Back in grad school I learned about the Zeigarnik effect, and I ran into the concept again when I was attending a Gottman workshop last month. You don’t have to know everything there is to know about this, but the bottom line is interesting: humans have a hard time forgetting unfinished business.

Think about a relationship you’ve had that has gone sour. This usually happens over time: you and your partner (or friend, or mother, any relationship) have little interactions over a span of months (or even years) in which you feel slighted, misunderstood, maybe even mistreated. And then you discover that you’ve been collecting these grievances and keeping them in a little bitter file in your mind, your anti-partner file, if you want to call it that. Your memory of these events may be distorted, but there’s little chance you’ll forget them because you keep rehearsing them in your mind, over and over. They may not be accurate memories, but they’re certainly powerful ones.

Meanwhile, anything neutral or good that has happened in your troubled relationship is either forgotten, or (worse) discounted and twisted into a bad memory, ready for the anti-partner file. You are suffering from the Zeigarnik effect. Until you resolve your unfinished business with the other person, you won’t be able to let go of these nasty memories.

But once you do resolve them, something happens that almost feels magical. They slide away. They become distant echoes of a bad time for which no one is responsible…or if someone is to blame, they’ve copped to it really well, so no problem! And you start collecting positive memories again. Bluma Zeigarnik studied and described this effect by working with restaurant servers: if they had taken an order but not turned it in to the kitchen, or if they had served a customer but the customer hadn’t yet paid the bill, they could remember with sharp clarity what the customer ordered. But as soon as the business was transacted—the cook had the order, the customer paid the bill—the servers had no idea what the customer ordered. The now-irrelevant information just slipped away.

Wouldn’t that feel good? If you’re nursing an old wound,* or if someone you love feels wounded by you, it might help to simply sit down, listen non-defensively to one another, and resolve the problem. After that, may not even remember what all the fuss was about!

*I need to say that some wounds run very, very deep, so this concept is not a suitable replacement for long-term relationship therapy or individual therapy when a person has been seriously harmed, abused, or betrayed. The problems I’m referring to here are in the category of everyday slights and injuries. And, I’ll also say—since it’s what I do for a living, after all—that working through small problems is also easier when you’re seeing a counselor!

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A few years ago I was working with a client who struggled with anxiety. (This is putting it mildly.) The client came into my office one day and was in the midst of an anxiety attack—and a fairly severe one at that. The client was barely able to walk, so intense were the anxiety symptoms. Fortunately for me, I was studying dialectical behavior therapy at the time, so I had just learned a set of basic self-soothing techniques. My office was just around the corner from the kitchenette, and the client was seated on my couch, so I told the client I needed to step out and would be right back.

I came back from the kitchenette with a small bucket of ice cubes. “Here,” I said to the client. “Just hold onto a few of these.” The client took three ice cubes from the bucket and began to hold them. Almost magically, the anxiety symptoms began to diminish. The client looked at me, eye to eye, and smiled. Ice was the answer.

Why? Because we experience our emotions in our bodies. That means we can regulate our emotions by making a change in our bodies, particularly a change of temperature. A writer I know will take a shower or bath when she feels stuck, and she emerges from the water with a new insight. I don’t use ice to calm myself down, but only because I prefer washing my hands and face with very hot water and soap. Another method: fill a shallow bowl with ice water and hold your face in the water for up to 30 seconds. Our bodies can’t stay anxious if they’re being asked to focus on a powerful physiological experience. Holding ice can be painful (as can the hot water), and sometimes it’s the pain that breaks the “spell” of anxiety. Other times it’s just the slight shock of coming into contact with warm or cool water.

So the next time you’re feeling stressed—and particularly if you’re having an intense experience of anxiety—try using ice or cold water to literally chill out!

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Like a lot of people I know, I don’t keep a regular journal. I used to pretend I was the journaling type—after all, I’m a therapist. Aren’t we supposed to be the kind of people who keep long and profound journals?? So I’d buy a journal in the new year, find it collecting dust months later, and feel frustrated. Now I’ve just accepted it: I don’t keep a journal. But I do do product-cloud journaling from time to time.

Product clouds look like this. They’re simply a list of things or products, organized in the rough shape of a cloud. The font size of each object in the cloud depends on the popularity or importance of the object. A product cloud of 2008 presidential candidates, for example, would have ‘Obama’ and ‘McCain’ in large font sizes (Obama would be somewhat larger than McCain), and ‘Kucinich’ much smaller. ‘Clinton’ would be nearly as large as McCain. You get the idea. And for a non-journaling person like me, this is a great way to get things off my mind and onto paper.

