Rachel, your wisdom to this is unmatched. It's as if you have lived this experience along with us. Your teaching has helped me to realize that what my daughter and I are going through can be considered a bump and not a wall, and is not insurmountable. Fortunately, we have not cut each other off, but to be honest, it was more me, the parent, who shut down during our struggles. Finding you online has changed me. I've been following you and learning from you for a while now. I no longer feel like I'm complete failure as a person or a mother. For a while, I did feel the desire to let her go completely because it felt easier to do so. Because of you, I've realized it doesn't have to come to that and that I'm not the only mother who mistakenly felt that. Our biggest divide now is that she wants to be herself, but she wants me to embrace everything she does. I'm trying to explain to het that she can be herself, but she has to let me be me too...which means Im not always going to applaud her choices. We will get through this, thanks to.you.
Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. I pray that your teachings prevail over all of the false teachings that seem to be so popular. God blessed you, thank you for blessing us.
I love the way you go into depth in order to thoughtfully explain many of the complexities of what goes on in relationships throughout the years, and with growth and change happening with both parties. It’s been so helpful for me to try and understand my role and realize what I could have done differently.
I only wish my ED was also able to understand that these are somewhat common misunderstandings that are repairable, if only both parties worked together to understand what likely caused them to happen in the first place. 🤔
To enable people to negotiate relationships of all kinds, I believe it’s helpful to assist in developing;
The capacity to be curious, rather than spring to judgement.
The capacity to be reflective, rather than simply reactive.
The capacity to listen, rather than immediately express an opinion.
The skills can be developed, but take time, modelling, mentoring and patience. Our educational, and therapeutic, systems are often focussed on achievement, improvement, “being better”, taking action, “doing things”, and doing them quickly and efficiently, rather than helping people learn how to simply be human and accepting our own and others’ vulnerabilities.
Great work, this. While I hole heartedly have rebelled against the dominant cultural model that guided my parents through a world in an economic catastrophe, capped by a global conflaguration that put church/culture over careers/patriarch over nuclear family ovr individual....As has been noted for millena, the pendalum has swung wide of balance. Is it concievable that at some point in the distant and far future, after we have dominated a billion worlds, we might find the wisdom from the Earth's wise?
Do not do to others what you would not want for yourself.
and the variants, sometimes known asvthe golden rule, at least when I was thrown into a classroom in the local Church on Sunday morning.
It really comes down to this idea.
The distiction between me (differentiation) and you (attachment) is not as obvious as it may seem. We are one. We are unique. We *are* individual ***and*** group. Neither should be placed above the other, because eack one ih us is both!
i have a photo like that of me and my granddaughters... all cuddled up; it breaks my heart everytime i see it, i miss them beyond description, and yet I understand my daughter's need to separate for her best self. I understand my loss, and her suffering, and her finding her agency and voice and need to express separately - both are true and both part of the the attachment, differentiation , thank you Rachel for always giving us the words we are trying to hard to capture. More love, that's what we need, more loving communication. Bless you.
As always, a thoughtful take on family dynamics. I particularly appreciate the exploration of differentiation - so needed in healthy attachment. It is possible to "go away" and then come back. Children do it all the time as a means of fostering indepenence and "other than you". It seems that adult children forget that they, too, can go away and come back, none the worse for wear.
Love it because it is thoughtful, psychologically serious, and unusually willing to tolerate complexity.
Hate it because articles like this tend to cost me several hours of my life. My thoughts immediately branch into twelve directions at once, and I start mentally outlining something much longer before I’ve even finished reading. So this will probably become an article eventually. (If it feels obsessive, maybe even today.)
One thing I kept thinking while reading it:
A great deal of emotional maturity and intellectual maturity involves the integration of opposites.
Not the elimination of tension and not finally choosing one side forever. But the ability to hold competing truths without collapsing into simplification.
Psychologically, this is basic developmental work. In Piaget’s terms, immature cognition tends to force experience into existing categories, while more developed cognition can accommodate increasing complexity and contradiction. Maturity means reality no longer has to become simple before it can be tolerated.
A parent can love deeply and still be intrusive.
An adult child can need distance without the parent becoming a villain.
A spouse can be controlling and terrified at the same time.
Someone can be wounded and still responsible for their behavior.
Less differentiated systems often experience ambiguity as danger. So they resolve anxiety through certainty:
good/bad,
safe/dangerous,
victim/perpetrator,
attachment/autonomy.
But maturity usually looks more paradoxical than that.
I also reach into my Jewish/Chassidic/mystical part here. There is also something deeply Jewish about this idea. In Chassidic language, maturity is not chesed (drawing close) defeating gevurah (defining boundaries), or gevurah defeating chesed. It is their integration. Closeness and boundary. Attachment and differentiation. Love and restraint learning how to remain in a relationship to one another without collapse.
