The following is a guest post from Ron Soderquist.
Debbie, in her 50’s, called: “I am so upset about my relationship with my 35-yr-old daughter, our only child. She and I are always in conflict, and my husband agrees this needs to be changed.”
When she came in she reported feeling so sad that she just couldn’t enjoy visiting her daughter who lives nearby: “It’s such a noisy household. The children scream and squabble — there are two under the age of six. I wish my daughter would be more organized and keep them quiet so I could enjoy being there. I get so tense I have to leave her home in the middle of a visit.”
I didn’t have a clear strategy, so I asked her to bring her daughter, Emmy, next time. Then the dynamics became clear: Emmy is a high energy, outgoing, modern in-your-face young woman. Mother Debbie is quiet, somewhat distant, a loner kind of person who needs her space. I was reminded of the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Mom is a lot like the uptight couple who came into the vibrant Greek gathering.
During the hour with Mom and Daughter it became clear that Emmy wanted mother to change and just enjoy her high energy household, “Why can’t you be like other grandmothers and just come in and enjoy the family?” And Mom wanted Emmy to change: “Why can’t you be more organized and quiet so I can be comfortable with you? I can’t stand all that commotion.”
First I tried some conventional strategies like helping them listen non-judgmentally to one another, but I saw no movement in their relationship. I didn’t see any point in seeing them together again, so I asked Debbie to come in alone.
Again she told me: “It just isn’t me to be like other grandmothers who get on the floor and play with the children and enjoy all the noise. And I like me the way I am. She is asking me to be someone I’m not.”
I assured her: “You are fine just as you are. And Emmy is fine the way she is. You just happen to be very different personalities. She is AM and You are FM—she is Rock and Roll and you are Chamber Music.” She agreed.
“Fortunately, there is a solution: I am thinking about Meryl Streep, and how she takes on a different personality for every role. But off stage she is still Meryl Streep — she doesn’t have to change who she is. I wonder if you would enjoy inventing a role that works well when you are with Emmy and her family? (Here I slowed to my hypnotic voice and watched her slip into a trance.) When you open the door to her home you can see it like a stage. You pause at the door, . . . to view the scattered toys, and listen to the active children as part of a stage play. You may find it amusing. You are Meryl Streep slipping into your role. Your creative inner mind will be alongside your conscious mind, enjoying the flow as you engage with your daughter and your grandchildren in fun ways, and every time you enter that stage, that family stage, you will find yourself expanding into your new role in very satisfying ways, sometimes surprising yourself, always enjoying your secret strategy. It’s OK to let your husband in on it — afterward you and your husband may chuckle about the relaxed grandmother character you have created. You are both director and actor on this stage. Really enjoy surprising them.”
She came out of her trance and exclaimed: “I can do that!” After some additional mental rehearsal she left in a very good mood. Three days later my phone rang: “This is Meryl Streep calling. I just earned an Oscar. I spent a whole day with Emmy and her family, and at the end of the day my husband asked Emmy: ‘How did your mother do today?’ And Emmy said: ‘She did great!'” It was their first pleasant, relaxed day together in many years, a day without tension and conflict. I asked her what she found interesting while playing her new role: “I felt so calm — very different — calm and comfortable.”
A well-deserved Oscar.
(A few weeks later she called, “excited and happy because she had entertained her entire hi-stress clan and did her Streep thing and enjoyed herself!”)
Ron Soderquist is a hypnotherapist and licensed Marriage and Family therapist in the Los Angeles area.
Commentary by Steve Andreas
This is a really lovely example of many different fundamental aspects of change work, and the importance of a careful choice of words.
The first session didn’t offer a clear direction for intervention, so Ron wisely brings in the daughter, so he can observe them interacting live, rather than knowing the daughter only through the filter of the mother’s perceptions and report. Although the interaction became much clearer when the daughter joined the mother for the second session, having them both together made it difficult to intervene usefully.
In that session it becomes clear that for both of them the issue was one of identity, in contrast to behavior. Both want the other to change, and each speaks of this change in terms of being different — in contrast to acting different. The daughter says, “Why can’t you be like other grandmothers,” and the mother says, “Why can’t you be more organized and quiet.” (Most answers to either of those questions would only lead to justifications and rationalizations, neither of which would be useful.)
For most people, being different seems to be much more difficult than doing something different. “How can I be different than who I am?” If you describe a certain behavior as “being different,” most clients will object, as both mother and daughter did in this case, and this is one source of what many therapists describe as “resistance.”
As long as both mother and daughter think of their differences in terms of the other having to be different, not much is possible. Demanding that someone else be different is an ill-formed outcome that gets many of us stuck and frustrated, because while you have at least some choice about your own behavior, you really don’t have any choice about what someone else does. That is why having them “listen non-judgmentally to one another” in the second session went nowhere, despite how useful that intervention often is.
