At the same time, she watched shows and read books about the Holocaust, about crimes and cruelty, about Stalin’s purges killing millions by famine and murder, etc. She felt a deep satisfaction when someone’s evil was exposed or a crime was solved.

This isn’t unusual behavior, but it’s interesting when you look more closely. The shows and books reflected unresolved issues within her unconscious, but at a safe distance,. What if Helen looked into her own earlier “unsolved crimes” or brutal abuse? Would she fall apart, or would she break the spell of postponement which she maintained by seeking beauty (and watching gruesome shows for “entertainment”)?

The first obstacle was her own training, that she “wasn’t allowed” to acknowledge the issues, much less have feelings about them. For a child whose priority had been to belong to her group, the conditions — no matter how she felt about them — were acceptable. Could she now name them and tell the truth about how they had made her feel? She’d be breaking the rules of her group-think, what Murray Bowen called “the fused family ego mass.” Especially in childhood, that’s a life-threatening offense.

The second obstacle was her lack of self-trust. She wasn’t practiced in believing herself, valuing her own perspective. Could she start now?

When she did, the postponed feelings came out in explosions of pain and outrage. How could a family behave that way toward their own child, and not seem to mind? Was the whole world evil?

Eventually, she arrived at a new equilibrium: yes, there was real and often extreme danger, even evil, among human beings, but no, it wasn’t everywhere at all times. She would protect herself as much as possible from potential harm — and also enjoy her life.

Since Helen was now more connected to her own experiences, she felt much stronger. She also felt safer, because she could strategize about potential harm in real time instead of processing old harm at one remove in stories.

If you think this anecdote applies to you, take a look at what you’re drawn to watching or reading about, and consider bringing the subject matter home to your own life and, maybe, your own unresolved experiences. They deserve your attention.

Now he was married to Sarah, who openly expressed her fury at the pain life had brought her. Sometimes Larry yelled back. Other times, he left, either physically or emotionally, or both.

When Sarah understood how much her rages hurt Larry, she worked hard to modify them. He was grateful, but he still yelled or went away when he felt frustration building inside him. He had no other tools.

We designed a simple one-to-ten code. When he was approaching, say, level seven, he could tell Sarah, or she could ask him, where he was on the scale. This way, both of them would participate, and both would risk.

Larry risked exposing his vulnerable feelings and took a chance that Sarah would actually care and be able to stop when he told her he was getting too upset. He also risked approaching someone who was already angry: would she get even more furious?

Sarah risked trusting that Larry could respond to how she felt. If she described her anguish instead of screaming it, would he even hear her? And if she didn’t continue to express her angry feelings in the moment, would he be willing to discuss them later?

They defined this trial as an experiment, and it worked — partly because they did love each other, partly because the system (and therapy) reassured both of them that their feelings were valid and would eventually be heard, partly because they were now conscious of the feedback loop, and partly because their code simplified communication. The biggest help, they said, was that Sarah could ask Larry where he was on the scale. He didn’t have to initiate a request; she could inquire, and all he had to do was say a number.

Things started to get more calm. Every time Sarah stopped pushing when he got upset, Larry was able to trust her more. Since he was more available, she began to trust that, even if they were postponed, her feelings would be heard. They entered a better feedback loop: as she managed her rages, he was able to stay more present, which helped her feel less alone and angry, etc.

You and your partner can figure out a code to help manage whatever triggers either of you (shame, not-mattering, aggression, being misinterpreted or criticized, guilt, etc.). You can use numbers, or say “rhinoceros,” whatever communicates that you’re losing it, and you (plural) need to take a break. The goal is for both of you to be able to stay at the negotiating table. If it’s safe enough — if each of you trusts the other person will care how you feel — you can talk about anything and everything.

Without meaning to, you’re insulting yourself. You were not wrong. You studied your environment. You understood perfectly what people needed and the role you were supposed to play. Should all that focus and hard work be thrown out? To illustrate the problem, imagine a conversation between your earlier self (“Early”) and yourself today (“Now”).

(Now): I know they didn’t see you and they weren’t able to love you very much, but that didn’t mean you were worthless. You’ve misunderstood. You were a terrific kid. You’re much better than how you feel about yourself!