Normally, if I can just get all the things on my mind disgorged onto a notepad, I can think, feel, and act with clarity. I don’t need to reflect at length on my life, or my career, or my relationships. I just need to clear out all the little things going on in my head. Here’s an example of a cloud I wrote this morning (click on the image for a larger view):

You can see, then, that laundry just needs to happen tonight, and that I’ll be doing something about my checkbook and paperwork today, even if I don’t make it to the grocery store. After doing this cloud, I felt a lot more organized, and the “sluggish Monday feeling” was almost gone. (Almost. It’s still a little early in the day.)

Oh, and here’s one more rule about this journaling technique: you are free to do it whenever you like. You don’t have to do it daily, or at all. If the spirit moves you, give it a try. I say this because a lot of my clients are like I used to be: they think they’re “supposed to” do these kinds of self-help things, and the “supposed-to” obligation short-circuits the whole thing, making it just another task, another product in the cloud. Give it a try if you like, or…don’t! Either way, I wish you a non-sluggish Monday.

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Every year or so I repost this technique. Here’s the last posting, from 2008. It’s a simple way to communicate with your partner (or friend, or colleague, or parent, or pretty much anyone) and work through a tough emotional situation. In the 2008 post I listed three steps, but actually there are four, as follows:

1. Describe the situation you’re concerned about. This is the “Just-the-facts-Ma’am” step. You simply describe what happened, what you observed. For example, you tell your partner, “You came in the door, walked past me, and went into the kitchen without saying anything to me.” Be careful to stick to the facts: all of the information in this step is the kind of information that a video camera would pick up.

2. Describe your feelings, and stick to feeling words like ‘frustrated,’ ‘worried,’ ‘sad,’ or ‘upset.’ If you catch yourself saying sentences that begin with “I feel like…” or “I feel that…” you’re not expressing feelings. You’re expressing thoughts. “I feel like you don’t respect me” is a thought—a belief—but not a feeling.

3. Now it’s okay to describe your thoughts, your judgments, your story about what happened. Continuing with the above example, you would say, “When you walked past me without saying anything, I thought it meant that you were mad at me.” Your belief that your partner was mad at you led to the feeling you described in #2.

4. Finally, state your request. “I’d like to check this out with you, and if you are mad at me, I’d like to work through it with you.”

The value of this technique is that it keeps you in full ownership of your thoughts and feelings, which allows your partner to respond less defensively. It’s not your partner’s fault that you thought he was mad at you. Right or wrong, that’s your story. Using this technique, you’re letting your partner know that you’re open to the possibility that he’s not mad at you, and you’re inviting him into a conversation with you about your story. This is much more effective than simply accusing your partner of being mad at you without taking the time to take ownership of your own reactions and conclusions.

Often, when people say they have communication problems, this is the kind of thing they’re not doing. Give it a try, use your own language and turns of phrase, and be patient with yourself as you work on improving your ability to relate effectively to others.

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I recently read a great article that talks about the psychological idea that a single human being’s mind is made up of multiple ‘selves,’ and that one of these selves–the Self with a capital S, if you want to say it that way–is the Person herself, the executive, the one who stands within the person’s core essence. This Self is reflective, thoughtful, and insightful about her life experiences. This is the Self that eats right and exercises, gets her work done before playing, and pays attention to the relationships and activities of her life that are the most nourishing and life-giving for her. Except during the times when one of the lesser selves is running things.

Her Self may be in charge, let’s say, when she eats right all day. But when she comes home, feeling exhausted and frazzled, one of her lesser selves reaches for snack food, or too much wine. Then, in the morning, her Self is back in charge, and feeling frustrated. “Why did I overeat last night?!” she wonders with exasperation. Except she didn’t overeat…or at least She didn’t. It was one of her lesser selves that took over.

The article I linked to above talks about ways people can use ‘self-binding’ techniques to gain control over the lesser selves. There are several examples that probably sound familiar to you: using a buddy system when you go out so that you don’t binge-drink; identifying triggers of unwanted behavior and making a plan to respond to them; or creative ideas like giving your lesser self false information so that she can’t betray you later on (such as setting your clocks ahead ten minutes so that your chronically-late lesser self can’t make You late).

But here’s a fun one. Our friend above–the one who overeats in the evening–would go online and set up a contract with herself to eat right and reach a weight-loss goal. And here’s the interesting twist: she would commit to giving money to a charity she despises if she fails to meet her goal. If she doesn’t lose a pound a week, she gives $20 to the NRA.

