"Find the Bad Guy" Dance

Because I do a lot of work with couples in my marriage and family therapy practice, I often see something known as “Find the Bad Guy.”  It is the dynamic that occurs when both partners are supposedly trying to protect themselves from the other, but really it is mutual attacking, accusation or blame.  I see this dynamic repeatedly.  My intention is to shine a light on it by helping people to understand it and to how to escape from it. 

This “dance” begins when one partner or the other is hurt or feels vulnerable, and one or both feel out of control.  Emotional safety begins to disappear.  The negativity continues as one or both say anything in an attempt to regain control through defining the partner in a negative way.  The receiving partner then reacts angrily.  Soon one or both feels cornered and actually are flooded with fear.  They perceive that something hurtful has been done to them, and do not usually see the impact of their responses on the other.  They forget about what is good in their partnership; they only see that “that you just stepped on my toes.”

Once this negative dance pattern occurs over and over again, a partner will come to expect it, watch for it, and react even quicker in the future when they perceive it is coming.  Subsequently, this reinforces the pattern.  By watching for and anticipating the perceived hurt, we close off all the ways out of this dead-end dance.  The partners find it hard to relax with one another, to let down their guard.  It becomes harder to emotionally connect with the other in a positive way.  The range of responses becomes more restricted as the “Find the Bad Guy” dance becomes more deeply entrenched in their interactions.

When a partner is attacking or counterattacking, they try to put their feelings aside.  After repeated occurrences, positive feelings get completely lost and the couple itself becomes lost.  The relationship becomes more unsatisfying and unsafe as partners begin viewing the other as uncaring or even defective.  Soon this pattern becomes habitual and deeply rooted, and the dance becomes almost automatic, and starts going in a “circle”:  the more one attacks, the more dangerous they appear to the other, and the more the other partner watches for the attack, the harder they hit back.  Round and round they go. 

This negative pattern is caustic and can destroy a marriage.  The only way to stop the dance and to restore safety and trust is to recognize that no one has to be the villain, to be the bad guy.  It doesn’t matter who started the dance or who is right or which details are true.  The pattern needs to be recognized as “The Bad Guy,” not the couple.  The dance is the villain and the partners are the victims.

If a couple really wants to say “enough,” they must recognize the pattern.  They both must be weary of the bickering and the drama.  They need to:

• ·         Attempt to stay in the present and focus on what is happening in the “here and now”
• ·         Attempt to not use past behaviors to justify present perceptions
• ·         Try to break the pattern of mind-reading, blaming, or assuming motives of the partner
• ·         Look at the pattern or the dance as a circular dance, fed by criticism and even contempt, realizing that there is no true “start” to a circle
• ·         Consider the alternative of continuing to do the “Find the Bad Guy” dance

I hope that this posting helps some couple out there.  Partners don’t need to do this dance anymore.

Negative Feelings and Emotions

The following list contains positive emotions and a common opposite negative emotion:

Calmness/Anger, Carefree/Insecurity, Courage/Fearfulness, Exuberance/Depression, Safety/Anxiety, Connectedness/Loneliness, Clarity/Confusion, Love/Apathy, Joy/Sadness, Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction, Excitement/Boredom, Innocence/Guilt, Bliss/Pain

Reviewing the “opposites” list above, most of us have felt many if not all of these negative emotions at one time or another.  Feeling negative emotions is unpleasant and can be painful.  We don’t want to feel the pain, or we may tell ourselves that we shouldn’t be feeling those negative emotions. 

When we feel physical pain, we view it as a feedback mechanism that informs us that something is harming us and such a situation should be avoided or modified.  However, we respond quite differently when we feel emotional pain.  We do not think something is wrong, but rather, we think that something is wrong with us.  But we can choose to view emotional pain similarly to the way we view physical pain: as a feedback mechanism that informs us that our heart or spirit is being harmed and that something in our lives needs to be changed. 

 

For example, when you once felt anger, could it be that you have been emotionally violated in some way, and your heart or spirit has been harmed to your detriment?

When you once felt fear, could it be that you perceived danger and that something or somebody might hurt you?

When you once felt depressed and your heart or spirit was shutting down from emotional pain, could it be that you might have needed to make some changes in the way you thought or framed the event?

When you once felt guilt, could it be that a choice you may have made emotionally hurt yourself or someone else and that it was not a wise choice?

When you once felt despair, could it be that you had lost hope that tomorrow was another day and that things would likely get better?

Negative emotions can serve a purpose.   We may not want or like to feel them, but it is not a matter of whether we should or shouldn’t feel them.  Feelings aren’t facts, they’re just feelings.  What matters is what we do with them.  We can go three ways with them, and it can be tempting to default to two of them:  surrendering our will to them, or shutting them down completely.