(Early): That’s nice, but I was there, and you weren’t. I know what I saw! You think I’m an idiot? And I don’t like you — you keep correcting me. Go away.

It’s an impasse. Both are right, but they’re talking about about different things. “Now” is talking about the result of how you were treated, your self-image. He’s arguing that your early sense of self doesn’t do you justice, which is true.

But “Early” is talking about the process. Did she get it wrong? She resoundingly did not. She worked hard to accurately respond to whatever she saw, heard, and felt. She should get an A+, not a D-, which is what “Now” is giving her.

“Now” would do better to acknowledge that “Early” was an excellent student — but the teachers weren’t good or well informed. They weren’t good in that they couldn’t think about the student’s experience of whatever they were teaching, And they weren’t well informed . . . probably because they’d been taught badly themselves and didn’t have healthy information.

It’s unlikely your parents wanted you to be insecure, angry, ashamed, or timid. They probably didn’t know how to do better. None of that relates to how well “Early” learned her lessons. She did really well. You disrespect her if you don’t acknowledge her devoted efforts. She wasn’t responsible for the content or quality of instruction. Instead of criticizing her, admire how hard she worked and how perceptively she understood what she was being taught.

Then she might trust you enough to consider your suggestion that there are wiser teachers with more accurate information who can help her feel better and navigate more successfully. You’d like her to consider studying with you.

Of what? Nothing specific. The fear was vague, generalized. All those years of helplessness had engendered not only a pervasive sense of shame but the belief that other people could see it.

She thought maybe she was reacting to Nature’s “pecking order.” The defeated male departs or shows his belly when the stronger male wins a battle for the female. We know when we’re bullied or abused: we’re not the stronger animal.

That explained her feeling inferior: she had definitely been less powerful (in that setting). But the shame was a different issue. She wondered if it might have been her abuser’s shame, which he was trying to displace onto her. Creepy, but that’s how it felt.

Then she thought, maybe that wasn’t the only psychic transfer going on: she’d “known” her family and community wouldn’t want to hear about what was happening. And in fact, when she finally told her mother, nothing changed. At an unconscious level, maybe the group condoned it? Or, at least, hoped she could carry their shame as well?.

That would explain why she felt others could see her “inferiority.” If the insult happened at a group level, why wouldn’t the group know about her wound?

Although it felt psychologically real, the whole process was magical. Her abuser did not diminish his shame by shaming her. He awoke the next day with just as much shame, and maybe more because he’d unfairly hurt her. As Anita clarified that the shame was all his, she even felt a bit sorry for him, but not enough to hold onto his shame. She gave it back to him, 100%.

The community shame was baffling — why would they blame her, not believe her, or not protect her? Were they ashamed of being vulnerable? Or … what? Anita decided the reasons didn’t matter. Her only job was to recognize that the shame was theirs, and not hers. The abuser had misbehaved; the community (specifically, her mother) had misbehaved. They should own their own shame and leave her out of it.

Being “weaker” when you’re a child is normal. No one is supposed to take advantage of you; it isn’t a fair fight. If someone bullied or abused you, they were doubly at fault: they didn’t take responsibility for their own psychic life, and they spread their disease into your healthy space. Give it back to them.

She refused to do the exercises. Her parents and her doctor were baffled and frustrated. She knew the consequences — was this teen-age rebellion? Was she lazy? It made no sense.

Except it did. Her refusal was an effort to compensate for having so little control in her life. Why did she develop a deformity? Why did she need a difficult surgery? It wasn’t fair! Tricia was brave on the outside, but on the inside she felt diminished and scared: it was all happening to her.

Refusing the exercises unconsciously reassured her that she was in charge. She wasn’t some dust mote to be blown around by the winds of fate. She made her own choices!

Usually, when people sabotage or harm themselves, they’re proving (to themselves) that they have autonomy. “I decide!” is the subliminal assertion. Something, too many somethings, for too long, have been out of their hands. The rebellious action (or inaction) signals that they’ve reclaimed ownership of their lives.

When the real issue is uncovered, it always makes sense, and it’s always something important. Once it’s brought into the light and integrated, the self-harming behavior eases.

