Dr. Orna Guralnik
Appearances
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Yeah. Yes, there are identity roles that force us to occupy certain aspects of ourselves and then dissociate from other aspects, like disavow, lose touch with, push aside and then feel compelled to see whatever we've pushed aside in the other. And then try to control that other, because it's really scary to constantly have to disavow stuff in yourself.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
So you've got to like see it in the other and then, Get a grip on that other control.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Exactly. Exactly. There was a couple like that on the show a couple of seasons ago, Michael and Michal. They were like such a classic example of that, where one of them was like, you know, the hyper-functional, all she could think of was like how to get the family moving. And her husband was all about like... wait, what about fun? What about relaxing vacation? Like hang out with the kids.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
And they were so split between them and she forgot. She loves having a good time. Like, you know, my, my, what we call a paradoxical intervention with them was like, Michal, you have to take two hours a day and do nothing, nothing, nothing. like play on your phone. You cannot be productive for two hours a day.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
And that was like a magical intervention because suddenly she was like, oh, actually I love doing that. And he was suddenly like, oh my God, I've given up all these like functional roles that I actually love doing too.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
A paradoxical intervention, it comes from like the cognitive behavioral world, but it's when you instruct a person to do exactly the opposite of what you ultimately think is going to happen. So let's say if you want a person to take more responsibility for finances, you paradoxically instruct them to spend as much money as possible.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
With the idea that you're then kind of, you're scrambling the system and other things kind of get evoked in them. You break them out of certain patterns. And in a way you allow for the opposite to emerge. So how can a couple do that on themselves? For example, if you feel compelled to yell at your wife for putting her shoes in the wrong place. You feel compelled to do that.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Instead of doing that, every time you feel compelled to do that, go up and give her a hug. You're wonderful.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
For example. Yeah. You're both suddenly released from something.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
So, okay. A non-friendly way of describing that is as toxic. That passivity is another way of asserting a certain kind of dominance. It's toxic in its own way. I encourage myself to, not to split and to try to understand all sides. So I've given a lot of thought to this like kind of new form of masculinity that is indeed on the face of it, it defined by passivity. Um,
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
And lots of things are happening, I think, in gender politics and in the distribution of roles. But one thing that is happening is it's pretty confusing to be a man, an aware man in today's world. the coordinates of what makes you perform your gender well have been scrambled. Like society is no longer asking of men simply to be a breadwinner or simply to be dominant women.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
and clueless about anything else. So a major defining role has been removed. On the other hand, there's still all sorts of like very powerful fantasies, phallic fantasies, like fantasies of what masculinity is, And I think it gets really confusing when on one hand, there's like this great pressure to perform some kind of masculinity.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Rings many bells. D.W. Winnicott talked about the containing environment. He talked about it more as sort of the maternal environment, the responsibility of the maternal environment to provide for the fussy infant, where if you provide a containing present environment for someone who's fussy, their nervous system will calm down. They'll have the space to make sense of their own experience.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
On the other hand, the clear coordinate of what that is have been devalued. Women are making more money than men. They're taking on positions. I mean, there's no longer an expectation that women will just subserve and take a secondary role. So How is a man to perform masculinity? What are they supposed to do?
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
It'll take a few generations to socialize men to actually find other ways to bring themselves into society and be valuable, like to connect with other parts of themselves. So they're left with a kind of a vacuum while there's still a great deal of pressure to perform something. And I think men are confused and paralyzed. I mean, this is a great generalization. I mean, they're- Sure, of course.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Yeah. But that's what I think of this passive situation.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
I think that's a good question. I think after so much analytic training and work, I think there is kind of a, almost like already now a built in suspicion of splitting. I don't believe it anymore. I mean, when I find myself splitting, you know, I can listen to the news and I, but you know, monsters. And then I'm like, come on, you know better.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Try to understand what are their fears, where are they coming from, what's motivating that side. And there's also something else that helps, which is that when I sit with couples, my patient, the unit that I'm treating is the couple. So I see each of them as each of the participants, I see them as just a part of a whole. And what I'm trying to listen to is what's happening in the system.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
I mean, sometimes I kind of take a pause from that and I dig into each person's individual history and go in there. But then I kind of zoom back out and I'm like, okay, but how is this part of the system as a whole? Is this system thriving or is the system stuck? And how do I help the system keep growing?
