Lessons in Self-Differentiation: Ground Yourself in Anxious Systems

Family Anxiety as an Electrical Current

I like to think of the family as an electrical system, where electricity represents emotional reactivity, or Bowen’s concept of anxiety. Understood this way, we can see how each family member in the family system plays a part in conducting - or taking on and passing along - this electricity throughout the electrical system. As such, when one person is emotionally activated, the rest of the system slowly becomes activated, too.

Over time, this becomes an experience of chronic anxiety - sometimes referred as chronic stress - for the different family members. Not only do family members have to deal with the normal stresses of everyday life - like working, paying bills, traffic, caring for kids, and so on - but they also have the added stress of the family system’s anxiety that they take on. Chronic anxiety can wreak havoc on the body and can lead to a number of physical symptoms and illness. It can also lead to a number of psychological symptoms and illness.

In addition to the health implications of this chronic anxiety, emotional reactivity prevents us from doing our best thinking and making the best decisions in our everyday lives. When we’re frequently emotionally reactive - because we’re taking that reactivity on from our family system - we’re more likely to make quick, reflexive moves based on our conditioned patterns and programming. We’re less likely to slow down, reflect, and make conscious moves in the world. We’re more likely to act on the anxiety of the moment rather than on our values, principles and long-term goals.

This process is especially true  when family systems with high degrees of enmeshment, where there is little sense of boundaries between family members and everyone feels responsible for everyone else’s emotional issues: 

• We take on the emotional problems and emotional reactivity of others.

• We get caught up in the family’s constant emotional drama.

• We get pulled out of our center and into the family’s electrical field.

A Ground for Electrical System

Thus, when we are doing self-differentiation work, we must learn to ground ourselves emotionally within the electrical field. When we do this, we reduce the strength and intensity of the emotional reactivity passing through the family system because we’re one less body conducting and amplifying it. Most importantly, we protect ourselves from taking on this emotional reactivity which takes us out of our center - our solid self - and leads to the consequences I mentioned above.

Grounding ourselves is no easy task. Our family of origin is where our emotional functioning was shaped and our family system often knows how to trigger our deepest emotional sensitivities. All the old survival patterns we learned as children - caretaking, defending ourselves, shrinking, deflecting - will want to come back into play. Our family will try to get us back into our old role - the one we’ve always played in their emotional drama. They will try to get a rise out of us when they’re activated as well.

Grounding Through the Body

But, we must learn a new way. We must learn to come back to ourselves and get centered in our solid self. As a long-time dancer, yogi, and now somatic educator, I’ve learned that using our mind-body connection is one of the most powerful tools we can leverage in our self-differentiation work. 

This is because the emotional system of the family is a biological and physiological experience - we are wired to each other’s nervous system - and there’s an actual felt and visible bodily experience unfolding as we interact with our family member’s and our nervous systems and bodies get activated.

If we notice that our body starts to tense and lean forward to prepare to fight back or get in the middle of a conflict between two people, we can perhaps try:

• Leaning back and intentionally relaxing the shoulders and face. 

• Taking a few deep breaths in while slowing down the breath out.

• Engage the core as we exhale and keeping the shoulders relaxed.

• Placing the palm of the hand on the belly keeping core engaged and shoulders relaxed.

The intention of this is to come back to our own body by finding a calm and stable center deep inside of ourselves, in our own body, and let others experience their own reactivity. We do not need to get caught up in their electrical field.

If we notice that we begin to shrink back and go numb because someone is projecting their reactivity onto us or a tension in the environment feels overwhelming, we can try: 

• Opening up our chest and uncrossing our arms while keeping the shoulders relaxed.

• Placing our feet firmly flat on the floor and palms down on our thighs.

• Lifting our head and chin up, while keeping the face relaxed. 

• Taking a few deep breaths in and engaging the core as you exhale slowly.

The intention here is to bring your presence back into the room while remaining centered in yourself. Sometimes we grow up in family systems where our role is to shrink while taking on everybody else’s projection. This leads to internalizing everyone’s emotional issues and a depressive personality style. We are still getting caught in the electrical field in this case. We combat this by saying - with our bodies - that we are here and we will no longer take on what’s not ours, we will no longer shrink for the system.

If we notice that our body is getting fidgety or we get really talkative, interrupt others, and try to change the subject, make jokes, or control someone’s reactions, we can try:

• Leaning back in our chair and softly closing our lips while relaxing the jaw.

• Practicing visual observation of the electricity moving through the field like a storm.

• Letting our palms relax face up in our laps while keeping shoulders relaxed.

• Taking a few deep breaths in and engaging the core as you exhale slowly.

The intention here is to lean out of the emotional field and to learn the art of surrendering. Sometimes we begin to take on the electricity and become agitated because we want to control or change the way things are happening in the system, but this is still a way of getting caught up in it. The best thing to do in these moments is to control our own response, grounding and centering ourselves inside our own body, and letting the system do what it does. 

Final Thoughts

One of the most powerful, yet subtle changes we can make in the system is changing our role within it by not getting caught up in it in the ways that we always have. When we change our role, the system inevitably has to change around us.

It does so not because we are trying to control how it functions. Simply because we are literally being different within it. We are doing the act of self-differentiation in real time in the system. And there are long-term benefits to this that are not always obvious at the moment, but are quite powerful.

Lessons in Self-Differentiation: Shift Toward an Internal Locus of Self

This is lesson one in series called Lessons in Self-Differentiation: 50 Short Essays for the Journey.

Healthy Differentiation is a Gradual Process of Moving Toward the Inner Self

In early development, looking to others for a sense of self is a normal part of our development as humans. We look to our caregivers to reflect back to us and validate what we feel, think, and believe about who we are. Slowly, overtime, our family system helps us develop a sense of who we are in the world. They help us cultivate our solid self, or the inner core of our identity that feels most authentic, stable, and secure.

But our family system can only take us as far in our identity development as they themselves have gone. For whatever reason, should we not receive the psychological and emotional resources required to develop a healthy level of self-differentiation through our family system, we will reach adult life constantly looking to the external world for a sense of self.

This can look like:

• Working hard to be liked by others. 

• Performing for attention and praise.

• Molding ourselves to fit the expectations and standards of others.

• Looking to others for how to think, behave, and present ourselves. 

• Looking to others for guidance and direction in all life choices.

• Looking to others to fix our problems, save us, and soothe our discomfort.

• Being highly sensitive to the approval and disapproval of others.

In essence, the authority of our lives will lie in the hands of others, versus within ourselves.

Making the Shift Toward the Inner Self

Thus, when one decides to commit to self-differentiation in adult life, moving inward and strengthening the inner self - what Bowen referred to as the solid self, is one of the most important parts of the process. This means shifting from an external locus of identity to an internal one. The word locus in Latin means place. 

Thus, when we shift our locus of identity, we are shifting the place in which we find our sense of self from the outside world to our inner world. We go from being defined by others and finding our sense of self through the external world, to defining ourselves and finding a home in ourselves.

This means we learn to:

• Look to ourselves for approval and validation, versus constantly looking outward and molding ourselves to be liked, approved of, praised, and validated by others.

• Start relying on and believing in ourselves to make the necessary changes to create the life we want.

• Evaluate ourselves based on our own values and principles. For example, before looking to others to see if we did well at something, we sit with ourselves first and ask, “Did I perform according to my own values and principles? Did I move toward my own long-term goals and vision?”

• Listen to ourselves first for guidance and wisdom to make important decisions for our lives.

• Work through our own emotions and problems first, versus dumping them on others or expecting others to save us, fix our problems, or soothe our discomfort.

• Trust ourselves to choose our own path and to be able navigate the positive or negative consequences of our choices.

• Live and behave according to what we truly value and care about, versus molding ourselves to look and act like in the world.

• Think things through for ourselves

• Follow our own path according to who we uniquely are instead of following the known and comfortable path that everyone has taken or expects us to take.

• Pick up the metaphorical pen to write the script of our own life instead of letting others write our script for us.

• Find a safe place and grounded center in ourselves in that we can always come back to when things in the external world get rocky.

We Are Still Inherently Relational Beings

That all being said, it’s important to understand that humans are relational beings. We learn how to be in the world in and through our relationships. They play an intractable role in our growth and development and they inevitable influence and shape our sense of self.

As we do self-differentiation work, however, the point is that the center of gravity of our sense of self shifts inward, while still allowing meaningful others to influence us. And as we do this, we become much more mindful and intentional about who is allowed to influence our sense of self as well as when and how we allow them to do so.

For example, here are some guidelines for reference:

Our inherent worth as a human is strictly derived internally.

This is a big one and one of the most enduring and important ones. No one - not one person - in the world is allowed to make us feel like we are not worthy to be alive, to have a decent quality of life, to be safe from harm, and so on. This is about our inherent worth simply by virtue of being a living being. Our inherent worth must always remain internal, never external.

Listen to ourselves and our inner guidance system first. 

Before looking to others for guidance, wisdom, and advice, hear what your inner self has to say about it first. What does your inner self want? What do you think you should do? If you had to do it completely without the input of others, what direction would your inner self tell you to take? Get clear on this first before ping-ponging around to others, have them tell you what to do and how to do it.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek counsel ever. It is humble and wise to do so. The point is to first go to ourselves and get clear on our perspective first. Again, the center of gravity is in ourselves, while still allowing others to help us move through the dance of life.

Get clear on our motivations to seek others and approach with intention. 

In addition to this, get clear on what you’re seeking from others. Sometimes our inner self knows exactly what it should do and how, but we are afraid of moving forward without the reassurance of others. We are afraid to take the risk and bet on ourselves. We are shaking in our bones and want to soothe our anxiety about things. So we reach out to others and - as Bowen would say - borrow some self from them. 

Reflect on your motivations. Understand why you are seeking other and what you’re seeking from them. Are you just looking for some attention? A few likes on your post? Validation that you’re right? Reassurance that you’ll be alright? 

Seek others with intention, as a part of a decision-making process to consider, not as the whole truth, and not as a mechanism for soothing.

Consciously and carefully choose whose reflection matters to us. 

The last part of this is to understand how to seek wise counsel from people who we genuinely trust, understand our values and long-term goals, and won’t just give us what we want to hear. This is likely a very small number of people in our lives, but their input is more valuable than the masses (though not more valuable than your own).

So, it’s important for us to learn how choose the right people to listen to and the right people to model - for the right reasons. We should choose those who have proven to be “in the arena” with us, those who have shown they’re capable of providing wise counsel and direction, those who have inner character traits and values that we respect and want to emulate and embody.