When Tricia understood how overwhelmed she’d felt, she could face it directly, cry hard, and pull herself back together. It was some random thing that happend, not a personal failing. The rain fell on her; she did not cause or want or deserve the rain. Now the exercises became what they were: a temporary, necessary inconvenience. They were boring, and they hurt, but Tricia knew they were important and would comply.

If you’re behaving in some way that harms or sabotages you, take a closer look. Not at the behavior, but at the moment(s) in which you felt you lost control of your own life. Does the behavior help you feel in charge again? If so, try to accept that you felt temporarily helpless; you’ll no longer need the reactive behavior.

Underneath it all, like Tricia, we’re dust motes, and we’re damned lucky if the winds of fate blow somewhere else. We develop illusory gestures of control like routines, systems, preferences, and plans. These feel good and they work well, maybe for a long time, but then the wind blows sideways and our fragility is exposed. We grasp for some new symbol of control. Tricia refused to do leg exercises. The anorexic chooses not to eat.

Apparently, feeling in charge is so important that we’ll pay for it with a lifelong limp, or even death by starvation. You have to respect something that strong within, so do what you can to support a sense of autonomy, however illusory. Just don’t blame yourself when it momentarily crumbles.

Diane had been badly treated in her family and had needed a savior. Thomas had supported his mom for years while his self-centered dad mistreated her. Diane and Thomas had met and married young, long before they could know themselves as adults.

Psychologically, they were involved in two relationships, and neither was going well. Their inner children were ever-hopeful but also frustrated: Diane’s inner child never got permanently saved (Thomas was in the wrong time zone), and Thomas’s inner child could never do enough to rescue her. Meantime, their adults were continually disappointed. Well, not entirely disappointed; mostly baffled, because the kids were running the show.

Their challenge was to shift focus. If both of them learned to take care of their own inner children, (a) their respective adult selves could be in charge, and (b) they wouldn’t keep hoping some outsider could deal with their inner child’s leftover needs.

At that point, they’d be able to decide (as adults) what their relationship should look like. My guess is this particular couple would stay together, but whatever they decided — as adults — would finally be a decision they could trust.

If you’re confused by your relationship, if it seems to wobble between degrees of compatibility or enjoyment, take a look. How much is your inner child or your inner teenager trying to deal with leftover needs through the relationship? How much are you-today satisfied?

To whatever extent a younger part of you is in charge, you can start addressing those earlier needs directly. That will free you-today to make informed adult choices about your relationship.

Decades later, realizing that people didn’t like him and he wasn’t that special, he started therapy. He already knew he saw himself as his dad had seen him. That was normal — all children see themselves in the family mirrors and internalize what they see. You’re valuable for X; you shouldn’t be Y; you can expect Z from the world. The images are deeply imprinted, difficult to change. But if they’re skewed, as Drake’s were, you have to try. How?

You get some change by consciously retraining yourself. “I’m not A. I’m more B.” You practice, and things do move around inside. But it isn’t quite fair to you. The subtext is critical: “You got it wrong — fix it.” Also, you don’t really know any other way to “be.” Are you supposed to figure this out? Where’s the model? Meantime, you’re getting angry, because you’ve been doing exactly what you were taught, and now, instead of being rewarded for getting it right, you’re being blamed.

Change is deeper and friendlier if you bring your early self-image into sharp focus and respect how accurately you understood the lessons you were given. The image wasn’t accurate, but your perceptions were. Start with that — because it’s true.

Specifically, Drake thought of himself as special because that’s exactly what he was shown in his father’s mirror. The representation of him was cockeyed, but he wasn’t wrong. He had understood perfectly and learned the lessons he was taught. It wasn’t his fault if the lessons contained misinformation.

The job now wasn’t to change himself. He’d always been fine, had understood what he was taught and done it well. He deserved to update that image of himself. It was just an image — powerful, identified with his most important childhood person, but still, just an idea. He didn’t have to alter himself. He was fine, and now he would find more reliable information.

You can do the same. Specify how you looked to yourself in the family context, and why. Is the image accurate? Is it fair to you? What got left out? If it doesn’t fit well or doesn’t do you justice, alter the image. Don’t try to alter you.

