The Relationship Grid

All unhealthy relationship patterns & interactions are affected by difficulties in these two domains:

1 - Boundaries (too strong or too weak/porous)

2 - Self-esteem (too low or too grandiose)

Relationship problems will tend to exist in the expression of these extremes and thus cause problems. If our goal is to create healthy relationships in our lives, a good first step lies in becoming aware of where you go when the going gets tough. We are not talking here about you on a good day. We are talking about the you when you get triggered; the Adaptive child role, when you lose contact with your Wise Adult self. Ask yourself again: "Where do I go?".

To help you more deeply understand these relationship patterns and behaviours, I'd like to invite you to take the Relationship Grid test (link below), developed by couples therapist Terry Real. It's a useful way to both understand where your primary maladaptive relationship style might lean.

If you are interested in engaging in Relational Mindfulness, a vital skill lies in being able to recognise when our 'adaptive or wounded child' has been activated, and to be honest with ourselves about how we are expressing that. When we find ourselves in one of the quadrants (ie: "triggered"), we can be sure that we've lost touch with our Wise Adult, and this inevitably leads into the reinforcement of negative cycles between you and your partner.

So - let's go!

Take the test by clicking this link:

20 Question Relationship Grid Test

(it will only take you a couple of minutes to complete).

Once you've finished, come on back here and read on!

As you'll read below in a more detailed explanation of the four quadrants, you'll begin to learn about where you need to move to when you feel yourself sliding into your habitual maladaptive patterns - to bring you back into the Healthy Centre.

This is the pathway of Relational Mindfulness.

It's not about changing your partner. It's about You taking responsibility for You.

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Adapted from material from the Relational Life Institute

The Relationship Grid will provide you with an simple and accurate snapshot of where you are (when reacting / in your adaptive child) and where you need to go (to move into your Wise Adult) when you are relating to others and you feel your reactivity igniting.

It provides an easy way to help you practice coming back into Healthy Centre -- moving yourself either down from grandiosity or up from shame -- whilst also pulling yourself in from being boundaryless or to open up from being walled off.

With the grid in mind, you can do a "mental freeze" and ask yourself: “Where am I, and where do I need to move to?” To use the grid:

First: Check your Self-Esteem:

Do you feel deflated & shame-filled, OR do you feel inflated & grandiose?

Second: Check your Boundaries

Start first with your containing boundary:

“Am I un-contained and letting too much out?" (violent in words or actions) OR

"Am I walled-off and letting nothing out?” (withdrawn)

Now check the self-protective part of your boundary: 

“Am I too porous?" (letting too much in) OR

"Am I not open enough?” (not letting anything in)

It is important not to overthink your position when using the Relationship Grid.  Simply place yourself in the appropriate quadrant. Once you know where you are, the Grid will instantly and unfailingly tell you where you need to go in order to come back into Healthy Center.

BOUNDARYLESS AND ONE DOWN

If you are Boundaryless and One-down, chances are that your predominant need is for more protection and solidity. Close your eyes or look down at the floor and in your mind’s eye, see the outer protective part of your boundary grow stronger; feel how it shields you. Let yourself relax within this circle of protection. You don’t have to steel yourself against emotional upset or attack because your boundary will do that for you.

BOUNDARYLESS AND ONE UP

Conversely, if you are Boundaryless and One-up, and if you’re feeling like a big, angry victim, stop it!  In the graphic above, 'violence' is not just referring to physical violence - it includes emotional, verbal etc. If you found this to be your predominant quadrant, chances are that your primary weakness will be containment: protecting others from you! What needs to happen is for you to strengthen the inside of your boundary. As you do this, feel it pressing in against you, like a hand on your stomach, sucking it in, reining you in. Your goal is to not offend or react from this victim position. This is not deserved by your partner, it’s not attractive, and it’s also not good for you.  Use the Grid to help you 'come down' into the healthy same-as position, and let your boundary protect you from whatever the stimulus was that you got yourself so upset about. Wait until you’re less reactive, then ask yourself “Is there anything to this, or do I just want to fight? Am I battling a story instead of dealing with the reality of the life-sized issue in front of me?”