These people will not be there to soothe you, they will be there to help you in your truth-seeking process. You won’t be borrowing self from them, rather it should feel like they help you come back to your inner self and find an even greater sense of gravity inside of you. They will help us come back home to ourselves over and over again.

Wishing you strength and wisdom on your journey.

Lessons in Self-Differentiation: Persist When the System Resists

This is lesson two in series called Lessons in Self-Differentiation: 50 Short Essays for the Journey.

Self-Differentiation is Disruptive by Nature

I often get questions like:

• How do I get my family to understand my boundaries?

• How do I get them to accept my new way of being?

• How do I differentiate without upsetting them?

I’m going to be brutally honest: I do not believe that this is possible. 

Some family systems will have less of an “inflammatory response” than others depending up their degree of enmeshment with each other and average level of reactivity, but there is normally always some kind of resistance when one member begins to differentiate a self, change their functioning in the status quo of the family system, and become more mature in the context of their family system. I actually think this is innate to the process of self-differentiation.

Murray Bowen, the pioneer of Family Systems Theory, once made a video on this which I’ll link below for those of you interested. In it, he quoted, “Anytime anybody makes a significant step toward differentiating a self, the rest of the emotional system attacks. This is my notion of why it is so difficult for a person to differentiate from another person. It upsets the other and it upsets self to have the other upset.” 

Understanding the Family as a System That Seeks Equilibrium

There’s a delicate balance of roles and patterns for things to be maintained as they are. In family systems theory, we refer to this as equilibrium, which the system seeks to maintain. You could think of this also as the status quo, and every one plays a part in keeping the status quo as it is. The network of relationships, the interconnected emotional patterns, the role each person plays. Those all function to maintain the current configuration of the family system.

When one person changes their roles and patterns, because of this interconnectedness in functioning, the whole system is shaken up and must reorganize itself with new patterns and roles. Other members of the family system most likely don’t want to deal with this, they will feel threatened by it, and they will resist.

Differentiation is an act of change, change that upsets the balance of the status quo, change initiated by you and it upsets the system, most times, the people in that system don’t want things to change, they’re comfortable with how things are, even if things aren’t ideal, they’ve found a way to function through patterns in the status quo.

Theory and the Higher Self Will Guide Through Rough Waters

This is why I believe it’s so important to: 

Study the theory

“Theory tells you where you’re going. You’re much less likely to govern your course by what feels right, governed by the demands of the moment, rather than what you know to be right. So, theory is a blueprint to guide you.”

This was a seminal quote from Bowen in presenting his theory. I have found it to be true in my own journey. Studying the theory, understanding how relationship systems work, and using it to work on myself has been key. The theory will offer you a map, a compass, when the path looks unclear or the waters get stormy.

Define your own long-term vision, values, and goals

If you’re clear on what your long-term goals are for doing this work, and if you’re connected to some higher purpose or intention, you can keep coming back to it for strength and resilience. Defining what this looks like for you is key.

For me, a big part of my motivation has been to a) be physically and mentally healthier, given almost everyone in my family history struggled with chronic physical and mental illness and b) to ensure my children and future generations in my lineage have a greater chance at a healthier patterns and relationships, given almost everyone in my family history did not. My values are self-awareness, emotional balance, physical and mental health, lifelong learning and development, and authentic relationships.

Find what your motivations are. Connect to a higher purpose that endures for the long-term in life. Define your values. And let these continue to offer you strength over the journey.

Work on both dimensions of self-differentiation

That is, both the intrapsychic and the interpersonal. The intrapsychic differentiation is going to help you work on your emotional reactivity as your family members react to you changing. The interpersonal differentiation is going to help you to not take on or personalize their emotional reactivity. 

The higher awareness, more conscious, deliberate, reflective, critical thinking, and principled part of you is going to draw on theory, on your long-term goals, on a higher purpose, to navigate the stormy waters of the emotional reactivity that will happen in the process of differentiation.

Tolerate the discomfort necessary for growth

Cultivate distress tolerance, sometimes referred to as emotional stamina by other self-differentiation experts. This is a point I talk about in a whole separate lesson because I find it to be so important in an of itself. The going will get tough at times, this is a given of the process of growth.

Part of self-differentiation is learning to endure temporary emotional discomfort so that we can live according to our values, principles, and long-term goals. And that will prove to be true in self-differentiation work as the emotional systems you’re a part of resist your attempts to do something different than you’ve always done.

Wishing you strength and wisdom on your journey.

People Will React to Your Boundaries When You're Differentiating, Keep Going Anyway

One of the questions that I often get from clients and readers who are learning to set boundaries in their enmeshed family system is along the lines of:

What do I do if the other person reacts? How do I set a boundary without upsetting the other person? How do I get the other person to understand and accept my boundary?

My short answer to all of the above is often: You can’t.

If it were going to be easy, you probably wouldn’t be here learning how to set boundaries in the first place. You might not even have to set boundaries explicitly with a person who understands healthy boundaries. However, most members of enmeshed families do not understand, practice, or respect boundaries.

For whatever reason, in their lives, boundaries were never modeled for them and they never learned how to practice healthy boundaries. Therefore, boundaries are experienced as rejection. It requires a paradigm shift to understand that boundaries are actually an act of love:

• We set boundaries so that we can be healthier people, both for ourselves and for our loved ones.

• We set boundaries to honor our limits, so that we don’t overextended ourselves and then burnout and check out of the relationship.

• We set boundaries so that we don’t subject ourselves to hurt and then grow resentment for the other person, which then distances us emotionally from them.

• We set boundaries to protect our physical, emotional, and psychological integrity, as well as those of our vulnerable children.

• We set boundaries to not tolerate certain behaviors from others that we know will affect the relationship, and to show them that we expect more from them and trust that they have the capacity to be a better version of themselves in the relationship.

And yet, still, you can pretty much bet on the fact that setting boundaries with family members who have spent a lifetime crossing them will stir up some feelings. This is largely unavoidable with most families in which there is a decent degree of enmeshment. They may very well react. They likely won’t understand. They’ll probably resist and pushback on you.

And in those situations, you’ll need to…

Remember the Purpose

Oftentimes, we end up feeling really bad when people react to our boundaries. We don’t want to feel like we’re the ones causing others pain or discomfort. We don’t want to deal with their emotional reactions. We don’t want to feel like we’re bad people.

However, boundaries are a tradeoff of short-term discomfort for long-term well-being. In the short-term, it’s often going to feel uncomfortable, otherwise the boundary probably wouldn’t need to be set in the first place. But, in the long-term, boundaries can help you live by your values and principles, reach long-term goals, and create emotional, psychological and relational health.

That’s why it’s important to be clear on your reasons for setting certain boundaries. You have to understand what the long-term goal or higher purpose for that boundary is:

• Is it to prevent burnout?

• Is it to create more respectful and reciprocal relationships?

• Is it to protect you from emotional harm?

• Is is to be more deliberate in how you spend your time and energy?

When we are connected to the long-term, we can more skillfully and gracefully endure the short-term discomfort.

Empathize but remain firm in your position.

It can be tempting to cave into the guilt trip or to become convinced by the person’s attempts to talk you out of your position or rationalize why you shouldn’t be

When you set boundaries with others, it can feel really uncomfortable for them, especially if they’re not used to people setting boundaries with them. Sometimes, this is the first time you’re setting a boundary with them and they’re surprised because they’re used to you being a different way. It can be hard for them to understand or accept your position.

Additionally, people might have experienced a history of rejection in previous relationships and boundaries feel really threatening for them. They might personalize it and think it’s because they are a bad person or because you don’t want to have a relationship with them anymore.

They’re not used to experiencing boundaries as a way to strengthen relationships, so they experience boundaries as a threat to the relationship.

It’s important to contextualize their experience so that we can accurately empathize with their reaction. However, empathize with their reaction is mutually exclusive from caving into their reaction. We can empathize with their reaction and stand firm in our boundary at the same time.

Like when your teenager asks to stay out late with his friends and you say no because you know he has an important school project to finish the next day. He might get really angry at you and upset that he’s going to feel left out of the gathering. This is a real emotion for an adolescent at this stage of life.

But, if we cave, we understand that the long-term consequence — which he is not yet primed to understand as clearly as you are — will be much worse than the FOMO of not attending. You can both empathize with his feeling left out and his misdirected anger at you, while still holding firm in your position of saying no.

My favorite phrase is, “I can imagine this feels hard for you and I can understand how my position might be hard for you to accept. However, I stand by it.”

Understand, too, that if you go along with what they expect even if you strongly need something else, this will likely not only drain you but affect your relationship with that person due to your growing resentment. This is worse for the relationship in the long-term.

Resist reacting to their reaction.

Its often the case that the relationships that we most need to set boundaries in are the ones in which people don’t respect them. So, we need to be prepared for their reaction:

• They might experience negative emotions, such as anger, disappointment, frustration, and sadness.

• They might make up a story in their head that paints you as the bad guy in the middle of it all.

• They might try to convince you you’re wrong and give you a million reasons why you shouldn’t be setting the boundary.

• They might try to guilt you, threaten you, or use other covert manipulation tactics to get you to change your position.

• They might pull other people in that you wish wouldn’t get involved.

All these things can then trigger a reaction in you. You might react to their reaction and feel upset that they didn’t respond in an accepting way. You might find yourself:

• Getting defensive and trying to explain or justify your position.

• Trying to convince them they’re reacting in the wrong way.

• Making up excuses or white lies to soften the blow.

• Venting to others and getting them to side with you.

We want to convince the person that it’s acceptable for us to be setting this boundary, and we want to convince them that they’re wrong for the way they feel about our boundary.

This is understandable, of course, because in ideal situations in a healthy relationship, people listen to, accept, and respect our boundaries. But you can’t control how people react and it’s not your place to tell them how.

You can only manage you and your reactions. So the best thing you can do in these moments is to try not to react to their reactions and to hold firm in your position in a loving way.

Tolerate the temporary emotional discomfort.

To do the above, you basically have to learn to tolerate the discomfort necessary to stick to your values, principles, and long-term goals. The discomfort that’s often necessary to create the types of relationships you want to have with others.

When people react to your boundaries, it’s likely going to feel uncomfortable for you, especially if you care about those people, and especially if you have a history of being sensitive to the emotional reactions of others.

Discomfort is often the admission price to a good life. Maturity requires to be strong and remain steady in the face of opposition, so that you can stick to living by your principles and values, and so that you can create the type of life and relationships you envision for yourself.