I wonder if it seems odd for a nice, kind therapist like me to like this! It seems negative, and maybe weird. And maybe it is. But I think it’s also quite creative and insightful: her best Self would never, ever give money to the loathsome NRA. Not even her lesser selves would do that. But her lesser selves betray her best interests in all kinds of other ways, and this is a way to say to them, “Your needs and wishes are not my needs and wishes. You do not live how I want to live. And I’m willing to put money where my mouth is.” It’s a powerful way to take command of one’s life, particularly if you approach it creatively, with positive energy and a thoughtful attitude.

Oh–and here’s a link to a website that talks about this in a different–and much more nuanced–way. This approach–Internal Family Systems therapy, by Richard Schwartz–has helped a great many people. Dr. Schwartz is trained (like me) in systems therapy, and I’d be happy to talk with you about his approach.

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It’s immodest to say this, but hey, it doesn’t happen that often–I’ve been included in a book about kids called “Transforming the Difficult Child: True Stories of Triumph” (link below). I studied with one of the authors, Howard Glasser, who has a wonderful approach to working with kids in classrooms and at home.

I submitted a story about a young client I had a few years ago who helped his mom figure out how to give him timeouts in an effective way. She’d see him break a rule and say, “Pause!” and he would freeze. Then, after a few seconds, she’d say, “Play!” and the timeout was over. That’s right–timeouts can last a few seconds. They don’t have to be “one year for every year of your age,” as the old rule goes. (Who thought of that rule? No one seems to know.) The “pause/play” wording that was the five-year-old child’s idea, so not only did it work, it rewarded him for being creative.

I worked with young children–and not-so-young children–for many years, and I’ve found that many of the ideas that work for them are also useful for couples. It’s not that adults in relationships are acting just like little kids–okay, sometimes it’s like that. But the true similarity is this: most of the time, when kids are acting out, they are just not getting what they need, and it’s not “attention.” It’s love, nurturing, boundaries, clear rules, a world that makes sense and has a lot of strength and companionship and kindness in it.

These sound like the basic needs of adult couples! Here’s the book:

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It’s common to think, “We just need to communicate better.” Or, “We should just talk it out. We never talk about our problems.” But sometimes that’s not the solution. I posted earlier this year on the idea that sometimes it’s better to just give your partner a little space and time to wrestle with stuff. You may feel wronged or hurt or angry about something, or you may feel you have the answer your partner needs, but the better choice is to let your partner take care of it.

Well now I have a little more backup on this idea! Barbara Graham, on Oprah’s Web site, offers a how-to called “How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It.” This is good news for those who aren’t all that great at verbal communication, but also for those who are very good at it and don’t realize that there are other ways to connect powerfully with your partner. Check it out!

Note: the Graham article is geared toward heterosexual couples, but the concepts apply to all couples. Don’t worry if you’re both women, or you’re both men…non-verbal communication works for everybody.

(And h/t to my webmaster, who found this article.)

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I’ve blogged before on the Drama Triangle, but I think I need to say more about it.

First, a brief review: the Drama Triangle has three roles: Victim, Offender, and Rescuer. None of them is pretty. If you’re the Victim, you are feeling (and acting) weak, oppressed. You’re the “hurt party.” That means whatever strengths you have are being suppressed or hidden, and whatever responsibility you have for your own suffering is being denied, by you or by others. If you’re the Offender, you’re the one everyone thinks is responsible for the Victim’s pain. You’re probably behaving in offensive ways, and you’re responsible for that, but the system is also responsible for moving around you in such a way that you’re the Bad Guy. If you’re the Rescuer, well, that sounds like a nice role, but in fact you’re probably not helping anyone very much. You’re probably reinforcing the Victim’s belief that s/he is a Victim (which, when you think about it, is not a nice way to treat a person), and you may be the first of the three to see yourself shift roles, going from Rescuer to Offender (when you go after the Offender on the Victim’s behalf), or going from Rescuer to Victim as you get trapped in melodramatic confrontations with everybody else.

Like I said, it’s not pretty.

What’s the solution? Well, first of all, you should know that it’s common to find yourself somewhere on the Drama Triangle. I myself was on the Triangle this past weekend (don’t ask!). So if you find yourself getting sucked into the drama, it doesn’t mean you’re mentally ill. It just means you have human relationships going on in your life.