WALLED OFF AND ONE DOWN

If you are Walled off and One Down, you'll feel de-energised and disillusioned. If you’re like a lot of people who adopt a walled-off, one-down position, you’re often passive. Perhaps you’re depressed or just resigned to what you’ve decided is your fate. You don’t want contact, or you don’t know how to make contact. You have a sense of failure before even beginning. It’s too difficult, too overwhelming, or just too ungratifying. You’d rather be left alone to comfort yourself as best you can with your usual distractions.  Perhaps you’re addicted to or dependent on some substance/s, process, or perhaps people outside of your primary relationship.

You must have courage to rouse yourself from limbo. The combination of shame and walls is hard to punch through. You have to make yourself start moving again, make yourself re-engage. Your lethargy is like that horrible feeling of getting up in the morning when it’s still dark and making yourself go to the gym to work out. But that’s all it is. Your resistance is no more substantial and no more difficult to conquer than that. You fear commitment – to a person, to work, or ambition, or everything. You fear you will fail. Far and away the most effective remedy for such fear is simple action and repetition. Don’t stall. For someone in this position, “trying,” “understanding,” or “working on things” may be little more than sophisticated procrastination.

WALLED OFF AND ONE UP

If you are Walled off and One Up, ask yourself, “What am I being so high and mighty about?”... “Who am I kidding?” Really see the way you walk around as if whomever you’re with isn’t good enough, isn’t quite worth your while. I want you to let in just how mean you can really be; your overt shaming of others and your meanness. Moving into Healthy Centre will require you to lose your grandiose attitude and connect with your partner (or child or parent or co-worker). You will need to bring yourself down from your superiority and out from behind those walls, and come back into engagement. The truth is that you were likely dying in there; alone inside your empty fortress.

Coming to Healthy Center

Like many people, you may find that you reside mostly in one quadrant of the grid when you lose touch with your Wise Adult . However, it may well be that in a former relationship your behaviour tended toward another quadrant. Or you may feel that you skip around quite a bit from day to day, or perhaps even from minute to minute. The important thing is to be honest with yourself about where you go now.

Here’s the deal on using the grid: Keep It Simple

• If you're in a shame state, bring yourself up.

• If you’re being grandiose, bring yourself down.

• If you are boundaryless, pause and reset your boundary

• If you are walled off, take a deep breath and get back into engagement.

Remember - we are talking about you when your reactivity is up. As we enquire into this framework, this is no time to be unkind to yourself. It takes practice, but it pays off handsomely in healthier relationship dynamics, and indeed your own inner peace.

Argh. Practice.

THE COURAGE OF SELF HONESTY

It also takes courage to look at yourself, to be honest, to recognise where you are in those difficult moments and to strongly will yourself to come back to Healthy Center. Like a beginner at anything, you'll likely find this internal work difficult at first, and you'll make mistakes. Press on! You'll get better at this.

But... just wait until the first time someone says something that feels provocative to you and you feel that whoosh against your psychological boundary.... and then you feel it bounce off.

Or... the first time you feel a hot wave of shame, and rather than feeling rotten for hours and hours about it, you find yourself able to breathe your way back into Healthy Center in a matter of minutes.

And... the excitement the first time you don’t just intellectually understand this material, but instead have the palpable experience that this technique really does work – that you can directly and powerfully impact your own state of mind - and use this for the benefit of ALL your relationships. Partners, Parents, Siblings, Friends, Children, Colleagues... perhaps even the relationship you have with yourself.

TO FINISH....

Here's comment that I lifted from an article in the New York Times, about a journalist and his wife who worked with Terry Real for 8 sessions. A very interesting read. Sure, the scenario below is a little on the dramatic side! ... however I believe the sentiment to be true. 

We CAN control ourselves when we need to (either to chill out OR to re-engage). We just need to do it more than we think.  

It's all too easy to think that the only person who needs to 'control' themselves is the noisy more expressive one. The withdrawing one needs to learn to 'control' that too. 

Truly, this is like the ultimate spiritual practise I reckon!  

Real has a bit he does when clients say they “can’t” control themselves in a moment of distress. “No one selectively loses control,” he says to me. Would I rage, he asks, if he had a gun to my daughter’s head? No? Then it’s not can’t. It’s won’t. It’s a choice. Every small victory over “can’t” is evidence that I am not impotent before the whims of my own adaptive child role, even when I’ve already traveled a step down the road toward a meltdown.