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Yeah, I understand. Obviously different therapists will listen in on different interpretive paradigms, but I can tell you that for me, there are a few layers that I listen for and assume underlie certain fights about sex, money, dishwasher. There's the one of, I mean, I guess to me, might seem obvious, maybe it's not obvious to listeners, but which is childhood histories.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Like how are each one in the couple reenacting childhood issues, whether it's traumas or unresolved dilemmas or patterns or unresolved attachment questions, riddles, how are they reenacting it with their partner? to try to figure something out for themselves. So that's one layer that I go to.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Then there's the layer of, if you want to go even beyond that, like what are intergenerational stuff that couples are trying to resolve between them? Maurice Apres is a wonderful analyst and writer. talks about these intergenerational errands that are passed down that still need to be resolved. So that's something that I keep in mind.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
So in a certain way, I guess you could think of The analyst's role as doing that, that's one of their roles, is to simply provide an environment in which the other person can sort out what's going on with them. My own, what you're calling my calmness, it is the result of many years in analysis myself.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
That's why some family therapists start any kind of family therapy with these elaborate genograms where they go way back, like several generations, to understand what are the forces that are influencing the particular family unit. Wow.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Yes. Yes.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
An example. This is, this is a couple that we filmed a couple of seasons ago. They actually, they're not on the show yet, but hopefully they'll make it in. This is an African-American couple. She was describing how she comes from many, many generations in which the men are never stuck around. The women were always left alone to raise the family, to raise the kids.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
And a great deal of resentment that has been passed down intergenerationally. And with this particular partner that she had a wonderful, wonderful relationship with her current partner, but she did feel like there's a certain kind of debt that he owed her that is not between them. It's something that has been passed down from generations of women that have been abandoned.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Now, of course, you cannot separate that from the larger history of like what it means to be black in America. And so it's not just intergenerational. It's, of course, immediately tied to the sociopolitical system in which these families grew up. I'm working now with a couple where one of the couples, he's like first generation Mexican-American family.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
And he's always been the translator for the parents. Like he's the one that knew English. He's the translator. And the partner he chose is deaf.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
So he's working on the business of translating, bringing someone into current culture. So he's bringing the deaf into the hearing culture. Wow. It's kind of amazing and gorgeous to notice these kind of intergenerational transmissions of errands that people are tasked with. And then they live out in their current relationships.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
And then there's the layer of power and sociopolitics that you want to listen in for. And it's always there between couples. Like there's always some negotiation about class. There's always negotiation about gender. Even in gay relationships, there's negotiation about gender. Who gets the bugs?
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Exactly. Yeah. Wow. Those are the layers that I listen for myself.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Interesting. There's this thing in the zeitgeist and culture now, which is this like want versus need. It seems to be like something that's out there in the world. I'd have to think about what is it? that people are trying to figure out by making that distinction. It's not a distinction that I use, the distinction between want and need.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
But I think it's a question of, which comes up between couples of legitimacy. Like what is a legitimate ask and what is not? Mm-hmm.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Yeah, that's a very good question. And it's always going to be there. I don't think it's something that you can simply resolve within yourself because we're full of wishes and wants and desires and needs and that's our humanity, right?
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
I think it's a question that should be figured out intersubjectively, like in a certain context, a certain need becomes a want because you're asking for something that is exactly very difficult for your partner to offer. Hmm. And in another environment or with another dynamic between a couple, something that might feel like a desperate need suddenly becomes a very easy want.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
It really depends on the dynamic and the contours of each person. So I don't think it's a simple question of like, oh, is my need or my want legitimate? Should I work on it on my own or not? I think it depends on
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Who your partner is, what are their, you know, I'm thinking, for example, a very classic thing or like if your partner is like, let's say, somewhat like neuro atypical, like they're somewhat on the spectrum and they don't exactly use the language of affect of emotion the way you do. It's much more confusing for them.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
In those situations, the ask for a certain kind of like verbal empathy, which is like a very basic wish, ask, need. For some people, that's like, what are you talking about? I don't know how to do that. It's like milk from a rock. And it's not because they're withholding. It's not because a power dynamic. It's just like, They're not wired that way. It's like a very complicated ask for them.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
So in that situation, what would be like in another context, a very legitimate wish, it's a more complicated one. So what do you do with that? You have to think of it intersubjectively. On the other hand, in other couples, it can be someone who's very capable of being empathic and verbally available, but because of a certain dynamic that got created, I don't know,
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
too much criticism, power, this, that, or the other, you know, the fountain is closed. And then it's a very different kind of conversation. Hmm.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Right. I'm going to operate with the goodwill assumption that change the partner is not really the third way. Sometimes it is, but let's... start from how do we work it out? First of all, trying to figure out between two people, what is going on here? Is what you're asking really something that your partner, it's just not in their making. They're not made that way.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
That's a very difficult ask from them. Think of it of like, you know, asking someone who wears glasses to take off their glasses and see better without glasses. It's kind of possibly the wrong ask. In which case, the third way is how do you figure out the thing you need and not bring it to your partner, but take it somewhere else? How do you see your partner for who they are?