You can remain deeply attached without psychological fusion.
You can differentiate without turning everyone you disappoint into an oppressor.
You can set boundaries without emotionally exiling people.
You can love someone and still say no.
I suspect part of what makes Rachel’s piece so compelling is that it resists the modern pressure to flatten relational tension into pathology. Some conflict is not evidence that attachment has failed. Sometimes it is evidence that two people are struggling, imperfectly, to remain connected while reality changes around them.
And maybe this is not only a family or couples issue. It is also a cultural one. Groups, like individuals, often become less able to hold the tension of another group’s truth without experiencing it as an attack on their own.
Imagine living life as a child, creating your own sense of self, your own personality, make your own decisions & choices, chosing your life partner, starting a family....just like everybody on this planet. And your parents, the people who should love you unconditionally and support you punish you for this with crititicism, pursuing, pleading, sulking, becoming reactive, shutting down, going silent, triangulate other family members, becoming controlling, becoming emotionally intrusive and performatively detached...
How is this behavior understandable? What is the fine line with emotional abuse? If you cannot call this behavior toxic, what can you call toxic?
If your spouse is treating you like this, should we normalize it as well?
Why should we understand this behavior from a parent to their child, but distancing yourself from this behavior is called concerning?
These are genuine questions as I am really confused and I am trying to understand.
FFS - you are describing normal ordinary development. It's done without a manual and a lot of jargon by most families. But please never pathologize cruelty, abuse, sadism. This is more pseudo psych language to obscure that monetizing abuse of parents is fine with you. But not in the real world. Please don't call out intentional and obvious harm. Calling it a communication an individuation tactic ( that's the actual term )is total bullshit. Some ppl never took basic developmental psych. Minimizing the harm of parental abus., by implying it is merely a variant of normal is not only wrong but also professionally unconscionable .
I think the issue comes when people never move out of the protest behaviors. If I say “I love you but I’m still going to make this choice” and then I never hear the end of how terrible that choice is eventually I’m going to grow weary. Protest behaviors may be normal but they can still be damaging and I don’t think they need to be excused just because they can be explained.
Rachel, your wisdom to this is unmatched. It's as if you have lived this experience along with us. Your teaching has helped me to realize that what my daughter and I are going through can be considered a bump and not a wall, and is not insurmountable. Fortunately, we have not cut each other off, but to be honest, it was more me, the parent, who shut down during our struggles. Finding you online has changed me. I've been following you and learning from you for a while now. I no longer feel like I'm complete failure as a person or a mother. For a while, I did feel the desire to let her go completely because it felt easier to do so. Because of you, I've realized it doesn't have to come to that and that I'm not the only mother who mistakenly felt that. Our biggest divide now is that she wants to be herself, but she wants me to embrace everything she does. I'm trying to explain to het that she can be herself, but she has to let me be me too...which means Im not always going to applaud her choices. We will get through this, thanks to.you.
Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. I pray that your teachings prevail over all of the false teachings that seem to be so popular. God blessed you, thank you for blessing us.
Wow. The most perfect explanation and words!! Thank you !!!! 💫💖
I love the way you go into depth in order to thoughtfully explain many of the complexities of what goes on in relationships throughout the years, and with growth and change happening with both parties. It’s been so helpful for me to try and understand my role and realize what I could have done differently.
I only wish my ED was also able to understand that these are somewhat common misunderstandings that are repairable, if only both parties worked together to understand what likely caused them to happen in the first place. 🤔
Thanks for this. I so agree with your comments.
To enable people to negotiate relationships of all kinds, I believe it’s helpful to assist in developing;
The capacity to be curious, rather than spring to judgement.
The capacity to be reflective, rather than simply reactive.
The capacity to listen, rather than immediately express an opinion.
The skills can be developed, but take time, modelling, mentoring and patience. Our educational, and therapeutic, systems are often focussed on achievement, improvement, “being better”, taking action, “doing things”, and doing them quickly and efficiently, rather than helping people learn how to simply be human and accepting our own and others’ vulnerabilities.
Go well.
Great work, this. While I hole heartedly have rebelled against the dominant cultural model that guided my parents through a world in an economic catastrophe, capped by a global conflaguration that put church/culture over careers/patriarch over nuclear family ovr individual....As has been noted for millena, the pendalum has swung wide of balance. Is it concievable that at some point in the distant and far future, after we have dominated a billion worlds, we might find the wisdom from the Earth's wise?
Do not do to others what you would not want for yourself.
and the variants, sometimes known asvthe golden rule, at least when I was thrown into a classroom in the local Church on Sunday morning.
It really comes down to this idea.