Later on, you still want to run, for the same reason: the memories hurt. And also because maybe you don’t know, even as an adult, how to process whatever you went through. And also because you still fear being overwhelmed; your psyche may not know its own (adult) strength. These are compelling reasons to keep running.

If you do, though, you are cheating yourself. It’s unfair, and it’s disrespectful of you. Here’s an example.

Genny had been sexually abused by her father, and her mother had said nothing. The abuse was horrible; her mother’s silence was profound betrayal. As a result, Genny was unable to be sexually open and trusting with her husband.

Since she loved her husband and knew she should be available to him, she tried not to feel the hatred, the shame, and the horror of male sexuality.

But those were appropriate feelings — in the original setting. Trying to shut them down was dishonest and ineffective.

Instead, even though it was acutely painful, Genny stopped running, included the feelings, and redirected them where they belonged: toward the abuser and the enabler (who, alas, happened to be her parents). If you think in vectors, you see the change: first, she’s running away from someone, which means she’s running from everything; she’s just running. Then she turns around and faces that specific someone (or the memory of him). The energy she’s been feeling is directed at him. It has a focus and is no longer generalized.

With that change come two other changes. First, the struggle is limited to him and Genny. Her husband is nowhere in this picture.

The second — and maybe the most important — change is that Genny is now the primary person in her story. As long as she’s running, she’s secondary. The abuser is the active force, and she’s just a satellite, reacting. When she turns around and faces him, she’s the lead. He’s now seen through her lens of her experience and her feelings..

Since Genny has finally taken her own side, she can sympathize with what she’s been through. She also can respect how hard she’s fought to stay afloat in a hurricane of torture, cruel indifference, and shaming.

Her husband had nothing to do with that disaster. Genny had no responsibility for it — she didn’t want it or begin it. The two of them deserve to have their own relationship. None of these stances is possible until the intrusive historical contaminant is named, confronted, and put in its place. That is, until you stop running.

In childhood, Esther felt sad and lonesome because people didn’t listen to her or care how she felt. Joel was sexually abused, told no one, and still cringed inside whenever he thought about it. Both felt like bad people. Their childhood logic told them, “If it’s happened it must be right. I guess I deserved it.” That was decades ago, but each of them still felt contaminated, second-rate, and marked as inferior.

If you felt powerless in your childhood, there is one thing you need to do: remind yourself it was normal to be helpless. You didn’t do anything wrong. If you didn’t get the support and protection you needed, that wasn’t on you, so you should unload this burden that was never yours.

How? In two phases. First, define how you looked to yourself in the mirror of your grown-ups. The process will hurt, but your early sense of self will become an “it,” a contained image. For example, Esther looked barely-there; Joel looked like someone to be used and discarded.

Once the image is defined, you can evaluate its accuracy: yes, that’s how you looked in your environment, but no, those qualities weren’t inherent to you. The image was context-dependent. Esther wasn’t inherently barely-there, and Joel wasn’t inherently someone to be used and discarded.

What you have now, which you didn’t have in childhood, is the power to choose a Self-Image (literally, an image of your-self). Esther could continue to see herself in her family’s reflection — or not. They had provided one of many possible contexts, and it wasn’t attractive or respectful. She chose to identify with how she looked in other settings. She thought of it as going shopping; of course she would buy (invest in) the outfit that showed her to advantage.

You can do the same. Notice how context-dependent your childhood self-image was, and practice choosing a self-image that’s inherently more fair to you.

By the way, that’s the real revolution. Not the difference in your self-image, but the fact that you can choose. As a powerless child, you had to go with the image of you that others presented. As an adult, it’s your choice and your responsibility (toward yourself) to represent yourself (to yourself) in the fullest and most respectful way possible.

Cody felt he had to do something. He started monitoring his own behavior, steering his reactions according to his father’s. He anticipated what his dad would like and paid no attention to whatever didn’t interest his dad.

Cody did all this work because he hoped it would make his dad feel closer. I once had a therapist who used the phrase, “See, Daddy (or Mommy), I’m just like you — now you’ll love me, won’t you?” That was Cody’s plan.

