her a hug, and they’re tense. I go “So just keep doing it until you relax.”
David Schnarch wrote the Crucible approach, and Passionate Marriage…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Passionate Marriage, yes…
Dr. Keith Witt: Yeah, this is his big thing – loving (hugging) until relaxed, which weirdly he trademarked. This is the thing I hate about David Schnarch, he’s so possessive. You know, excuse me, David, but a lot of us have been doing “hugging until relaxed.” You can’t trademark “hugging until you’re relaxed”, okay? I’m sorry, I’m just [unintelligible 00:29:00.08]
Dr. Jessica Higgins: [laughs]
Dr. Keith Witt: Anyway… But his systems are good. So they do it and then they’re relaxed. I say “Well, now look in each other’s face.” And they do. Then I go “How do you feel now?” “I feel pretty close. He’s a pretty good guy.” I go “So this is what you guys need to do”, and this is one way of doing it. When you have a complaint – I’m talking to her; she’s the person who pursues, or the validator, as John Gottman calls it – turn it into a request, and only do one at a time, and request for something now. Don’t say “I want you to communicate more.” That’s a request, but it’s not now. It’s like “I’d like you to tell me how you feel now”, which is different. It’s something he can do.
And I said to him “When she does it, you’re not gonna feel like saying yes, but it’s good to say yes, and then saying yes makes you feel more generous and kind towards her, which helps her. And then you both feel better, like right now. Remember this moment.”
And then I might give her an assignment. “I’d like you to make three requests a day, something you’d like right now. And to him, “If that request doesn’t feel right, or if doesn’t violate one of your values, I want you to try to say yes, and when you say yes, try to say yes gladly.” This becomes a little symbolic practice that they can do, that will help them develop a new habit of shifting from this mutually avoiding intimacy and enhancing conflict state, which looks really colorful but is actually not as complex, into the more complex, inner subjective care state, getting back to love state.
In general, with human beings, if you look at most developmental lines, what marks the development on most lines of development is people have deeper consciousness and more compassion, particular on the moral line of development, the interpersonal line, the psycho-sexual line, the self line. So I want them to go “This is what getting back to love is, and it’s better than what you were doing, these mutually-amplifying, negative, defensive states.” And they might have trouble with that.
Now, you notice how much of that last interaction that I described had to do with my unconscious and their unconscious, and their unconscious is relating each other’s unconscious… And most of that is in the right hemisphere. [unintelligible 00:31:20.08] loves talking about the right hemisphere; that’s very significant to him… And that works. I definitely will look at people’s left a lot when I’m talking to them, because I’m trying to get to their right hemisphere more than their left hemisphere.
How much of it is unconscious to unconscious… And that there’s a reciprocal relationship. Once you start going into hostility, empathy and kindness go down dramatically. But once you start going into kindness and empathy, hostility goes down dramatically. It’s very fast, and they work that way. And with couples it’s complicated, because one person can be trying to be kind, and if the other person is a little bit hostile, that’s experienced as rejecting, and they’re back in the defensive state. This is why I don’t know how many times over the last 46 years couples have said “We wanna take you home with us.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I know. They’re like “Can you just come and live with us for a little while?”
Dr. Keith Witt: Yeah, you’ve probably heard that too, right?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right.
Dr. Keith Witt: Well, because they discover that you can get them back to love, and they don’t realize that what I’m doing is I’m facilitating their own deep desire to get back to love. I’m empowering that. They’re the ones that are getting back to love. I’m the guide. They’re the people that are climbing the mountain. And there are ways to climb the mountain that work better and ways that work worse, and my job is to help them with that.