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
And what can you focus on in what's going on between you and your partner that is kind of an open channel and an ask that will bring a lot of good exchange between the two of you? Rather than ask your partner to take off their glasses and see, talk to them about like, you know, listen to music together. Thank you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Thank you. Thank you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Thank you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Thank you. Thank you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Wow, that's a good one. First of all, yes, therapy, historically, it's been kind of an expensive thing that differentiates, that follows like a certain kind of class system in terms of who can and cannot have access. And hopefully that is changing. That's one of the objectives of our show, of the series, but it's also changing in the psychoanalytic world at large. People are
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Interesting. Sounds like this person is already doing a lot of the work. Yeah. So keep doing that work. And I guess the work is a strong feeling comes up and often the indicator that there's something to investigate is the feeling of blame. And then rather than indeed just go after the person, like turning it back to herself and asking, like, what's going on for me? What am I feeling?
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Okay, I'm feeling jealous of what he's doing. How do I turn that question back towards myself and ask myself what's missing in me? I mean, often this lost in the relationship symptom is...
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
some way that some question that should be turned to the self is interpersonalized it's put into the relationship like your partner is supposed to fulfill something or answer something that you're not doing the work of answering to yourself and sounds like this person is already doing that work so great it's a good example of what it means to try not to get lost in a relationship. Yeah.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
more and more aware of needing to find ways to democratize therapy. And a lot of really interesting initiatives going on in that respect. But if I had to try to put together some words that would serve as like a very preliminary kind of
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Yeah. Right. There's an inclination to what I call interpersonalize certain issues, to turn it into a relationship issue when it's not, it's something else. Interpersonalized. That's good.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Yeah, that's a great, I love the way she's phrasing the question. This is good.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
How did that become a thing? Yeah. That's great. So I'm again, just going to think out loud. This is no, there's no cookie cutter answer to something like that. But I would pursue two different questions, two different ways of thinking about this. I mean, one would be, yeah, whoever decided that's a thing.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
There's plenty of ways to live life and not everyone needs to live in this kind of put it all in one box, all in one bedroom, all in one apartment. Plenty of people choose to be in a romantic relationship and not live together, not sleep together, give a lot of space. People have different needs in terms of how much together and measurement they need and how much space they need. And I'm like,
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
figure it out. There's not one way to live life. That's on one hand. So whoever decided that's a thing is a very good question. It doesn't have to be a thing, but I'm also thinking, you know, sleeping, being unconscious on a piece of furniture is a time when we are indeed very vulnerable and trusting, right. And, And you might want to ask yourself, what is scary about that?
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
container about couples, I would say that it would be great for people to think of both the challenge and beauty of their couplehood as the challenge of dealing with otherness, right? We don't connect to our partners to find ourselves. I mean, what's the point? That's not interesting. There's no growth in that. There's nothing new in that. There's nothing
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
What is your unconscious telling you about like, What could happen to you if you let loose and fall asleep in the presence of another person? What are the dreads that come up around that? What is the kind of mixing up that sleeping together threatens?
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
I wouldn't take it as simply like being very sensitive as far as hearing, although who knows, maybe that person is like a highly sensory person, but maybe there's more to it. Maybe that unconscious has something to say. Hmm. Fascinating.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
That's a good one. How would I operationalize it in a nugget? Maybe challenge yourself to think of the thing about your partner that is the most disturbing to you, that brings you the most agita, to try to imagine it as the thorn from which the most growth Can happen.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Thank you so much. So much. This has been fabulous. Really wonderful questions. Thank you for pushing me to the edge.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
to be had by just having a relationship just with oneself. That's just narcissism, which leads nowhere. this thing that we do, which is that we reach out towards the world and fall in love and want to connect with someone else means we are inviting otherness into our lives. And that is important. That is like the thorn that will make you grow, that will make you heal and go beyond yourself.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
So that's the journey. The journey is to negotiate otherness. And in the crisis that always gets created between a couple. It's always ultimately a crisis about otherness. How do you deal with the fact that your partner is different from you? So it's what you need and it's what you will struggle with.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
It's in a way you could think of the fact that you're, you could imagine it, that you're creating your own mini political system.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
So what kind of political system do you believe in? What are your ethics about difference? And try to have that guide you. Holy shit.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Well, those two are kind of the same way of thinking. Right. They're both one is right, one is wrong. And you need to either squash difference or get rid of difference. But none of that involves opening up to difference and figuring out how do you live with difference? How do you live with both understanding who you are and who your partner is and figuring out a third way that will involve both?
