PHD Worthy Intimacy

Can you name your desire and not lose yourself in another?

“Yes,” I squealed in response to her request. My enthusiasm could not be tamped down. My clients see an authentic version of myself. There is no mask I put on. And the authentic version of myself when I am delighted is a squealy, boisterous and sometimes loud ball of energy.

“Are you patronizing me?” Lainey asked.

“Fuck, no! I am though showing you a bit more of my enthusiasm because I think you’re ready to experience more of my celebration of you.”

“But, what I did isn’t celebration worthy.”

For her, like many, she was raised to be modest, to make small her contribution, except for in service of men. And at that you work steadily for the men without making them feel like you did the work. Bolster their ego, ignore yours. Basic Christian, heteronormative, patriarchal programming. But like, more modern, in that becoming a wife and mother wasn’t at the top of the list of what her parents wanted for her. Lainey earned a PHD in her 20s. For this she was celebrated and which feels correct.

“Receiving praise when I graduated and even now about that accomplishment feels good. It’s easy to be celebrated for that,” she said.

“Well, in my books a woman asking for what she wants with integrity is PHD worthy celebration, especially considering that a woman asking for what she wants is shamed in dominant culture,” I said.

“I just went up to a 7,” she noted. We have devised a 1-10 number system to communicate her stress response: 1 is blissful calm, 10 is panic attack. She takes a long slow exhale while placing a hand on her chest. “I feel like I have to match you.”

“As you in have to feel the same excitement I do?”

“Yes.”

This has happened before which is why I tapered my enthusiasm in previous sessions because I knew my energy would overwhelm her. But we are nearing the end of our surrogate partner therapy, and she needs to practice all that she has learned about tracking her emotions, honoring them and individuating from the person or group she is interacting with.

In other words, she is working to dismantle people pleasing tendencies, that learned messaging that another's needs are more important than our own. Over six months in various embodiment exercises and even in conversation, I've experienced Lainey lose herself, sometimes begin to dissociate trying to accommodate me or match my emotions. The unconscious habit of defaulting to others on how she "should feel" is a pattern we are working to change in surrogate partner therapy, a collaboration between a surrogate, talk therapist and client. And while the talk therapist and I can identify this pattern in our individual sessions with Lainey, the goal is for Lainey to identify it as it's happening and work to change it

Tenderly I hold her, the request that made me giddy. My energy no longer bubbly but steady and maternal. Motherful. A mother she hasn’t know. One that says my joy doesn’t have to be yours. It can’t. We are different. Don’t match me. But accept my celebration of you. For Lainey, the people pleasing or fawning tendency wasn't born from an unstable or violent home the way it is for some clients, but from a quieter training of her mother: other people's feelings, especially men’s, mattered more than yours.

“It must be exhausting having to match other people,” I said.

“It is,” she said. She continued to explain how once at work they lost a large contract and one of her co-workers, was devastated, like, crying devasted. And Lainey didn’t feel sad, let alone feel like crying about it, but she felt like she should.

“I tried to feel sad and just couldn’t and then that made me feel like something is wrong with me. And then much later I thought, maybe that level of crying isn’t appropriate for the situation.”

Her story captures fawning to a tea: the automatic defaulting to others on how to feel in any situation. And I love that she recalled this story in this moment. She is recognizing fawning in real time with me and reflecting on past experiences, without shame, just noting. And so, I validate her. No squeal. Just truth. Validating her emotions is a key goal in our work together.

“Not knowing anything about the work situation, I would agree with that balling about a lost contract might not have been appropriate. In fact, it may have been an overreaction. But more important why look to her on how you should feel? It’s exhausting. You’re exhausted. You are working so hard.”

I hold her and stroke her hair and keep repeating a few times, “You are working so hard. Let go. Let go.”

As a surrogate partner therapist, I work to not shame the parts of us that have been engrained by a caregiver or circumstance. Rather, I hold these parts with reverence and ask my client to do that same as we create change. She has a skill of hyper vigilance, of being able to track someone else’s emotional weather. This is a skill that can serve her. We honor that. And we transmute the fawning response, the ignoring of her own internal weather, into embodiment, the claiming of her emotions be they different of another. Acceptance, love, safety, care, friendship, partnership does not have to come by way of accommodating others.

My own people pleasing tendencies have been transmuted into being a diligent surrogate partner therapist. I have a keen ability to track people, the verbal and non-verbal cues and the crossing weather patterns of the energetic body, but I don’t lose myself. And if ever I sense that I am, I call it out as Lainey did. My clients get to practice intimacy with me, a squealing boisterous recovering people pleaser who will celebrate you and often hold you and say, “Ask me how I know.” I know because I have been. I know because I, too, live in this culture. I, too, have felt broken. I, too, am transmuting patterns that don’t serve me anymore. I am with you. In asking you to let go it is a reminder to myself.