What you do in psychotherapy in general is you teach people when they’re available to be taught. In Waking Up I said that what therapy does is you relate, you teach, you inspire, you confront, you interpret, and you direct. These are all the things that you’re doing as a therapist. Sometimes people need to be inspired, sometimes they need to be related to and understood empathically, sometimes they need to be confronted… When they’re doing historical work, they need interpretations… And sometimes they’re making a big mistake and you just need to tell them “Stop that.” People go “Well, yeah, I just tell him that he’s acting just like his mother when he’s acting like that”, and I go “You can’t do that. Stop that. If you wanna piss him off, tell him he’s acting like his mother.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: [laughs] I know I’m always like “Look at me, talk to me, don’t talk to her”, like you’re saying. So I’m listening to you, Keith, and I’m like “This is so helpful.” I love how you’re describing this in such a clear, coherent way for people, and I’m also recognizing people listening are also interested in some tips for them to work with at home… And what I’m hearing you describe, and I wanna see if I’m hearing you correctly – in this example that you’re using, when you’re talking to the woman in this scenario, and her initial complaint and helping her reframe that, connect with the here and now request that may feel vulnerable, are you also tracking her (it sounds like you are) triggered or her elevated state? Because sometimes people can’t maybe access that, and you’re really helping them calm, which was the deep breath, and helping them take a moment to just try to gather themselves…
And then you’re kind of teaching them, and it almost sounds as though you’re saying “Experiment with me. Trust me. Let me be the guide here.” And not that they’re faking it until they make it, but there could be some element that they’re not 100% bought in. Would you recommend couples try this? And if so, is there like a moderate level that you would say to start working with, rather than maybe super-escalated states?
Dr. Keith Witt: Absolutely, to all that…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I know, sorry. Big question.
Dr. Keith Witt: No, that’s fine. What I recommend is you buy my book, “Loving Completely”, and read it with your partner. The reason why I called that “Loving Completely” was that, again, there are so many dimensions to a couple loving each other… And generally, what people do with their systems is they get caught up in their system and they tend to explore and explain everything through the lens of their system, which by definition blocks out other systems and other dimensions.
For instance, John Gottman’s system, which I love – John Gottman doesn’t pay a lot of attention to diet. Well, diet really matters. Physiologically, say you eat way too much sugar – that can affect your mood with your partner to the extent that it can create a lot of conflict. Esther Perel talks a lot, and she has a wonderful system, talking about the romantic connections between people, and the romantic significance of affairs, fidelity, infidelity, and so on… But she really doesn’t draw from evolutionary psychology or interpersonal neurobiology. There are a lot of drives that happen through us, that we don’t have conscious control over jealousy, sexual attraction, romantic infatuation, and so on… But we can direct those drives; they’re there, and we need to take them into account when we’re relating with each other. Mate protection is one, the sex drives, and so on.
Sue Johnson – she talks about helping people have vulnerability to vulnerability, but she’s contemptuous of people who talk about personality disorders. I’m sorry, Susan Johnson, but personality disorders have existence and they’re a big deal. A personality disorder is when somebody has a distorted perspective that is always there. They don’t really get away from it. It’s egosyntonic. “It really feels like a good idea to attack you. No, no, it really is a good idea. That’s what you need, you need to be attacked.” That characteristic is a deeper problem than somebody gets upset and they attack.
So when I wrote “Loving Completely”, I wanted to take all these things into account, in a particular kind of way, and organize them so that people can reference them in the way that they love each other and love their children… Because if parents are on different channels loving their children, it predicts divorce with 80% accuracy. It’s a really big deal to have a coherent parental strategy with your partner… And there are definitely better and worse ways to parent, and more complex and more rigid or chaotic, and it’s important to understand that if you’re gonna have kids with somebody or share kids with someone. So there’s that.
Now, let’s make it more specific. More specifically, when people get married, they make a lot of promises. Now, when I got married, I didn’t make any promises whatsoever, and neither did my wife. There were no vows, because I knew – by the time I got married, I had been a therapist for 12-14 years –Â people don’t do stuff because they promise, they do stuff because they have an intent and they do it. So when I got married, I said “My intent is to take care of my love for you every day, for the rest of my life.”
We got married decades ago – Becky and I have been together 46 years – and I’ve tried to do that every day; I’ve tried to take care of my love for her. So the first thing is to recognize that loving your partner is a responsibility that you have every single day. Your partner needs to be loved, she/he needs to be loved in your friendship, in your love affair, in your capacity to heal injuries. Those three things are the foundation of a relationship, and you can’t neglect any one of those. If you do, problems happen. So are you tending to your friendship, and your love affair, and resolving injuries into love? All those things involve us staying attuned with each other, unconscious to unconscious.
A good example of this is fidelity. A couple that have never cheated on each other don’t have cheating on each other in their universe. They see other people cheat on each other, maybe they were cheated on, or cheated on somebody in a previous relationship, but in their shared universe, in their inner subjective container of their relationship, cheating doesn’t exist. But then one person cheats. Okay, now that container is changed forever. The capacity to cheat now has entered that container, and it will never be the same. And it requires an enormous amount of healing to get back to a secure love… But even that secure love involves the possibility that one person can cheat. They’re changed forever. That’s how delicate our unconscious selves are, and how delicate the inner subjective container of the relationship is.