This means you will need to take a deep breath, bite your tongue, regulate your emotions, and surrender to the process of their reaction to you. You will need to stay calm amongst the storm of their emotions. And you will need to trust that the emotions will pass and this person will eventually calm down. You do not need to cave into their reaction or soothe their emotions about this.

It’s like breaking up with someone that you care about but know you just isn’t right for you in the long run. They’re going to feel upset. That’s a very likely thing. But should you cave on your decision because they’re upset?

Or, for a simpler example, you’re kid wants to eat his fifth cookie for the day and you say no because, well, come on, it’s the fifth cookie. They’re going to feel upset. That’s a very likely thing. But should you cave on your decision because they’re upset?

And it sucks to see those we love upset. It sucks even more when we feel like we’re the one’s causing that upset. But, emotions pass, despite being very uncomfortable in the moment. Maturity is being able to tolerate that temporary emotional discomfort for something more important or more worthy in the long-term.

Allow the relationship to change organically.

Often times, people are in relationship with us because they are benefitting from our lack of boundaries. You need to be prepared that when you set a boundary with someone, and they can longer benefit in the way that they were, their reaction might actually be leaving the relationship altogether.

And this might be incredibly painful to you. Firstly, the loss of a relationship is never easy, simple as that. Additionally, it sucks to realize that a relationship was actually transactional and a person’s connection to you was conditional.

This is also why it’s so important to be clear on our values and our reasons for setting certain boundaries. Are you prepared to lose this relationship? Do you value yourself enough to risk losing it in order to stand up for what you want or will no longer tolerate?

If you’re setting a boundary, you have to be ready for the relationship to shift and change in ways you might have not predicted or wanted. The other person might shut down on you, they might get petty, they might get distant, they might hold a grudge, they might seek revenge.

A number of things can happen that are out of your control. You’ll need to allow the person to have whatever reaction they have and allow the relationship to change organically.

Because this is the only way to guarantee the positive version of setting the boundary, which is creating a healthier relationship with greater levels of understanding of each others needs and respectful of each others limits.

Final Thoughts

We set boundaries so that we can have stronger and closer relationships with others. The are an act of both self-care and care for the relationship. And, it’s unfortunate, but people are going to react and misunderstand. Expect that as a part of this process and trust that it’s a necessary and healthy thing to do anyway.

It’s hard work. It often doesn’t feel good in the moment. But maturity is about living by our values and principles over allaying the anxiety of the present moment. It’s about setting long-term goals for our lives and pushing past the discomfort necessary to get there.

It’s about understanding the higher purpose of saying no to what’s not helping us have the types of relationships we want, both with ourselves in others. That might not always feel good, but many things that don’t feel good in the short-term are actually what get us to feeling great in the future.

• • •

“Anytime anybody makes a significant step toward differentiating a self, the rest of the emotional system attacks. This is my notion of why it is so difficult for a person to differentiate from another person. It upsets the other and it upsets self to have the other upset.”

— Murray Bowen, Pioneer of Family Systems Theory

Self-Differentiation in Relationships: Processing the End of a Relationship

When a relationship ends, we lose a part of our identity that we’ve been building with another person. It’s an experience of psychological death. This can be extremely painful and can launch us into an emotional and existential crisis that leaves us disoriented and unsure of how to cope and move forward.

And, I’m here to tell you honestly that moving forward is not an easy process, but it’s completely possible. What’s more, on the other side of this process might actually be a life you love even more than before.

When you give death to an old version of your life, you are afforded the opportunity to create a new one. One that lets go of the baggage of the past. One in which you are wiser and stronger. One in which you might actually find is more meaningful and fulfilling.

But to get to the other side, you must go through it and experience it fully. You must process the experience, learn from it, and apply the lessons to the new life you are creating. Here are 3 steps to begin processing doing so…

1. Embrace Emotional Complexity

It’s normal to feel many opposing things at the same time: grief and relief, desperation and hope, hate and love. Paradoxical emotions, motives, and meanings can all co-exist:

• We can feel intensely sad about the fact that it’s over and yet be absolutely certain that the right thing to do is move on.

• We can love the person we are leaving with every ounce of our being, we can think they’re amazing, and yet still know that they’re not a good match for us.

A big part of maturity is the having the capacity for mental and emotional complexity. It’s about embracing paradox. It’s about holding the tension between seemingly opposing poles with giving in to one side.

This is where I often see people go wrong. They either give into the sadness and go back to what is no longer a viable relationship. Or they completely cut off and don’t allow themselves to fully process the situation and learn from it.

The more we allow ourselves to experience the complexity and totality of any given situation, the more skillfully we can navigate challenging situations, and the more wisdom we can draw from our lived experiences.

2. Acknowledge How You’ve Grown

Listen, I know it can be a lot to ask to acknowledge the good in the midst of the rage and resentment we can sometimes feel toward the other person. But, the more we practice awareness of what we take with us from our relationships into our future lives, the better off we will be for it.

Any relationship — no matter how good or bad it was — offers us the opportunity to learn and grow if we allow ourselves to reflect and extract the lessons from the experience. When a relationship ends, we can ask ourselves:

• What do I take from that relationship with me into my future life and relationships?

• In what ways did that relationship help me grow and mature?

• What did I learn about what I need most in future relationships?

• What did I learn about what I don’t want or won’t tolerate?

• What was my role in the relationship not working out and how can I approach my future relationships differently given that awareness?

To be clear, this exercise is intended to help acknowledge both what worked and didn’t — and the growth and evolution you take with you as a result.

As humans, our nervous systems are wired to connect with the nervous systems of others, and any time we enter into an attachment with another human being, we inevitably affect each other. We wire new connections and make new memories.

No matter what, our relationships remain a part of our psyches and body memories as metabolized experiences. We have a choice whether we want to reflect on those experiences and draw wisdom from them, or leave them lurking in our subconscious.

Each person we connect with can potentially draw out a new side of us that we’ve never explored before or that had gone to sleep. They can potentially show us a new way of being in the world or a new perspective on life.

Each relationship offers us the opportunity to get to know ourselves more deeply. To learn what we need and want. To learn what to avoid and let go of. To get a little bit better at relating and at loving.

3. Tend to ‘The Void’

When a relationship ends, it sometimes can launch us into a full-blown identity crisis. At the very least, it can leave us a little lost and confused for a while. This is because, as social creatures, we evolved for our identities to be wrapped in our relationships with others, for better or for worse.

When a relationship ends, a piece of our sense of self is lost and we will need to grieve:

• Past memories, present routines, and future plans.

• The sides of ourselves that came alive in the presence of the other.

• The time, energy, and resources we invested.

Whether we were the one broken up with or the one doing the breaking up, there’s a void is left behind to fill. And we will need to tend to that void by moving forward into the future while still grieving what we’re leaving behind.

Moving forward looks like taking the opportunity to recreate ourselves, to build up our sense of self, and to fill that void with novel and meaningful things.

Perhaps for you that means:

• Reinvesting in old relationships that were getting less attention.

• Going out to meet new people and making new friends.

• Pursuing hobbies, work, and creative projects more deeply.

• Doing some extended travel or moving to a new city.

• Going to therapy and processing your patterns and grief.

• Taking care of your physical health and body.

Whatever it might look like for you, know that you can move forward while still holding onto the past. You can still grieve what was while working on what will be. In fact, that’s a critical part of the grieving process: transitioning a new life.

And creating will be a big part of it, because in the transition, we lose what we once created. To fill that void, we must create new things in our life to fill it. While it’s sad to lose the past, it’s also an opportunity to grow and expand ourselves in ways we might have not imagined.

My two biggest and most painful breakups in life have helped birth new and better versions of me. They helped take my life in new creative directions I never thought possible.

Sometimes the things in life that help catapult us into growth are things we wish would have not happened, but they are an opportunity for expansion nonetheless.

Final Thoughts

Breaking up is never easy. Loss and grief are never easy. Starting over is never easy. But change is a fact of life. We’re always losing old parts of ourselves and creating new ones. It can be tempting to want to block out everything that happened or to try to hang on tightly to what is getting away from us.

But the best way to move forward is to process the experience and use it as a catalyst to birth a new version of ourselves. To create a new lifestyle that’s deeper, richer, more engaging, and more meaningful than ever before. After all, discomfort is the often admission price to a meaningful life.

Learning to See the Unconscious Emotional Process in Relationship Conflicts

As a couple’s therapist, I’ve been trained to prioritize my focus on how a couple interacts with each other during conflict over what their conflict is actually about.

In therapy speak, we call this focusing on the process of a conversation over the content of the conversation. The content is what people are talking about, whereas the process is how they are talking about it with each other.

Seems simple enough, but it’s incredibly hard in practice to not get lost in a couple’s content — and even harder to do so in my own relationship disagreements.

A couple’s process tells you a lot more about the strength and health of their relationship than whatever mundane content they’re fighting over. The process is where people get stuck in their relationships and what most relationships eventually fail over.

For example…

Let’s say a couple comes in to talk to me about their perpetual disagreements over their finances. We’ll bring the issue up in session and I’ll let them air out their grievances for a bit. As they do, I observe how they’re interacting with each other in the process of talking things out:

• Who gets defensive? Who shuts down? Who escalates?

• Who is more dismissive? Who more often defers to the other?

• When one person does or says X, how does the other react?

I also explore what it would be like to be a fly on the wall when the conflict comes up at home:

• Who normally brings the topic up first and how do they do so?

• How does the conversation normally play out?

• How does the conflict normally come to an end?

• Do they tend to pull anyone into the middle of the conflict?

• Do they distract themselves with work, hobbies, or friends?

• Do they avoid addressing the topic altogether to keep the peace?

The How Reveals the Emotional Process

You see, couples are normally in recurring conflicts with each other about different things throughout the course of their relationship: finances, raising children, sex, relationships with in-laws, and so on. 

How they approach conflict over one topic is likely similar to how they approach all of them, and this is why they get stuck. They repeat the same patterns of interaction over and over with each other.

At the surface it might look like these conflicts are about different things. Underneath the surface, however, there’s a common emotional process that drives their interactions with each other across all of those topics. 

The emotional process is - quite literally - the subconscious emotional communication that’s happening between the two of them. It reveals each person’s unmet emotional needs, emotional sensitivities, and deepest emotional wishes.

In every criticism, there is a veiled wish. In every bout of anger, there is a hidden cry of pain. In every conflict, there is a set of unresolved emotional issues that express themselves in the physical world.