The distiction between me (differentiation) and you (attachment) is not as obvious as it may seem. We are one. We are unique. We *are* individual ***and*** group. Neither should be placed above the other, because eack one ih us is both!
i have a photo like that of me and my granddaughters... all cuddled up; it breaks my heart everytime i see it, i miss them beyond description, and yet I understand my daughter's need to separate for her best self. I understand my loss, and her suffering, and her finding her agency and voice and need to express separately - both are true and both part of the the attachment, differentiation , thank you Rachel for always giving us the words we are trying to hard to capture. More love, that's what we need, more loving communication. Bless you.
As always, a thoughtful take on family dynamics. I particularly appreciate the exploration of differentiation - so needed in healthy attachment. It is possible to "go away" and then come back. Children do it all the time as a means of fostering indepenence and "other than you". It seems that adult children forget that they, too, can go away and come back, none the worse for wear.
Rachel: This is the best explanation that I've read about the tension between differentiation and attachment.
And you did it while avoiding the massive egos and epic shouting matches between David Schnarch and Sue Johnson.
I hope that folks who are teaching relationship therapy concepts to future couples therapists will allude to this article in their training.
I both love and hate this piece.
Love it because it is thoughtful, psychologically serious, and unusually willing to tolerate complexity.
Hate it because articles like this tend to cost me several hours of my life. My thoughts immediately branch into twelve directions at once, and I start mentally outlining something much longer before I’ve even finished reading. So this will probably become an article eventually. (If it feels obsessive, maybe even today.)
One thing I kept thinking while reading it:
A great deal of emotional maturity and intellectual maturity involves the integration of opposites.
Not the elimination of tension and not finally choosing one side forever. But the ability to hold competing truths without collapsing into simplification.
Psychologically, this is basic developmental work. In Piaget’s terms, immature cognition tends to force experience into existing categories, while more developed cognition can accommodate increasing complexity and contradiction. Maturity means reality no longer has to become simple before it can be tolerated.
A parent can love deeply and still be intrusive.
An adult child can need distance without the parent becoming a villain.
A spouse can be controlling and terrified at the same time.
Someone can be wounded and still responsible for their behavior.
Less differentiated systems often experience ambiguity as danger. So they resolve anxiety through certainty:
good/bad,
safe/dangerous,
victim/perpetrator,
attachment/autonomy.
But maturity usually looks more paradoxical than that.
I also reach into my Jewish/Chassidic/mystical part here. There is also something deeply Jewish about this idea. In Chassidic language, maturity is not chesed (drawing close) defeating gevurah (defining boundaries), or gevurah defeating chesed. It is their integration. Closeness and boundary. Attachment and differentiation. Love and restraint learning how to remain in a relationship to one another without collapse.
You can remain deeply attached without psychological fusion.
You can differentiate without turning everyone you disappoint into an oppressor.
You can set boundaries without emotionally exiling people.
You can love someone and still say no.
I suspect part of what makes Rachel’s piece so compelling is that it resists the modern pressure to flatten relational tension into pathology. Some conflict is not evidence that attachment has failed. Sometimes it is evidence that two people are struggling, imperfectly, to remain connected while reality changes around them.
And maybe this is not only a family or couples issue. It is also a cultural one. Groups, like individuals, often become less able to hold the tension of another group’s truth without experiencing it as an attack on their own.
Very good & helpful.
Thank you.
Brilliant explanations!
Thank you, Rachel...this makes sense. I really appreciate your guidance 💜
Imagine living life as a child, creating your own sense of self, your own personality, make your own decisions & choices, chosing your life partner, starting a family....just like everybody on this planet. And your parents, the people who should love you unconditionally and support you punish you for this with crititicism, pursuing, pleading, sulking, becoming reactive, shutting down, going silent, triangulate other family members, becoming controlling, becoming emotionally intrusive and performatively detached...
How is this behavior understandable? What is the fine line with emotional abuse? If you cannot call this behavior toxic, what can you call toxic?
If your spouse is treating you like this, should we normalize it as well?
Why should we understand this behavior from a parent to their child, but distancing yourself from this behavior is called concerning?
These are genuine questions as I am really confused and I am trying to understand.
FFS - you are describing normal ordinary development. It's done without a manual and a lot of jargon by most families. But please never pathologize cruelty, abuse, sadism. This is more pseudo psych language to obscure that monetizing abuse of parents is fine with you. But not in the real world. Please don't call out intentional and obvious harm. Calling it a communication an individuation tactic ( that's the actual term )is total bullshit. Some ppl never took basic developmental psych. Minimizing the harm of parental abus., by implying it is merely a variant of normal is not only wrong but also professionally unconscionable .
I think the issue comes when people never move out of the protest behaviors. If I say “I love you but I’m still going to make this choice” and then I never hear the end of how terrible that choice is eventually I’m going to grow weary. Protest behaviors may be normal but they can still be damaging and I don’t think they need to be excused just because they can be explained.
Is identity culture a symptom of overemphasis of differentiation?
Prolly ...