Forget for the moment how sad this is, and that it didn’t work, and look instead at Cody’s attitude toward his own little self. He became strict, critical, and very judgmental. “Do more of this, don’t do that, be more whatever, that wasn’t good enough, stop needing that, Dad doesn’t like it when you do this,” etc.

The obvious purpose was to get a result: Dad would approve of him. A deeper purpose was to give Cody hope and a sense of agency: “I can do this — it’s up to me — and it’s going to work.” The hope and the illusion of control were dollops of encouragement in Cody’s long, lonely project.

Today, Cody understood that the whole endeavor had been magical, but he also appreciated its constructive intention. That story had kept him going: he’d believed he had some influence, and maybe tomorrow Dad would see ….

The unexpected and ongoing collateral damage was that he learned to bully and be mean to himself.

If you have critical voices in your head,, understand:

1. you learned this attitude toward yourself in desperation;

2. the bullying was intended to help you in some emotional project (to push you into doing it better); and

3. the intensity of your self-bullying has been directly proportional to the intensity of your distress.

Today, you have a choice. You can add another layer of self-criticism to those years of worry — you’re bad for being so mean to yourself, you should. think better thoughts, you need to change, etc. Or you can empathize with your childhood distress and suggest kindly that being mean to yourself was well intended but not effective.

When you acknowledge that you needed (and were helped by) the hope and the sense of agency that came with your plan, you can appreciate how hard you worked. You don’t deserve more criticism. You were scared and lonely, and you were doing your best, in a really good cause. You’re okay now. You can lighten up.

It sounded right, but then I wondered why both of them were so angry. Their husbands were providing their part of the family’s finances, they were faithful, they tried to do their share of household tasks, and they had adapted to their wives’ sexual limitations. Consciously, both these very smart women knew that how people take care of each other can vary widely, and their husbands were trying. Why were they furious?

They both felt “being taken care of” should provide the love they had needed in their childhoods. Neither husband had read the unconscious contract, however, much less signed it. They didn’t realize the contract really said, “I’ll treat you the way I wanted to be treated, and that’s how you’ll treat me.” I remember doing this with my mother when I was four or five, and being baffled that she didn’t adopt the model I was showing her.

The anger these two wives were feeling was much more intense than simple frustration with their husbands’ imperfections. The imperfections were irritating, but dishonoring the contract was outrageous and unjust. They were righteously furious. They were doing their part, and the husbands weren’t doing theirs!

One husband kept saying, “I always feel I’m in arrears.” The other repeatedly said, “No matter what I do, it’s never enough.” Like their wives, they felt unfairly treated, miserable, and stuck.

This kind of contract feels obviously real to only one person in the relationship. It’s magical, and developmentally it’s pretty early, before a child can understand that another person isn’t part of them. It helps keep the child going, though. “I need to be taken care of. I’ll show you [the loved one] how to do it, and then you’ll take better care of me.” It’s patient, it’s encouraging … and it’s completely useless. Except that it gives the child hope.

If you’re keeping up your end of some magical contract with a friend or with your partner (and you’re so angry … ), you should give it up. But first you have to recognize it, and then you have to acknowledge the early loneliness that led you to create it, and then you have to grieve — that you were so lonely, and that you had no realistic way to fix it.

At that point, you’ll stop expecting the other person to meet your earlier needs. You’ll be able to see — and love — them for who they are.

Look more closely at what you were believing. You assumed your performance was what made you valuable. You assumed the rest of you was irrelevant or undesirable; you didn’t even look at it. And maybe you weren’t good-enough. After all, no one was expressing interest in you on your own terms. They liked your performance.

“Oh, well,” you inferred, “that’s the way it is. I’ll keep performing.”

In childhood, performing was your best choice. You had to fit in and belong, get as much love/approval/nourishment as you could. You needed it “to grow on.”

Once you were out in the larger world, you kept doing whatever you learned. You kept performing. For an adult, that’s not the best choice, because the grown-up job is to represent yourself and take care of yourself. But maybe you don’t know who “yourself” is, because you’ve identified with a performance.