Money, sex, children, in-laws — we channel our deepest emotional needs through the external world. Our inner life manifests in our outer life.

For example…

I’ve worked with male clients who live an entire emotional life through their interest in sports. I have a strong suspicion that this is because it’s safer and more socially acceptable to do so.

In the world of sports, they can experience pride, excitement, and joy. But it’s also more acceptable for them to experience disappointment, fear, and even grief. I’ve seen grown men cry over their team losing a world championship, yet I know they would never feel safe to cry over their marriage.

All human beings - including men - have emotional needs and wishes that show up in everyday, mundane topics. If each member in a couple can learn to zoom out, they can understand the larger process and the deeper emotions driving the fight over the mundane topic.

As a result, when done well, conflict can actually lead you to a deeper connection between your partner. 

Most Conflicts Are Unsolvable, Which Isn’t a Bad Thing

Famous couples therapist and relationship researcher John Gottman found that 69% of conflict in relationships is over what he calls unsolvable problems.

These are conflicts that will happen over and over throughout the life of a relationship. They stem from “fundamental differences in personalities or fundamental differences in lifestyle needs.”

Ideally, we partner with people who have shared values, but who are different enough from us that they complement areas of our personality that we lack.

For example, in my relationship, I’m the laid back one. I take life really slowly and like to think things through thoroughly before ever acting on them. But I’m so laid back and thoughtful that I can become lethargic and prone to inertia.

I’m lucky enough to have partnered with someone on the opposite end of this spectrum. He gets things done in the blink of an eye. This balance between us has fared out well for us for the most part. He inspires me to move, I inspire him to slow down.

But it’s also one of the biggest drivers of perpetual disagreement the two of us have. His action bias leads him to have a hard time sitting and being present with me — something I need deeply in a relationship. And my tendency to ask a million questions and analyze every thought and feeling often leaves him feeling anxious and groundless.

But this is exactly how it should go. This is what happens in a long-term relationship. Couples who have had enough fights over the decades — or enough failed relationships — come to understand that every relationship will have some version of this.

And this is because no two people are 100% alike, have exactly the same needs and strengths, and move through life the same way. And if you spend long enough with each other, and intertwine your lives enough with each other, you’ll eventually hit the limitations of your differences.

That is to be expected. There’s nothing to be solved in unsolvable conflicts. The only thing to do is to improve the process by which you approach and navigate those conflicts.

Differences in views on money can be a good thing. One person is a big saver, the other more of a carefree spender. Together, they bring each other to balance. But together, they can also drive each other nuts trying to bring the other to their side completely. They might eventually even decide that they’re not right for each other because of this.

Couples who last understand that differences can be a good thing. Differences can help each person grow and evolve. And the work of a successful relationship is to mature in the process of navigating those differences. It’s not about compromise, it’s about co-creating something greater than each of you could have done individually, through drawing on each other’s strengths.

A couple can succeed at their relationship while still having a million things they disagree on and see differently. They can have perpetual conflicts over them throughout the course of their entire relationship, yet still feel fulfilled in their partnership. As long as their process - or how they navigate these conflicts - is done with maturity, emotional savvy, empathy, and light-heartedness.

A Lesson From Stable Couples

The difference between stable couples is not that they don’t have conflict — AKA differences — it’s that they navigate them more smoothly. They simply don’t react or catastrophize their differences. They don’t see it as a sign of relationship failure. They see those differences as a normal part of being human trying to coexist closely with another human.

So, where a volatile couple looks like they’re fighting endlessly, a stable couple looks like they’re having a normal daily conversation over coffee. From the outside, it looks like stable couples don’t ever fight or have conflict. But they navigate differences and perpetual disagreements just as every couple does — they just take the emotional reactivity out of it and see it as a part of normal daily conversation.

They also see each other’s emotional process and can attend to it without getting caught up in the content and thinking the relationship is doomed. A volatile couple would be having the same conversation over differences but be highly emotionally reactive over it — in part because they are not attending to their own and each other’s emotional process — and it would look and feel like an endless fight.

Final Thoughts

In my office, I open space for people to talk about literally anything with me — sports, celebrities, work, social media, gaming, you name it. But in those conversations, I’m always exploring: What are the deeper emotions this person is playing out through this thing they’re talking about?

My ultimate goal when a couple comes in is to help them learn to see process and catch themselves when they’re at home, outside of the classroom of my therapy office.

So if you can learn to use my secret weapon as a couples therapist of seeing the emotional process during conflict, your relationships will benefit greatly from it.

How to Live More From Your Solid Self Than Your Pseudo Self

What Are the Pseudo Self and Solid Self?

A sense of self is our understanding of who we are in the world and determines how we approach our internal and external experience of life. We all have two versions of our sense of self - a pseudo self and a solid self (often referred to as the true self).

The Pseudo Self

The pseudo self is like the persona or mask that we wear for the world that’s based on the world’s standards, expectations, and demands for who we should or shouldn’t be. The pseudo self seeks external approval and behaves in a way that’s going to be received well by others.

The pseudo self is shaped by:

• Caregivers

• Family

• Social Circles

• Culture

• Religion

• Society

The Solid Self

The solid self, on the other hand, is that inner authentic core within us that’s based on the things that we truly think, feel, believe, and want for ourselves in our lives. It’s internally guided and internally validated.

The solid self is shaped by:

• Our Authentic Present-Moment Feelings

• Our Authentic Present-Moment Thoughts

• Our Self-Determined Principles and Values

• Our Unique Talents, Skills, and Creativity

• Our Unique Hopes and Dreams for Ourselves

• Our Unique Curiosities and Interests

Evolutionary Context

Having a pseudo self is a normal part of being human. We all have one and it develops in early childhood when we’re still dependent on our caregivers to meet our survival needs — normally our physical and emotional needs. We have to meet their expectations and conform to their standards because we depend on them to survive.

This is also true for society — we do depend on society to an extent to provide for our survival needs. At the end of the day, we are a social species and our interdependence with other members of our species is undeniable. Thus, we learn to morph and contort ourselves to meet the standards of others in exchange for some of our needs getting met.

Consequences

But as we grow up and become more capable of meeting our own needs, it becomes more important to live from our solid self, because living from our pseudo self can be incredibly emotionally taxing and impact our mental health and well-being.

It can also make it so that we don’t relate authentically in our relationships, so our relationships aren’t as authentic and fulfilling as they could be. And, living from our pseudo self can stunt our growth and development through the course of our lives, so we never reach our fullest potential.

A healthy separate and authentic sense of self counteracts the pseudo self and sets the stage for our ability to:

• Trust ourselves.

• Make wise choices for our lives.

• Have healthy relationships.

• Cope with life’s stresses and challenges.

• Manage our psychological and emotional needs in adulthood.

Evolving Into Our Solid Self

Part of our personal evolution in our adult lives requires that we practice living more from our solid self, which takes hard work and intentional effort. It’s also not always going to be comfortable.

There are three main ways to practice living more from your solid self:

1. Learn how to be more emotionally autonomous. Depend on yourself to manage your emotionally difficulties and meeting your emotional needs instead of putting them in the hands of others.

2. Learn how to validate and approve of yourself so that you’re not living based on the definitions and judgments of others.

3. Define your own principles and values and practice living by them, even — and especially — when it gets hard to do so.

A Final Note

If you have been living a life that’s mostly from your pseudo self, this process might entail losing some relationships or dealing with reactions from people who are you used to you being a certain way and all of the sudden you’ve changed.

Learning to live more from our solid self is lifelong journey. It’s built from small, intentional, and consistent habits practiced over the long-term. It can get hard sometimes, but it’s a life-giving pursuit.

Living more from the solid self brings greater levels of mental health and well-being, more authentic and fulfilling relationships, and helps us reach our greatest potential in our unique lifetime.

Take your time and embrace the journey!

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Self-Differentiation and Boundaries: What Are They and Why Are They Important?

What Are Boundaries?

Boundaries are invisible psychological and emotional lines that we draw with ourselves and others as we interact with the world. They determine what we will or won’t do, and what we will or won’t accept from others.

Boundaries are not intended to shut others out or to become rigid and distant from others in our lives. Rather, boundaries are intended to help us manage our energy wisely, protect our survival, and promote our well-being and evolution throughout the course of our lives.

Boundaries Help Us Manage Our Energy Wisely

Managing our energy with boundaries is actually an act of humility because we admit to ourselves and to others that we are limited human beings. We wake up each day with a limited amount of energy to offer to the world. We cannot be everything for everyone all of the time. And that is perfectly alright.

Using boundaries to manage our energy requires that we decide what’s important to us, what really matters in the grand scope of our lives, and what our priorities are. Then, we put in place boundaries to help us direct our energy toward the things that do matter and push aside or say ‘no’ to the things that don’t.

This is about embracing quality over quantity. It’s about going deeper in the few things we do choose to do, instead of spreading ourselves thin over many things. It’s about showing up as our best selves for the things that we choose to care about and choose to give our energy to.

Boundaries Help Protect Our Survival and Well-Being

When it comes to protecting our survival and well-being it’s about understand that as humans, we have limits and thresholds. Beyond those limits and thresholds, we can experience harm or potentially even destruction.

When we put boundaries in place, it’s about honoring those limits and thresholds. It’s about determining how far others can or can not go with us, or how far we will or won’t go with others. Beyond those limits and thresholds — or if people disregard a boundary we put in place — we ultimately choose to leave the interaction or the relationship because staying can cause us harm.

This is not about controlling the behavior of others because we can’t actually do that. This is really about having guidelines for how we will take responsibility for our own self-preservation. It’s about managing ourselves in interactions and relationships and pulling out of them if people cause us harm. We still should communicate our boundaries to people, but if they cross them, it’s on us to leave.

Boundaries Go Both Ways

We don’t just set boundaries with others, we also set them with ourselves. Boundaries with ourselves look like a) choosing which thoughts we will or won’t indulge, b) what kinds of behaviors we will or won’t engage in, c) how we will or won’t speak to ourselves and others, and d) what we plan to do with our emotions as they arise.

Boundaries go both ways: They are about managing our interactions with ourselves and our interactions with the external world.

Why Are Boundaries Important?

Individually, they promote our mental health well-being by protecting us from the anxiety of taking too much on and from becoming overwhelmed or burnt out.

Relationally, they ensure that we show up as our best selves in all of our interactions with others. They also set the standard for how others will interact with us and show up for us.

Collectively, they promote more peaceful and harmonious societies. Imagine if hundreds of people in your community — or millions of people in your society — were all working on having healthy boundaries and good emotion regulation skills. That would be a very different society than we live in today.