But if you describe the exact same behavior as “doing something different” or “acting different” a client will often be willing to at least consider it. This important distinction between identity and behavior is one that many therapists have never learned, and it is often a crucially important redescription. In this case it was the key understanding that allowed the mother to change her behavior, and also have a new internal response to her daughter’s chaotic household.
In the third session, the mother states even more blatantly that her understanding of the issue involves her identity, “It just isn’t me to be like other grandmothers . . . I like me the way I am. She is asking me to be someone I’m not.” There are six references to her identity and five to her being in that brief utterance — “isn’t,” “me,” “be,” “I,” “me,” “I,” “am,” “me,” “be,” “I’m” (“I am”).
Ron begins the his intervention by exquisitely pacing her focus on her identity, assuring her, “You are fine just as you are,” relieving her of any pressure to change who she is, and implying that her daughter’s attempt to change her is not valid. He follows this up immediately with saying, “And Emmy is fine the way she is,” which implies that the mother’s attempts to change her daughter are just as invalid. Since the mother already agrees with the first statement, she has to agree with the second, which only reverses the direction of the logic. Abandoning her attempts to get her daughter to be different closes a door that leads nowhere, and opens a door to a more useful alternative.
To strengthen this understanding, Ron first offers a generalization, about them being different. “You just happen to be very different personalities.” Then he follows this up with two specific metaphors that express this difference in who they are, “She is AM and you are FM — she is Rock and Roll and you are Chamber Music.” Both metaphors are drawn from contexts in which differences clearly don’t need to change.
Ron begins his description of Meryl Streep, and the difference between her self and the roles she plays, with the word, “Fortunately,” a cognitive qualifier that creates an expectation of good things to come. (If he had used a different adverb, such as “unfortunately” or “sadly,” the mother would have had a very different expectation about what he would say next.) Saying “there is a solution,” further directs her attention away from the problem, and builds even more positive expectation.
“I wonder if you would enjoy inventing a role that works well when you are with Emmy and her family,” is called an embedded question, a hypnotic linguistic form often used by Virginia Satir, one of the greatest therapists who ever lived. Although it is gramatically a statement, it elicits an internal response as if it were a gentle question, without demanding an overt response the way most questions do. This invites the mother to consider changing her behavior, but without any demand that she do so, and with no need to respond verbally.
Notice how different an overt question with the same content would be. “Would you enjoy inventing a role that works well when you are with Emmy and her family?” would demand a verbal answer — yes or no — and that would keep her externally focused on Ron, making it harder to turn inward and simply consider whether she could enjoy doing that.
The embedded question also focuses her attention on whether she would enjoy playing a role, implying that she can do it — it’s just a question of whether she would enjoy it or not. Before, she demanded that the daughter change; now she is invited to change her own behavior (while keeping her identity intact) an enormous shift in attitude that nearly all clients can benefit from.
As she begins to consider this possibility, she will naturally become more internal, a perfect time for Ron to slow his voice to be more hypnotic, and set up the specific cues for her new role play — all in present tense, so that she can rehearse it as if it is happening now. “When you open the door to her home you can see it like a stage. You pause at the door, . . . to view the scattered toys, and listen to the active children as part of a stage play.”
Then he permissively suggests a response she might have, “You may find it amusing,” and follows with even more detailed suggestions that together create a rehearsal of new behaviors. “You are Meryl Streep slipping into a role.” The word “slipping” implies that it will be easy and effortless. Think how different it would be for her if Ron had said instead, “trying to get into role,” or “struggling to act differently”! Then he goes on to suggest other behaviors, and possible pleasurable responses for her.
When he says, “Your creative inner mind will be alongside your conscious mind,” that implies that the creative mind is unconscious, and will assist her. As he goes on to say, “enjoying the flow as you engage with your daughter and your grandchildren in fun ways,” that implies that much of this will occur unconsciously and spontaneously. Notice all the words that make this rehearsal an enticing prospect: “enjoying,” “flow,” “engage,” “fun,” “expanding,” “satisfying,” “surprising,” “enjoying,” “secret.”
A bit later, when Ron says “. . . afterward you and your husband may chuckle about the relaxed grandmother character you have created,” that invites her take a future vantage point and look back on what she has imagined, as if it had already actually happened in the past, further cementing its reality as something she can do. With all this elegant hypnotic language, it is not surprising that when she emerges from her trance, she says enthusiastically, “I can do that!”
This entire intervention probably took less than four minutes, showing that when you know what to do — and how to do it — change is easy.
I think Ron deserves an Oscar, too!
