This month marks my eleventh year as a psychotherapist, and every time I reach an anniversary or milestone, I reflect on my work, and my profession. This year, I’m reflecting on the difficulty people face when they come to counseling and start grappling with the concept of ‘differentiation.’

If you don’t know what the word ‘differentiation’ means, don’t worry. It’s not my favorite word, and not the best way to describe the concept to which it refers. Here it is in English: differentiation is the ability to draw close to people you love without giving in to the pressure they put on you to change, while at the same time not being indifferent to them. Still confusing? How about this: differentiation is, in short, taking almost nothing personally. Your partner is mad at you? Differentiation means that you are not indifferent to that, but you’re also not getting all defensive. Your parent is trying to run your life, even though you’re in your 30’s? Differentiation means that you understand your parent’s motivations, and you’re standing your ground without cutting yourself off from your meddling parent.

Here’s the thing: the more I work with people on this concept, the more I come to realize how hard it is to learn and practice it. It seems like we’re just hard-wired to take things personally and be over-involved with each other. When someone criticizes us, we naturally get defensive. It just happens, and usually within a few seconds! So there are times in my work when it feels like I’m asking fish not to swim, or birds not to fly.

But even if it feels like that, it’s actually the opposite. To be undifferentiated is a lot like being frozen, stuck, mired in the mud. It’s a fish who can’t escape to open sea and swim gracefully with her school. It’s a bird who can’t take flight in a beautiful aerodynamic pattern with his flock.

So, I’ll keep at it. I’m enjoying my work very much these days, so I’ve got at least another eleven years (or 22, or 33) to help more people take flight.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Couples therapy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.