So if I wake up every day with the intent to take care of my love for my partner, and our friendship, our love affair and repair injuries, if I have an opportunity to cheat, I’m not gonna cheat. And 70% of affairs are from just that – opportunity. They have an opportunity, and they go for it. And they’ll describe their relationship with their husband/wife as great. “We have a great relationship, but…” Now, it’s not that great when you look at it, really… But you know, John Gottman tracked 24 steps from [unintelligible 00:40:25.24] and resentment to cheating on each other, and you know, you’re probably on one of those steps… But you know, along the way you might self-identify as having a good relationship.
So the first thing you do is you wake up and you go “I’m gonna take care of…” And how do you do that? Well, one, you do it by cultivating positives through your partner. Yeses. Newlyweds that turn towards the other person – when they wanted attention, they gave them attention, when they wanted interest, they gave them interest. When they towards their partner 86% of the time, they’re happy six years later. And couples that did that 33% of the time were divorced six years later.
So you wanna be positive to your partner. If they want attention, do your best to give it. If you’re talking to them about them, try to say something positive, and something caring. Try to be kind to them. Especially knowing how sensitive we are, if you say something and you see them contract, you say something critical or mean, apologize immediately. “Oh, I’m sorry.” And an “I’m sorry” that is true, because those apologies suck, as we all know. A real apology, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was just trying to help.” “Well, it hurt.” “Well, let me see… Is there a better way of saying that? Because I don’t wanna hurt you.” And then, you see, now we’re having a more kind conversation.
So you focus on kindness and you notice the absence of kindness, and always apologize. And most people, if I’m being unkind to you, and you go “You’re being unkind”, what I’ll do is explain to you how you’re being so f-ed up that you deserve my unkindness.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: [laughs]
Dr. Keith Witt: You know, she complains, and he goes “You’re complaining all the time. What do you want me to do? You’re never satisfied.” So what does she do then? She starts complaining harder. She goes “Yeah, I’m never satisfied because you never respond”, and they’re accelerating. So I go “Stop for just a second. You just didn’t validate the fact that he thinks you always are dissatisfied. Is that accurate?” “No, I’m satisfied sometimes.” “Well, tell him that. Sometimes I’m really happy with you.” Then he resists it, and I go “Look, didn’t that feel good?”, he says “Yeah.” “Well, tell her thank you. She made an effort to be kind and you’re still hanging on to being pissed off. She’s making an effort to me kind, you like that, so say thanks for making an effort to be kind.” So he’ll say it. He’ll say it begrudgingly, and she’ll go “You don’t mean it.” I’ll go “Is that true? Do you not mean it?” He says, “No, I like it when you make an effort.” And I’ll say “Did that feel a little better?” “Yeah…” So now we’re back again.
I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of times I’ve done something like that. I’ve done about 65,000 therapy sessions, and about a third of them was couples… So I’ve had hundreds of thousands of interactions like that with couples over the last 46 years.
So that’s just another little step towards them being more complex, and taking care of their friendship, their love affair and their capacity to heal injuries.
Now, I have another great tip for couples. One, be kind, be positive, and when you’re not kind and not positive, apologize and don’t give excuses. Say “I’m sorry”, and then try to be kind. Here’s another thing. If there’s a problem that you guys are not making progress on, go see a therapist, go see a couples counselor. Most people wait six years from when problems start to seeing a therapist, and I wanna tell everybody that’s listening to this that when you have to wait through six years of people dumping on each other to get to the issue, it’s a lot of work. When couples come in and the issue started a week ago, and they say “We got really worried [unintelligible 00:44:03.17]” I go, “God, you guys are so great!”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: [laughs] Yes.
Dr. Keith Witt: If somebody comes in and says “God, I was looking at other guys, because I’m being dissatisfied with you; our sex has been so boring recently”, I go “God, that’s so great that you’re talking about when you’re just looking! It’s so much better than after the secret affair.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right.
Dr. Keith Witt: Now, we can do it after the secret affair too, but now we have to slog through all the mess of a secret affair, or we have to slog through six years of being mean to each other, and developing bad habits in their shadow selves, in their unconscious, of enabling and allowing them to act badly, habituating the acting badly with each other… And this is one of the worst things that happens with couples – they begin to habituate the little criticism, and the little [unintelligible 00:44:52.27] and the little lacks of acknowledgment…
What I do with people is I point those things out and I say “You don’t wanna habituate to that. You wanna change that habit. You wanna help her be kind, you wanna help him be caring, and you do that by being kind.”
