Perceptual Incongruence: Future-Proofing Your Relationship (Part IV)
Future-proofing your relationship doesn’t mean preventing perceptual incongruence from ever happening; it means building the internal and relational capacity so that it happens less frequently and feels less threatening when it does because you’re able to navigate it with steadiness, curiosity, and flexibility. Developing the capacity for optimal mentalizing can help ward off and navigate future experiences of perceptual incongruence. Optimal mentalizing is all about avoiding extremes while you’re trying to understand self/other (Bleiberg et al., 2023; Luyten & Fonagy, 2015), finding balance in these areas:
Amount of mentalizing (neither too much nor too little)
A middle ground between being quick/reactive versus controlled/intellectual in understanding yourself and others
Considering both actions and internal factors (thoughts, feelings) in understanding yourself and others
A healthy middle ground between trying to reach a shared reality (which becomes a higher need during high stress times) and building capacity to hold difference between minds without feeling unduly threatened
This is not easy. Breakdowns in mentalization and the ensuing perceptual incongruence are likely to be most pronounced during times of stress and overwhelm, and that very stress and overwhelm is also going to make it more challenging to navigate the incongruence skillfully.
Differentiation theory combined with interpersonal neurobiology can support development of capacity for optimal mentalizing. An early family therapist, Murray Bowen, first described differentiation of self as the ability to manage one’s own anxiety when in relationship with important others without over-relying on distance, triangulation, conflict, or one person becoming the problem-bearer for the system (Bowen, 1978). I’ve found the updated framing of differentiation from the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy to be accessible, practical, and relevant: 1) the ability to know what you think, feel, and prefer; 2) the ability to skillfully share what you think, feel, and prefer in important relationships, particularly when stakes are high; and 3) the ability to skillfully hear what another person thinks, feels, and prefers even when stakes are high and you disagree, while managing your own emotional activation. (Bader, n.d.; Kauppi, 2019)
Our current understanding of interpersonal neurobiology suggests that the capacity for this is generated in the mentalization neural network that processes the relationship between self/other and holds a necessary separation between the psychology of oneself and that of another while in relationship (Luyten & Fonagy, 2015). When this brain network is functioning optimally, it is much easier to navigate difference between others’ minds and emotional experiences without feeling threatened. You are able to discern what’s about you/not about you and to allow others to have their own feelings because you’ve developed the superpower of taking in and personalizing the right amount of others’ perceptions and experiences in a relational environment. Therapist and trainer Juliane Taylor Shore calls this superpower of a well-functioning mentalization neural network your “psychological boundary” and suggests activating it using a visualization/thought experiment: ask your mentalization neural network to generate an image for you that knows what’s about you/not about you and that knows it is okay to allow someone to have their own feelings (Shore, 2023). Visualization can be particularly helpful for bringing optimal mentalizing online because automatic, reactive mentalization happens in the subcortical emotional brain that processes experience as images, not words.
If you’re not a visualization type, here is a differentiation mantra to use as an anchor: “I can know my own mind and tolerate another’s mind being different, even their perception of me or their perception of themselves, considering it carefully and taking in what’s for me while leaving the rest.”
Optimal mentalizing involves being able to accurately infer what is in our own mind and in the mind of another, while holding these inferences lightly, with flexibility and curiosity. Practically, this looks like slowing down, checking assumptions, and holding steady while sorting out tricky relational and communication tangles. Navigating this well is a lifelong growth process that unfolds over time through the development of an internal sturdiness that supports us in knowing our own thoughts, feelings, and preferences, expressing ourselves skillfully, and taking in the mind of another with curiosity, compassion, and discernment.
References
Bader, E. (n.d.). Differentiation in couples relationships. The Couples Institute. https://www.couplesinstitute.com/differentiation-couples-relationships/
Bleiberg, E., Safier, E., & Fonagy, P. (2023). Mentalization-based couple therapy. In J. L. Lebow & D. K. Snyder (Eds.), Clinical handbook of couple therapy (6th ed., pp. 175–198). Retrieved from https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10131246/1/Fonagy_Bleiberg%20Revised%20edited%20clean.pdf.
Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice. Jason Aronson.
Kauppi, M. (2019, September 11). The three aspects of differentiation of self: Part one. Institute for Relational Intimacy. https://www.instituteforrelationalintimacy.com/blog/the-three-aspects-of-differentiation-of-self-part-one/