Sure, your performance was “you.” That is, you couldn’t be entertaining or smart or charming if you didn’t have the potential. But what about the rest of you? Not just the parts of you that got left out, but also the huge accumulation of feelings that have accrued to decades of “being a performer.”

What about the hurt and shame? No one has been interested in you on your own terms. The frustration that, no matter how well you performed, your audience still cared more about your performance than about you. The insecurity: “You’re only as good as your last performance.” The confusion: this isn’t working, but you don’t have another model. The loneliness. Those are all part of you, and you’re pretty sure no one wants to hear about them.

The exception has to be you-today. Even if all you do is acknowledge that you are more than your performance, you’ll have broken the pattern. Then you can get curious about who else is in there. You’re the person who chose the best adaptive performance possible and maintained it for decades. You were the strategist, the scriptwriter, the editor, the performer, and the critic. Since you began performing, you’re the person who has tolerated all that hard work and tepid audience reaction, and kept going.

You’ve always been much more than that performance. It’s your job today to recognize and appreciate the little one inside who did all that — and who has been waiting for decades to be seen.

“Because you worry all the time about your mother,” Maria said. “I know she’s a widow, and she’s had a hard life, and you have a strong sense of filial duty, but you call her every day, I have to hear about what she’s done, you often dream about her, you’re still trying to be the man she imagined, and . . . you just spend more time with her in your head than you do with us. You’re still ‘her son’ more than ‘my husband.’”

Another woman, frustrated with her marriage, said, “If we’re friends, I take care of you, and you take care of me.” She resented being an emotional support for her husband and not getting the same back. Even though he took care of her in other important ways, she felt unfairly treated. During conversation, it emerged that he’d grown up devout and therefore paid more attention to suffering acquaintances than he did to her. Christ took care of the suffering, he said; since she wasn’t suffering, he didn’t have to spend as much time on her.

There are all kinds of guiding principles in our lives, values we absorb through our families and other life experiences. They’re often unconscious — preoccupations, goals, guilts, responsibilities, and standards that influence our sense of self and serve as touchstones. They’re rules; they aren’t personal.

Yet they have a huge, invisible influence on very personal relationships. Although you don’t see them on the surface, they steer the trajectory. It’s useful to ask, how much of your partner is really available to you in your relationship? How much are you really present with a partner or with friends?

There’s no “right answer” here, just the chance to become more aware of how much you or anyone else is really participating in a relationship. Being there in time and space is not the same as being present in sprit. When you consciously use this criterion, you can become more emotionally available as a friend or partner, and you can evaluate how present other people are with you. As a result, you’ll take better care of yourself, and relationships will become more rewarding.

You keep looking for it, even into adulthood. Maybe this person or that person. Maybe professional identity, or a nicer house, or friend groups, or status, or some kind of intense experience (sensory, athletic, cultural, sexual, aesthetic, etc.)

Anything you choose can promise ‘home.’ It just never works, because it isn’t ‘home.’ It’s valid on its own terms, but it isn’t ‘home.’ What can you do?

Separate the purpose of ‘home’ from its specifics. The purpose was your survival. You survived (you are here). Even if you didn’t have enough feeling of home, you apparently did get enough of what ‘home’ was supposed to provide. It was not ideal, and not emotionally satisfying, but you’re okay and can stop searching for something you’ll never find once you’re out of childhood.

The feeling is correct: you didn’t get what you needed emotionally. But that feeling is a leftover from your life decades ago. It isn’t qualified to guide your life today.

Try paying less attention to what happened and more attention to how you coped. Think of it as reversing the background and the foreground in your narrative. During trauma, the “what happened” and the suffering loom so large (foreground), you can forget to identify with yourself. And maybe you prefer to be the background, because being “me” during trauma is not a good place.

But you definitely want to be the foreground today, so re-evaluate what you’ve been through with admiration for the fact that you made it. When you focus on how you coped, the experience shrinks and you become important.

For example, Lisa had to wear a brace for eleven years of her childhood and adolescence. She moved awkwardly, couldn’t do sports. She was the weird kid. She tried not to think about it. Today, even though she looked and moved normally, her body was still associated with shame.