Boundaries matter. They matter individually. They matter relationally. They matter collectively.

A Final Note

As we work on ourselves and practice healthy boundaries with ourselves and others, we show up differently in the world. This eventually inspires others to change and to rise to the standard. By doing our own inner work, we slowly but surely shift the collective.

As cheesy as it sounds, we end up being the change that we wish to see in the world. As we change ourselves and then show up in the world as evolved beings, we inspire evolution in all of those around us as well.

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7 Skills of Highly Self-Differentiated Individuals

Have you ever been around someone who seemed ‘wise beyond their years’? On the other side of that, do you ever notice how some of the ‘adults’ in our society are regularly having public temper tantrums more outrageous than 3-year-olds do?

You see, emotional maturity is not a given. It doesn’t just happen with age. It’s not innate to our species to be emotionally mature. It’s a lifelong pursuit that takes hard work and intentional practice.

But it’s life-giving. Emotionally mature people, in general, have greater levels of mental health and well-being, better relationships, and create more peaceful communities and societies.

Here’s what people who grow into emotional maturity practice doing regularly…

1. They are aware of their emotions, triggers, and reactivity.

Self-differentiated people work hard to observe and stay aware of their inner experience as they interact with their surroundings. They are able to slow down enough to notice their emotions as they arise in each moment. They are also able to notice when they are becoming emotionally reactive or reenacting a conditioned pattern from their past.

2. They practice consciously responding over automatically reacting.

Because they can slow down and become aware of their emotions, they can interrupt an emotional reaction or a conditioned pattern. They can introduce a space between the emotion and what they end up doing with it. They then use that space to temper the emotion and think about how to best respond to the situation at hand.

They introduce more choices for the next move, instead of unconsciously going with the default programming. Instead of the emotion blindly running the show, the emotion instead informs a consciously chosen response to the circumstance.

3. They practice taking responsibility for their own experience.

Emotionally mature people don’t blame others for their emotions, dump their emotions onto others, or pull others into their emotional dramas. They don’t constantly seek approval and direction from others. They see their emotional experience as their burden alone to bear.

They know how to self-regulate and self-validate. They know how to acknowledge and process their own emotions. They can think for themselves and have clearly defined principles and intentions for how they want to live their life. They understand that, while they can’t control what happens to them, they are always in control of how they choose to respond.

4. They practice having and respecting boundaries.

Boundaries help people preserve and use their energy wisely, so that they bring their best selves to the world as often as possible. Healthy boundaries also hold those around us to a quality standard of behavior. It ensures that we don’t remain in interactions or relationships that are harmful.

Emotionally mature people understand that healthy boundaries are a vital part of personal well-being and healthy relationships. Thus, they practice defining, setting, and reinforcing healthy boundaries with others and respecting the boundaries of others.

5. They practice living by principles over emotions.

Emotionally mature people understand that living by emotional reactions and automatic behaviors can lead to a lot of unnecessary chaos and suffering. Instead, they practice living by individual principles and values that they spent plenty of time thinking through and defining for themselves.

This doesn’t mean neglecting emotions altogether, but rather moving them out of the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s seat. Living a life guided by principles means living a life that is informed by emotions, but not driven by them. Our principles lead us instead, even when our emotions are pulling us in the other direction.

6. They practice balancing individuality and togetherness.

There are two seemingly opposing forces that shape all human relationships and are driven by our emotions. On one hand, we have the desire to be connected to others and to feel like we belong. On the other, we have the desire to be our own separate individual to belong to ourselves. This often manifests as the tradeoff between choosing self or choosing others.

People tend to polarize toward one side or the other, but emotionally mature people practice balancing the tension between both poles. With practice, they become skilled at knowing when to choose self and when to choose others, and this becomes a fluid dance for them over time. Thus, they have both a strong relationship with themselves while remaining in close connection with significant others in their lives.

7. They practice embracing the discomfort of growth.

Emotionally mature people are willing to endure the discomfort inherent to the process of challenging old ways of being and learning new ones. They lean into adversity and conflict. They listen to perspectives that challenge their worldview. They hold space for the opinions, beliefs, and life choices of others, even when they differ significantly from their own.

They practice being flexible and remain open to the unknown. They see life as an endless journey of learning and growing; of expanding one’s mind and letting go of what no longer serves them; of repeated cycles of psychological death and rebirth; of continuously evolving into new iterations of oneself.

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How to Strengthen the Solid Self Through Self-Differentiation Work

Increasing your level of differentiation and strengthening your solid self can shift your entire life for the better. It can help you experience a greater sense of inner peace and resolve. It can attract people to you. It can lead to much more satisfying and fulfilling relationships.

In general, it can nurture a greater overall sense of well-being at the physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual levels of your existence.

And every single one of us has the ability to cultivate this quality in ourselves.

But it takes hard work and intentional effort. In reality, it’s an ongoing and lifelong process. But if you‘re willing to put in the work to become a more magnetic and life-giving presence, here are 9 habits to start practicing.

•••

Live By Your Own Principles, Values, and Standards

Living from your authentic self means living a life that’s your own and not driven by the standards, norms, and expectations of others. To develop true inner confidence and live from your authentic self, you alone must define what’s important to you, what you believe, and how you want to live.

If you the standards and expectations of others didn’t matter to you…

• How would you actually want to live?

• What would you care about?

• How would you spend your time?

• What would you believe in and express?

• How would you present yourself?

• What would you do for a living?

• What would you buy or not buy?

• How would you spend your free time?

• Who would you spend it with?

Grow From Adversity and Welcome Novelty Into Your Life

Overcoming adversity — whether you chose the challenge or life thrust it upon you — is an important part of developing your character. Through the process of navigating new challenges, you nurture skillsets, strengths, and virtues. You develop self-trust, inner resolve, and new levels of awareness.

A few ways to do so…

• Choose to take on new challenges and change intentionally: For example, go on a solo trip to a foreign country, change careers, enroll in an educational program, start a new relationship, start a new business or project, learn a new language or art form.

• Seek out perspectives and ways of living that are different from yours: If you’re left-wing, read about right-wing perspectives. If you’re a Christian, learn about other religions or atheist perspectives. If you’re white American, learn about Black American history and culture.

• Lean fully into challenges and adversity that you’ve chosen: For example, raising children, sustaining a marriage, completing graduate school, developing your vocation, leading a team, growing old, and so on.

• Adapt to unwanted adversity, learn from it, and reinvent yourself: For example, an unexpected illness, a global pandemic lockdown, a job loss, financial struggles, marginalization of some kind, and so on.

Practice Enforcing Boundaries With Yourself and Others

Boundaries are psychological and emotional lines we draw with ourselves and others in service of our well-being. To do so, we have to first understand what our principles are and how we want to live. Then, we do the hard work of enforcing boundaries so that we can live by those principles.

Some boundaries to consider…

• How you will and won’t spend your time and energy.

• Who you will or won’t engage with and when.

• What your thresholds for your well-being and self-preservation are.

• What types of communication and behaviors you will or won’t tolerate.

• What types of interactions you will or won’t engage in.

• What activities and projects you will or won’t participate in.

• Whose emotions you will or won’t take on and when.

• What sacrifices you will or won’t make for your relationships.

• What thoughts and opinions you will or won’t allow to influence you.

• How you will or won’t communicate and behave toward others.

Work Toward Long-Term Commitments With Meaningful Endurance

There’s a special kind of reward we get when we work hard at something we care about and believe in. It’s not about the actual outcome, it’s about who we become in the process of trying to achieve it. We build character along the way: grit, resilience, discipline, honesty, humility, courage, self-control, perseverance, leadership, and — you guessed it — inner confidence.

Examples of commitments you can set…

• A committed partnership.

• A far-fetched career goal.

• Starting your own business.

• Having and raising children.

• Working toward cause or mission.

• Losing weight or improving your health.

• Getting an education or continuing education.

• Learn to speak a new language.

• Learn to play an instrument.

• Learn to dance.

• Learn to play a sport or martial art.

• Invest in long-term therapy or coaching.

• Write a book or create a podcast.

• Conquer a long-standing fear.

Develop an Internal Locus of Control and Take Responsibility for Yourself

Having an internal locus of control means that you believe you have influence over the outcome of your life no matter what happens to you in the external environment. While you cannot control what happens to you, you can control how you respond to it. This liberates us to feel like we truly own our own lives.

Some examples…

• In a relationship that you are dissatisfied with the dynamics, change yourself instead of trying to change the other person.

• When someone says or does something hurtful to you, instead of blaming them and making them responsible for your emotions, manage your own emotions, set boundaries, and even end the relationship if appropriate.

• When an injustice happens to you of some kind, instead of complaining and blaming the system, use the emotions to take meaningful action that makes a difference.

• When a setback or unexpected adversity happens to you, instead of falling victim to it, take it as an opportunity to learn and grow from it.

Spend Time Alone Doing Things You Love and Develop a Relationship With Yourself

Much of inner confidence comes from developing intimacy with yourself, finding solace in yourself, and coming to enjoy your own company. Spending time alone allows you to get to know yourself outside of the influence of others. It allows you to understand who you are as a separate individual.

Some ways to do so…

• Go on a solo trip somewhere that you might be curious to discover.

• Develop a solo contemplative practice like meditation or journaling.

• Go to see a movie, play, concert, or restaurant by yourself.

• Spend time isolated from people and devices just thinking and reflecting on your thoughts, emotions, and memories.

• Spend time in nature or with animals on your own.

• Learn or engage in a creative or artistic pursuit that’s just for you, like playing an instrument, dancing, painting, or writing.

• Trying something totally new without brining anyone you know along for company or comfort.

Measure Yourself By Internal Qualities and Characteristics

In our culture, we tend to measure ourselves by external standards, such as how much money we make, our wins at work, our physical appearance, our status in society. Internal qualities, however, are more enduring harder to be taken away. We also have much more control over the internal than external.

Some examples of this could be…

• Measuring your attractiveness more by your character which improves with age, than by your physical appearance which deteriorates with age.

• Measuring your worth more by your humanity which can never be taken from you, than by your job title and economic status which can be lost in the blink of an eye.

• Measuring your success more by your process which is largely driven by your efforts, than by your results which are influenced by numerous external forces.

Learn to Self-Regulate and Self-Soothe Your Inner Life

Inner confidence requires a high degree of emotional awareness and emotional maturity. By learning to regulate your own emotions moment-to-moment, you become a grounding force for others in your life. You exude an inner balance and harmony that becomes contagious, and people will come to feel more calm in your presence.