The solution is to practice stepping off the Triangle. Practice, practice, practice! Consider some of these non-drama behaviors:

–Someone tries to get you to be the Rescuer, telling you all about how he was harmed and enlisting your help to get back at the Offender. You express empathy, but you also (hard as it might be) decline to play the Rescuer role and just clearly state what you can do–and not do–for your friend.

–Someone tries to get you to be the Victim, telling you that you’ve been harmed, you’ve been wronged, and it’s time to get back at that Offender! To avoid becoming a Victim, you might want to take time by yourself–or with a friend, or with a counselor–to decide what your best course of action might be. Try not to act on your feelings without taking time to inform your feelings with reasonable thought and reflection. At some point you may want to tell the person that you’re fine, actually, and capable of handling the situation. You appreciate their concern, but you want to deal with this yourself.

–Someone harms you, verbally or otherwise, and becoming a Victim is a tempting option for you. In this case, you may need to seek justice or resolution of the offense, but it’s also good to notice how your own reaction to the offense may only make things worse for yourself. You may have been harmed, but you were not destroyed by what happened. You still have tools, options, and strengths. You still have You!

–You have been the Offender in some way. You have harmed someone. And they are taking a Victim stance, or you’re finding yourself dealing with Rescuers that the Victim enlisted to go after you. You choose to be honest about what you did, but you also set boundaries with the Rescuers (“This is between me and the other person…”) and you figure out how you want to interact with the Victim in a way that holds yourself accountable for your actions but does not lead to a situation in which you are perpetually treated as an Offender. For example, you may want to genuinely apologize to the Victim, and seek reconciliation, but if the Victim is unwilling to let go of the Victim role and work with you on reconciliation, you may choose to end the relationship.

As I’m sure you know, this gets a lot harder when the people involved are really close to you, or really important to you. The important thing to remember is this: The Drama Triangle is easy to get into, and sometimes a lot of fun (?!), but it diminishes everyone who’s involved in it, and causes a lot of pain. Even if no one thanks you for not being in it (and they usually won’t!), it’s worth it to practice stepping outside of the Triangle–for your sake, and for the sake of everyone around you.

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Recently I posted a pretty good rationale for not cleaning my basement on my day off. It was a light way to describe the concept of “Radical Acceptance.” Well, let’s say that today is the day to clean that basement, that you can’t stand it anymore, it has to get done, and you’ve decided to do it now. Good for you! I found a book (click icon below to purchase) that describes a four-step way to make this project something more, something that helps you grow and change in your life.

(True confession: I found it while reading O Magazine at the health club. A guilty pleasure!)

The “SHED” process involves four steps:
1. Separate the treasures. Look through your stuff and keep things you truly want and need, or things that have deep meaning for you.
2. Heave the trash. The rest of it is out of here! Personal note: my dad is really good at this step. I remember him saying things like, “Does it work? No? Throw it out!” or “Do we use it? No? Throw it out!” This was a good thing, because my dad had a lot of kids.
3. Embrace your identity. In this step, the author, Julie Morgenstern, encourages you to discern your present and future goals, dreams, hopes, and so forth, and to look at your “shedding” process as part of a larger effort to be your best self, and live your daily life by drawing upon the best in yourself.
4. Drive yourself forward. In this step, you become more active and directive in your re-engagement with life. You pursue the goals and dreams you discerned while shedding not just the old stuff in your basement, but also the old habits, ways of scheduling your time, and other default assumptions and behaviors you have about yourself and your life.

So if you’re looking for a step-by-step way to change your life, not just your basement, you might want to give Morgenstern’s book a try!

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Lately I’ve been reviewing the work of John Gottman, a well-known psychotherapist, researcher, and scholar who has devoted his career to helping couples. The Gottman Institute offers great workshops for couples, and Dr. Gottman has published several books on marriage, interpersonal problems, couples with children, you name it.

Here’s a link to a great page on the Gottman Institute’s Web site. It offers several basic tips for couples, and a few surprises. For example, one of the tips is, “Edit yourself. Couples who avoid saying every critical thought when discussing touchy topics are consistently the happiest.” This flies in the face of a common assumption: that if we just express everything that’s on our minds, we’ll be a healthier couple. Not so! I like Gottman’s work because he models it on his extensive observation of healthy couples, couples he calls “masters of marriage.” Gottman has found that these healthy couples usually don’t sound like they’re amped up on self-help books. They’ve figured out how to relate authentically with one another, dealing with both positive and negative emotions. But they’ve also learned that, well, I’ll say it this way: they’ve learned that discretion is often the better part of happiness!

Check out Gottman’s work. It’s a great way to learn how to improve your relationship!

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