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
That is huge. That is a huge question. You can try to answer that question on many layers. I mean, some people say that we were kind of wired to understand the world by creating differences in our mind. Like we have to create distinction to be able to even have any kind of thought. So there's some way that we always have to like separate what's this and what is it not. So what I am is not you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
What you are is not me. So there's some way that it's kind of inherent. But then what is the fear? There could be all sorts of fears and you could talk about like early childhood fears that get triggered. Like what is the fear? If I depend, will that other abandon? If that one is other than me, is there immediately the question of who is better?
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Is there immediately a question of hierarchies and power? If we're different, who's on top? Who's exploiting who? Is there a fear of the person's otherness means I'm not entitled to exist? There are many ways that you can imagine like what this difference and what the fear brings up. And then there's the question of your life experiences and how you've been indoctrinated to respond to difference.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Right. If you're if let's say the political system you grew up in invites dealing with difference by way of oppression, then that's what you think. Other oppress. If you're growing up in a society in which otherness is like you seek to harmonize, then you'll have a very different kind of reaction to otherness. It's actually a great question to try to answer it in a deep way.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
What is the existential fear that otherness brings up? Because that underlies racism, it underlies homophobia. Every kind of difference obviously is a riddle. How are you going to respond to that?
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. I mean, first of all, what's happening now in the States, I mean, it's not only happening in the States, it's happening in Europe, it's happening in Israel, it's happening. Across the world, it's like a disease. But this business of more and more extreme polarization, you know, and we can see it like between Democrats and Republicans, red and blue.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
But when that is the... the way of thinking that has marked our time, then it will make its way, of course, into like gender dynamics. It will make its way into the smallest difference around like how to load the dishwasher. When people are in the mindset of what I would call splitting, and I'll explain what I mean, it goes everywhere. It goes in relationships between parent and children.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Exactly true.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
It's really a disease. And what I mean by splitting, and that goes to this question of difference and response to differences, this British analyst, Melanie Klein, I mean, many years ago, really emphasized this primary defense that we all come into the world with or start our life with, which is this trying to distinguish good from bad internally.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
There are things that feel good and things that feel bad. There's the breast that is giving milk and then the empty breast that is keeping the baby hungry. And those differences between good and bad are very important. Like we need to preserve the good inside us and then project the bad outside of us. It's sort of a basic way of organizing an experience.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
And with time and with the development of mind, one can integrate good and bad and say, oh, mom is both feeding and sometimes not there. Our partner is both this wonderful person that provides a lot of warmth and sometimes not available. And it's the same person. And the good feelings that get created in us, we are the same person that feels both love and hate.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
So the integration of this good and bad is like developmentally where we want to be. So going back to your question of, for example, gender differences and completely different ways of experiencing the world, ultimately what you want is for people to be able to understand that their inner experience of goodness and badness is the same.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
I mean, it's not the same, but it lives within the same container. When I work with couples on... for example, on gender differences, on how, let's say, patriarchy shapes their experience in the world. People come into the negotiation or into the conflict assuming that, for example, women assume that they're the only one suffering from patriarchy. Men suffer from patriarchy tremendously.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
They're robbed of so much by having to split and perform this kind of masculine, role and they have to like split off all that's within them that has to do with femininity. And it empties them out. Like any kind of splitting ultimately empties you out. Women suffer too.
We Can Do Hard Things
Couples Therapy: The Tools You Need with Dr. Orna Guralnik (Best Of)
Not only do they suffer the oppression of patriarchy, but they suffer of having to like split themselves off of all the goods that the, whatever we want to imagine as masculinity is. So You want to bring people into the understanding, the deeply felt understanding that we're everything. And these splits are artificial. They rob us.