This process includes…

• Taking responsibility for regulating your emotions instead of projecting them onto others or expecting others to soothe them for you.

• Being aware of your emotions — especially the respective sensations in your body.

• Attuning and responding well to the emotions of others, while not being influenced by them — especially their stress, anxiety, and fear.

• The ability to calm your body and temper your emotions — especially stress, anxiety, and fear — in interactions with others.

Learn to Self-Validate and Let Go of the Need for External Approval

Do you ever find yourself seeking out the opinions of others to guide your decisions? When you do make your own decisions, do you question yourself when others disapprove of them? When you’re feeling down or insecure, do you seek out attention and validation from others? If so, this habit is about learning to offer yourself your own reassurance, approval, and validation.

How to practice…

• Instead of asking other people what you should think or do, try first tapping into what your own internal guiding system is telling you.

• Instead of looking for others to validate a decision you’ve made, reassure yourself and practice tolerating the disapproval of others.

• Instead of doing the next trendy thing in society or doing things a certain way to get attention and likes from the masses, practice doing things your own way whether you get attention from others for it or not.

• Instead of seeking attention, guidance, approval, or reassurance from other people, begin practice giving those things to yourself.

A Final Note

In essence, people who are truly confident are living life on their own terms and taking responsibility for themselves. They’re confident in who they are not because they were born with special privileges, but because they’ve worked hard to develop their principles, values, and inner character.

Ultimately, they’re mature adults. That maturity makes them show up in life with a different energy than most people. This energy is both palpable and contagious. It’s both mysterious and magnetic. It attracts us as people because we want to soak all of it up — we want the same in ourselves.

But in reality, you have the power to create more inner confidence. You can learn to live more from your authentic self. It’s a demanding lifelong process, but one that will touch and enhance nearly every area of your life.

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Self-Differentiation and Boundaries: A Short Guide for the Journey

Defining and Describing Boundaries

Boundaries are psychological and emotional lines we draw with ourselves and others in service of our well-being. Healthy boundaries make it possible to have relationships free of the inevitable consequences of poor boundaries.

• Poor boundaries can leave us feeling drained. It’s exhausting to do things we don’t want to do just to protect the feelings of others. It’s exhausting to let ourselves constantly get sucked into other people’s drama. It’s exhausting to constantly tend other people’s demands for attention, soothing, and validation.

• Poor boundaries repel others. It’s repelling to others to have to constantly validate and soothe us. It’s repelling to them when we suck them into our drama. It’s repelling to them to when we constantly emotionally react to them when they don’t meet our expectations.

• Boundaries helps us develop healthier relationships with ourselves and with others. They help us set limits with ourselves and others. Healthy boundaries help us optimize our time and energy. They help us take responsibility for our own emotions and to not take responsibility for the emotions of others. They help us create relationships based on authentic adult connection instead of attachments that fulfill dependency needs.

Poor boundaries leave us feeling anxious, drained, and needy of others. Healthy boundaries, on the other hand, help create psychological and emotional health and help us to show up as our best selves in our lives.

The 5-Step Process of Healthy Boundaries

1. Get Clear On Your ‘Why’

Staying tethered to the reasons you are working on boundaries is important because the journey will get hard. Boundaries are simple, but not easy, and you will likely lose your way at times. Remind yourself regularly of the higher purpose of setting boundaries.

Your higher purpose might include:

• Having greater mental health and well-being.

• Protecting yourself from abuse and mistreatment.

• Having more mature and gratifying adult relationships.

• Setting a good example for your children and future generations.

• Allowing others to learn how to take care of themselves and grow.

• Having greater choice in how you spend your own time and energy.

• Continuing your own lifelong process of growth and personal evolution.

• Maintaining your best self in the world for yourself and others.

• The list goes on, so keep adding onto it for yourself based on your values!

2. Define Your Boundaries

Boundaries are unique to each individual person, so only you can define what your boundaries will be. You will need to decide what your personal wants, needs, and limits. When you are defining your boundaries, remember that having them with yourself is just as important as having them with others.

Defining your boundaries might include:

• How you will and won’t spend your time and energy.

• Who you will or won’t engage with and when.

• What your thresholds for your well-being and self-preservation are.

• What types of communication and behaviors you will or won’t tolerate.

• What types of interactions you will or won’t engage in.

• What activities and projects you will or won’t participate in.

• Whose emotions you will or won’t take on and when.

• What sacrifices you will or won’t make for your relationships.

• What thoughts and opinions you will or won’t allow to influence you.

• How you will or won’t communicate and behave toward others.

• The list goes on, so keep adding onto it for yourself based on your needs…

3. Practice Setting Your Boundaries

Once you’ve defined your values, the hardest part comes next: Setting them with yourself and out in the world. Setting our boundaries means having hard conversations with others and holding ourselves accountable to ourselves. Although this part is simple, it’s often not easy.

It sometimes means disappointing those we love. It sometimes means we will have to tolerate our own discomfort. It’s one thing to create something up in our minds. It’s another entirely to do the hard work of putting those things into action.

Taking action on our boundaries requires energy, effort, and intention. It takes being firm. It takes discipline. It takes risk. It takes courage. Do it anyway and use your ‘why’ to keep you grounded in a higher purpose.

4. Practice Reinforcing Your Boundaries

Boundaries — or a lack of them — are ultimately learned behaviors. Like with learning anything new, boundaries take repetition and practice to sink in. Setting boundaries once will likely not be enough. You will probably need to reinforce them with yourself and with others over and over again.

If you’re setting new boundaries in a relationship, you will also likely receive pushback and emotional reactions from others. Relationship systems resist change. They get comfortable with how things are, especially if the current status quo is convenient for them.

When you set a boundary in a relationship, realize you’re ultimately changing the dynamic of the relationship, and the people on the other side of the relationship will have to adjust to your change. Realize that they might not want to change, so be prepared to face this resistance.

Practice remaining calm and grounded in the face of other people’s reactions to your boundaries. It will be uncomfortable in the short-term, but there is a long-term payoff, I promise. It will be important to stay connected to your higher purpose in these times as well.

Boundaries are a skillset. They take deliberate practice to get good at like any other skillset. Forgive yourself when you fail at maintaining your boundaries, learn from it, and continue on. Keep practicing. Keep learning. Keep evolving.

5. Practice Reshaping Your Boundaries

Over time and with practice, you might get pretty good at setting and reinforcing your boundaries. They might even become second nature. The next step will be to begin to develop flexibility in your boundaries while not losing their solidness.

As we grow and strengthen ourselves from within, we might not need such rigid boundaries or we might simply need different ones. We might be able to tolerate more than we used to. We might have greater resilience. Our needs, wants, and limits might shift and change.

As a metaphor: A baby incubates in the safety of its mother’s womb. There are boundaries between the baby and the world as its inner systems evolve and strengthen. At some point, the baby develops enough resilience to face the external world, so the baby leaves the comfort and safety of the womb.

The next boundaries for the baby will be its mother’s arms, its crib, and its stroller. It will eventually outgrow these boundaries, too, and go on to find a new set of them. This process continues until the young adult leaves home and even beyond it.

We are always evolving out of old boundaries. It’s the natural process of growth throughout human life. We should make space for that to be the case.

With practice, boundaries can become an energetic art form. We can learn to open, close, and adjust them fluidly and creatively. As we become a skilled boundaries artist, people might not even notice that we are setting and reinforcing them. They become a natural part of the flux and flow of life.

But, stay patient and deliberate. This comes a little later in the process. Honor where you are and practice steps 1–4 religiously first. Eventually, it will all start to feel more organic. Like learning to play an instrument or speak a new language, start with the foundations first.

A Final Note

The above process is not necessarily linear. At any moment in time, you might be practicing all of the above in different interactions in your life. In one moment, you might be reinforcing an old boundary with your partner, in the next you might be setting a new one at work, and in the very next you may be reshaping one with your child.

Boundaries are a lifelong practice. They require our ongoing and active engagement. We get better at them over time, but they always require our intention and effort, like any art form. As we practice, our life benefits greatly.

Boundaries help create people with a strong sense of self-respect and self-worth. They help create people who are in control of their own emotional and psychological lives. They help create people who magnetize and attract others to them, instead of people who chase others for attention and validation.

Boundaries are intended to help us show up as our best selves in all areas of our lives, so they lead to greater overall well-being in the long run.

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The Family System You Grew Up in Shapes the Self You Bring to Your Adult Relationships

I see this same story reflected over and over in my work with my clients: People struggle in their relationships. They feel confused. They feel overwhelmed. They feel drained. They feel stuck. They don’t understand why things are so hard sometimes. They wish they could get themselves out of certain binds. They feel like they are constantly stepping on each other’s toes in their own relational dance.

The key lies in bringing awareness to the learned patterns that are unconsciously shaping our way of being in relationships. And it starts by looking at the root of where we learned those patterns: our original families.

There are dozens of patterns that shape our relationships. Today we’ll look at four major ones and I’ll address others in future pieces.

Your Level of Self-Differentiation

Each generation of a given family has a certain average level of differentiation and passes that average level onto the next generation. Some of the children will remain at that same level and pass it onto their own children. Some of the children will work on becoming more mature throughout life and pass on higher levels to their own children.

So, your level of differentiation is determined by your original family. You then go out into the world and find a partner that is about the same level of maturity as you. This is largely an unconscious process. It’s often understood as emotional attraction, emotional chemistry, or emotional fit.

The more differentiated you are, the more likely that you will organically attract and fit with a more differentiated person. Your level of maturity includes:

• Your ability to self-observe and self-reflect.

• Your tolerance for stress, ambiguity, and uncertainty.

• Your ability to take responsibility for your own emotions.

• Your ability to regulate your own emotions.

• Your level of emotional reactivity.

• Your resilience to setbacks and challenges.

• Your ability to think, decide, and do for yourself.

• Your ability to define your own values and principles.

• Your ability to live by those values and principles

• Your ability to define, set, and reinforce boundaries.

• Your ability to self-validate instead of seeking approval.

• Your ability to balance individuality and collectivity.

Your Attachment Style

Your attachment style shapes how you manage the balance between separateness and togetherness in a relationship. When there is stress in your relationship or in life, do you tend lean into the relationship and seek more contact, or do you lean out and seek space to recenter yourself?

In a relationship, this will create the distancer-pursuer pattern, where one person pursues connection while the other distances from it. The more one chases the connection, the more the other pulls away. Each person is just seeking what they believe they need in the best way they know how.

