Repressives
Repressives avoid acknowledging a thing is happening in order to protect against the emotional effects of a threatening situation. They practice selective inattention (denial). In some cases a person may use a lot of positive self-talk and ‘hope’ in difficult circumstances in order to deny what is actually going on in their lives.
At an Unconscious level they are reacting and building up emotional tension but on a Conscious level they are not aware of this going on. They are not wiling to listen to the emotional messages coming up from their Unconscious and may have a very good reason for behaving this way – for example if they do pay attention it may mean the end of an important relationship.
Sensitisers
Sensitisers do the opposite to Repressives – they adopt a more paranoid approach and react to everything as quickly as possible with the intention of minimising the affects of the issue concerned before it can take a hold and push them to the point they are producing negative emotional responses.
In both cases the people concerned are trying to avoid the development of their own negative feelings in regards to a looming situation.
Most of us can identify with having adopted versions of these two behaviours at different times to ‘keep the peace’ or prevent a situation ‘getting out of hand’ but the researchers tell us that some folks adopt one of these two approaches as their default way of dealing with life.
As a short-term strategy either method is fine (in my view) but what if the external issue keeps recurring? In that case all that happens is the person builds and stores emotional response issues for the future.
Both approaches are based on the belief that the ‘ultimate threat’ would be something we could not cope with.
Sample Scenario: John Loves Emily and the Children But Emily Does Not Love John
Eighteen months into their marriage and Emily gives birth to their first child. Up until the point she became pregnant Emily was an apparently loving, caring partner who thought the world of John. Once she became pregnant, however, Emily became cold and uncommunicative.
During her pregnancy John told himself this was simply a side-effect of being pregnant – he had tried to offer his support through this tough time but Emily dismissed his concerns about her demeanour as his ‘being silly’.
Baby is now nine months old – the relationship with Emily still feels cold and John is wondering if ‘this is it’ and asks Emily what has gone wrong. He is getting very emotional.
Emily tells John she wants another baby. This will make her feel differently towards him. John replies he did not realise there was a problem and Emily states it just goes to show how unobservant and self-centred he is.
John tells Emily he would like to concentrate on the quality of life for their current child rather than simply being a child-production system and Emily tells him she wants six children and if he cannot bring himself to make her happy by doing this he will be of no use to her and can leave so she can find a man who will; she storms off.
John reasons that Emily must care about him despite her current behaviour because women do not have babies with men they do not love, do they? He also thinks about how he will fail to cope with leaving his current child, with the shame of having another man raising his child and how easily Emily could meet another man and disappear from his life, taking his child with her, forever. He immediately has an image of his committing suicide because of all this loss. He decides to agree to have another baby with Emily.
Again, up until the pregnancy, Emily is the perfect partner. Once pregnancy has been achieved however, Emily goes cold on him again.
When their first child, a daughter, reaches three John starts to worry about her behaviour – she has a habit of running headlong into things and injuring herself. Emily dismisses all of his concerns telling him he does not know the first thing about children and he should keep his nose out.
John feels completely disrespected by her responses. When he makes it clear he does not like the way he is treated Emily explodes in rage at him and tells him he can leave if he does not like the way things are.
This happens several times and on one occasion John also gets angry back at her and feels himself losing control. As Emily comes at him in spitting fury mode she says something hurtful and he slaps her.
Immediately John falls into shocked remorse. His reaction shocks him so much he vows never to do that again. He begs Emily to forgive him and promises he will never do it again.
Now he starts trying to eliminate the possibility of another confrontation like that happening by constantly monitoring and eliminating potential areas in which his daughter could hurt herself.
John has noticed that every time his daughter runs anywhere in the house he jumps out of his skin at the thought of her being injured and he chases her around everywhere to confirm she is safe.
Emily criticises him for this, telling him to let the daughter be, and John accepts her criticisms – he is too jumpy.
Meanwhile, Emily wants a third baby. John starts to notice the cycle – she likes him up until pregnancy and then goes cold again. He agrees to another baby – in for a penny, right?
One day John reads a newspaper story about a child being injured in a certain way and he imagines his own child being hurt that way and then finds he cannot stop thinking about it. He would never forgive himself if that happened to his daughter. He criticises himself for being over-reactive but keeps it to himself so Emily does not, likewise, criticise him. His own self-criticism he can live with but her doing it has more power.
The images of his daughter being hurt keep flashing in his mind. John has just developed an obsession. He cannot get the pictures of hurtful things happening to her out of his head.
Fourth child arrives and now John sees the like-John-dislike-John cycle in Emily so clearly he can no longer hide from it. He wonders if Emily will dump him when baby number six has arrived.
A year later, when Emily does her baby routine again, John decides to test the theory and refuses to have baby number five. Emily does not dump him immediately but she does go cold on him. The coldness goes on and on and John notices Emily getting happier and happier – with other people who she goes out with more and more.
First child is now fifteen years old and John asks Emily straight what the ‘big plan’ is. John tells Emily he believes she sees him as nothing more than a sperm donor and if he walked out tomorrow she would not bat an eyelid.
Emily comes clean and without any sense of guilt tells him he is absolutely right. When John asks how she sees the next steps in regards to the family she tells him now the cat is out of the bag she wants him to see other women and wants him to stay in the house just for the sake of the children – she has no further use for him personally.
Emily asks John why he does not look surprised at what she has just said.
John looks at her and says “I always knew”.
What John Always Knew
At some level John knew he was pretending real-life events, and the way he was being treated, were not real. He lied to himself and believed it was morally right to do so in order to protect his relationship with his child.
This is repression at work.
In a bid to remove the possible threat of a future confrontation with Emily which could also lead to the ending of the relationship both with Emily and his children he next tries to take preventative measures by following his daughter around – here he is also acting like a sensitiser.
This gets so bad it triggers an obsession.
What John Now Knows
John has an obsession to get rid of and the possible loss of a family to come to terms with. What he now realises was that he was always powerless to change the path of the relationship. It was always going to end up this way.
But he also knows he CAN survive the worst case scenario – in fact the worst case scenario is not as bad as the long, drawn out experience he has had.
Quite often in emotional illness we make the mistake of preferring a permanent, lower level painful experience to a short-term, intensely painful version which would eventually pass.
We remain stuck in situations, repressing and becoming increasingly sensitised to them, until we face up to the genuine fact we can cope with pretty much anything when we need to and we knew it all along.
Have you had experience of repressing and sensitising in this way?
Regards - Carl
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