Quotes from Terrence Real

Do you remember it when your body shuts down and, for the life of you, you can barely squeak out a word or two?

The good news is that the love is still there. The bad news is that it's stored in parts of your brain, body, and nervous system that, in those flash moments, you no longer inhabit.

Us evaporates and becomes you and me, adversaries in a cold world of I win, you lose.

Us is the seat of closeness. You and me is the seat of adversarial contest. You and me is great when you are confronting a tiger, but less so when you are confronting your spouse, your boss, or your child.

And the more trauma you sustained as a child, the more compelling you and me becomes.

The central question I ask myself during a therapy session is simply this one: Which part of you am I talking to?

This set point reaction, this relational modus operandi, is your relational stance, the thing you will do over and over again when you are stressed.

Or am I speaking to a triggered part of you, to your adversarial you and me consciousness? The triggered part of you sees things through the prism of the past. I believe there's no such thing as overreacting; it's just that what someone is reacting to may no longer be what's in front of them.

But most of us do not reenact the experience of the trauma itself. Instead, we act out the coping strategy that we evolved to deal with it.

Our society mirrors the qualities of the Adaptive Child—black and white, rigid, perfectionistic, unrealistic, and unforgiving.

As a couples therapist, I have three sources of information: what the partners report about themselves and each other, how they behave in front of me, and how I feel witnessing their behavior.

Pia Mellody, spoke of the Adaptive Child as a "kid in grown-up's clothing." The Adaptive Child is a child's version of an adult, the you that you cobbled together in the absence of healthy parenting. Here's a chart detailing the traits of the Adaptive Child, as distinct from the Wise Adult.

ADAPTIVE CHILD WISE ADULT Black & White Nuanced Perfectionistic Realistic Relentless Forgiving Rigid Flexible Harsh Warm Hard Yielding Certain Humble Tight in body Relaxed in body

As for flight, just a reminder that someone can sit inches away from another and still flee—they just do so internally. We call that stonewalling.

There is no redeeming value whatsoever in harshness. Harshness does nothing that loving firmness doesn't do better.

Dan now has resources that he lacked as that little boy, like the ability to stand up to his wife, to tell Julia the truth and let the chips fall where they may. I call this letting the bad thing happen.

One of the telltale characteristics of the you and me Adaptive Child is that it is automatic, a knee-jerk response.

This reactive approach to relationships is inherently individualistic.

It's the Whoosh, the visceral reaction that comes up from the feet like a wave washing over your body. I speak of it as our first consciousness, and I divide it into three reactions—fight, flight, or fix.

in our reactions, we are not simple passengers. Over time, with training and practice, we can change our responses. We can shift from being reactive individuals to being proactive teammates who, in cooperation with our partner, intentionally shape the transaction between us.

We all know what fight looks like. As for flight, just a reminder that someone can sit inches away from another and still flee—they just do so internally. We call that stonewalling. Finally, the knee-jerk response of fixing is not the same as a mature, considered wish to work on the relationship. Adaptive Child fixers are fueled by an anxious, driven need to take anyone's tension away from them as quickly as possible. Their motto is "I'm upset until you're not.

My wife, the family therapist Belinda Berman

She calls it relational heroism—that moment when every muscle and nerve in your body is screaming to do the same old, but through raised consciousness, insight, discipline, and grace, you lift yourself off your accustomed track and deliberately place yourself on another track.

In our culture, our relationship to relationships tends to be passive. We get what we get, and then we react to it.