So if you’re now having a problem that you’re not making progress on — if you’re making progress on a problem, that’s great. Keep making progress in a relationship, and great things happen. If you’re not making progress on a problem, call a therapist, and make progress.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love it. There’s so much that you’re saying that is offering this perspective and what to focus on, what to prioritize, and your book “Loving Completely” – I highly recommend it. I’ll put a link in today’s show notes. Also, seek support if you’re fumbling. I can’t tell you how many things I spend way too long trying to teach myself, and yes, there’s something I’m learning in the process, but there’s often such a gift to be able to resource someone who knows the landscape, who can really be efficient and supportive in the facilitation, and I couldn’t agree more to not wait, or not to just think time will make it better…
Is there anything else you wanna say about today’s topic? And then I guess I’d love to turn towards how people can get in touch with your work. I wanna give you some opportunity to say anything else you wanna just wrap up with.
Dr. Keith Witt: Yeah. First of all, whoever is listening either has a relationship or doesn’t. If you don’t have a relationship, please read the first three chapters of “Loving Completely”, about how to choose people. [laughs] Just saying, okay…?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Just saying… [laughs] I talk about this on my show, that when I went through my own relationship hardship, some of my best relationship work was when I was single, and prepping, and learning, and applying, and practicing… And then how to choose a mate.
Dr. Keith Witt: Yeah, there you go. So please read at least those first chapters. The same thing is that relationships go through stages. We won’t go into them in detail, but there’s meeting each other, falling in love is romantic infatuation – it’s an altered state where we’re super-sexual and super into each other; it happens in the beginning of a lot of relationships… Not all, but we’re biologically primed to have that only last six months to a couple years, and then we enter intimate bonding, where different things happen. And then there’s a transition into parenthood, where different things happen. And then transition into middle age, and old age, and dealing with crises, where different things happen. And these all create essentially different relationships, different marriages. All these relationships, all these marriages are super-important, and in every single one of them you need to pay attention to your friendship, your love affair, and your capacity to heal injuries. There’s never a pass on waking up and attending to those things.
So people could get upset because their marriage has gotten hard. All marriages get hard at some point, and that’s fine. Just say “It’s getting hard. Let’s tend to our friendship, our love affair, and our capacity to repair injuries”, until it starts getting better. If you do that, then in the long run you’ll become one of those great relationships. And we’re a pair-bonding species, have been for five million years, and the modern capacity for pair-bonding is phenomenal; the level of intimacy and depth we can have. But it requires growth, development and self-awareness… And we get there by tending to and supporting that friendship, that love affair and that capacity to heal injuries… Because two people doing that together are supporting each other’s individual development and evolution. This is how couples grow – individuals, as they grow the couple. And that’s what’s so beautiful about intimacy, and what’s always attracted me to studying intimacy, teaching intimacy, and practicing it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Lovely. Well said. Dr. Keith Witt, how do people get in touch with what you’re doing and what you’re offering, and where to find you?
Dr. Keith Witt: You can find me on DrKeithWitt.com. That’s my website, and there’s a bazillion lectures, and you can check out my books. If you sign up for my website, which is free, for the next seven weeks you’ll get a video and some other materials about perspectives that I’ve found to be enormously useful and mind-blowing in my life, and that I wanted to share with everybody. Some of them about intimacy, some of them about individual development.
And check out my books. All eight of them – there was something in the world that I felt wasn’t being said, that needed to be said, that was wonderful to know and practice, that people could learn from. I wrote those books to provide that.
The people that have read the books, who got back to me – they’ve found them enormously useful for them, and I think you will, too. So there you go, DrKeithWitt.com, and check out my books on Amazon.com.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us today. It’s always such a gift and a pleasure.
Dr. Keith Witt: It’s fun talking with you, Jessica, and keep up the good work.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you.
Dr. Keith Witt: There’s what’s called an integral awakening happening around the world. People are waking up to how we’re all connected, and it’s more in a world-centric sense than it is in an ethno-centric sense. And people like you and me are part of that. We find people that are like-minded, and it’s like finding a member of our tribe. You and I are a member of that tribe, and a lot of people listening, I’m sure, are a member of that tribe. That tribe is changing the world for the better.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Beautiful.
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