This pattern is shaped early in life in our families of origin. If you grew up in a family that lacked boundaries and you felt constantly overwhelmed by the emotions and needs of others, you may have learned to distance yourself in your intimate relationships as a self-preservation mechanism.

If you grew up in a family where you learned to depend on another person to help you soothe your emotions, and were never given the opportunity to learn to self-soothe, you might have learned to seek togetherness in your intimate relationships as your self-preservation mechanism.

We all thrive off of a healthy balance of separateness and togetherness. When we haven’t learned or integrated the ability to create this balance, we lean harder to one side than the other. Oftentimes, we find partners that lean the opposite way from ours. This can create polarization in our relationships that leads to a lot of confusion and hurt.

How You Manage Conflict

Ultimately, this is how you express negative emotions and manage tension in your intimate relationship. The basic premise is this:

We learn to manage our hurt and dissatisfaction in our family of origin. We take on our family’s patterns of managing conflict and tension. Our partner takes on their own family’s patterns. Sometimes our approaches align. Often, they collide.

When you feel angry, hurt, or dissatisfied in your relationship…

• Do you sweep it under the rug instead of talking about it?

• Do you keep it a secret to avoid ruffling feathers?

• Do you confront it in an explosive way?

• Do you give the silent treatment or make passive aggressive remarks?

• Do you exact revenge to show your partner how it feels?

• Do you blame or criticize your partner for what you’re feeling?

• Do you tune out or shut down altogether?

• Do you vulnerably express your emotions and look for empathy?

• Do you express yourself intellectually and look for a practical solution?

• Do you express what you didn’t like or do you express what you wish for?

The list can go on and on here, really, but there are two basic dispositions: leaning into conflict or pulling away from it. From there, there are numerous manifestations of how that plays out.

How You Express Love

To me, this goes beyond the traditional premise in the popular psychology book Love Languages, although that book is useful to understand this basic premise:

We learned to express love, affection, care, and concern in our original family. Our partner learned how to express the same in their original family. In some partnerships, those patterns will align. In many, they won’t.

Some of the ways we may show or express care, affection, and concern:

• Listening to and empathizing with your partner.

• Letting your partner be their own person.

• Complimenting and validating your partner verbally.

• Encouraging your partner to reach their potentials.

• Giving tough love and telling the truth even when it’s hard.

• Paying attention to details and recalling them to your partner.

• Sharing thoughtful gifts, offerings, and mementos.

• Taking responsibility for your own thoughts and emotions.

• Addressing your own patterns and wounds that affect your partner.

• Becoming the best version of yourself for the relationship.

• Honoring and respecting your partner’s boundaries.

• Giving physical affection when your partner requests it.

• Giving your partner your undivided attention and presence.

• Completing tasks for your partner, like cooking dinner or doing the dishes.

• Allowing your partner space and time for themselves.

• Making sacrifices for your partner, where appropriate.

The list can go on here, too. There are so many significant and subtle ways we can show that we are invested in the relationship and in our partner’s well-being.

A Final Note

The patterns we learned from our family of origin don’t need to be a relationship death sentence. The key to success is to cultivate awareness. Awareness requires reflecting on the different patterns you bring to your intimate relationship, as well as the patterns your partner brings to the relationship. Based on those patterns, you two will create a unique relational dance that will play out throughout the course of your relationship together.

With awareness, we can approach our relationships with more patience, compassion, and skill. We can arm our relationships against destructive unconscious forces, and instead work with each other to create more conscious and enriching relationships. We can learn to dance better with our partners, even if that means stumbling a bit along the way.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. — Carl Jung

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My Favorite Books on Self-Differentiation to Help You Evolve

Being human is complicated. Being human in the era we are living in is even more so. I’ve been studying maturity for over a decade now, and I believe it is one of the most important qualities we can cultivate within ourselves to live a good life. In this era, I not only believe it’s important, but I’m also convinced it’s imperative for both the individual and the collective.

Our society is in dire need of more maturity right now.

And, my dear reader, it starts with us. Or, more accurately, it starts with those of us who are willing to look within and do the hard work required to lead ourselves and the other members of our species into a new way of living. We do this by working on ourselves first and then showing up in the world as a model of what we’d like to see.

Doing our inner work has enormous ripple effects. Just as emotional reactivity and foolishness are contagious, so are maturity and goodness. It is up to us to model what we wish to see more of in our relationships, communities, and culture at large. By being in the world differently, and by engaging fully with others in mature ways, we slowly yet surely influence the collective.

When a good portion of adults finally grow up, our society’s psychological and emotional climate will shift for the better.

Furthermore, maturity is a key ingredient to long-term physical, mental, emotional, professional, and social health and well-being. So, I offer you a few books to get you started (or continue) on your journey. Some reads are more academic, others more philosophical, and others more accessible. Take your time. Meditate on it. Contemplate. Take notes and pace yourself because:

Maturation is a lifelong, arduous journey, but it’s worth it, and the integrity and well-being of future generations of our species depend on it.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

Don’t let the title fool you. This book is chock full of accessible wisdom on becoming more mature. Manson discusses a) learning how to take more responsibility for yourself, b) tolerating discomfort and adversity for growth, c) setting and maintaining boundaries in your relationships, d) clearly defining your values, and e) living a principle-based life. These are all things I believe to be essential to maturity and adulthood. Most importantly, he talks about learning how to direct your energies toward the things you decide most matter to you in your life.

The best part is that he does this in an accessible and humorous way, which makes for a fun read on an otherwise heavy topic. This book was a mega-bestseller for good reason. He delivered a message to culture (and the world) that is much needed right now, and shared it in a way that they could all hear it. If you haven’t read it yet, I hope you’ll get the message, too.

Favorite Quotes:

1. “Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a f*ck about what’s truly f*ck-worthy.”

2. “Not giving a f*ck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.”

3. “There is a simple realization from which all personal improvement and growth emerge. This is the realization that we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives, no matter the external circumstances. We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.”

Bonus Tips:

1. If you’re short on time or want an introduction to his work, he actually has an article on the same premise, which went viral and inspired the book in the first place.

2. He has many other articles that are topical and fun reads as well, like this one on personal values, this one on understanding your emotions, and this one on growing from adversity. Check him out!

Growing Yourself Up by Jenny Brown

Brown does an amazing job of taking a complex theory and making it accessible for the reader and applicable in everyday life. The essence of the theory she draws from suggests we have an instinctual nature as humans that has been in the evolutionary making for millions of years. It takes hard work and intentional effort to override it, but doing so is required for maturation.

Additionally, our level of maturity has been passed down to us from multiple generations before us in our lineage. Because of this, it is through our relationships with our families, partners, and communities that we must do the hard work of growing up. Growing up requires that we define a separate sense of self. It requires that we live based on self-determined values and principles, instead of being swayed by our emotions or pressures from the group to conform.

Favorite Quotes:

1. “Growing maturity, based on seeing the patterns of relationship we’re a part of, promotes more honesty, humility, and improved health for us and for those we care about.”

2. “Each of us is part of a system of relationships that deeply influences each individual’s capacity for emotional resilience. Given that our original family has such a profound sway on the development of our maturity, it follows that going back to these formative relationships is the best laboratory in which to make positive changes.”

3. “Genuine maturity for life starts with learning to observe ourselves in our relationships, and appreciating that problems are not just in the individual but also in the interconnections — the relationship systems — with others.”

Bonus Tips:

1. If you enjoy reading her book, check out her blog where she writes shorter pieces on these topics.

2. For my extra ambitious readers or fellow theory nerds, if you want to dive deeper into the theory, check out the Family Systems Institute where Brown offers more learning resources as well as training opportunities.

Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Ah, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the Western master and proliferator of mindfulness studies and practices in America. He is quite the thinker and writer, too. Mindfulness is not about being peaceful and happy all the time, contrary to popular belief. The practice of mindfulness is actually intended to help humans cultivate awareness of their automatic nature.

With mindfulness, we can learn to become more aware, moment-to-moment, of our emotional reactivity, automatic thinking, and conditioned patterns of behavior. By becoming more aware, we can interrupt the automaticity and make more thoughtful choices in our daily lives. This, of course, is maturity 101. This book is rich with both theoretical wisdom and practical applications for the thinker and practitioner.

Favorite Quotes:

1. “Automatic reactions triggered out of unawareness — especially when the circumstances are not life-threatening but we take them that way all the same — can compound and exacerbate stress, making what might have remained basically simple problems into worse ones over time. They can prevent us from seeing clearly, from solving problems creatively, and from expressing our emotions effectively when we need to communicate with other people or even understand what is going on within ourselves.”

2. “A lifetime of unconscious and unexamined habitual reactivity to challenges and perceived threats is likely to increase our risk of eventual breakdown and illness significantly.”

3. “At the heart of this paradigm-breaking perspective lies the conviction that it is essential for a person to engage in a personal, intensive, and systematic training of the mind through the discipline of meditation practice to free himself or herself from the incessant and highly conditioned distortions characteristic of our everyday emotional and thought processes, distortions that, as we have seen, can continually undermine the experiencing of our intrinsic wholeness.”

4. “Knowing what you are doing while you are doing it is the essence of mindfulness practice.”

Bonus Tips:

1. This is a nearly 600-page read, but it is very possible to skip around chapters if that’s your thing. No need to read in order, but be sure not to miss chapters 17–20, which hit at the heart of cultivating maturity.

2. If you’re open to it, take the complementary 8-week cohort course at the Brown Mindfulness Center.

Extraordinary Relationships by Dr. Roberta Gilbert

Dr. Gilbert draws from the same theory that Jenny Brown does in Growing Yourself Up, but this read is a bit more academic — and houses a bit more jargon. This might require the reader to learn some new vocabulary. But, I believe the theory that both of them draw from is the most important theory of our time that no one knows.

It is a grounded, living theory about human relationships and how humans are much more like nature than we are different from it (Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about this, too). In this book, you’ll learn how your maturity level is interconnected with that of the family you were born into. You’ll also learn how understanding where you came from will give you a map for how to work on your maturity going forward.

Favorite Quotes:

1. “A life lived according to the principles of a thought-out inner guidance system has an entirely different quality, course, and outcome than a life lived according to guidance implicitly or explicitly set by the environment. This makes it possible to say no when that becomes appropriate. In other words, the effort toward [maturity] frees people from trying to be what they think others want them to be. At the same time, it allows them to remain in open contact with significant others in the emotional system, whether they hold the same beliefs or not.”

