Therapist Errors: Not Recognizing Protective Passivity

This blog post continues to focus on the initiator. Last month we looked at  recognizing a “non-Initiation.”  Remember we are discussing couples who have done very little active differentiation.

An important subtle issue that occurs in many initiations is passivity. Passivity happens as a self-protection when partners fear the vulnerability of self-exposure. They may have difficulty articulating what they desire or they may not even know. Today let’s consider a situation in which the wife is trying to initiate. She initiates a topic in which she passively insinuates that everything would be better if her husband would just go to her parent’s house for a family reunion. She uses statements like, “My sister and her family always go to these family reunions.“ She adds,  “My parents are aging and it is the right thing to do.” She goes on and on without ever directly saying why this is an issue for her or why she wants her husband to come.

This is a time when it is easy to make an error and create mischief for yourself. The wife’s request sounds easy. Why not, a family reunion at the in-laws? It is even tempting to say to her, “Will you tell your husband what you are wanting or needing from him right now?” She will gladly say, “I want you to go with me this summer”.  And her husband looks like a heel if he says no. And of course, this doesn’t make him feel warmly towards you or the therapy process.

Even worse, inadvertently you have allowed her to remain passive, to stay undefined and to pull on her husband before she activates herself.

Imagine how different it might be if you said to her, “ I am not sure what you feel about going to your parents for the reunion.” And with careful therapeutic questioning by you (and maybe even her husband), the session evolves and she says, “I feel conflicted. I want to go and I don’t want to go. I always end up depressed when I am at their house. I feel small. I do whatever they want. I lose touch with myself, with you and with our kids. I’m like putty in their hands. This year I’d like to test myself. Can I do better? Can I lean on you for support? Can I think more carefully before saying yes or no to what they want to do each day? I like joining in some of the activities, but I’d really like us to go off together some days as just our nuclear family. I’d like to depend on you (husband) for some support, and I am afraid to depend on you.”

Jumping into premature problem solving is a related error that’s easy to make. After the wife did the first Initiation, you might be tempted to ask them both, “Do you have any ideas what the solution could be?” Asking this would be way ahead of them. You would be caught in the content of the conflict and you’d be jumping way ahead of the wife’s development.

Watching the initiation has given you a window into seeing how much is unspoken and perhaps unknown by either partner. It is not your job to mediate a solution. Your job is to support their development and to encourage more openness to themselves and each other. You are a translator who helps her stretch into her internal world, to know herself better, to describe herself and eventually to hold onto herself in the relationships with those she loves.

Please share examples of similar situations where couples have been protectively passive in an attempt to initiate. These examples are not always easy to recognize. I’d also love to see questions you use to help a client verbalize his or her deeper desire.