TWO DEFAULT OPTIONS

Heather‘s three kids had been noisy and she heard constant crying.  They just appeared to run around and scream.  Her nerves were frayed.  She barely got them down for a nap and was relishing a much needed quiet time when she heard a crash down the hall.   Upon arriving in one of the kid’s rooms, she realized that her almost three year old had pulled on a cord and toppled a vase which had shattered.  What was she feeling?  Perhaps negative emotions like anger, even perhaps rage.  Does she surrender her will to the moment and scream at the child, telling him how clumsy and stupid his is?  It will make her feel good—temporarily.  Is this her “default” response?  

Mark had just found out from the doctor that the hearing loss he had experienced in one ear was not going to get better and that he would likely have to deal with it the rest of his life.  When his brother David asked him how he was handling the disturbing news, he remarked that it could have been both ears.  When David pressed him a little more as to how difficult it might be and that it was too bad that Mark would have to deal with it long term, Mark became a little upset and wondered if David was just trying to make him feel bad.  Does Mark just “put a happy face” on the situation and stuff the feelings, shutting them down as he usually does and supposedly hiding them away?

What are the consequences of these two approaches?  The first one is that you can surrender completely to your emotions, losing control to the tsunami of emotion and perhaps physically or emotionally hurt others.   Inappropriate words can be as hurtful as inappropriate actions.  Our surrendering to hurtful words, and sometimes even actions, usually leads to deep regret afterwards.  Is this a “default” setting. 

The second one is you can always shut down or stuff these negative feelings, pretending that they are not there, and be emotionally flat.  This may seem a more level-headed thing to do, except unresolved feelings do not go away.  They just remain in the dark, festering and mildly churning like bad food in one's stomach, until some provocative event occurs.  In that moment, all of the unresolved emotions come quickly to the surface and we "vomit" or explode on people, often those with whom we have strong emotional connections like family or friends.

Jose’s wife was routinely getting on him for not paying more attention to, and spending more time with, the children.  He would listen to her passively and then walk away.  He kept doing this until one day, his daughter Angela spoke to him in what he considered a disrespectful manner.  Even though she said it in a non-provocative way, he exploded emotionally, walked up to her with fists clenched, getting about six inches from her face, and started yelling at her about how disrespectful she was.  She burst into tears and ran away, afraid and hurt, even though he hadn’t touched her.  Jose immediately felt terrible.

A THIRD OPTION

The more healthy approach is to feel what you are feeling, but realizing that feelings indeed are not facts.  Such negative feelings can certainly serve that purpose and indicate to us and inform us that something is in fact wrong.  And it is not a matter of whether we should or shouldn’t feel them.  We can manage them by saying to ourselves that they are not us.  We can be in control of them.  We can think about why we are feeling a certain way and try to determine what that negative emotion is communicating to us about ourselves.

How can feelings be felt in a constructive way?  We can remove ourselves from a triggering event or situation and give ourselves a “time out,” and be alone for awhile.  We can talk to our spouse, a relative, or a friend, and vent.  Alone, we can cuss.   We can scream into a pillow or punch it a few times.  We can go for a walk and isolate ourselves for awhile and try to get perspective on what just happened.  We can write about it, and emotionally dump our feelings onto paper, and as such, out of us.  In fact, feeling the feeling and then getting it out of our system is very healthy.

Sometimes a situation arises in which there are negative feelings and emotions between two emotionally attached individuals, such as in a spousal relationship.  As we process why we are feeling a certain way or what is to be learned from the disagreement, this time of “sitting” with our negative emotions can be very instructive.  It is fine to not have everything resolved in a relationship at any particular time.  We must not think that we must try to repair the disharmony immediately.

Returning to the earlier story of Heather and the broken vase, exercising the Third Option, perhaps she could have pushed the vase behind a dresser where it would be out of the way, and then excused herself to a quiet place in the house—to cool down.  Later in the day, when the emotion had subsided, she could reflect on what changes need to be made in her life.  What could this negative experience and negative emotions teach her.  Is she getting enough support in parenting?  Is she getting enough sleep?  Is it time to change the naptime dynamic?  Or is something deeper going on?  Maybe she is treating others about as well as she subconsciously believes she should be treated.  Or is it that she feels out of control and disrespected which implies that she secretly fears that she does not deserve to be respected?  Could it be that her anger came when she felt threatened in some deep way? 

Negative feelings and emotions are a feedback mechanism that can inform us that some aspect of our lives needs to be changed.  They are the way the Universe or God helps us to get to our “whole place.”  And there is always a Third Option to get us to that “whole place” rather than surrendering ourselves to the tsunami of those feelings or stuffing them.