Dear Therapist,

In December, I set a daunting task for myself. I volunteered to
do a clinical demonstration at the Brief Therapy conference. I
have done many demos over the years, but the topic for this one
was about confronting negative beliefs and unrelenting
projections in couples relationships.

Why is this so challenging in a role play demonstration? When we
see clients in our practice, their negative projections have had
years to grow and take root. At the conference, I planned to do
a role play demonstration with two people who just met and would
try to recreate the dynamics of a long-term very intractable
negative projection. I worried ahead of time, "What if they
seemed artificial? What if they made it too easy?" Or worse,
"What if they acted too hostile for me to make any progress?"

Well, the couple created the dynamic of ongoing selfishness in
the husband - and away we went. I used the hour to demonstrate
as many principles as possible about disrupting chronic
negativity. It was challenging because I didn't have a chance to
get to know them or make genuine contact with them before
working to shift something so chronically destructive.

To create enduring change, these unrelenting negative beliefs or
projections must be addressed on multiple levels. For the
partner holding the negative belief, it is especially important
to create emotionally-based experiences in the room that enable
them to experience their partner in a new light.

In fact, partners hold onto their beliefs no matter what their
spouse or the therapist says. Webster's dictionary points out
part of the problem by defining a belief as "a conviction that
something is real and true - whether based on reasoning,
prejudice, authority of the source or on our experience. It is
not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof."

So Webster quickly explains why we can't talk our clients out of
their beliefs. No matter how many facts we present, people will
recall emotional experiences that oppose any rational thinking.
The effect of the emotional experience will always dominate!

Transactional analysis theory has another way to describe this
problem. It is called "contaminated thinking." It is depicted by
Adult rational thinking being taken over in part by Parental
prejudices or Child-ego state feelings and impulses. In either
instance, the rational Adult is blocked out and the Child or
Parental beliefs dominate.

To further complicate this dynamic, the Child feelings usually
stem from some essential form of self protection. For example, a
little girl with an angry, inconsistent alcoholic father might
decide that men can not be trusted. Later this belief is
transferred to her husband so she won't be hurt by him. If we
attempt to "prove" the husband is worthwhile or worthy of trust
in a particular area, the wife will find reasons why he is not
trustworthy in other areas or why if she trusts now, her trust
will be shattered in the future.

What do we do?

I believe we must help the couple create new emotional
experiences in the room. These are experiences that run counter
to the negative projection. Here are some principles to keep in
mind:

Slow the process down and facilitate a deeper inquiry into the
motives of the partner who is believed to possess the negative
trait.

Help the projecting partner claim their desire to possess some
of the disowned trait (for example, to be selfish at times). And
claim it emotionally, not rationally.

Confront and delineate the parental prejudice that may be
dominating and understand the origins of the prejudice.

In the role play, I did succeed in making progress and even
created a very tender moment when the wife "felt" her husband in
a new way and shifted her rigid self protection

If you'd like to see the session filmed in December at the Brief
Therapy Conference, you can order it at
../../../professional/projection-dvd.html
.

To make this DVD an even better learning resource, I am
including two additional handouts. One presents a twelve step
process to work with entrenched beliefs in couples therapy and
the other is a transcript of a real session with a couple with
the same dynamic.

This aspect of our work is hard. Remember that a very entrenched
negative projection will not resolve in one session. It is too
embedded in each partner's early life experience and their
experience with each other. You have to hold the thread, create
the coherence and keep going back, checking in and working with
the emotional dynamics that underlie the negative belief.

Clients with pervasive projections will try to avoid this work.
But if you persevere, your couples will change the negative
dynamic that interferes with their ability to love one another.

In closing, I'd like to share with you one of my favorite quotes
by Pericles, "What you leave behind is not what is engraved in
stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."

I like it, of course, because it recognizes the essential value
of work like ours and the interwoven nature of all
relationships. And I think of it especially when I work with
couples who stubbornly hold unrelenting negative beliefs about
their partners.

I value what you give to others,

Ellyn