Letting go of the past

Moving forward can require looking behind, writes relationship expert Dr Clive Williams

The hardest thing about being a psychologist is seeing people unintentionally shoot themselves and their relationship in the foot.

These people with bloody feet are often bright, capable, highly successful. Like many of us, when it comes to our relationships, we operate from long-held behaviours that we think are good, normal, effective. This couldn’t be furtherer from the truth.

Sid* is a cattleman with several properties across the Downs. It’s not an easy career and like a lot of other cattle people, he would say he was born into it.

Sid comes from a family where his mother ruled the roost. Her rule was comprised of daily telling people in the family what they were doing wrong. Any pushback against this was meet with more information about their failings and how they were being selfish.

Sid’s dad, a quiet man, allowed his wife her daily assessments of everyone but mostly kept to himself. As Sid grew, he spent as little time in the house as he could and followed his quiet father in and around their properties.

In Sid’s marriage, he is mostly quiet. He doesn’t tell his wife a thing about his internal life, if he is angry, disappointed, or worried. His “normal” is that it’s pointless to tell anyone anything as you will be shot down and then ridiculed. His wife’s feels overwhelmingly lonely.

Sid thinks psychologists are wankers who charge too much, who don’t know a thing about his life and are a waste of time. He believes there is no point talking about his past or the family he grew up in. He has too much to do. He has to focus on the present. Sid is a good man but has no idea that he repeats in his marriage the same life skills he learned as a small boy, as a teenager. His “normal” is to shut down, and stay a safe distance from other people. In a very real sense, Sid learned to survive his family and these same survival skills is how he lives his life, 40 years later.

Sid has no idea that closeness can feel safe. In our first session, he sat scowling, making minimal comments about his wife and her talk of leaving. I asked if he was scared. His response was abusive. Stupid ### therapist.

I asked if he was sad. He had been diagnosed with depression and was having trouble getting out of bed. There was a small, but visible change in his body, his face. He had been caught off guard. Forty plus years of holding in every emotion he’d ever had, somehow, slipped out, just a little.

In that session, Sid let his wife briefly see his distress. She for the first time in a long time had seen that this silent, angry man she loved deeply cared about the possibility of losing her. Sid had his first experience of how a feeling, without words, could bring him and his wife a little closer.

It would take awhile for Sid to stop shooting himself and his relationship in the foot but Sid had had his first lesson in a new life skill. He promised not swear in the next session.

And there in that moment, a new way of living had just become a possibility. * not his real name