Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Navigating the Emotional Dilemmas in Relationships

As a couples therapist, one of the classic dilemmas I encounter is: Should I stay or should I go? Many times, the couple, or at least one of them, cannot decide whether they want to stay in the relationship or leave it. Such emotional outbursts often indicate a difficulty in connecting to emotions. This is different from technical considerations (like financial difficulties) or moral considerations (such as whether it is appropriate to leave one's partner at this stage of family life). These are important but do not necessarily indicate an emotional problem.

The therapeutic work directs the person to connect with their feelings through focusing on the body, paying attention to physical changes, experiential work through guided imagination, and, of course, conversation. The assumption is that once the person is in touch with their feelings, it will become clear to them what the right action is.

Two Exercises to Help You Understand What You Really Feel

Anger of all kinds: distinguishing between healthy anger and destructive anger

The problem is that most of us are skilled at avoiding our emotions. We do this by distraction (being restless or making plans about the future), over-consumption (shopping, information, or food), or emotionalism. We avoid anger by feeling critical rage instead. We avoid anger by self-pity accompanied by guilty tears.

Such emotional responses do not help us face the challenge that the initial emotion indicates. This is similar to someone who can't bear the sight of the red light of the fuel pump that lights up on the dashboard of their car and solves the problem by sticking a sticker that hides the light or stopping the car with screeching brakes in the middle of the road and starting to cry. Both actions are dangerous and neither solves the problem.

Our deepest feelings matter. An emotion is an intense and relatively short episode of related and synchronized changes that occur in our systems in response to an external event. The event can be phenomena in nature and the environment, from a traffic jam to an earthquake, or the behavior of humans – from a joke, through ignoring to violence, or even the behavior of animals that affect our well-being. The event can be internal, like memories or images that come to mind, provided that we feel or appreciate that it has significant consequences in relation to our various needs. The event can also be our own behavior – from winning a prize to losing control – which gives rise to feelings such as pride or shame.

The Function of Emotions in Our Lives

The aforementioned changes take place in the cognitive system, but also in the neuro-physiological physical system (we turn pale, blush, sweat, feel weak, feel a lump in the throat, a tightness in the chest, the stomach turns over, the heart beats faster, the breathing changes, the mouth dries up or fills with saliva, etc.). Our facial expressions and voice change (our mouth opens or closes, our eyes close or open, tears flow, our voice rises or falls, we become silent or start speaking in a gulp, etc.). And all of these are also accompanied by changes in our subjective feelings (which we roughly classify as pleasant or unpleasant feelings).

But the most interesting thing from my point of view as an emotion-focused therapist is that our action in relation to the environment changes. By identifying a vital need that is not being met, the above set of changes, which occur under the heading of "emotion," prepares the ground for action that contributes to our survival. In other words, emotions are not an ornament, and certainly not a strange evolutionary remnant like eyebrows or nipples in men.

The function of fear is to stimulate our self-defense and therefore, for example, it motivates us to avoid the trigger, and it only dissipates when we have succeeded in making ourselves inaccessible to the threatening factor. Our product design was more or less finished when we ran through the savannah with a rag on our waist, and at the time, those of us who didn't feel fear when we saw a tiger reduced our chances of passing our genes on to the next generation. The function of anger is to give us back control of the situation and therefore it drives us to a confrontation and only dissipates when we have removed the obstacle (in today's Savannah we will say that the neighbor apologized, for example). Disgust also protects us by motivating us to reject the trigger and dissipates when it is removed (someone cleaned up the dog's vomit). The role of desire is to stimulate us to consume, therefore it leads us to approach the generative event and it passes only after we have gained full access to the trigger, and so on.

Understanding and Acting on Emotions

In other words, our emotions are smart and carry information vital to our survival. If we are not connected to them, we put ourselves at risk, like that driver who fails to deal effectively with the red light. In therapy, this is especially noticeable when patients feel they are stuck in an emotional dilemma.

If we return to the common case of a person debating whether to stay with their partner and does not know what they really feel – if the emotion they feel towards their partner is, for example, anger that the partner is related to their parents, or to their work, in a way that endangers the marital relationship, the anger will energize the patient to act in a way that removes the threat from their lives. If they succeed, the anger will disappear, and with it the dilemma of staying in touch. If they do not succeed, the anger will naturally turn into sadness, and the sadness will motivate the patient to ask for help or to release the pain (what we sometimes call letting go). It is possible that they will "let go" of the entire relationship, but it is also possible that they will let go of the hope that the partner will show them the degree of loyalty and devotion that they show to their family of origin or to their workplace. Either way, we can see that even in this scenario the dilemma regarding the partnership will be resolved.

The Role of Therapy in Navigating Emotions

It is very important to point out that in emotion-focused work, with its various approaches (EFT, AEDP, and schema therapy), when we investigate the killing Q that arose in the patient following a certain event, we assume that almost always in places where the emotional response seems excessive in relation to the trigger, there is an ancient sensitivity or an emotional wound in the person, which was opened as a result of the action of the other person (the neglect of the partner, for example, opens the wounds caused in the relationship with the neglectful mother). As far as this level is concerned, the psychological work will focus on events from the past and on extracting the deep emotions that the patient felt at the time, under the layers of defense with which they tried to avoid them. That is, even emotional work that begins with identifying our anger at our partner can turn into a journey to the deep sadness we felt as a child when a parent hurt us.

Here, again, we as therapists will help this historical design to do its vital action, although we will do so, from technological constraints, with imagination, in the clinic and with our help. This last point also illustrates that there is not necessarily a contradiction between the attitude of emotion-focused therapy towards emotions and the view of mindfulness towards our emotions. In both approaches, in my understanding, it is important to identify the emotions we feel, to develop the ability to bear them and handle them, and to reduce the avoidance of emotions, either by avoiding or by sinking into emotionality. We need to identify them so that we can get off at the nearest gas station, refuel, and continue on our way.