2. “The guiding principles of [mature] individuals make it possible for them to be less concerned about what people think of them, whether or not they are loved, and how they appear to others. As mature adults, they no longer need parents or parental love, so they don’t have to spend their lives seeking nurturing from others. This fact alone relieves relationships of a great deal often put on them.”

3. “People at higher levels of [maturity] are clear on and comfortable with their beliefs, standards, values, and priorities. This is what makes it possible to live a life based on principle rather than on emotions and relationships. At any given time, they have a fairly clear idea of what they believe, the evidence they used, and the logical process they went through to get there.”

Bonus Tips:

1. Start with an overview of the vocabulary and theoretical concepts in the appendices.

2. If you get really into the theory, get her small, 100-page guidebook on it, The Eight Concepts of Bowen Theory.

The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene

This is one of those books I would consider a lifelong guide to understanding human nature. One of those books that you read over and over throughout the years, understanding the world and life just a bit more each time. This book has one big, yet basic premise: Humans have an irrational nature that we must learn to accept and master by intentionally cultivating our rational faculties.

It’s safe to say that this book is a philosophical monster and one of those challenging yet mind-blowing reads. Robert Greene is a deep thinker and he packs his books with years of research and preparation. Expect that it will take you an equal amount of years or more to metabolize this masterpiece. In doing so, you will have a greater understanding of your own nature and how to cultivate more maturity throughout life.

Favorite Quotes:

1. “We tend to think of our behavior as largely conscious and willed. To imagine that we are not always in control of what we do is a frightening thought, but in fact it is the reality. We are subject to forces from deep within us that drive our behavior and that operate below the level of our awareness.”

2. “Rationality is the ability to counteract emotional effects, to think instead of reacting. It does not come naturally; it is a power we must cultivate, but in doing so we realize our greatest potential.”

3. “To this day, we humans remain highly susceptible to the moods and emotions of those around us, compelling all kinds of behavior on our part — unconsciously imitating others, wanting what they have, getting swept up in viral feelings of anger or outrage. We imagine we’re acting out of our own free will, unaware of how deeply our susceptibility to the emotions of others in the group is affecting what we do and how we respond.”

4. “The future of the human race will likely depend on our ability to transcend this tribalism and to see our fate as interconnected with everyone else’s. We are one species, all descendants of the same original humans, all brothers and sisters. Our differences are mostly an illusion. Imagining differences is part of the madness of groups. We must see ourselves as one large reality group and experience a deep sense of belonging to it. To solve the man-made problems threatening us will require cooperation on a much higher level and a practical spirit missing from the tribe.”

Bonus Tips:

1. Check out his talk at Google on the book if you want a substitute or complement to reading the book.

2. Do yourself the favor and marry your study of this book with the study of Bowen’s Natural Systems Theory.

A Final Note

In essence, maturity is a lot about coming to understand and harness our human nature, or the part of us that’s largely automatic and unconscious. At the same time, it’s about cultivating more of the part of us that is different from nature, or the part that’s able to deliberate and make conscious choices that are different from what the automatic programming would have had us do.

It’s about learning to direct our controllable energies so that they don’t run away with us. With this, we can take a step back from our reactivity and have more thoughtful and meaningful interactions with other human beings — no matter how different they are from us and no matter how intense the circumstances in the external environment are.

This starts with doing our individual internal work, for that is all we have control over. By doing our own inner work, we show up differently in the world, and because we are an interconnected species that’s constantly influencing one another:

Changing ourselves changes humanity.

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Self-Differentiation in Relationships: 6 Skills for the Journey

Self-differentiation in intimate relationships is an incredibly important for fulfilling and enduring relationships.

• It can arm our intimate relationship against the inevitable stress and pressure of hard times that often tear most relationships apart.

• It can increase our capacity to be tolerate the discomfort of being vulnerable with our loved one and therefore strengthen our connection to them.

• It can deepen our capacity to feel the full range of our emotions and therefore experience an incredible sense of depth and meaning in our relationships.

And if we can practice being more self-differentiated in our intimate relationships, it can carry over into other relationships in our lives — with friends, at work, even with strangers.

Maturity, like anything else we want to get good at, takes intentional practice. Here are 5 ways to practice relational maturity.

1. Bring awareness to unconscious processes.

Unconscious processes include instincts, emotions, automatic thoughts, and conditioned behaviors. They are always present as we relate to others, and they exert their influence over our behavior in ways that are often invisible to us.

Awareness is simply about observing ourselves, moment-to-moment, and noticing what comes up as we interact with the world. By cultivating awareness of our unconscious processes, we increase the likelihood that we’ll be able to interrupt — or at least slow down — the ones that negatively impact our relationships.

Simple, but not easy.

As you’re interacting with your loved ones: Do you get anxious? Do you snap at them? Do you judge what they’re saying? Do you pull your phone out to avoid connecting? Do you change the subject when it’s not to your liking? Do you start gossiping? Do you look for their approval?

Unconscious processes are more powerful than the individual and they have a ton of historical momentum behind them. It takes work to become aware of them moment-to-moment, and it’s even harder to shift how they play out, but continual practice adds up over time.

2. Speak from your own experience.

This is about taking the ‘I’ position and keeping the focus on the only thing we have any semblance of control over: our own experience.

It’s normal to want to change the other, to try to fix their problems, to give them advice, or to want to tell them about all the things they’re doing wrong. It’s much more effective, however, to turn the mirror on ourselves and focus on what we can fix or change about ourselves.

You can’t control a whole damn family, but you can control you, and any time you can control you, the family is a healthier organism. That is a reason to become a self. The more you can become a self, the more to your advantage, and the family’s. — Dr. Murray Bowen

It’s also common to try to manage our discomfort by redirecting the focus of the conversation to a third person or thing. This is the essence of small talk and gossip — to avoid talking about the “real stuff” going on between you and the other person. People will often sit and talk about the children, other people, work, the weather, celebrities, and pop culture, in order to avoid talking about their true thoughts and feelings with each other.

The practice here is to try our best to refrain from blaming or fixing the other, or from talking about the “third” entity, and keep the focus on sharing from our own inner experience.

3. Regulate and validate yourself.

This is about fostering the ability to calm ourselves as we relate to others, and not expecting them to make us feel better. It’s about taking responsibility for our own emotional experience, and regulating ourselves accordingly, so that we remain calm and thoughtful in our interactions with others as often as possible.

Our close relationships are going to challenge us — that’s a given. The things our loved ones say and do are going to make us uncomfortable. We’re going to get frustrated. We’re going to get angry. We’re going to feel anxious. We’re going to feel misunderstood. We’re going to get defensive.

The practice here is to use what organically comes up in our interactions to get better at regulating ourselves and bringing ourselves back to calm, so that we don’t rely on the other to do that for us.

4. Use conflict for growth.

Leaning into discomfort is about sitting with the hard stuff that comes up for us as we relate to others. When we choose to practice sitting with the hard stuff, we do so because we understand the value of staying in it and growing from it, instead of checking out or giving up.

As you may notice, all of these principles are interconnected. Part of what’s required to sit with the hard stuff is the ability to become aware of what’s coming up for us and soothing ourselves along the way.

The only way to truly grow in our relationships and deepen intimacy is to stay in through the hard stuff. Some parts of our relationships are going to be tough. Some parts are going to make us see things about ourselves and others that we don’t want to see. The only way to grow is to lean into the truth and tolerate the discomfort it causes.

This creates intimacy based on the truth of who you really are and who they really are, moment-to-moment. Not intimacy based on what makes each person feel good or comfortable, but what’s truly coming up for each person, in the moment, no matter how difficult.

The practice here is simply to stay in the discomfort and work through it with your loved one. Don’t run away from the hard work.

5. Stay connected, yet separate.

As human beings, we have a natural desire to both preserve our individuality (or separate sense of self) and to remain deeply connected to those we love.

To maintain a separate sense of self, we must practice healthy boundaries and ensure that others do not cross an emotional threshold within us that will overwhelm us. Boundaries say, “This is where I end and you begin, and I will not allow you to cross this line.” We momentarily choose ourselves over the union.

To feel deeply connected to others, we must practice releasing boundaries and open the channel that allows for an energetic connection between self and other. Openness says, “I allow you into me, I give myself to you, and through that, we become one.” We momentarily lose the separate sense of self in favor of the union.

Two of the most powerful human drives are our urge to control our own lives (autonomy), and our urge for relationship with others (attachment). One of the biggest tasks of adulthood is being able to balance these two urges, and one of the most common problems is having too much of one, and not enough of the other. — Dr. David Schnarch (Rest in Passion)

We are always managing the paradox between these two seemingly opposing forces. We tend to polarize toward one or the other, either by losing ourselves in our connections with others, or by remaining emotionally distant in order to preserve our individuality.

The more we mature, however, the more we are able to manage the paradox and get evermore emotionally close to our loved one, while staying grounded in a solid sense of who we are.

This practice is about learning to fluidly open and close boundaries, moment-to-moment, in order to promote a relationship that honors both separateness and togetherness, without polarizing to one side. Like the breath rhythmically and effortlessly expands and contracts within us, so too do our deepest connections with others.

6. Embrace the Lifelong Process

The practice of cultivating more maturity in and through our relationships is not for the faint-hearted. It’s arduous and laborious, but it is a life-giving practice. You see, this practice creates a positive feedback loop in our relationships.

As we leverage our closest relationships to practice self-differentiation, we feed life back into them. We begin showing up with more and more maturity in the very relationships we’re practicing in.

This deepens and strengthens the connection over time, which has unimaginable gifts for all those who are touched by the relationship.

A Final Note

This article is an homage to the late David Schnarch, who wrote the book Passionate Marriage and forever changed my view on love, passion, and life itself. Halfway through writing this, I learned of his passing. Dr. Schnarch inspired my thinking (and being) in my personal and professional life in inexplicable ways, and I’m forever changed by his work.

In a world obsessed with validating, coddling, and comforting, Dr. Schnarch reminded me of the importance of telling the truth, of individuality and self-ownership, and of growing up and taking responsibility for our role in the success of our relationships.

In a world obsessed with attachment and stability, he reminded me of the importance of passion, eros, alchemy, and the innate drive that exists within all living things to evolve.

Most importantly, he helped me believe in a version of love and relationships that is not about feeling good all the time, but rather about reaching our fullest potentials as humans, about spiritual realization, and about union with the Divine within ourselves, in the other, and in all that is.

May you Rest in Passion, Dr. Schnarch. Thank you, for everything.

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