There are two very powerful and seemingly opposite impulses that drive human development and interaction. First, there is the impulse towards autonomy, towards becoming a unique individual, being self-determined and the captain of one’s ship. Secondly there is the impulse towards togetherness, towards connection, towards the experience of belonging, union, and communion with another. These two very healthy and important drives seem to pull us in different directions and create numerous conflicts in our lives and relationships.

 

 

This is a challenging endeavor, one that often requires years of perseverance and practice. Instead of differentiating our tendency is to organize our lives around one or the other of those very powerful impulses, feeling more comfortable or familiar with either individuality or togetherness, largely due to which of these impulses formed the basis of interaction within our family of origin. This creates problems for us, and often results in a reenactment of childhood drama.

 

If you refer to the illustration below you can see that individuality without connection leaves us detached and disengaged. This is the rugged individualist who does his own thing and doesn’t seem to care about the opinions of others. We tend to call him strong in this culture, but we forget that he has difficulty relating to or interacting with others. Fear of intimacy and the inability to commit are issues coming from this side of the spectrum. We are afraid of getting too close for fear of being engulfed by another or losing our fragile sense of self.

 

 

On the other hand, togetherness without autonomy creates enmeshed relationships where partners and families are emotionally fused. Codependence arises from this orientation. Unfortunately, our culture has come to mistake emotional fusion with love. Do you remember the songs, “Aint no sunshine when she’s gone, only darkness everyday?” Or how about James Taylor’s, “I feel fine any time she’s around me now… and if I’m well, you can tell that she’s been with me now.” Or how about the award winning song, “Wind Beneath My Wings.” These all speak of our idea of love as finding completion in relationship to another. When we come to relationship from a desire to find comfort, acceptance, validation, and a sense of wholeness, we are sure to co-create enmeshment and emotional fusion. Why? Because when the starting point of relationship is our neediness and fear, nothing truly loving can result.

 

Healthy, vibrant, and passionate relationship with an intimate partner and with our world depends on our ability to self-differentiate and to bring the best of ourselves to the relationship.

 

 

•    Differentiation involves developing patterns of self-reflection in order to come to see and know ourselves, who we are, who we are not, and what our life is about - not what should be, but what is.

 

•    Differentiation means developing the ability to support and maintain our sense of self without giving in to the various pressures to conform to the way others want us to be, while at the same time being open to honest reflection and feedback from those who are important to us.

 

•    Differentiation means taking personal responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, words, and actions. The quality and experience of our lives is up to each of us.

 

•    Differentiation involves the ability to care for and nurture ourselves, to self-soothe, and to regulate our own anxiety. This enables us to relate to others from the best in us rather than from the most wounded or most needy in us.

 

 

•    Differentiation is the willingness to tolerate discomfort on behalf of growth. It recognizes our greatest challenges as our greatest opportunities for growth.

 

•    Differentiation involves the capacity to be compassionately present with another as they work out these principles in their own life. Being differentiated means that we can care for, support, and encourage the development of another without feeling any threat or loss of self.

 

 

At first glance at the principles one might think that differentiation could leave one rather aloof or uninterested in relationship. Actually, the opposite is true. The healthiest relationships are experienced by people who don’t need to be in one to feel good about their lives. Only a well differentiated person can connect deeply with another while allowing for the unique expression of what each brings to the relationship. Well differentiated people tend to have a higher capacity to give of themselves, and can set their own needs and agendas aside on behalf of another, if needed, without feeling resentful or keeping score. Because differentiated people don’t derive and maintain their sense of identity from the relationship they are free to experience relationship as a naturally evolving process, rather than trying to make the relationship conform to their ideas of what they want it and need it to be.

 

 

This investment and involvement may feel like “closeness” but it is emotional fusion, not love. Love causes us to see, support, and encourage the expression of the unique qualities and interests of our partner and family members without feeling threatened if they go a way that is varied from our own. Through differentiation we can really “see” who our partner is, because we’ve come to know who we really are. Harmonizing these two selves is a much more loving path than fusing them into one, as romantic as that “one heart and mind” might sound.

 

 

It is one thing to understand the principles of differentiation, and another entirely to live in a differentiated way. I would say that differentiation is mostly about conscious awareness given to our inner life and the way that we function in the world, as well as much experimentation and practice around the principles of differentiation in our relationships. The relationships in your life which perturb you the most, and within which you are the most reactive are the one’s that will teach you the most about differentiation.

 

 

Most of us have difficulty being kind and compassionate with ourselves, and for that reason, practices are given that open our hearts towards our own woundedness and neediness. In differentiating we take responsibility for our own healing and awakening. Heart-centered practices help us to be compassionately present with our inner process, work with difficult emotions, and resolve old business in our lives. Learning to do this results in a growing patience and compassion with others in our lives who struggle with their own issues, and with all beings who suffer and who, just like us, want to be happy.

 

At the Center for Open Hearted Living I teach the principles of differentiation and the practices that develop it in both individual and couple sessions, as well as in a class/group processes. Whereas we must take personal responsibility for our own differentiation, it is to our great advantage to seek support from and join others in the process.