When she focused on how she had coped, she cried a lot but also felt a growing respect for her own gritty determination. She had held on for years, and outlasted the indignity. That was a huge effort. It was her effort. And here she was. The brace was gone, and she went to the gym three times a week.

Now she still cringed when she thought of the brace, but mostly she felt like pumping her fist. What mattered was pride in her own triumph of determination. The worse that humiliation had been, the more she was impressed by her own perseverance.

Think about your own disturbing experiences or trauma. Maybe you went through something shaming, or an illness, or losing someone you loved, or being abused, or having your life and identity interrupted by a sudden change.

Whatever it was, focus on how YOU coped. You are the person who spent all that energy, for so long, who strategized about continuing to survive as a person (even though circumstances were treating you like a thing). This is your dignity. Claim it.

He was feeling the same way in his marriage to Fran. They were talking about divorce, “even though we love each other.” Fran was short-tempered and angry at the world because she’d recently learned she was unable to have children and had just finished treatment for breast cancer. Larry had not been the caregiver she needed. She said he was sympathetic, but he couldn’t really understand: it was her body that wasn’t working right.

Larry was feeling never-good-enough, desperate to avoid blame and his own shame. Once again, he could try to stay in the room (and fake participation) or he could escape.

What other choice did he have?

Simple communication techniques offered a familiar formula: “When you say or do X, I feel Y.” For example, he could say, “When you bark at me, I have a hard time staying present.”

“You make it sound so simple!” he said. “It is,” I told him. “It’s descriptive instead of emotionally intense. It cools the temperature, and it also gives the other person (Fran) responsibility for whatever behavior of hers is difficult for you.”

Fran was able to listen carefully, but you might have a partner who says, “Oh, you’re too sensitive! I’m not barking!” Then you could try another layer: “When you dismiss my feelings, I lose trust.”

You can try a few more rounds (if you have the patience), but ultimately, if the other person doesn’t care about their effect on you, you need to know it. So now you have two reasons for saying what you need:

— If you don’t, it isn’t safe to stay in the relationship. You’ve lost your voice; you aren’t fully represented.

— The other person’s response will tell you about their quality as a negotiating partner. Maybe you should stick around and keep trying, or maybe you’re wasting your time and emotional reserves.

Either way, it’s good for you, and for the relationship, if you speak up.

She reassured herself with a made-up story about how they would eventually notice what a good girl she was. [I call this kind of childhood story a “fairy-tale fix;” being an exceptionally good girl was Jenny’s “magic task,” and their love would be her “happy ending.”]

In her fairy-tale fix, Jenny was still on her own. Heroines aren’t part of the crowd. They’re special, and they have noble responsibilities, precisely because they operate solo. Now Jenny had two reasons to infer she was on her own: the family’s lack of attention to her, and her heroic role in the magic story.

Then came the third layer of isolation: Jenny’s magic story gave her a mildly dissociated split-screen existence. Her daily performance was normal — she went to school, did sports and other activities, ate dinner with her parents, etc. Her interior life, however, was a world of lonely feelings and the struggle to be seen and loved. While she looked like a participant in her life, she was really focused on her secret fairy-tale project. That placed her psychologically in a bubble, yet another degree more separate from her community.

All these layers of distance helped Jenny avoid feeling the original pain of her parents’ lack of interest in her. She could also avoid the shame of being unworthy (why else would they pay so little attention?). Living “on her own” propped her up: she was fine, she didn’t need other people, etc. She had the importance of being the heroine in her fairy-tale fix. And the story promised eventual love, so whatever loneliness she felt was only temporary.

In other words, the whole structure was a clever, elaborate defense, a way to fool herself into believing she could hurt less.

It was an illusion. Jenny was never on her own. We’re group animals, always in-relation-to others, which meant Jenny had two choices.

(1) She could continue isolating herself in the magic story and the pretense that she didn’t need other people, and stay lonely for the rest of her life. Or, (2) She could be honest — about her terrible loneliness in childhood and about her real need for connection.

If she chose the braver path, the agony of her loneliness would be assigned to the era in which it belonged. She could stop spending energy on defending herself against something that was over. Even better, if she stopped running, she’d be real to herself and open to enjoying her current connections to others.

