Healing Metaphysics Home > Archive> State-Changing in Relationships

Article by Michael Finn
Copyright Michael Finn

The idea discussed here is that within a relationship there can be a tendency for persons to lift their own moods, self esteem and general demeanor (a state-change ), by causing the other person to reflect poorly on themselves. Guilt is often a conveyor.

Our lives are like a revolving door of states – moving, shifting, becoming stuck, stagnant, some notable by their very absence, their disavowal by the individual. The states are accessed, created by our lenses of personal perception.

We are chameleonic by nature. You can be one person with family, possibly another in the workplace, with friends and so on. Should the parts you feel the need to assume in a given situation, ever come into some conflict with one’s entrenched and fairly unmoving identity structure, then the organism undergoes covert, stealthy but injurious stress. This conflict of interest, over time, often metamorphoses into chronic body symptoms. The states we move through often hinge on which part of the personality is/are being drawn on or emphasized at given times.

In relationships, there is a constant shift of energy between partners ; families as operating systems, have more complex energetics. If due to relationship dysfunction, parts of oneself are repressed or suppressed, then one’s overall vitality, energy levels and emotional status all suffer. Fatigue, boredom, low motivation, depression, anxiety and so on, often strongly emerge. Rather than being turned on, the individual will feel heavy, lethargic, turned down – a low state.

At this point, mood and spirit changers/enhancers are resorted to.

So what turns us on?

Let’s see, how about some major players:-

• Sex
• Drugs/Alcohol
• Possession (money, celebrity, power, control)

These embed themselves into the prevailing culture. They are fairly obvious to the observer.

Other, more covert’ intra-relationship state changing processes’ are also operating. It’s very useful to simply become more aware of their presence and their background influences.

These are part of the ‘games people play’. A prominent example is the tendency for the partners within a committed relationship to ‘work off’ each other, albeit very unconsciously. Low self esteem is a prevailing trigger.

A person, feeling the pangs of this ‘deep and prevailing emptiness’, will often continually undermine his/her partner often through subtle emotional strategies, or via the likes of criticism. The upshot is that one partner subverts the other. The scales shift between the two and states shift. The critic’s energy lifts as her/his partner shifts down a few gears into self doubt, guilt, complexes, self criticism, anger, depression etc. This scenario probably cycles and has a ‘slow rollercoaster’ character.

Relationships really are rollercoasters at times. Often poor health, serious diagnoses/prognoses, accidents and incidents will disrupt the process between the two people. So, a state shift from (for example), some low mood to a higher one is effected by inter-personal interaction.

Long term relationships often come to an end when one of the two partners breaks the cycle(s). This person finds a way to extricate themselves from the ‘game’ and works/focuses on self enough to support themselves adequately to invoke change.

What happens more often than not, is that one partner discovers a third party. This party is attractive to them, more than likely seems very supportive and becomes the springboard to change. His/her energy is utilized to effect the relationship separation process. This is not a preferred scenario because no one really gets around to working on her/his raw issues – third parties are very seductive and distracting.

Leaving a relationship is a big deal. I see many people in clinic who are experiencing poor health, very frequently a few months after a difficult and messy separation, one which is neither very clear nor very complete. Like something important was left behind or is only half cooked.

A terrifically useful concept known as – ‘high and low dreaming’,is expounded upon by Dr. Arnold Mindell, in various books (see www.laotse.com)

This expands on the cyclic high and low movements of energy between people in relationship. Dr. Mindell’s deeper considerations stem from exploring the tendency of people to ‘dream each other up’, through the continual transmission of ‘double signals’ between each other. The double signals are created by identity confusion and conflict and are only resolved by ‘inner work – personal investigation’.

Useful texts in this regard are:-

• ‘Working with the Dreaming Body’ by Dr. Arnold Mindell and
• ‘Radical Intercourse’ by Dr. Joe Goodbread

Healing Metaphysics Home > Archive> State-Changing in Relationships