What works better? Start by recognizing that, if you’re not “over” something, it’s because you couldn’t integrate it. Whatever it was has remained separate, something you ran from because it was too powerful to be included in your sense of self.

Now consider that you’re running less from “what happened” than from how you felt. You know “what happened” is over. It’s those feelings that still scare you. Take advantage of the distinction: if “what happened” is over, maybe you have enough distance to hold steady and look at those feelings. That was your experience (then). And it’s not happening now.

You’re establishing different “identities” in different time zones: You-then and You-now. While you’re running, the experience is still “real,” in your head. That’s You-then: the feelings are exploding, and you’re running.

When you turn around and face them, you might scream and cry at the sight, but you see the experience — not as a participant but as a watcher. That’s You-now, standing apart, observing a historical event. It isn’t happening now.

You may have to move slowly, admit the earlier feelings only gradually (not all at once), but with each bit of truth you reinforce your understanding that you can stop running. You may be wounded, but you’re here, and you’re okay.

This is a very different approach. “Just do it!” implies a goal of being You-now instead of You-then. What I’m suggesting here might be called “Let me help you.” It’s kinder, and much more realistic: the goal is to include your history, You-then, feelings and all.

I think of those old feelings as a little person who is determined to matter, to not be overlooked or left behind. If you try to exclude or supplant it (just move on), it will scream bloody murder. But if you include it — tragedy, terror, and injustice — it will calm down, because you’re providing what’s been missing: it is seen and heard, it matters (you matter), and it’s no longer alone.

As its pain diminishes, it demands less attention. This version of “moving on” means ending an intense stalemate that was taking up too many of your resources. If you negotiate a compassionate peace treaty, you can put those resources to happier use. Even better, all of you can participate in your life today.

The trick is to give it a name.

I worked with a family in which the mom had been badly traumatized for most of her childhood. Her husband had a difficult history, too, but he was better at categorizing and controlling his emotions. The mom was expressive, she blew up easily, and her children felt they had to manage her — a lot.

They came to therapy because various episodes on a family vacation had been so volatile that one of the children (in her twenties) was refusing to speak to the mother. The family was in an uproar.

They all knew about Mom’s trauma, so we made up a code word for it. They liked “zebra.” Whenever Mom was reacting post-traumatically, they could say, “Oh, the zebra has showed up again,” and everyone calmed down. The trauma-complex was now a “thing,” discrete, separate from their normal life. No one had to react as if it were related to them — because it wasn’t.

Mom was helped, too. Since no one blew up back at her and the phenomenon was named, she could observe her process and return to her grown-up self more quickly. Everyone knew this was her old trauma breaking through; no one blamed her; and current family relationships were no longer contaminated by these artifacts from her past.

From then on, the family’s response to her post-traumatic behavior was the best one possible, and the most healing: understanding and kindness.

I always wondered why they said that; it didn’t feel true. And it isn’t.

There is energy in words. You can say “thank you” or “I love you” or “I’m hungry” in any language, and the meaning is more or less the same. The words, the sounds, are symbols which represent the feelings. So, really, it’s the corrosive energies within the words that accumulate over time like small doses of venom.

Of course, words are only one channel. A criticism can be delivered in a look, a snort of dismissal, a turning away of the body, an emotional withdrawal. It’s always some form of attack or rejection, though, and it does damage.

Since relationships are based on trust, every criticism you give or receive erodes the relationship’s strength. What’s the alternative?

Pushing back usually doesn’t help: now both of you are being critical. Even “That hurts my feelings” may not be effective; if the person criticizing you stays frustrated, they’ll keep pushing.

Instead, try explaining to the critical person that they are slowly losing you. Even if you stay physically, you’ll go away inside. You can’t control it: your inner self will move out of range, because it isn’t safe to stay close.

Whether the critical person then tries to adjust is their responsibility. How long you’re willing to wait for them to learn or care is yours. Since relationships have many levels, there’s no “right answer,”

Whatever happens, if you at least acknowledge the destructive influence of criticism on your relationship, you stand a (non-fighting) chance of repairing the trust.